Released just last month, Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4 is already garnering reams of respect, and is currently battling with multiplayer stalwarts at the top of the PC FPS popularity charts. So let's give credit where credit is due, and tracing the game's lineage quickly leads us to the award-winning Call of Duty. With a cinematic single-player campaign featuring Hollywood voice acting talent, the game's story was engaging and a fresh departure from the staleness which hung over the FPS genre in 2003, the year of the game's release. Solo gameplay was innovative, with capable AI allies and a transitioning viewpoint on the conflict, but it was the solid multiplayer - both deathmatch and team-based - which captured gamers' attention. From the Behind Enemy Lines game mode to the unsettling-but-cool Killcam, Call of Duty ushered in a new era of FPS development.
Welcome to the big time, indeed: Infinity Ward's smash hit spawned an entire franchise
Did you really think you had a choice? Call of Duty was intense from start to finish
#9: Far Cry (2004)
As we fawn over the impressive FPS Crysis, it's easy to forget that Crytek's graphical masterpiece is only the German developer's second title. But it is hard to forget 2004's Far Cry, the Yerli brothers first hit game. The upstart coders managed to sell over one million copies of their action-packed FPS on the PC alone, and subsequent ports and expansion packs on consoles continue to pad that number. Though Crytek sold the rights to the Far Cry franchise to Ubisoft (who have a planned 2008 sequel in the works), the antics of unwitting hero Jack Carver paved the way for the FPS genre to leave behind its monster-closet past. Objectives could be accomplished in a number of ways, and the game's outstanding graphics and believable AI raised the bar for FPS gameplay. Of course, the game's hallmark was its outstanding visuals, which brought then-primo hardware to its knees (sound familiar?). If Crytek's vice is bringing us a graphical experience which is ahead of its time, then that's a vice I can live with.
Before Crysis, there was Far Cry; it, too, brought hardware to its knees
This was as good as FPS graphics got in 2004
#8: Company of Heroes (2006)
Company of Heroes has the distinction of being one of only two games to break up the FPS stranglehold on this Top 10 list, and it's a deserving game indeed. There's an argument to be made that Company of Heroes is the best real-time strategy game we've seen in years, and the game handily walked away with enough Game of the Year awards to fill a warehouse. Renowned for its graphics as much as its gameplay, a patch earlier this year enabled limited DirectX 10 support, adding a bit of flair to the already stellar visuals. In terms of gameplay, the experience isn't necessarily groundbreaking: completing objectives is hinged upon capturing control points, which bring in resources such as fuel, munitions and manpower.
No other RTS brings you as close to the action as Company of Heroes
Company of Heroes visuals are stunning for an RTS
What makes Company of Heroes stand out from the competition (sorry, Supreme Commander and World in Conflict) is a solid single-player campaign in addition to addictive multiplayer. Where solo RTS campaigns are often an afterthought shoehorned in to justify a full price tag, the single-player experience in CoH has a cinematic quality reminiscent of early Call of Duty games. As one high-profile gaming site so eloquently put it, "All details have been given great amounts of detail and it shows." With an endorsement like that, how can one go wrong? With a recently released standalone expansion, Opposing Fronts, it's a safe bet that we'll be enjoying this game well into 2008.
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