Counter-Strike (commonly abbreviated to CS) is a tactical first-person shooter video game which originated from a Half-Lifemodification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Anthology and Counter-Strike on Xbox. Counter-Strike pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won by either completing the mission objective or eliminating the opposing force. The latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source, is based on the Source engine developed for Half-Life 2.
The game is almost entirely based on the dynamically streamlined multiplayer experience activated via Steam, and is currently the most played Half-Life modification in terms of players, according to GameSpy.
Counter-Strike was developed first as a Half-Life modification. Therefore named "Half-Life: Counter-Strike." The original version was a 3rd-party Half-Life modification, but since then it has grown into a commercial mod and later advertised as separate game in itself. It still uses and runs on the Half-Life game engine and is based on its unchanged structure.
Unreal is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes and published by GT Interactive (now owned by Atari) in May 1998. It was powered by an original gameplay and computer engine that now bears the game's name, one that had been in development for over three years in founder Tim Sweeney's garage before the game was released.
Since the release of Unreal, the franchise has had one sequel and two different series based on the Unreal universe. One official bonus pack, the Fusion Map Pack released by Epic Games, can be downloaded from the internet for free.
Unreal Mission Pack I: Return to Na Pali was released June 1999, and added new missions to the single player campaign of Unreal. Unreal and Unreal Mission Pack I: Return to Na Pali would later be bundled together as Unreal Gold. Additionally, the games were updated to run on the Unreal Tournament version of the game engine.
Left 4 Dead is a co-operative, survival horror, first-person shooter game by Turtle Rock Studios, who were purchased by the Valve Corporation part way into development. The game uses the Source game engine, and is available for Windows-based personal computers and the Xbox 360.
Left 4 Dead pits four human playable or AI-controlled Survivors of an apocalyptic pandemic against hordes of aggressive "Infected" (zombies). These Infected are controlled by an AI that dynamically balances difficulty and mood depending on the players' progress and situation. In an alternate game mode, human players can control up to four different Infected with special abilities and cooperate to stop the Survivor players.
The game went gold on November 13, 2008, and was released on November 18, 2008 in the United States; and on November 21, 2008 in Europe to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the release of Half-Life. A five-minute trailer was released on Halloween. A playable demo was made available on November 6 for pre-purchasers and on November 11 for the general public, and was closed on November 18, 2008. The demo contained the majority of the first two chapters in the "No Mercy" campaign, and was playable in both single player and multi-player.
Left 4 Dead received an aggregate score of 88% on Game Rankings and 89% on Metacritic upon its release, with praise given for its replayability, focus on cooperative play, and movie-like experience. Similar to Team Fortress 2, Valve intends to support the game with downloadable content
The games feature a focus on large maps and vehicle warfare over and above traditional first person shooters. The main attraction of the games is their online gameplay and the series had sold 17 million copies in August 2008.
Information on each of the Battlefield games can be found below.
Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game developed by German video game developer Crytek and published by Electronic Arts, and is the first game of a planned trilogy. It was released on November 2007. Well-received by critics, early NPD figures for the US market were taken as a sign that the game had flopped; however, EA has recently reported being happy with sales, reporting that the game has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide.
Crysis is based in a fictional future where an ancient alien spacecraft has been discovered beneath the Earth on an island near the coast of Korea. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of United States Delta Force operator Jake Dunn, referred to in-game by his call sign, Nomad. Nomad is armed with various futuristic weapons and equipment, most notably a "Nano Muscle Suit" which, according to Crytek senior game designer Bernd Diemer, was inspired by the United States' Future Force Warrior 2020 program and other projects relating from the Natick Soldier Systems Center. In Crysis, the player fights both North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in four different locations: a tropical island jungle, inside an "Ice Sphere" (consisting of the same jungle, but frozen), the alien ship itself (with a zero-gravity area) and a United States Navy aircraft carrier. Crysis uses Microsoft's new API, Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) for graphics rendering, and includes the same editor that was used by Crytek to create the game.
A standalone, but related, game titled Crysis Warhead, was announced on June 5, 2008. It was released on Steam September 17, 2008.
Downloads and details on the various games in the Crysis seriese can be found in the articles below.
