Tempest, by Dave Theurer, is one of the first ever ‘tube shooters’. It was released by Atari in 1981.
You control a spider-like yellow craft that walks along the edge of a 3D playfield, often taking the form of a cylindrical tube. You shoot bullets down the tube at enemies that are rising upwards to get you. Thus the name ‘tube shooter’.
Doom was good, but Quake – for me – was where id Software really broke the First-Person Shooter mould, with a game far ahead of anything else at the time – even their own games…
Doom II: Hell On Earth (to give the game its full title) was released in 1994 and is the sequel to the infamous id Software blaster, Doom.
It uses the same engine as Doom (id Tech 1), but has more variety and is optimised to be more detailed and quicker.
id Software‘s hit shooter, Doom, blew the roof off the gaming world when it was first released in 1993.
It was the first First-Person Shooter that moved really fast and smoothly, and gave you a real sense of ‘being there’ when you played it.
The 2006 sequel to the hit RPG Neverwinter Nights was created by American developer Obsidian Entertainment and published by Atari, Inc.
In many ways Neverwinter Nights 2 improves on the original game, and uses a new game engine (actually a suped-up version of the previous engine), this one called the Electron Engine.
BioWare‘s 2002 release, Neverwinter Nights, is a bit of a giant on the RPG scene.
Not only is it a detailed and engrossing Role-Playing Game par excellence, but it also plays host to a huge modding community. It’s also well-known as a multiplayer game too and features campaigns that can be played single or multi-player, and also features Player-versus-Player (PvP) combat.
Taking place immediately after the events of the famous John Carpenter film of the same name, The Thing is a 3D survival horror game that aims to wallow in the sheer, dark, brilliance of Universal’s 1982 cult sci-fi hit.
A classic first-person survival horror game from Monolith Productions and first released in 2005.
F.E.A.R. unfortunately came out not long after Half-Life 2, so was kind of drowned-out in the attention Valve‘s release was getting. It’s not as good as Half-Life 2 – to be quite frank – but is definitely up there with the best releases of that year.
British author Clive Barker was a writer and creative consultant on this 2001 Windows/Mac release.
Clive Barker’s Undying is a survival horror, first-person shooter – with magic – and was developed by EA Los Angeles. The game sold poorly on release and a planned multiplayer patch and sequel were both canned.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings was first released in 2011 by Polish developer CD Projekt Red.
It is the predecessor to the smash hit The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and also follows the exploits of Geralt of Rivia – a Witcher, or monster-hunter – on a series of open-world adventures.
The King of Grabs 