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184-502: Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a 2013 first-person shooter game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft . It is a standalone expansion to Far Cry 3 and the seventh overall installment in the Far Cry franchise . Blood Dragon is a retro-futuristic parody of 1980s action films, cartoons and video games, and takes place on an open world island. Players assume the role of military cyborg Sergeant Rex "Power" Colt. Gameplay

368-410: A FPS game engine as well as a customizable HUD , an auto-map , jumping, swimming, flying, shapeshifting with each metamorphosis featuring its own characteristics to adapt to each situation. Then it got enhanced with redbook audio narration , voiced dialogues which replaced the text boxes, two new levels, and 3D rendered cutscenes , then re-released on CD-ROM in 1994. ShadowCaster started

552-547: A first-person perspective , with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character . This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games , and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world , and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in

736-427: A periscope viewfinder similar to submarine shooting arcade games such as Midway 's video game Sea Wolf (1976) and Sega 's electro-mechanical game Periscope (1966). Battlezone became the first successful mass-market game featuring a first-person viewpoint and wireframe 3D graphics , with a version later released for home computers in 1983. MIDI Maze , a first-person shooter released in 1987 for

920-438: A sci-fi setting about a British secret agent named Blake Stone pursuing a mad scientist through his facilities like a sci-fi James Bond , a similar Wolf3D's gameplay of exploring mazes while battling various foes to find keycards required to unlock doors to reach each floor's exit all while searching every wall for secret areas filled with treasures for a higher score until each episode's last floor's boss but with

1104-598: A thesaurus to search synonyms for the word " construction ", and named his new game engine "Build". Apogee Software wanted Build since id Software went their own way and didn't want to license their new Doom engine (yet). Both Epic MegaGames and Apogee Software attempted to contract Ken Silverman who chose Apogee Software which he never explained his reasons however Epic Games expressed no regret since not relying on Ken Silverman motivated them to develop their own technologies, which paid off. Most shooters in this period were developed for IBM PC compatible computers. On

1288-446: A DLC for Assassin's Creed III that is set in an alternate timeline . The team intended to continue this approach for Far Cry 3 , and allowed the developers to abandon its characters and the settings. Ubisoft welcomed all types of idea for the DLC, and they were approached by Dean Evans, who had previously worked on Assassin's Creed III and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction , about

1472-621: A Q&A session for The Victim , and decided that he would be the perfect candidate to voice Rex. Evans contacted Jennifer Blanc to set up a meeting, but he was initially reluctant to meet with Evans due to his unpleasant experience voicing Hicks in Aliens: Colonial Marines , his only voice role for a video game. Biehn changed his mind after meeting Evans, as he found the 1980s influence to be inherently interesting. The team described Rex Colt as "Michael Biehn in Terminator - but if he

1656-563: A SNES by itself which is why the SNES game cartridge was actually an adapter cartridge which required another licensed SNES game cartridge to be inserted into it in order to get Super 3D Noah's Ark to work despite being unlicensed. Star Wars: Dark Forces was released the 6th of February 1995 after LucasArts decided Star Wars would make appropriate material for a game in the style of Doom . However, Star Wars: Dark Forces improved on several technical features that Doom lacked, such as

1840-459: A Shotgun , to help him reach them. The soundtracks were produced fairly early during the game's development, as Evans wanted to use them as a baseline for the game's development. According to Evans, this allowed the team to understand more about the atmosphere and the tone the game was striving for. Concept arts were sent to Power Glove for inspiration. The team first composed the Blood Dragon theme,

2024-604: A VHS-era aesthetic he felt was lost to the times". At the time, the release of nostalgic films such as Manborg and Hobo with a Shotgun made him believe that Blood Dragon would yield similar success, since the genre was underrepresented in the video game industry . Evans contacted director Jason Eisener after watching Hobo with a Shotgun; the two soon became friends, and Eisener became Blood Dragon ' s informal adviser, with Evans regularly sending assets and soundtracks to him. Ubisoft also invited Eisener to visit their Montreal office to brainstorm additional ideas and read

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2208-470: A captured Megatron, with some unexpected aid from Grimlock ensuring Magmatron is sent back to Cybertron empty handed. However, Razorbeast's Maximals and many Predacons (led by Ravage, resurrected in a Transmetal II body) are left on Earth, opening the way for future series. There have been two Beast Wars video games. The first game, simply called Beast Wars , was released for the PlayStation and PC . It

2392-557: A character. Medal of Honor , released in 1999, gave birth to a long running proliferation of simulative first-person shooters set during World War II. Valve 's Half-Life was released in 1998, based upon Quake ' s graphics technology. Initially met with only mild anticipation, it went on to become a commercial success. While most of the previous first-person shooters on the IBM PC platform had focused on visceral gameplay with relatively weak or irrelevant plots, Half-Life placed

2576-496: A cult following; 1UP.com called it the "first multi-player 3D shooter on a mainstream system" and the first "major LAN action game". Id Software's Hovertank 3D pioneered ray casting technology in May 1991 to enable faster gameplay than 1980s vehicle simulators; and Catacomb 3-D introduced another advance, texture mapping , in November 1991. The second game to use texture mapping

2760-401: A die, or performing silent takedowns with a large knife. Enemies can also be tagged using Rex's camera. The game features a simplified character progression system. With sufficient cyberpoints (the game's equivalent of experience ), new skills and combat perks, such as increased health or increased defense, are automatically unlocked. At the beginning of the game, most of the skills unlocked by

2944-407: A durable close friendship between id Software and Raven Software as id will always share their technologies with Raven who will continuously use and upgrade them. Apogee Software , the publisher of Wolfenstein 3D , followed up its success and released another FPS game based on its engine titled Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold from another developer Jam Productions 5 December 1993 which featured

3128-401: A dystopian 3D first-person dungeon shooter, has been argued to be the first true FPS. This is due to the combination of a fully perspective-shifting 3D maze with enemies ahead, and what may be the earliest representation of weapons appearing in perspective in front of the player. A slightly more sophisticated first-person shooting mainframe game was Panther (1975), a tank simulator for

3312-477: A far bigger focus on strong narrative; the game featured no cut scenes but remained in the first-person perspective at all times. It capitalized heavily on the concepts of non-enemy characters (previously featured in many other titles, such as the Marathon series and Strife ) and wider in-game interactivity (as first introduced by the likes of Duke Nukem 3D and System Shock ) but did not employ power-ups in

3496-606: A far more believable 3D environment than Wolfenstein 3D 's levels, all of which had a flat-floor space and corridors. Doom allowed competitive matches between multiple players, termed "deathmatches", and the game was responsible for the word's subsequent entry into the video gaming lexicon. According to creator John Romero , the game's deathmatch concept was inspired by the competitive multiplayer of fighting games such as Street Fighter II and Fatal Fury . Doom became so popular that its multiplayer features began to cause problems for companies whose networks were used to play

3680-435: A far wider diversity of enemies, and added textured floors and ceilings, switches to find and to press to open new areas, traps, an auto-map , stats tracking, a grenade launcher, limited-use vending-machines , teleporters , enemies spawners, back-tracking to previous levels as well as some friendly NPCs in the form of scientists who would give the player hints and supplies provided the player didn't kill them. The game

3864-512: A feat that the original game failed to achieve. Dan Whitehead from Eurogamer agreed that the game was dumb, adding that it "wears its idiocy like a shield", but remarked that some players may not enjoy this kind of humor. Matt Bertz from Game Informer thought that the story was hilarious, but commented that the crass humor featured in the game, similar to the 1980s movie, may alienate some of its players. Jim Sterling from Destructoid and Alex Wiltshire from PC Gamer were more critical of

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4048-504: A futuristic missions-based FPS game called CyClones . The name referred to Cybernetic Clones , the minions of aliens who had ravaged and devastated Earth . The game was in first person 3D , as was most other Raven games, so reusing the ShadowCaster engine and its tools was a natural choice. But within a short time, the team found that they wanted to do more with the game and engine than they had done before. A new, 100% in-house engine

4232-453: A game that is set in "a 1980s vision of the future". Franchise director Dan Hay and Ubisoft executives in Paris were pleased with the idea, and gave Evans approximately six months to complete its development. The game was heavily inspired by B-movies released in the 1980s and the early 1990s. Since Hay gave the team free rein to create something unexpected, Evans used the opportunity to "resurrect

