A Brief History of the FPS
Daring to be differentIn the midst of the multiplayer mayhem, two developers bucked the deathmatch trend and released single-player focused shooters. While technically not first-person shooters, both Rogue Entertainment's American McGee's Alice and Remedy Entertainment's Max Payne can be considered bridge titles between the FPS and other genres. Using the Quake 3 engine, the third-person Alice reinvents the world of Lewis Carroll's famous protagonist. Set some time after Alice's last literary adventure, designer American McGee – formerly at id Software – situated the the young heroine in violent, maddening world. With inventive weapons, such as a deck of playing cards, and creative level design, Alice draws the player in with a new and gory twist on an old tale. 
Max Payne
Like Alice, May Payne blends FPS elements with a third-person view. Remedy Entertainment used their custom, feature-rich graphics engine MaxFX to create a visually cutting-edge game. With a dark graphic novel as a backdrop, Max Payne was an excellent example of how a story can be told through the medium of video games. Almost certainly borrowed from the film The Matrix, the innovative Bullet Time feature mimicked the movie's slow-motion shoot-out sequences. With Bullet Time enabled, time slowed to a crawl but your reflexes were preserved. Multiple shots could be fired in quick succession while enemies stood unprepared. This mode would have been awkward in an FPS, and the third-person perspective highlighted the effect. Max Payne was well-liked by critics and gave many FPS gamers a reason to stray outside the multiplayer arena. Moving from the famous the the infamous: no discussion of FPS gaming at the end of the 90s is complete without including Daikatana. By this time, the personalities surrounding FPSs were as big as the games themselves, and there was no bigger personality than John Romero (at least, according to John Romero). Famously promising that he was about to "...make you his bitch" with a controversial ad for Daikatana, Romero proved that there is such a thing as too much hype. Ultimately, Romero's hubris was his downfall; Daikatana was a critical flop and a never a great commercial success. The game was thoroughly mediocre in all respects, from gameplay to level design to art direction. Some critics pointed out that some community-created modifications for other FPS titles exceeded the level of quality found in Daikatana. 
Deus Ex
Ion Storm, the company Romero founded with three partners – including Tom Hall, former designer at id Software and 3D Realms – burned through tens of millions in advances from publisher Eidos Interactive with little in the way of financial return. The saga of Ion Storm's downfall and the companies extravagances is told better elsewhere, but suffice to say the company burned out like many other dot-com failures. The one moment of glory for Ion Storm was Warren Spector's Deus Ex, a remarkable game which elegantly blended the mechanics of an FPS with role-playing elements. Untainted by the antics of Ion Storm's Dallas offices, the Austin-based Spector and his team cranked out a brilliant and now-classic game. Deus Ex is an exciting, open-ended thriller in the vein of System Shock, with a compelling back story, deep plot and well-designed gameplay. Spector's masterpiece is required playing for any genuine video game fan, not just FPS junkies.
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