Criminally Underrated First Person Shooters?

Ambient_Malice

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A few FPS games I think are actually underrated because they got an unfair negative reception or have been forgotten. For example, Goldeneye and Perfect Dark on the N64 don't count because they're iconic.

The World is Not Enough. (N64. Eurocom.)
Turok 3.
Nightfire (Console version. Eurocom.)
Chaser.
Goldeneye Wii/Reloaded (Eurocom.) (Terrible story rewrite, but good gameplay.)
Quantum of Solace. (Treyarch's FPS, not Eurocom's TPS. Although that's decent, too.)
Syndicate
Call of Duty: Ghosts
Crysis 2/Crysis 3
 

RedRockRun

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I couldn't stand Black. It took like half a clip to kill a single enemy. That game was just tedious.
 

JohnnyDelRay

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Going through my list, shooting games that are not too popular or not well received, but I had a great time with anyhow:
-May Payne 3
-Stranglehold
-Wet
-Alien Vs. Predator (either the old one or the 2011 one, though the first one has aged badly it's the better game)

Ah shit. I just was about to hit post when I realized these are mostly TPS. My bad. Well I still think they're great and worth a look!
 

The Rogue Wolf

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Doom64 was pretty good in my book. New levels, new game mechanics, and a sweet new weapon (the Unmaker). Somebody went and ported it to ZDoom and the other modern 3D Doom engines, as well!
 

-Ezio-

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Bobic said:
Also, Bedlam, this is a very tentative recommendation because I haven't played it, but being such a shooter fan, you might get some enjoyment from it. It's basically, from what I gleamed, a game that through various plot shenanigans, takes you through the evolution of FPS's in lawsuit avoiding parody versions of classics. I've heard the gameplay is sadly a bit janky, but it really delivers on the writing and in-jokes around old shooters. Worth looking at a review from someone who's actually played it, if nothing else.
the game is all in first person but you go through several game worlds including an RPG, an RTS and rip offs of pac man and space invaders.

and the story starts of basically as Soma, but instead of being uploaded into a robot you're uploaded into video game worlds.

gameplay is indeed janky. but it's entertaining.
 

Ihateregistering1

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Most have already been mentioned, but...

Syndicate: The bloom effect is awful, but beyond that this is a really solid shooter, and I thought it had the perfect balance of speed and brutality to the combat, and the weapons are awesome.

Singularity: Yeah it was trying really hard to be Bioshock, but this was a really fun little shooter with great atmosphere and a cool setup.

Bulletstorm: Awesome game, though unfortunately it ends on a huge cliffhanger which I doubt we'll get to see resolved.

Darkwatch: Such a cool game!! Seriously, why there aren't more "weird west" video games is something I've never been able to figure out.
 
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Cold Winter on the PS2. Imagine Goldeneye had been made on the PS2 except a lot less PG. Proper James Bond/techno thriller plot by Warren Ellis. Has Tom Baker in it. I'd probably rate it as my fave pure FPS of all time.
 

StoleitfromKilgore

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I'm a bit surprised about some of the games being mentioned. Bulletstorm and Shadow Warrior for example. As far as I remember they got pretty high marks. And at least for Shadow Warrior, the sequel is already on the way. It can't have done that badly commercially.

Anyway, I wanted to mention "Vietcong", a tactical shooter from 2003, which does atmosphere really well. Especially the sound is well done, and there is a lot of detail to the graphics. Pterodon (the czech developer) also took the Vietnam-war setting quite serious and it shows. It was received positively back then, as far as I know, but it seems to me, that it has been forgotten. (A warning: The campaign always crashed in the second mission on Windows Vista. Possibly also on Win 7. It worked on XP and now on 8.1 it's also working for me again. The Vista-problem seems to have been a common issue)

Also, not sure how well "Prey" was received. I thought that it at least deserves to be mentioned. It was quite original, looked good and was atmospheric. The shooter-aspect was fun and included a number of relatively original weapons.
 

Ambient_Malice

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Zykon TheLich said:
Cold Winter on the PS2. Imagine Goldeneye had been made on the PS2 except a lot less PG. Proper James Bond/techno thriller plot by Warren Ellis. Has Tom Baker in it. I'd probably rate it as my fave pure FPS of all time.
Fantastic game.

StoleitfromKilgore said:
Anyway, I wanted to mention "Vietcong", a tactical shooter from 2003, which does atmosphere really well.
Another good title. There were some console spinoff games, but those weren't really as good.
 

the December King

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S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow Over Chernobyl.

Now, I'm a huge fan of all of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R games- , but to get that first taste of the mood, I recommend starting at the beginning.
 

jurnag12

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I really enjoyed Project: Snowblind. Semi-interesting setting, fun set of cyborg powers to play around with, and actually decently open levels to screw around in.
 

Bobular

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I'm currently going through COD2 and am having a lot of fun with it. My original copy doesn't work so I picked it up in a steam sale and that works perfectly.

Its got a lot going for it, from some semi open maps to really good set pieces and even a tank battle (admittedly short and not too good these days).
 

