Shooters
In the late 90’s a video game started making the rounds that changed the way we look at FPS games. Around Beta 5, CounterStrike, a full conversion modification of Half-Life, was released as a free download. It was dreamed up, developed and released, for free, by a college student named Minh “Gooseman” Le.
The premise was simple, and that is the real beauty of this game, it was two teams, the Tangos and the Counter Terrorists, running a set of straight-forward scenarios. The scenarios were; Plant the Bomb, Rescue the Hostage(s) or Executive Protection (VIP). The rules were self explanatory and the area of play was limited, focusing the teams on the each others annihilation. It started a whirlwind of other games, and impacted the gaming community like no other since the advent of the 3d-shooter.
Since that time, the shooter genre has undergone many mutations, consoles have come into play, 3rd person view, addition of certain real-time strategies, but the underlying features are the same.
In the Military Simulation department, the US Army’s America’s Army, the Tom Clancy Ghost Recon series and Bohemia Interactive’s Operation FlashPoint, Armed Assault and ArmA 2, all reach for the ten-ring. Where other games have a immersive story and rich single player features, such as Mass Effect, only these games try to be “tactical.” Each has problems, each has strengths and weaknesses. However, it can’t be denied that FPS games have had, will continue to have, a deep impact on both the casual gaming world and the virtual combat trainer world.