4416-403: A giant to battle a massive dragon, and a boss fight with Sloan was replaced with cutscenes. At one point the game included self-aware quick-time events , such as "press A to show emotions" and "press A to cry", but this was subsequently removed from the game. Australian synthwave duo Power Glove composed the game's music. Evans asked Eisener, who worked with the duo previously on Hobo with

4600-458: A greater emphasis on narrative, problem-solving and logic puzzles. In addition to shooting, melee combat may also be used extensively. In some games, melee weapons are especially powerful, as a reward for the risk the player must take in maneuvering his character into close proximity to the enemy. In other games, instead, melee weapons may be less effective but necessary as a last resort. " Tactical shooters " tend to be more realistic, and require

4784-478: A large scale by Doom . While its combination of gory violence , dark humor and hellish imagery garnered acclaim from critics, these attributes also generated criticism from religious groups and censorship committees, with many commentators labelling the game a "murder simulator". There was further controversy when it emerged that the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre were fans of

4968-452: A medieval-themed/dark fantasy game using a modified version of id's Doom engine . Raven considered themselves as typical D&D fans and initially drafted the game with role-playing elements. They then took instruction from id programmer John Carmack to simply "do it like Doom , and add the fantasy flavor." Raven Software then used and upgraded the Doom engine and released Heretic

5152-575: A nearly fully destructible environment since the flamethrower could set people and environments on fire, which could make movement extremely hazardous for the player, especially since the fire randomly spread, and the grenade-launcher too could destroy any wall (with some hard coded exceptions). OBC also featured textured floors and ceilings and an auto-map like Blake Stone however, unlike BS , OBC featured more than one floor texture per level although its floors and ceilings' graphics were partially parallax meaning that they appeared to "warp" as

5336-458: A new standard for first-person-shooter video-games widely emulated, improved, and still applied to this day. Tom Hall originally designed it to be a first-person infiltration game including stealth, hiding dead bodies, disguises and alarms, following the legacy of its predecessors, and the game engine does include these original features, however John Romero and John Carmack wanted a simple shooter and Tom Hall had to fight hard to even include

5520-417: A newly designed aiming system that allowed players to aim at a precise spot on the screen. Though not the first of its kind, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six started a popular trend of tactical first-person shooters in 1998. It featured a team-based, realistic design and themes based around counter-terrorism , requiring missions to be planned before execution and in it, a single hit was sometimes enough to kill

5704-611: A nomination for Downloadable Game of the Year at the 17th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards , and won the VGX award for Best DLC. The game sold over 500,000 copies in two months, which surpassed Ubisoft's expectations, and its success also boosted the sales of Far Cry 3 . At Gamescom 2013, the game was announced to have sold over 1 million copies. The tone and the theme of the game received mixed reviews. According to GameSpot ' s Kevin VanOrd, Blood Dragon

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon - Misplaced Pages Continue

5888-807: A particularly potent power-up . These match types may also be customizable, allowing the players to vary weapons, health and power-ups found on the map, as well as victory criteria. Games may allow players to choose between various classes , each with its own strengths, weaknesses, equipment and roles within a team. There are many free-to-play first-person shooters on the market now, including Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory , Apex Legends , Team Fortress 2 , PlanetSide 2 , and Halo Infinite Multiplayer . Some games are released as free-to-play as their intended business model and can be highly profitable ( League of Legends earned $ 2 billion in 2017), but others such as Warhammer 40,000: Eternal Crusade begin their life as paid games and become free-to-play later to reach

6072-538: A protagonist who delivers regular one-liners , commenting upon the situation at hand. Much of the humor is derived from over-the-top, stereotypical portrayals of Asian culture . Based on the James Bond film , Rare 's GoldenEye 007 was released in 1997, and as of 2004 it was still the best-selling Nintendo 64 game in the United States. It has been the first landmark first-person shooter for console gamers and

6256-451: A realistic and tactical approach aimed at simulating real life counter-terrorism situations. GoldenEye 007 , released in 1997, was a landmark first-person shooter for home consoles , while the critical and commercial success of later titles like Perfect Dark , Medal of Honor and the Halo series helped to heighten the appeal of this genre for the consoles market, straightening the road to

6440-581: A rifle, or even limiting the players to only one weapon of choice at a time, forcing them to swap between different alternatives according to the situation. In some games, there's the option to trade up or upgrade weapons, resulting in multiple degrees of customization. Thus, the standards of realism are extremely variable. The protagonist can generally get healing and equipment supplies by means of collectible items such as first aid kits or ammunition packs, simply by walking over, or interacting with them. Some games allow players to accumulate experience points in

6624-435: A role-playing game fashion, that can generally be used to unlock new weapons, bonuses and skills. First-person shooters may be structurally composed of levels , or use the technique of a continuous narrative in which the game never leaves the first-person perspective. Others feature large sandbox environments, which are not divided into levels and can be explored freely. In first-person shooters, protagonists interact with

6808-554: A secret door. It also included vertical aiming, jumping, various missions objectives as well as one of the first training modes in a FPS game. Apogee Software 's Rise of the Triad: Dark War , released the 21th of December 1994, began as a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D , but was soon altered and became a stand-alone game . The game included "ludicrous" gibs, bullet holes persisted, and sheets of glass could be shattered by shooting or running through them. Bungie Software released

6992-598: A short extension for Wolfenstein 3D titled Spear of Destiny released the 19th of September 1992 to tease the players with the Hell to come in Doom as Spear of Destiny concluded into Hell, then two years later, Doom 2 included two secret levels featuring Wolfenstein in Hell while re-using Spear of Destiny 's Hell final level's music to close the loop. Ken Silverman decided to develop his own game engine after he played Wolfenstein 3D in 1992. His first game , that he named Walken as in "Ken's Walking simulator",

7176-429: A similar genre with a first-person perspective which uses dedicated light gun peripherals, in contrast to the use of conventional input devices. Light-gun shooters (like Virtua Cop ) often feature "on-rails" (scripted) movement, whereas first-person shooters give the player complete freedom to roam the surroundings. The first-person shooter may be considered a distinct genre itself, or a type of shooter game, in turn

7360-488: A still active community. Many sci-fi games both from Bungie themselves and from other studios have cited the Marathon trilogy as a huge influence on their stories and settings such as the series Halo , Destiny , Mass Effect and Warframe . After having provided a modified Wolfenstein 3D engine to Raven Software for ShadowCaster and being impressed by the final result, id Software requested that Raven develop

7544-488: A subgenre of the wider action game genre. Following the release of Doom in 1993, games in this style were commonly referred to as " Doom clones "; over time this term has largely been replaced by "first-person shooter". Wolfenstein 3D, released in 1992, the year before Doom , has been often credited with introducing the genre, but critics have since identified similar, though less advanced, games developed as far back as 1973. There are occasional disagreements regarding

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon - Misplaced Pages Continue

7728-526: A survey as to whether Dreamwave's new comic would be Robots In Disguise or Beast Wars . Beast Wars won. Dreamwave Productions had plans to release a Beast Wars comic in early 2005, which would have been done by the War Within creative team of Simon Furman and Don Figueroa . Brad Mick and Adam Patyk were originally planned to write the series until they left Dreamwave after not being paid for several projects. However, although some cover art did appear on

7912-488: A team of American scientists which opened a portal and connected Earth to another world from which an alien invasion started into the research facility . Corridor 7 added animated textures such as computer screens, distant shading which darkened distant areas to limit the player's sight's distance, dark areas and night vision mode to see into them, some invisible aliens and traps which could only be seen through infrared vision mode, some energy stations to recharge

8096-513: A varying number of enemies. Because they take place in a 3D environment, these games tend to be somewhat more realistic than 2D shooter games, and have more accurate representations of gravity, lighting, sound and collisions. First-person shooters played on personal computers are most often controlled with a combination of a keyboard and mouse . This system has been claimed as superior to that found in console games, which frequently use two analog sticks : one used for running and sidestepping,

8280-436: A wider audience after an initially disappointing reception. Some player communities complain about freemium first-person-shooters, fearing that they create unbalanced games, but many game designers have tweaked prices in response to criticism, and players can usually get the same benefits by playing longer rather than paying. The earliest two documented first-person shooter video games are Maze War and Spasim . Maze War

8464-466: Is "fascinatingly entertaining", its writing more clever than most other shooters in the market and that it was "hard not to be charmed from the moment it begins". Mitch Dyer from IGN liked the 80s influence and described the experience as entering the mind of a nine-year-old kid where action figures come to life. Sinan Kubba from Joystiq compared Rex Colt to Duke Nukem , and lauded Ubisoft for successfully "combin[ing] crazy ideas with classy writing",