DrownedAmmet

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Bitter Hobbit said:
Killzone series. Whilest it isn't the Halo/CoD killer that Sony really really want us to believe it is, it's still a fun albeit sometimes frustrating FPS with a amazing atheistic design, especially for the Helgast, sure they're just 'Space Nazi's' but they look cool and it works so well. I hope Guerrilla goes back to it, although Horizon looks great and I'm always happy when a dev gets to do something new but I hope Killzone gets some more love soon, there's a great series in there.

BulletStorm, What a load of fun, this was one of the most overlooked games of last gen and I think it only got attention from some people because of the inclusion of the Gears 3 beta for 360 (well it worked for Crackdown) I'd really like to see more from this, it's scoring system was great and the creative kills you could do were sometime down right hilarious. It was the silly over the top foul mouthed shooter that Duke Nukem Forever wished it was.

Prey, sure it was a bit clunkey and a tad to easy but it was alot of fun with a cool unique setting, the living spaceship looked great and the portal system was very novel at the time. Shame it's sequel got canned as that sounded great too.
Speaking of Killzone, what's a good jumping in point for the series on PS3? I've been tempted to try it out because they are butt cheap used, but not sure where to start
 

DefunctTheory

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StoleitfromKilgore said:
I'm a bit surprised about some of the games being mentioned. Bulletstorm and Shadow Warrior for example. As far as I remember they got pretty high marks. And at least for Shadow Warrior, the sequel is already on the way. It can't have done that badly commercially.
Bulletstorm got good reviews, but absolutely bombed in sales. There's also a fair amount of people who criticized it for aiming at the bottom when it came to humor, about one step above jokes about pooping (When they weren't actually making poop jokes, that is). Personally, I loved Bulletstorm. It was a fun shooter that refused to take itself or the player seriously, and while the humor may have been low brow, they fucking reveled in it, clearly unashamed of how retarded it all was. I still remember the main character, drunk as hell, stuttering out the comeback line ' I'll kill your dick! How 'bout that, huh?' To someone who had just threatened to castrate him. And who was a woman. Or his tearful epitaph for his remote controller T-Rex, named 'Waggleton P. Tallylicker.'

My pick would be Bulletstorm, for the above reasons, though it may be more accurate to say it was under appreciated, not underrated.
 

Ambient_Malice

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jurnag12 said:
I really enjoyed Project: Snowblind. Semi-interesting setting, fun set of cyborg powers to play around with, and actually decently open levels to screw around in.
Started out as a Deus Ex game, IIRC.
 

RebornKusabi

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Even with some of the publicity on mainstream sites and cultural relevance within our medium, I still find System Shock 2 to be severely overlooked even now. Not so much the original which has baaaaad but the sequel is everything I want in games. It has depth, it is a mechanically amazing game and while not pants-wetting, it can be surprisingly harrowing- giant invisible (they fade into view when they get close to you) spiders the size of a truck tire that inflict damaging poison on you being the supreme highlight.

Honestly I feel that to this day, the big issue is that even though the game is 10 bucks on average, usually on sale for lower, more people don't play it because of the platform it's on, period. Which is depressing since if you have a PC made after 2001, you can play the game. I have played it on junk desktops and it ran just fine. The other issue is modding- a lot of people still have an ill opinion of modding and as a computer science grad (who mostly plays on consoles to be fair- by the end of the day I'm sick of computers), I've always loved modding but most people can't hang with it even though by this point, SS2 modding is supremely streamlined.

But that's all my opinion. My other dark horse game is Silent Hill 3. I won't go into depth on it, but when most people think of Silent Hill, they think of the second game and the movies. But the original game (I love it still but it's aged poorly) and the third game are my favorite two of the whole property. Not being derogatory in the slightest- when feminists are looking for great games to play, Silent Hill 3 with it's unsexualized 16 year old female lead, it's unsexualized female villain and no cheesecake or romantic trash in it is the game for them. I always see the Japan-only cover of the third game's soundtrack brought up against the game and again, that was Japan-only and nothing in the game resembles it (because it would be illegal- the female lead is 16). But the game is my favorite horror games and it doesn't get the love it deserves- I know SH2 tells a more personal and dark story, but I've had family members die of cancer already, I don't need a horror game to tell me how much that shit sucks!
 

AnthrSolidSnake

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So I've since picked up a couple of the suggestions people have made.

Bulletstorm- I played this when it came out, but never got into it (I just got Skyrim around the same time, so all other games were kind of just shoved out of the way.) It's pretty damn fun. Got to say, chaining together multiple different kills and seeing those points pop up is almost endlessly satisfying.

Timesplitters: Future Perfect- Still working on 2 right now, but I did at least boot the game up. Seems like I'll enjoy it just as much though.

007: Quantum of Solace- I can see why few people talk about this game. It's not that great. But I'm enjoying myself regardless. Mechanics feel a bit stiff, but the shooting is serviceable.

As a side-note, NightDiveStudios (The studio that has become popular for bringing back older PC titles and reworking them for modern systems) has said that they will be releasing remastered PC versions of Turok: The Dinosaur Hunter and Turok 2: Seeds of Evil this December, which is great because they are easily two of my favorite shooters of all time.