So often the bleeding edge of games tech, yet so often fundamentally the same underneath: there’s a reason we can’t get enough of pretend shooting pretend people in their pretend faces. It is a pure test of skill and reflex, a game about movement at least as much as it is about violence, and done right it is absolutely delightful. And hey, sometimes you get a decent gimmick or story thrown into the mix.
These are our favourite 50 first-person shooters on PC, from 1993-2017. Your favourite is at number 51.
I had twin criteria for this. The first was ‘is it a decent game?’ and the second ‘does it meaningfully evoke the spirit, themes or characters of the movie in addition to having Quite Good Guns And Graphics?’ The second saw quite a few games which would otherwise qualify ruled out. This year’s Mad Max, for instance, was an agreeable murder-romp but it’s much harder to argue that it nails the desperation or oddness of the films it’s based on. Star Wars: Battlefront, meanwhile, is an OK online shooter with marvellous graphics, but it’s too mechanical to ‘feel’ like Star Wars once you get beyond the spectacular presentation. Ah, ‘feel’. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Does a movie game make you feel like you’re a part of that movie’s wider world, or is it just wearing its skin?
It’s that question which most informed this list. I don’t disagree that there are, in some cases, better games-based-on-movies if ‘game’ is the foremost criteria, but these, in no particular order, are the ten games which most understood and even grew my appreciation for their subject matter, rather than simply piggy-backed it. (Additional FYI: I decided not to include any superhero games, reasoning they’re really their own thing rather than innately movie-based).
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy soundtrack has taken up residency on my speakers once again, so my mind naturally turns to the other time a series with far more potential than actual achievement reached great heights. 2003’s Tron 2.0 was a mixed bag for sure, but for visual style – abstract shapes, big punchy colour, swathes of otherworldly black – it remains one to beat. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you know what I did? You do? Oh. So yeah, I wrote about Tron 2.0 for Eurogamer. With the new movie coming out soon, it seemed a good time to go back to a game that is oddly similar to the plot of the next film. I wrote words. Some of them were:
My lasting memories were of three things: 1) The pink worm monster thing I could never beat. 2) The light cycle races I could never win. 3) The Disc weapon. What I’d forgotten was that it was in many ways as much of an RPG as Deus Ex. Not only is there a good deal of walking through friendly areas, or areas populated with friendly NPCs at least, but there’s a lot of chitchat with them and your companions. Combined with this is the levelling up – something that’s so incredibly rarely featured in an FPS. And then on top of that is the absolutely superb way it lets you add in various abilities, augmentations and weapons.
As everyone clever knows, 2003’s Tron 2.0 was an imperfect shooter stuffed to the neon gills with thoughtful design – both thematically and visually. As current shooters hunt for ever-more shades of brown, it is only proper to hang our heads and think of where we might be today had Tron 2.0 taken off.
We’ll never know. But we can at least play free Unreal 3-based hacking/shooting game Sp.A.I. Read the rest of this entry »
This piece was first published in PC Gamer UK‘s Long Play series.
Disney occasionally hit the high notes of imagination. The Tron movie was one of those: a neon-and-black vision of the innards of cyberspace, long before such concepts became bread and butter to our science fiction diet. Making what purported to be a sequel to that famed film as a videogame was a brave move, and it’s one that only just worked out for the best. Tron 2.0 is an awkward, flawed combat adventure that mixes annoying jumping puzzles with atmospheric brilliance and scenes of stark, cold beauty. Not one of the great games, perhaps, but certainly one of the memorable ones. Read the rest of this entry »
