Year In Review: 2004

Year in Review: 2004

Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and Unreal Tournament 2004 were all great, so I thought It'd see what else happened in '04. It turns out I've never heard of most of the games. I'm going to mention titles I'm familiar with, or at least heard of, and ignore the rest.

I used this list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_first-person_shooters as a reference. Dates are the initial release, and may apply to PC, consoles, or both. Alphabetically:

Doom 3

This paired a brand-new graphics engine with horror elements to reboot the Doom series in a fast-paced, visceral bloodbath. A masterpiece.

Far Cry

Far Cry is best known for enourmousenvironments allowing for one of the first open-world experiences. Slick AI and realistic jungle cat-and-mouse gameplay begat one of the most difficult shooters I've ever played. This is the first game from Crytek.

Half-Life 2

The award-winning Half-Life was followed by the award-wining Half-Life 2. The new Source engine had the best graphics of the time, and still looks good eight years later. This game excelled at pacing and level design, and was quite engaging.

Painkiller

Painkiller is one of the few contenders in the sparse old-school shooter market. This first game in the series had some of the largest bosses I've ever seen, along with hordes of monsters. A cult following continues to play and develop Painkiller titles (the most recent from February 2012) using the same engine and gameplay as this. The developer, People Can Fly, was purchased by Epic in 2007.

Star Wars: Battlefront

This game is noteworthy for supporting an unprecedented number of players and/or bots on team assault maps.

Unreal Tournament 2004

UT 2k4 was easy to LAN and had tons of game types and maps (further bolstered by fan-made content) . Balanced level design and solid bot support helped balance teams and allow a single player to rock out. Unreal Engines 2.0/2.5 were ubiquitously licensed by gaming and simulation developers.

Other Games

Here's a short list of '04 titles that I haven't played but sounded familiar: Halo 2, a Call of Duty title, Counter Strike: Source, a Goldeneye 007 game, a Medal of Honor game, Thief: Deadly Shadows (the final release from Ion Storm), and a Tribes game.

The odds and ends aren't all blockbusters, but I still think 2004 was a great year for the genre. There have been few decisions in my life as difficult as, “Should I get Doom 3, or Half-Life 2?”