8648-537: Is a sci-fi story revolving around a neural drug named Tek and the Matrix, a virtual reality (four years before the first Matrix movie ). The video-game featured FMVs, digitized live-actors and actresses, a stun gun to neutralize people in a non-lethal fashion , and gibs and dropped the player into a lively open-world future Los Angeles , making it the first FPS game which featured an open-world modern city, full of civilians, cops and enemies where civilians panicked if

8832-551: Is a standalone expansion to Far Cry 3 , which is a first-person shooter video game. In the game, the player controls Rex "Power" Colt, a cyborg military commando stranded on an unnamed island. Like the main game, it allows players to use various means to approach their objectives; for instance, players can use various firearms such as pistols , assault rifles , shotgun , and sniper rifles , and explosives like grenades to kill their opponents. Alternatively, they can utilize stealth tactics such as distracting enemies by throwing

9016-524: Is a third-person shooter , based on the first season of the show, in which players control either the Maximals or the Predacons in a series of missions to undermine the other faction's attempts at gaining enough resources to win the war between them and escape the planet. It was given a multiplayer feature (removed from the console releases) that allowed up to 8 players to play over LAN , with its own play rooms in

9200-559: Is an entertainment franchise from Hasbro and is part of the larger Transformers franchise. The franchise directly follows the Transformers: Generation 1 continuity established by the 1984 series and animated film . It ignores the continuity established by the Japanese Transformers series, though this franchise would have two exclusive Japanese series of its own. Before Beast Wars , Hasbro had attempted to relaunch

9384-509: Is awoken by Sloan's assistant Dr. Elizabeth Darling ( Grey DeLisle ), who, disillusioned with Sloan's goals, betrays him. He teams up with Darling to overthrow Sloan's plan to revert the world to a prehistoric-like state with his rockets, armed with the blood of the "blood dragons" that roam the island. After liberating bases, saving scientists, and killing animals, Rex fights Sloan's other assistant, Dr. Carlyle ( Robin Atkin Downes ), who has used

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9568-405: Is largely similar to Far Cry 3 , though several systems from the base game were simplified or removed, and it introduces the titular Blood Dragon, a massive dinosaur that fires lasers from its eyes and can be lured to attack enemy garrisons. The game's development was completed in about six months. It was part of Ubisoft's initiative to release downloadable content that would appeal to newcomers to

9752-597: Is quite atrocious. But we’ve gone along that line of so bad it’s good. It’s almost like the Troll 2 , or Miami Connection kind of aspect of things." — Dean Evans, the director of Blood Dragon . Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a standalone expansion for Far Cry 3 , which was released in late 2012. At the time, Ubisoft was experimenting with a new approach to release downloadable content (DLC) for their games. The company sought to appeal to new and existing players. It first experimented with The Tyranny of King Washington ,

9936-618: Is set in a dystopian version of 2007 where the world is suffering the aftermath of a nuclear war. Ubisoft described the game as "an 80s VHS vision of the future" where the player must "get the girl, kill the bad guys, and save the world". The player controls an American cybernetic super-soldier named Sergeant Rex "Power" Colt ( Michael Biehn ). He and another American cyber-soldier, T.T. "Spider" Brown ( Phil LaMarr ), travel to an unnamed island to investigate Colonel Sloan (Danny Blanco Hall), an elite agent who has gone rogue. Rex and Spider confront Sloan, who knocks Rex out and kills Spider. Rex

10120-463: Is the "Tome of Power" which acts as a secondary firing mode for certain weapons, resulting in a much more powerful projectile for each weapon, some of which change the look of the projectile entirely, then Raven added two more episodes and re-released it as Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders the 31st of March 1996. Super 3D Noah's Ark , developed on Wolf3D engine and published by

10304-400: Is the home of the blood dragons, as well as various wildlife such as cybersharks and mutant cassowaries . Blood dragons are blind, but they can shoot lasers from their eyes and hunt using their sense of smell. Players can throw cybernetic hearts to lure blood dragons to an enemy base, which would help Rex to wipe out nearby enemies. The only way to collect cybernetic hearts is to rip them from

10488-451: The Halo and Destiny series which took a lot from the Marathon trilogy which is no more exclusive to Mac since Bungie Software open-sourced it in 2000 then released the original trilogy as freeware in 2005, some fans have source-ported it to Windows and Linux as well as remastered them using the open-source engine Aleph One and have even been developing many new scenarios, total conversions, and multiplayer maps sustaining

10672-503: The PlanetSide series allow thousands of players to compete at once in a persistent world . Large scale multiplayer games allow multiple squads, with leaders issuing commands and a commander controlling the team's overall strategy. Multiplayer games have a variety of different styles of match. The classic types are the deathmatch (and its team-based variant) in which players score points by killing other players' characters; and capture

10856-511: The Atari ST , featured maze-based gameplay and character designs similar to Pac-Man , but displayed in a first-person perspective. Later ported to various systems—including the Game Boy and Super NES under the title Faceball 2000 —it featured the first network multiplayer deathmatches , using a MIDI interface. Despite the inconvenience of connecting numerous machines together, it gained

11040-535: The Build engine for MS-DOS , but was later spun off into releases for Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation using developer Lobotomy Software 's in-house SlaveDriver engine. While the PC version is a traditional linear first-person shooter, the console versions feature non-linear progression and unlockable player abilities reminiscent of a metroidvania . Strife , developed by Rogue Entertainment and published by Velocity Inc.

11224-643: The Doomsday engine and completely remastered by its modding community . The 12th of March 1994, the Japanese company Exact released Geograph Seal for the Sharp X68000 home computer. An obscure import title as far as the Western market is concerned, it was nonetheless an early example of a 3D polygonal first-person shooter, with innovative platform game mechanics and free-roaming outdoor environments. CyClones

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11408-622: The Macintosh side, Bungie released its first shooter, Pathways into Darkness in August 1993, which featured more adventure and narrative elements alongside first-person shooter gameplay. Pathways had been inspired by Wolfenstein 3D , and born out of an attempt to take their previous top-down dungeon exploration game Minotaur: The Labyrinths of Crete into a 3D setting. ShadowCaster , developed by Raven Software and published by Origin Systems

11592-540: The PLATO system . Atari's first-person tank shooter arcade video game Battlezone (1980), modeled closely after PLATO Panther, was released for arcades and presented using a vector graphics display , with the game designed by Ed Rotberg. It is considered to be the first successful first-person shooter video game, making it a milestone for the genre. It was primarily inspired by Atari's top-down arcade shooter game Tank (1974). The original arcade cabinet also employed

11776-420: The PlayStation console, called Jumping Flash! , which placed more emphasis on its platform elements. Witchaven , developed by Capstone Software and published by their parent company IntraCorp the 20th of September 1995, was the first commercial game licensed on Apogee Software rebranded 3D Realms ' Ken Silverman 's new Build engine to rival id Software 's John Carmack 's Doom engine and

11960-445: The SNES version was itself a mere reskin from Wolfenstein 3D's SNES version as well however the PC version did upgrade some things upon Wolfenstein 3D such as textured floors (like Blake Stone ) along with higher resolutions graphics and MIDI music, and added a new gameplay feature such as quizzes which tested the player's religious knowledge whose rewards were more ammo to keep playing

12144-452: The Terminator franchise, was invited to provide his voice for the game's protagonist, while Australian synthwave duo Power Glove composed the game's soundtrack. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was released for PlayStation 3 on 30 April 2013, and for Windows and Xbox 360 on 1 May 2013. The game received generally positive reviews upon release, and was praised for its gameplay, soundtrack and its 1980s influence, but opinions were divided on

12328-635: The Tripredacus Council to capture Megatron after Ravage's failure. However, Magmatron has his own agenda - to create his own army from the stasis pods the Axalon ejected in the pilot episode of Beast Wars . His scheme is partially thwarted by the Maximal double-agent Razorbeast, who ensures the shell program used reconfigures many of the protoforms as Maximals rather than Predacons. The two sides clash in an attempt to stop Magmatron from returning to Cybertron with

12512-516: The Xbox Live Marketplace . On 11 April, Ubisoft officially confirmed the game's release with a new trailer, and that the game would be released on PlayStation Network on 30 April, and on Windows and Xbox Live Arcade , on 1 May. The trailer was animated in a 1980s style, including all the tropes of poor voice acting and imperfections designed to make the video look like a VHS tape . A live-action video titled Blood Dragon: The Cyber War

