For the uninitiated, here's a quick guide: FPS: First-Person Shooter. Glossary: A number of acronyms are used when describing FPS games (see?) and for the purposes of authenticity are also used in this article. With that in mind, here are what we consider the most influential online shooters. YES NO Honourable mentions go to those that didn't make the cut, but are fine games in their own right: Duke Nukem 3D, Outlaws, Starsiege: Tribes, Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, ArmA: Armed Assault, Crysis, Deus Ex, Killzone 2, Resistance: Fall of Man.
ONLINE FPS GAMES SERIAL
That's those played across an internet connection or another multi-site network like TEN – but not physically connected via LAN, modem, serial cable or other local network. What we're interested in here is online FPS games. Not even online connected shooters such as Gears of War, as they're not first-person. Not just FPS games, like, say, Doom, as that could only be played multiplayer via a local area network (LAN). With the massively multiplayer MAG coming out soon, we at IGN thought it would be a good idea to highlight the most influential online connected first-person shooters so far.
If you can't sleep, the alternative to a glass of warm Horlicks is to grab a virtual gun and bag yourself a few bad guys. The massive number of PCs, Xbox 360s and PS3s out there with broadband connections, and the global spread of those machines across the time zones, means that for a popular game there will almost always be someone to play against, day or night. The social gaming landscape has changed completely with the internet and widely available broadband no longer must you rely on real-life friends coming round for a FIFA 10 session, you can just search online for a game to play and the chance are you'll be quickly matched up with someone. Similar advancements in video games technology mean that we now have the facility to shout obscenities to complete strangers while playing multiplayer games, or to be roundly cussed by American pre-teens playing one of Pop's games while he's out hunting for real. It's difficult to imagine a world without them. Email and Instant Messaging are now part of everyday life for most of us, while businesses are enhanced with video conferencing and Skype. The internet is a beautiful thing, an advancement in global communication that has brought the world together in a way that could not have been dreamt of a few decades ago.