Call of Duty Call of Duty is a first-person shooter video game series set in World War II, with the exception of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which are set in modern times.
The series began on the PC, and later expanded to consoles and handhelds, and several spin-off games have also been released alongside the main series.
The Call of Duty series is published by Activision and Aspyr Media and has been developed primarily by Infinity Ward, with other games being developed by Treyarch, Gray Matter Interactive, Spark Unlimited, Pi Studios, Amaze Entertainment, and Rebellion Developments, using a variety of game engines including the "id Tech 3" and the "Treyarch NGL."
Information on each of the games in the Call of Duty seriese can be found below.
Command & Conquer is a video game franchise, mostly of the real-time strategy style as well as a first-person shooter game based on the former.
The Command & Conquer series was initially developed by Westwood Studios between 1995 and 2003, with development being taken over by Electronic Arts with the liquidation of Westwood Studios in 2003.
The first installment of the series was released worldwide on August 31, 1995 and was simply named Command & Conquer. It was based on Westwood Studios' earlier strategy game Dune 2.
The series is primarily developed for personal computers running Microsoft Windows, although some titles have been ported to various video game consoles and the Apple Macintosh. The latter games of the series starting with Tiberium Wars have also been developed in parallel for Xbox 360. Another spinoff game, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, was developed for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
In 1999, American game marketer and developer Electronic Arts purchased Westwood Studios. Westwood was eventually closed down in 2003 and absorbed into EA Los Angeles which has become the current development center for the ongoing Command and Conquer series. Some of the original Westwood developer team remained at EA Los Angeles, but most left to form Petroglyph Games.
Articles and Downloads on the individual Command and Conquer titles can be found below.
Warhammer 40K Warhammer 40,000 (informally known as Warhammer 40K or just 40K) is a tabletop miniature wargame produced by Games Workshop, set in a science fantasy universe. Warhammer 40,000 was created by Rick Priestley in 1987 as the futuristic companion to Warhammer Fantasy Battle, sharing many game mechanics. Expansions for Warhammer 40,000 are released from time to time, often to facilitate a certain sort of game, such as Cities of Death and Apocalypse, which give rules for urban and large-scale combat, respectively. The game is currently in its fifth edition.
Warhammer 40,000's gothic space fantasy setting spans a vast fictional universe. Its various factions and races include the Imperium of Man (the human race 38,000 years hence), the Orks (similar to Warhammer Fantasy Orcs), and the Eldar (similar to Elves in Warhammer Fantasy Battle). These races, along with their playing rules, are covered in the game's rule books and supplemental army codexes, along with articles in the Games Workshop magazines, White Dwarf and Imperial Armour. Lines of these miniatures are produced by Citadel Miniatures and Forge World.
In 2004 Warhammer 40,000 evolved into a seriese of computer games under the name Dawn of Wardetails on these games can be found in the articles below.
Introversion Software is a UK based company that labels itself "The last of the bedroom programmers". It was founded in 2002 by three friends, Chris Delay, Mark Morris and Thomas Arundel, who met when they were undergraduates at Imperial College London.
Their first game Uplink was programmed and designed almost exclusively by Chris, while Mark and Tom handled marketing, materials and the other 'business' elements. Their small initial investment enabled them to buy CD-Rs and printer cartridges. Early copies of the game were hand-made. The company was able to fully make back their investment within a few hours of accepting orders. A large community formed, and the team, along with a new programmer Andy Bainbridge started work on two new games, Darwinia and DEFCON.
Darwinia was released to much critical acclaim and was eventually re-released over Steam on December 14, 2005. Uplink has also since joined Darwinia on Steam, as of summer 2006. On September 29, 2006, Introversion Software launched its third game DEFCON. Shortly after its release, Introversion had measured their bandwidth in terabytes for the first time.
Introversion has a relatively small but growing following and its games are considered cult classics. Both Uplink and Darwinia have a strong modding community.
Downloads and Details on the Introversion titles can be found in the articles below.
Half-Life is a science fiction first-person shooter computer game series which consists of two full games, two episodic games, and three third-party made expansions, as well as a number of demos featuring exclusive content. The series has been ongoing since 1998.