12696-466: The christian video-games company Wisdom Tree (formerly named Color Dreams ) the 1st of January 1995, was the first non-violent FPS game along with being the first religious FPS game ( Doom was already based on christian mythology as well since the enemy was christian's Hell however unlike Super 3D Noah's Ark , it merely used it as a setting and didn't attempt to teach religion) which featured Noah from Abrahamic mythology 's Noah's Ark as

12880-428: The crosshair was not fixed at the center of the screen on which it could move freely as opposite to nowadays standard fixed aiming, CyClones 's aiming was comparable to Metroid Prime ' s years later. CyClones used the mouse not only for aiming but also for picking up objects and interacting with the environment such as doors and switches and even revealed secret doors since the crosshair changed color upon pointing

13064-416: The protagonist and re-used Wolfenstein 3D 's gameplay and level-design while replacing enemies' death animations by seemingly friendly animals falling asleep upon being hit by the player's weapon which was a slingshot shooting food to feed the unresting hungry animals aboard goats filled Noah's Ark made of the recycled original maps from Wolfenstein 3D including the same items' placements and even

13248-420: The sci-fi FPS game Marathon the 21th of December 1994 still exclusively on Mac , which streamlined concepts from their previous game Pathways Into Darkness by eliminating role-playing elements in favor of the shooter action spurred by Doom 's success. Marathon was highly successful, leading to two sequels Marathon 2: Durandal released the 24th of November 1995 then Marathon: Infinity released

13432-560: The 15th of May 1996, was the last commercial game which used and modified the Doom engine before id released the new Quake engine the following month and it introduced some RPVG 's features into the standard FPS formula such as an actual lively open-world filled with NPCs , dialogues with choices of answers, some of them were even voiced, trade, reinforcements who engage the enemies in battle, mandatory and optional quests, character's evolution of his abilities, an intriguing plot branching into different routes and conclusions according to

13616-506: The 15th of October 1996 to form the Marathon Trilogy , and becoming the standard for FPS games on Mac which pioneered or was an early adopter of several new gameplay features such as default freelook , ammo clips and weapons reloading though not manually, forcing the player to keep an eye on their ammo clips to anticipate the next reloading, dual-wielded and dual-function weapons, a motion sensor to detect both enemies and allies in

13800-425: The 17th of March 1995 ), a game in which the player pilots a spacecraft around caves and factory ducts, was among the earliest truly three-dimensional first-person shooters. It abandoned sprites and ray casting in favour of polygonal models and allowed movement through all of the six possible degrees of freedom . The 28th of April 1995, the Japanese company Exact released the successor to Geograph Seal for

13984-414: The 23th of December 1994 which introduced larger maps , vertical aiming, flying, gibs , randomized ambient sound effects, interactive environments such as rushing water and winds which push the player along, an inventory system to store and select many different items which range from health potions to the "morph ovum" which transforms enemies into chickens and one of the most notable item that can be found

14168-567: The 27th of October 1993, used a heavily modified version of Wolf3D engine made by John Carmack during summer 1992 who offered it to Raven Software after he was impressed with their first RPVG Black Crypt because he was curious about how Raven would use his game engine to make a RPVG instead of a FPSG. ShadowCaster was the first commercial game released with classic "2.5D Doom engine " improvements such as distance fogging, non-orthogonal walls, textured ceilings and floors, etc before Doom itself came out. It introduced some RPG elements into

14352-546: The 3D engines that powered the games of that period, such as the iconic id Tech 2 , the first iteration of the Unreal Engine , or the more versatile Build . Other seminal games were released during the years, with Marathon enhancing the narrative and puzzle elements, Duke Nukem 3D introducing voice acting, complete interactivity with the environment, and city-life settings to the genre, and games like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Counter-Strike starting to adopt

14536-402: The 5th of May 1992 in which the player had to explore mazes while battling Nazis to find keys required to unlock doors to reach each floor's exit all while searching every wall for secret areas filled with treasures for a higher score until each episode's last floor's boss and was an instant success because of its first episode's distribution and spread as shareware whereas the second and

14720-457: The 6th of May 1996, was a sequel to the first Witchaven which set the knight from the first game onto an even more perilous quest to rescue the princess abducted by the witch 's sister seeking vengeance, still licensed on 3D Realms ' Build engine , it added dual weapons wielding or wielding a shield in the place of the second weapon as well as a map editor to let players create and share their own maps , however Capstone didn't fix

14904-545: The Blood Dragon was developed by RedLynx and released by Ubisoft in 2016. Evans left Ubisoft in March 2018 after his project was cancelled internally. Following the success of Blood Dragon , Ubisoft continued to release spin-offs for the series using assets built for mainline games, which led to the release of Far Cry Primal in 2016 and Far Cry New Dawn in 2019. Blood dragons return as enemies in Dead Living Zombies ,

15088-627: The BotCon comics, two particular Beast Wars storylines are tapped. In the Omega Point storyline, several events lead up to a tremendous battle against Shokaract, a Predacon fueled by the Dark Essence of Unicron himself. This also serves as an introduction for Apelinq , and the only appearances of Windrazor , Sandstorm, Antagony, and Cataclysm. In the Primeval Dawn story, Tarantulas comes back from

15272-657: The Hill, Kill the Man with the Ball, and cooperative campaign) and a map editor for players to create and share their own maps for the games. The Marathon games also had a strong emphasis on storytelling in addition to the action, which revolved around evolving relationships between the human player's character and some AIs during a surprise invasion and subsequent war against a hostile alien Empire which already conquered and enslaved some other alien species, much like Bungie's future projects such as

15456-462: The Killstar, killing him. Darling appears and informs Rex of his success in stopping Sloan's plans, then proceeds to destroy the base. They embrace while looking on at the destruction, as Darling looks behind with purple eyes and a sinister gaze. "We’ve worked really hard to do a really bad script and it’s been a lot of fun to embrace that, tick off a lot of tropes, and try to create something that really

15640-512: The MS Gaming Zone (they have since been removed). The second game, Transformers: Beast Wars Transmetals , is a fighting game based on the second season. The PlayStation version was released by Hasbro Interactive and the Nintendo 64 version was released by bam! Entertainment . Most of the cast members from the show reprised their roles. A third game was in the works for the PlayStation 2 , but

15824-467: The ability to crouch, jump, or look and aim up and down. Dark Forces also was one of the first games to incorporate 3D-designed objects rendered into the game's 2.5D graphics engine. The game's success launched the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series, beginning with the direct sequel Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II the 9th of October 1997. Descent (released by Parallax Software

16008-569: The action had to take place in enclosed areas, such as corridors and small rooms. During the 1990s, the genre was one of the main cornerstones for technological advancements of computer graphics, starting with the release of Quake in 1996. Quake was one of the first real-time 3D rendered video games in history, and quickly became one of the most acclaimed shooter games of all time. Graphics accelerator hardware became essential to improve performances and add new effects such as full texture mapping , dynamic lighting and particle processing to

16192-408: The additional support and encouragement for game modifications attracted players who wanted to tinker with the game and create their own modules. According to creator John Romero, Quake ' s 3D world was inspired by the 3D fighting game Virtua Fighter . Quake was also intended to expand the genre with Virtua Fighter influenced melee brawling , but this element was eventually scrapped from

16376-464: The alarms if they detect the presence of Rex in their compound. These bases have an energy shield that must be deactivated before a blood dragon can enter the compound. Once liberated, these outposts became fast travel points for the players, though they can also freely explore the world on foot or by various vehicles. As the player explores the world, they will find various collectibles in the form of VHS tapes and CRT TVs . Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

16560-493: The appearance of a rat running through a maze. Another crucial early game that influenced first-person shooters was Wayout . It featured the player trying to escape a maze, using ray casting to render the environment, simulating visually how each wall segment would be rendered relative to the player's position and facing angle. This allowed more freeform movement compared to the grid-based and cardinal Maze War and Spasim . Among PLATO games, Witz and Boland's 1977 Futurewar ,

16744-429: The area, gravity alterations, swimming, interactive environments such as healing stations, oxygen stations, save points , teleporters , many computer terminals spread all around the levels as plot devices which provided messages, informations, various objectives and maps to the player's character as well as friendly defense drones and non-player characters (NPCs), versatile multiplayer modes (such as King of

16928-480: The atmosphere was gripping, the aliens were more appreciated than the stereotypes of Arabian people, the AI was improved with some enemies patrolling routes and some others camouflaging into environments or being invisible and not attacking until the player was close enough to ambush them, providing an actual challenge to players, and the game was considerably more evolved than Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone , however it

17112-425: The blood dragons' interaction with other enemies to be an engaging experience. However, several critics remarked that it was not too challenging to kill a blood dragon in the game. Wiltshire added that they were not interesting to fight, and were more interesting as an ally than an enemy. Whitehead praised the game's progression and pacing, noting that the game ends before it overstays its welcome. Bertz disliked some of

17296-443: The blood of blood dragons to turn humans into zombie-like creatures called "the running dead". After he fights Dr. Carlyle's cyber soldiers and blood dragons, Dr. Carlyle is killed by his own AI, who had been mistreated and acted out of revenge. Rex goes into a parallel dimension where he fights legions of Colonel Sloan's running dead. Upon defeating them, he gets the Killstar, an arm-mounted laser gun that allows him to defeat Sloan at

17480-433: The case of Portal , the 'gun' the player character carries is used to create portals through walls rather than fire projectiles). Some commentators also extend the definition to include combat flight simulators and space battle games, whenever the cockpit of the aircraft is depicted from a first-person point of view. Like most shooter games, first-person shooters involve an avatar , one or more ranged weapons , and

17664-628: The character they are controlling (usually from behind, or above). The primary design focus is combat, mainly involving firearms or other types of long range weapons. A defining feature of the genre is "player-guided navigation through a three-dimensional space." This is a defining characteristic that clearly distinguishes the genre from other types of shooting games that employ a first-person perspective , including light gun shooters , rail shooters , shooting gallery games , or older shooting electro-mechanical games . First person-shooter games are thus categorized as being distinct from light gun shooters,

17848-416: The construction of complex cinematic storylines with a well defined cast of secondary characters to interact with. Furthermore, certain puzzle or platforming games are also sometimes categorized as first-person shooters, in spite of lacking any direct combat or shooting element, instead using a first-person perspective to help players immerse within the game and better navigate 3D environments (for example, in

18032-431: The context, other first-person shooters may incorporate some imaginative variations, including futuristic prototypes, alien-technology or magical weapons, and/or implementing a wide array of different projectiles, from lasers, to energy, plasma, rockets, and arrows. These many variations may also be applied to the tossing of grenades, bombs, spears and the like. Also, more unconventional modes of destruction may be employed by

18216-406: The corpses of fallen enemies. Blood dragons are infused with the lights of neon, and the color the neon lights reflect their hostility status. Red means that the beast is already attacking, yellow suggests that the beast is being cautious, while green means that they are calm. The game features 13 hostile garrisons that the players can liberate. Hostile enemies will call for reinforcements and activate

18400-499: The cost of his own vitality. After Rex and Darling have sex, she is abducted the following morning. Rex makes an assault on Sloan's base with the Killstar and the Battle Armored Dragon Assault Strike System (B.A.D.A.S.S.). Rex confronts Sloan who, having programmed Rex, prevents him from attacking. Darling and Spider's memories remind Rex of his humanity, and he impales Sloan with his robotic hand and fires

18584-404: The current tendency to release most titles as cross-platform, like many games in the Far Cry and Call of Duty series. First-person shooters are a type of shooter game that relies on a first-person point of view with which the player experiences the action through the eyes of the character . They differ from third-person shooters in that, in a third-person shooter, the player can see

18768-475: The cybernetic transmetal Beast Wars Transformers sold well in Western markets, Japanese fans preferred more realistic looking beast modes; thus, Beast Wars Metals was not as successful with Japanese fans. The second and third season of Beast Wars and its toy line only lasted a few months before being replaced by Transformers: Car Robots in the following new year, in which several unused Transmetal 2 molds were used as Destrongers (Predacons). Beast Machines

18952-491: The dead alongside Ravage, Spittor, Iguanus, and Razorclaw to complete the mission he set out to do, while the Vok create Primal Prime to stand in his way; Primal Prime teams up with Airazor, Tigatron, and Ramulus, who have come back from the dead as well. Dreamwave Productions released a Summer Special which contained a Beast Wars story. It introduced three new characters, Optimus Minor , Bonecrusher , and Wolfang . The comic had

19136-584: The earlier platformers Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II ), released as shareware the 29th of January 1996, which ran on the then new Build engine developed by Ken Silverman with the support of John Carmack . Duke Nukem 3D won acclaim for its humour based around stereotyped machismo as well as its adrenalinic gameplay and graphics. However, some found the game's (and later the whole series') treatment of women to be derogatory and tasteless. Witchaven 2: Blood Vengeance , developed by Capstone Software and published by their parent company IntraCorp

19320-543: The end of Far Cry 3 , such as swimming for an indefinite duration underwater and chained combat takedowns, are already unlocked. The crafting system featured in Far Cry 3 was removed in Blood Dragon . The island is an open world that is about half the size of Far Cry 3 . Players can hunt wildlife, complete side missions to unlock new weapon upgrades and attachments, and liberate enemy outposts and garrisons. The unnamed island

19504-444: The enemy attack dogs with giant rats to allow it to be released on SNES because of their anti-violence policy. id Software released a map editor to let players create and share online their own home-made maps for the game which started the players' modding communities who blossomed with Doom and maintain their games alive continuously sustaining new content for them. During Doom 's development, id Software quickly developed

19688-422: The enemy designs were simple, but creating the blood dragons was challenging for the team due to their massive size; the developers had to rethink the island's design to ensure that the dragons can fully interact with the environment without clipping into the terrain. Many features were cut from the game since the team became over-ambitious: one deleted ending involved Rex eating Sloan's heart before transforming into

19872-832: The environment to varying degrees, from basics such as using doors, to problem solving puzzles based on a variety of interactive objects. In some games, the player can damage the environment, also to varying degrees: one common device is the use of barrels containing explosive material which the player can shoot, harming nearby enemies. Other games feature environments which are extensively destructible, allowing for additional visual effects. The game world will often make use of science fiction, historic (particularly World War II ) or modern military themes, with such antagonists as aliens , monsters , terrorists and soldiers of various types. Games feature multiple difficulty settings; in harder modes, enemies are tougher, more aggressive and do more damage, and power-ups are limited. In easier modes,

20056-413: The field of graphics processing units . Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years. Although earlier games predate it by 20 years, Wolfenstein 3D (1992) was the highest-profile archetype upon which most subsequent first-person shooters were based. One such game, considered the progenitor of

20240-480: The final DLC pack for Far Cry 5 . In 2019, it was announced that Ubisoft was collaborating with Adi Shankar to develop an animated series inspired by the game, titled Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix . The show was released on Netflix on 19 October 2023. First-person shooter game A first-person shooter ( FPS ) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from

20424-580: The final game. Shadow Warrior , developed and published by 3D Realms the 13th of May 1997, introduced 3D voxels instead of 2D sprites for weapons and inventory items as well as weapons' secondary firing mode, climbable ladders, true room-over-room situations, transparent water, some vehicles to drive, and a brand new Asian hero named Lo Wang into a brand new Asian setting in contrast to its predecessor Duke Nukem 3D's occidental atmosphere and Shadow Warrior, just as its predecessor, features deliberately immature and politically incorrect humor, as well as

20608-424: The first game's issues and it was their last game before going extinct as they were developing a Build-based sequel to their previous Wolf3D -based game Corridor 7 when their parent company IntraCorp went bankrupt . Witchaven 2 was open-sourced in 2006 then source-ported into BuildGDX by its community which fixed most of its original issues in 2018. The game PowerSlave was initially designed using

20792-420: The flag , in which teams attempt to penetrate the opposing base, capture a flag and return it to their own base whilst preventing the other team from doing the same. Other game modes may involve attempting to capture enemy bases or areas of the map, attempting to take hold of an object for as long as possible while evading other players, or deathmatch variations involving limited lives or in which players fight over

20976-430: The floor, and Ken himself voiced the protagonist and filled his game with pictures of himself which hurt the player if they dared to shoot them, which made his game personal. Epic MegaGames , then Wolfenstein 3D 's publisher Apogee Software 's main competitor, noticed it, saw potential, then signed a commercial agreement with Ken's father, as Ken was still minor. However, the original Advanced Systems' Ken's Labyrinth