Most games and expansions in the series were developed by Valve Corporation and published by Sierra Studios, although some expansions were produced by Gearbox Software. Electronic Arts also took over distribution of the games in the series from Sierra from 2005 onwards. The series was initially released for the PC, but console ports of most installments have also been released.
The main protagonist of the Half-Life series is Gordon Freeman, a theoretical physicist and employee of the Black Mesa Research Facility. Some games feature other controllable characters.
Downloads and details on the various games in the Half Life series can be found in the articles below.
Runes of Magic offers a very interesting system for character development besides its dualclass system already explained. To equip a character in Frogster's upcoming fantasy MMOG with unique abilities, players may take skills and spells from three basic categories.
Amidst the general abilities and spells players will find callback spells, crafting skills, melee attacks and a PvP flag to enable or disable the player versus player mode. The second category in Runes of Magic, the so-called primary skills, may only be used by the primary class. Among these abilities special skills like the exceptional attack combinations of warriors, reanimation of priests or sneaking up of rogues can be found. Players can use the secondary skills with both their primary- and secondary class. If a player chooses to play a Rogue as his or her secondary class, he may for example apply "Training: Assassin's weapons" to throw daggers.
At any time, players can change their primary and secondary class. But a player will only receive experience and talent points for his active primary class, which means that only this class will level up. To upgrade the secondary class, players will have to switch between the classes first.
By defeating enemies and via regular level-up the player will receive talent points, which can be used in Runes of Magic to upgrade most skills and spells. The Mage's fireball for example will only reach its true destructive power, when it has been enhanced with talent points. The multifaceted crafting will be trained by regular practice just like the combat skills, e.g. one-handed swords, wands or bows.
Each class in Runes of Magic possesses a special ability, which is already available at level 1, but has a long cooldown time of one hour. Warriors for example increase their Fury by using „Rage", Scouts fire their arrows with an increased attack bonus by using the „ Arrow of Essence ", which does not consume physical arrows and Mages transform their spells into instant spells by applying „Elemental Catalysis". While a Rogue's normal attack changes into a murderous instrument by the use of Assassinate" for 30 seconds, a Knight endows all of his companions with a protective shield for 15 seconds via the use of his Holy Shield".
Some skills in Runes of Magic may be used at any time, others need a certain conjuring time, a few have a cooldown period and for others the correct type of energy is needed (Warriors use fury, Rogues energy, Scouts focus and Knights, Mages and Priests use mana). Beside the active skills, players in Runes of Magic also have passive abilities that enable them to use certain equipment like a bow or armor.
Even skill combinations are possible when starting with the right opening attack. The correct sequence of each skill's assigned element - fire, water, wind, earth, light and darkness - can trigger mighty combination attacks that deal immense damage to an enemy or complement a skill or spell with a special effect. Thus, a normal spell can for example affect a whole area when applied within such a sequence. By using several skills in the right order, players trigger such a combo effect. The best way to figure out which combinations work best, is by playing together with other players fighting against the many creatures and monsters in the gaming world of Runes of Magic.
The Elder Scrolls
The Elder Scrolls is a series of role playing games developed by Bethesda Softworks.
Downloads and details on the various games in the Elder Scrolls seriese can be found in the articles below.
Starcraft Starcraft is a Real-time strategy series based in a futuristic war between the Terrans, Zerg and Protoss.
You take on the role of the military leader for your species, you must gather the resources you need to train and expand your forces and lead them to victory. 30 unique missions will challenge you across three different campaigns as you control the fate of the galaxy.
Starcraft is known for it's well balanced but unique races and excellent game play, features which have made this classic game maintain it's relevance 10 years on.
Since the original Starcraft, the game has expanded to include the Brood War expansion set and will soon have a sequel Starcraft 2.
Details on the various games in the Starcraft world can be found in the articles below.
BioShock is the "genetically enhanced" action-adventure, survival horror first-person shooter by 2K Boston/2K Australia (previously Irrational Games) that lets you do things never before possible in the genre. Turn everything into a weapon, biologically mod your body with plasmids, hack devices and systems, upgrade your weapons and craft new ammo variants, and experiment with different battle techniques. It also contains some mature content.