21160-495: The form of up to 12 players' deathmatch and team deathmatch modes (believed to be the first FPS game to allow that many players) and 8 additional maps made specially for it. In deathmatch, the player could choose among 12 of the game 's characters both humans and aliens who had different speed and health stats, however all characters used the same weapons though. Corridor 7 was a significant improvement after Capstone's previous FPS game Operation Body Count (read above),

21344-470: The future that the Beast Wars teams left, but the events of the series take place in the far future. The series saw the return of Unicron . Unlike the original Beast Wars series, Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo used traditional animation and were aimed at a much younger audience. Beast Wars II spawned a theatrical movie. The Beast Wars Neo toyline was created to cater to the Japanese market. Whereas

21528-412: The game along with some score 's points. This is not what Wisdom Tree had originally designed though, since they originally designed a FPS game based on the horror movies Hellraiser themselves adapted from Clive Barker 's novels , until they realized that this was in contradiction with their christian social image then designed Super 3D Noah's Ark instead. A popular rumor has it that Wolf3D engine

21712-588: The game are slideshow-styled 16-bit animations. Evans also asked the team to design the characters as if they only have a budget of $ 150. Many characters in the game looked like action figures , and the team incorporated found objects into their design that is commonly seen in "B-movie sci-fi". According to Evans, the team was proud of the script, which was "bad", and boasted about having "predictable and one-dimensional characters", "terrible story" and "minimal emotions" during early preview events. He further remarked that Blood Dragon did not "make much sense", and that

21896-471: The game is powered by the Dunia 2 engine. In March 2013, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon was found listed on a Brazilian ratings site. On 1 April 2013, Ubisoft released a teaser video and website for Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon , leading many to believe that it was an April Fools' Day joke. Suspicions that the game was real were further confirmed when Power Glove uploaded music from the soundtrack to SoundCloud . The game

22080-418: The game to eventually name his black metal band after it. Witchaven was open-sourced in 2006 then source-ported into JFBuild by JonoF and into BuildGDX by its community which fixed most of its original issues in 2018. William Shatner's TekWar , developed by Capstone Software and published by SoftKey Multimedia Inc. the 30th of September 1995, barely ten days after Witchaven (read above),

22264-530: The game was designed to be "ridiculous", "fun", "stupid" and "honest". The team hoped that the game could evoke the feeling of playing with action figures when players were young. Since the game had a very short development cycle, many systems, such as skill trees and crafting, were either removed or streamlined significantly. Evans said the essence of the game is entirely about "running around with very big guns and shooting cyborgs in their faces whilst trying to avoid dragons that fire lasers from their eyes". Most of

22448-626: The game's attempts at humour. The game was a commercial success for Ubisoft, as it sold 1 million copies by August 2013. A remastered version of the game was released in December 2021, available for players who purchased the Far Cry 6 season pass. While the game did not have a sequel, a spin-off, Trials of the Blood Dragon , was released in 2016. An adult animated series loosely inspired by Blood Dragon , titled Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix , released on Netflix in October 2023. Blood Dragon

22632-500: The game's code with him to Massachusetts Institute of Technology , where with help from Dave Lebling to create an eight-player version that could be played over ARPANET , computer-run players using artificial intelligence, customizable maps, online scoreboards and a spectator mode. Spasim had a documented debut at the University of Illinois in 1974 on the PLATO mainframe system. The game

22816-546: The game's humor; Sterling thought that some of the jokes were banal and lame. The game's soundtracks received critical acclaim. The cutscenes were generally liked; VanOrd compared them to older games such as Metal Gear and Shadow of the Beast , though Dyer noted that some of these cutscenes were too long. The gameplay received generally positive reviews. Most critics liked the blood dragons, as their presence gave players an additional way to clear outposts and garrisons. They found

23000-486: The game's script. Initially, the team planned to include a boss battle in Blood Dragon , which would involve Rex fighting "the Plague", characters from Hobo with a Shotgun. The idea was scrapped due to the game's limited development time. Initially, Ubisoft considered hiring Dolph Lundgren for the lead role, Rex "Power" Colt, but Evans met Michael Biehn , who was known for his roles as Kyle Reese and Dwayne Hicks , during

23184-409: The game, causing frequent bandwidth reductions. Doom has been considered the most important first-person shooter ever made. It was highly influential not only on subsequent shooter games but on video gaming in general, and has been made available on almost every video gaming system since. Multiplayer gaming, which is now integral to the first-person shooter genre, was first successfully achieved on

23368-491: The game; the families of several victims later unsuccessfully attempted to sue numerous video game companies - among them id Software - whose work the families claimed inspired the massacre. John Carmack explained how he designed his Doom engine to Ken Silverman that he considered his only equal which inspired Ken who was in the process of developing his Build engine . Operation Body Count , developed on Wolf3D engine and released by Capstone Software on 1 January 1994,

23552-400: The genre's mainstream acceptance and popularity, was Doom (1993), often cited as the most influential game in this category; for years, the term "Doom clone" was used to designate this type of game, due to Doom ' s enormous success. Another common name for the genre in its early days was "corridor shooter", since processing limitations of that era's computer hardware meant that most of

23736-475: The internet, Dreamwave entered bankruptcy before one issue could be published. A mini-series takes place parallel to the third season of Beast Wars and introduces characters who are not shown in the original series such as Magmatron , Razorbeast , and Injector. Other characters who appear are Grimlock in his Beast Wars body (a recolored Dinobot toy) and Ravage in his Transmetal II "Tripredacus Agent" incarnation. The mini-series focuses on Magmatron, sent by

23920-404: The lack of new gameplay additions, Arthur Gies from Polygon thought that Blood Dragon was a more manageable game due to its smaller size and simplified systems. Evans initially planned for a sequel, though Far Cry 4 director Alex Hutchinson later added that the game would not have a follow-up. Although no sequels to Blood Dragon have been released, a Trials game titled Trials of

24104-573: The market as 3D Realms thanks to Ken Silverman and some personality. Doom , released the 10th of December 1993, refined Wolfenstein 3D's template by adding support for higher resolution, improved textures, variations in height (e.g., stairs and platforms the player's character could climb upon), more intricate level design ( Wolfenstein 3D was limited to a grid based system where walls had to be orthogonal to each other, whereas Doom allowed for any inclination) and rudimentary illumination effects such as flickering lights and areas of darkness, creating

24288-450: The market while a challenger Captone Software persisted at attempting to be original and compete with them and failed every time for diverse reasons where another challenger LucasArts succeeded and Bungie Software made FPS games featuring a complex plot, the modding communities who sustain life into their games blossomed starting from Doom, 2D sprites were replaced with 3D polygons starting from Descent then Quake and Apogee Software returned on

24472-524: The market, with Apogee Software/3D Realms and Epic MegaGames being their main competitors. This technological race, monopoly, and three-ways rivalry started during the Wolfenstein 3D's era from 1992 to 1993. Wolfenstein 3D was the first episodic FPS game developed by id Software , as a successor to the successful 1980s 2D infiltration video-games Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein from Muse Software , and published by Apogee Software

24656-463: The only way to get rid of some invulnerable enemies, water fountains which slowly restored health (much like in Duke Nukem 3D three years later), changed the goal from the original's merely escaping the labyrinth to rescue the player's abducted dog Sparky and save the world, added the requirement to have Sparky follow the player to the exit of each floor to be able to reach the next floor, which made

24840-570: The original toys and animation as Transformers: Generation 2 . Hasbro intended another franchise titled Transtech to follow which would've combined Beast Wars and Generation 1 characters and aesthetics, but this was canceled. Instead, the franchise began a series of reboots , beginning with the Japanese-produced Transformers: Car Robot series, internationally known as Transformers: Robots in Disguise . Beast Wars

25024-439: The other for looking and aiming . It is common to display the character's hands and weaponry in the main view, with a heads-up display showing health, ammunition and location details. Often, it is possible to overlay a map of the surrounding area. First-person shooters generally focus on action gameplay, with fast-paced combat and dynamic firefights being a central point of the experience, though certain titles may also place

25208-403: The playable character, such as flames, electricity, telekinesis or other supernatural powers, and traps. In the early era of first-person shooters, often designers allowed characters to carry a large number of different weapons with little to no reduction in speed or mobility. More modern games started to adopt a more realistic approach, where the player can only equip a handheld gun, coupled with

25392-495: The player can succeed through reaction times alone; on more difficult settings, it is often necessary to memorize the levels through trial and error. First-person shooters may feature a multiplayer mode, taking place on specialized levels. Some games are designed specifically for multiplayer gaming, and have very limited single player modes in which the player competes against game-controlled characters termed "bots". Massively multiplayer online first-person shooters like those in

25576-537: The player drew a weapon who they begged to not shoot while holding their hands up and ran away for their life whereas cops drew their gun onto the player and ordered him to drop their weapon and enemies shot him on sight from everywhere without the cops ever reacting whereas they shot the player if he dared to shoot back at the enemies, which is the main issue with this game: everyone is allowed to shoot you but you are not allowed to shoot anyone. Some civilians were actually kamikaze androids who self-destructed when close to

25760-468: The player have to pay attention to another character beside their own, and commercialized Ken's Labyrinth v2 still as shareware the 21st of March 1993. All versions of Ken's Labyrinth got to be source-ported many times and even onto Nintendo Switch by a fan. As soon as id Software showed off some previews of Doom in the middle of its development, Ken Silverman started to develop his own game engine to rival with John Carmack once again, used

25944-563: The player is an unnamed mercenary (sometimes referred to as the Strifeguy) who joins the Front to fight the Order's oppressive rule while being remotely assisted by a Front's radio operative woman nicknamed Blackbird who occasionally comments with humor the situations that the player encounters. However despite all of its innovations, Strife went relatively unnoticed because it was released right between

26128-466: The player moved around. Despite some of its original ideas , it was badly made, the terrorists were stereotypes of Arabian people, the AI was not smart enough to make nor the enemies pose any challenge nor the squad's teammates be actually useful, and being based on Wolf3D engine after Doom was released made it already technologically outdated and "doomed" from the start as opposite to Blake Stone which did enjoy one week of glory before Doom

26312-447: The player though. During the Doom & Quake's era from 1993 to 1997, FPS games were still all about their game engines as original and innovative games were ignored for the only reason that their game engine was outdated. FPS games were simplistic shoot them all without any complex plot however their gameplay started to evolve and the combo id Software & Raven Software still dominated

26496-531: The player to find other weapons and save the strongest weapons for the strongest foes, evolving stats from earned experience where each level up unlocked new spells and abilities such as lockpicking in the form of an unlocking spell as well as dual wielding some weapons. The campaign involved a knight on an epic quest to defeat a witch who cast a curse of never-ending darkness onto his land. In order to complete this quest, he had to battle hordes of minions with both medieval weapons and magical spells to reach

26680-425: The player's approach, weather effects, some destructible objects, scripted environmental changes such as earthquakes, different character classes to allow different playstyles as well as interconnected maps through hub maps instead of the standard linear succession of maps which granted a taste of open-world in a FPS game. Apogee Software , then renamed 3D Realms , followed up with Duke Nukem 3D (sequel to

26864-492: The player's choices and actions, some burning effects as well as some infiltration gameplay such as stealth, disguises and alarms. The plot takes place in a medieval world struck by a comet which released a virus which wiped out almost all life on the planet and corrupted most of the remaining people who created a high-tech theocratic new world order known as "The Order" whereas the few remaining free people organized into an underground resistance known as "The Front" and

27048-459: The player, taking them into their explosion . Half of the game also took place into the Matrix. William Shatner's TekWar was the worst of Capstone's FPS games however it still got to be source-ported into BuildGDX. Raven Software upgraded the Doom engine further and released Hexen: Beyond Heretic the 30th of October 1995 which added jumping, more immersive environments with effects such as swirling leaves or scattering bats upon

27232-583: The players to use teamwork and strategy in order to succeed; the players can often command a squad of characters, which may be controlled by the A.I. or by human teammates, and can be given different tasks during the course of the mission. First-person shooters typically present players with a vast arsenal of weapons, which can have a large impact on how they will approach the game. Some games offer realistic reproductions of actual existing (or even historical) firearms, simulating their rate of fire, magazine size, ammunition amount, recoil and accuracy. Depending on

27416-446: The range of all weapons at once, also replaced the original final boss with Ken himself, added diverse monsters, temporary power-ups such as reflecting enemies' projectiles, kill enemies on contact, and invincibility, as well as treasures for buying these power-ups from vending-machines and for paying doors' toll, slot-machines to win coins instead of finding treasures in secret areas, death-traps such as holes in floors which were

27600-437: The release of Duke Nukem 3D , id Software released the much anticipated Quake the 22nd of June 1996. Like Doom , Quake was influential and genre-defining, featuring fast-paced, gory gameplay, within a completely 3D game environment, and making use of real-time rendered polygonal models instead of sprites. It was centered on online gaming and featured multiple match types still found in first-person shooter games today. It

27784-441: The same color within the floor whereas some computers were traps which triggered an alarm which attracted nearby enemies to the player. Capstone Software released Corridor 7 first as floppy disks , then as a CD-ROM the 6th of May 1995 which featured a different soundtrack , randomization of placements within floors, and added 10 more levels into the alien homeworld with new weapons and alien types along with multiplayer in

27968-609: The same in Catacomb 3-D . Catacomb 3-D also introduced the display of the protagonist's hand and weapon (in this case, magical spells) on the screen, whereas previously aspects of the player's avatar were not visible. The experience of developing Ultima Underworld would make it possible for Looking Glass to create the Thief and System Shock series years later. From Wolfenstein 3D to Quake, FPS games were all about their game engines. id Software & Raven Software completely dominated

28152-399: The secret areas. Despite its violent themes, Wolfenstein largely escaped the controversy generated by the later Doom , although it was banned from Germany due to the use of Nazi iconography which is a sensitive topic there where Wolfenstein has been forbidden until 2022 and Nintendo too required id Software to remove blood , gore, and all Nazi iconography as well as replace

28336-451: The series, and the team was tasked to create something unexpected as Far Cry 3 downloadable content . The game was inspired by movies from the 1980s such as The Wraith and Terminator , and recent movies like Manborg and Hobo with a Shotgun . The director for Hobo with a Shotgun , Jason Eisener , became the game's informal advisor after befriending the game's director, Dean Evans. Michael Biehn , who played Sgt. Kyle Reese in

28520-432: The side objectives for disrupting the game's pacing, and thought that some of the quests were repetitive and boring. VanOrd and Dyer liked how most of the skills in Far Cry 3 were already unlocked at the beginning of Blood Dragon , with Dyer noting that this made Rex a very powerful character. Many critics remarked that the gameplay strengths of Far Cry 3 remain in Blood Dragon . While several critics were disappointed by

28704-534: The specific design elements which constitute a first-person shooter. For example, titles like Deus Ex or BioShock may be considered as first-person shooters, but may also fit into the role-playing games category, as they borrow extensively from that genre. Other examples, like Far Cry and Rage , could also be considered adventure games , because they focus more on exploration than simple action, they task players with multiple different objectives other than just killing enemies, and they often revolve around

28888-424: The theme for Rex Colt, and "Omega Force". The production of the soundtrack went smoothly, as the team rarely needed to ask the duo to revise their soundtracks. The soundtracks produced were mainly electronic music that paid homage to John Carpenter and Terminator films. To capture the retro vibe, the team also recruited the sound designer of Airwolf to serve as the game's audio director. As with Far Cry 3 ,

29072-413: The third available after registration; and the three last prequel episodes available as a separate mission pack, to the point that it has since been credited for having single-handedly invented the concept of first-person-shooter as a genre of video-games. It was built on John Carmack 's ray casting technology already experimented into id's previous games Hovertank One and Catacomb 3D to create

29256-440: The traditional sense, making for a somewhat more believable overall experience. The game was praised for its artificial intelligence , selection of weapons and attention to detail and "has since been recognized as one of the greatest games of all time" according to GameSpot. Its sequel, Half-Life 2 , (released in 2004), was less influential though "arguably a more impressive game". Cybershark Transformers: Beast Wars

29440-456: The two other overwhelmingly popular games Duke Nukem 3D and Quake which made the Doom engine already outdated by then. Still, players who discovered it many years after its original release appreciated its originality for its time and even compared it to Deus Ex and Marathon . Doom 's modding community source-ported Strife into GZDoom to update and upgrade it from its original version to modern standards. Shortly after

29624-435: The visor's battery, some aliens who camouflaged into the environments (like Blake Stone: Planet Strike released half a year later), screen jumpscares whenever the player was idle for 10 seconds, body armors , limited-use healing chambers, force fields which hurt the player if they walked into them, mines to trap corridors, maps of the floors, and replaced keys with security computer screens which unlocked all doors of

29808-466: The whole planet empty, and all of the Transformers missing, Optimus Primal, Cheetor, Rattrap, and Blackarachnia begin a new crusade, this time to free the entire planet. The Japanese series Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo were created to fill the gap while the second and third seasons of Beast Wars were being translated into Japanese (called Beast Wars: Metals ). The characters originate from

29992-504: The witch on her volcanic island . It featured digitized graphics , however the characters made of clay didn't appeal to everyone and the environments were empty, as well as adjustable level of gore, the same Corridor 7 's trick to spawn a screen jumpscare whenever the player is idle, and it is known for game logic issues, dumb AI , hazardous map triggers and game physics that cause slippery player movement, sudden deaths, and faulty hit detection. That didn't stop an original fan of

30176-467: Was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss , a March 1992 action role-playing game by Looking Glass Technologies that featured a first-person viewpoint and an advanced graphics engine. In October 1990, id developer John Romero learned about texture mapping from a phone call to Paul Neurath. Romero described the texture mapping technique to id programmer John Carmack , who remarked, "I can do that.", and would feel motivated by Looking Glass's example to do

30360-521: Was Capstone's first FPS game, was all about a terrorist attack on the UNO tower, and was an early attempt at making a tactical FPS game since the player was in command of an anti-terrorist squad that they could order around and even switch to any of their body at any time as long as they were not dead and featured some digitized graphics , transparent textures such as breakable glass, randomization of enemies and items' placement, body armors , booby-traps , and

30544-446: Was a medieval fantasy First Person Slasher game as in a melee -focused FPS game, reminiscent of Raven Software 's Heretic including an inventory system, both a single-player campaign and multiplayer, but far harder as it was far more tactical , making use of environmental hazards such as magma and traps against enemies, while implementing more of a RPG gameplay such as weapons' durability which broke after many uses, requiring

30728-498: Was a rudimentary space flight simulator for up to 32 players, featuring a first-person perspective. Both games were distinct from modern first-person shooters, involving simple tile-based movement where the player could only move from square to square and turn in 90-degree increments. Such games spawned others that used similar visuals to display the player as part of a maze (such as Akalabeth: World of Doom in 1979), and were loosely called "rat's eye view" games, since they gave

30912-441: Was also imported to Japan in 2004 under the title Beast Wars Returns , though it did not gain very much popularity. Officially, the Beast Wars and Beast Machines series exist as the future of Generation 1 universe, and not specifically the original cartoon series or Marvel Comics series . The writers of the series adopted this position in order to pick and choose the best elements of the discrete Generation 1 continuities. In

31096-455: Was begun in February 1994 and published by Raven Software the 1st of November 1994, marking the beginning of a new period for Raven who split into two groups: One which worked with id 's new DOOM engine to create Mage , a fantasy action game, which would eventually evolve into the game Heretic . The other team started on a project that was to use the engine from ShadowCaster to create

31280-662: Was close to Wolf3D engine . Then he improved his game with his friend Andrew Cotter, added narration to each floor , renamed it Ken's Labyrinth , and released it on Internet as shareware under his brother's company Advanced Systems on 1 January 1993. The game was about escaping a bizarre dream labyrinth full of people shooting projectiles at the player while projectiles were more balls than bullets, meaning they had limited range and were slow enough to dodge them as opposite to Wolfenstein 3D whose weapons were hitscan firearms , some walls reflected projectiles, killed enemies vanished without any death animation nor remnant body on

31464-480: Was created that could handle moving platforms, catwalks, sloped areas, and transparent textures. The engine, by Carl Stika, was nicknamed STEAM. A small budget was granted for full-motion video sequences to be created for the game, to be presented between missions as briefings. CyClones allowed to use the mouse to aim without moving, as opposite to other FPS games from the time which bound the mouse to both aiming and moving simultaneously, and without turning either, as

31648-467: Was given to Wisdom Tree by id Software as a kind of " revenge " against Nintendo for all the censorship that Wolfenstein 3D had to go through to be on the Super Nintendo. However, there's no proof of this, and Wisdom Tree bought a license for the game engine like everybody else instead of having it "given" to them. The SNES version was not licensed by Nintendo and therefore couldn't be played on

31832-457: Was highly acclaimed for its atmospheric single-player campaign and well designed multiplayer maps. It featured a sniper rifle , the ability to perform head-shots, and the incorporation of stealth elements (all of these aspects were also included in the game's spiritual sequel, Perfect Dark ) as well as some Virtua Cop -inspired features such as weapon reloading, position-dependent hit reaction animations, penalties for killing innocents, and

32016-481: Was initially well-received but sales rapidly declined in the wake of the success of id's Doom , released a week later. It still got a sequel Blake Stone: Planet Strike the 28th of October 1994 which integrated the auto-map into the HUD as a rotating mini-map which revealed secret doors at the cost of consuming auto-mapper charges and added some enemies who camouflaged into the environment or were cloaked to surprise

32200-497: Was leaked on 7 April 2013, due to an exploit in Ubisoft's digital distribution service, Uplay , which led a temporary closure until the exploit was fixed. According to game journalist Ian Miles Cheong, "The hackers developed a piece of software which tricks the Uplay executable into believing that the user has ownership over games that they do not own." On 8 April 2013, the game was listed on

32384-404: Was made from Ken and Andrew's limited resources to the point that Ken made the sound effects with his mouth, therefore Epic MegaGames made use of their resources to revamp the game, replaced the projectiles balls with bubble gum balls , starbursts which bounced off walls, and homing missiles , while collecting more of the same weapon increased their range and collecting thunderbolts increased

32568-414: Was originally developed in 1973 by Greg Thompson, Steve Colley and Howard Palmer, high-school students in a NASA work-study program trying to develop a program to help visualize fluid dynamics for spacecraft designs. The work became a maze game presented to the player in the first-person, and later included support for a second player and the ability to shoot the other player to win the game. Thompson took

32752-553: Was released on 16 April 2013. The virtual box art cover for the game was designed by James White, who had previously created artwork for the film Drive . A remastered version of Blood Dragon was included in the season pass for Far Cry 6 . The remastered version, titled Classic Edition , was released on 16 December 2021 for PlayStation 4 , Windows , and Xbox One , and launched for Google Stadia on 7 July 2022. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon received generally positive reviews according to Metacritic upon release. The game received

32936-484: Was released. OBC still got to be source-ported into GZDoom and remastered by its modding community eventually though. Corridor 7: Alien Invasion , developed and published by Capstone Software the 1st of March 1994, was their second attempt to make a FPS game. Still based on Wolf3D engine , the plot reminds strikingly of Half-Life 's, four years later, since it was about scientific experiments with gamma beam on an alien artifact brought from Mars by

33120-414: Was still based on the then outdated Wolf3D engine after Doom was released and therefore was "doomed" from the start too even if it did better than its predecessor, it was still not technologically on par with Doom and Capstone moved onto another new game engine after this game. Still, Corridor 7 was so appreciated that it got to be source-ported only five years after its original release into

33304-426: Was succeeded by Beast Machines , a new series with a new creative team in charge of production. The Maximals find themselves back on Cybertron, malfunctioning and trapped in their first beast modes (the ones they had at the beginning of Beast Wars ). They were without memory of what happened previously, and fighting for survival against mindless drones called Vehicons. These were created and controlled by Megatron. With

33488-585: Was the Terminator". Biehn portrayed Rex as "somebody that was old and done [wiping out blood dragons] 100 times". Evans added that Rex was "bored" and "cynical" about the events happening in the game. As a result, the team had Biehn record satirical one-liners with a hoarse voice . To ensure that the game captured the aesthetics of the 1980s movie, Evans held weekly "Cyborg Nights", where the development team gathered together to watch films such as RoboCop , Predator , and The Wraith . The cutscenes featured in

33672-462: Was the first FPS game to gain a cult following of player clans (although the concept had existed previously in MechWarrior 2 ' s Netmech , with its Battletech lore as well as amongst MUD players), and would inspire popular LAN parties and events such as QuakeCon . The game's popularity and use of 3D polygonal graphics also helped to expand the growing market for video card hardware; and

33856-452: Was the second commercial game licensed on Apogee Software rebranded 3D Realms ' Ken Silverman 's new Build engine to rival id Software 's John Carmack 's Doom engine and was a FPS game adapted from William Shatner 's TekWar novels and TV series who personally contributed to the video-game to the point of live-acting the player's boss during briefings and debriefings. William Shatner's TekWar , both novels, TV series and video-game,

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