most people who do play FPS games are very much aware of the Marathon series. they where very influential at the time.

that's why I come in and recommend these games!

...also this trilogy has quite a big fanbase. not too vocal but big enough.

(O_O) I apologize for the text wall, meant to keep things briefer than that.

The topic did not specify, so I shall list both FPS and TPS.

FPS:

"3D" era:

Doom II is probably the most playable of the Wolfentsein-Doom-clone era. I only played it in 2019, but really enjoyed. It lacks the complex level designs of the Build Engine games, but that was part of the charm to me. It acted (based on the order in which I played such games) as a mid-point between the Wolf-style games (e.g. the Blake stones and the criminally underrated Noah's Ark 3d). I also thought that the addition of the super shotgun in this game made it much easier to get into than the first Doom, helped complete the weapon progression.

Of the Wolf clones (Wolf 3d is required reading, but hard for me to get into) my favorite is probably either Blake Stone: Planet Strike or Rise of the Triad. I've been able to get farther in Planet Strike than Rise of the Triad and that is largely due to the fact that Planet Strike includes a mini map. Rise of the Triad's level design tends to confuse me, but the game is so wacky that I tend to enjoy it anyway.

Of the Build Engine games (namely: Duke 3d, Blood, and Shadow Warrior), it is actually pretty difficult to pick a favorite, but a little bit of background. The first one I played was Duke 3D, but I did not get very far (I thought the levels were confusing), then I played Shadow Warrior and found it immensely enjoyable, I then tried to play Duke again and once again failed to beat it (though I did get through the first episode), then I played through Blood and its X-packs (I also played through the Shadow Warrior X-packs already). Finally, about a year after finishing Blood, I was able to play through every episode of Duke. The reason, I suppose, it took so long was that unlike Blood and Shadow Warrior, I did not find Duke's setting or antagonists that interesting. At any rate, both Shadow Warrior and Blood are first-rate games from their times and I cannot recommend either one enough. Duke is also required reading, but I had great difficulties actually playing through it.

Other honorable mentions from this era would include: Outlaws, Star Wars: Dark Forces, Hexen and Heretic, Strife, and Chex Quest.

Moving into Polygons:

Quake is a great game to be sure but if I had to pick a starting point for me I just love Quake II. It was the first Quake game I was able to get working in full and it is still the one I typically go back to from that era. Unreal is also great but I really just prefer Unreal Tournament (Even as a single player bot fragging fest this game is endlessly enjoyable for me). Quake III is nearly as fun, but that is an important distinction: it is nearly as fun but is just a tick shy of it. The weapons in UT are more fun for the most part and have stronger feed back with more distinctive feel from them. I also like the character design more in UT and even the graphics look slightly more pleasing to me but we are talking about fractions of a point for the most part.

On an in between slot in the time line I would like to throw Soldier of Fortune. The second game is good but the first one is everything good the premise could deliver with gun play slightly more satisfying than Quake II and an inkling of the modern military shooting games of the early 2k that I really miss. This game, however, is gloriously over the top in all the right ways. Go to every hot spot of the 90's and hunt down evil mercenaries who resemble cartoon Nazis more than anything with an arsenal of real and imagined guns with wonderful sound effects and powerful effect on their targets.

Honorable mention of the late 90's would have to be the original Jedi Knight.

2000's:

Another game I love is Return to Castle Wolfenstein. It is not the first WWII shooter of this early 2k era that I played (Medal of Honor Allied Assault preceded it as did the original Call of Duty demo) but it is probably my favorite of them. The right mix of supernatural, SS secret super soldier goofiness and a satisfying amount of gibbing and gun feedback help keep this game in my rotation in spite of its difficulty spikes. I am not a glutton for punishment but this game also does not deter me since everything about it feels good.

If I could I would go on about the game Vietcong except that I never played the full version of the game. The demo was excellent and I played it about as much as the Far Cry, Crysis, Call of Duty 4, and Age of Mythology demo. The only demos I played more were probably the Rise of Nations and Halo Combat Evolved demoes. Instead, I'll go on about arguably my favorite shooter at all which is Delta Force Black Hawk Down. I have played this game to death as a CD and I still do as a GOG game. The game is pretty much everything I wanted from a shooter when I played it (okay, it was not Star Wars, but we'll get there). Your guns are believable and powerful (maybe a little too powerful since bad guys require one round from any of them to down) and you have a mostly realistic and wholly reasonable kit of a knife, a handgun, and a primary small arm (usually a CAR 15 or M16A2) with some extra equipment of a few flash bangs, frag grenades, smoke grenades, and extra equipment of C4, an AT4, or claymores. The claymores are basically useless to me but somebody else could probably have fun with them. This game is not the hardest but it has its moments of extreme cheapness that the only way you can prepare for them is to suffer them once. I do adore this game even still.

Battlefield 2 is another favorite of mine. It felt somewhat revelatory, and I only played it single player. Nowadays I dare not play this game without mods but if the player count could be naturally upgraded to 32 or 64 the need would never have arose. I played this game mod free for nine years with some regularity. Similarly, I play Battlefront every here and again still and with good reason. The original 2004 game on PC in third person is just plain fun. It is a Star Wars battlefield where you can distinguish yourself as one of the grunts for a change. I enjoy killing hordes of storm troopers as Kyle Katarn quite a lot (but if I include every game I like we will never go home) but playing as a storm trooper or a clone trooper or rebel troop is really what I prefer. The battlefields can be hectic and fortunes can change suddenly. Now, after a while you can see the AI patterns but it still can keep you on your toes.

Quake IV is an excellent shooter which combines what was then fairly cutting edge and what was being left behind. You have objectives and little things to immerse you into the game world (mostly the way you interact with computers in game) as well as weapons for just about every number on your keyboard and health and armor packets to be discovered and pilfered. The feedback from these weapons are slightly less satisfying than the ones in Quake II but otherwise I thing it stands up with its fellow Strog slayer. Also, this game still looks great, a quality that will become more common but few games manage to look this good seventeen years later.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and F.E.A.R. games are probably my favorite acronym-named games ever. Both go for creepy atmospheres, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. The former definitely has a more "realistic" approach to the gunplay and inventory management, whereas F.E.A.R. is basically living out your own Hong Kong action movie. Of the two, I would say that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is probably the more difficult to acquire taste, but is easily one of the most immersive shooters out there, all the games are good, but Call of Pripyat is my favorite.

Honorable mentions include: The Serious Sam games, Unreal Tournament 2004, Timeshift, Far Cry, Crysis, Call of Duty 2 and 3, Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault, and 4, and Resistance: Fall of Man, Call of Duty United Offensive.

2010's:

I'll keep this brief: retro-revival games were very much ascendant in this period and my favorite was Shadow Warrior 2013. The game had great visceral combat, funny dialogue, and a great selection of weapons. A favorite I played around the same time was Metro: Last Light, I realize that some would prefer the original, but I always derived a bit more pleasure from the sequel. I also really enjoyed Titanfall 2. The 2010 Goldeneye on the Wii is an excellent game, if you ask me. (It may seem obvious from the lack of titles, but I thought FPS games were in a bit of a slump in this era.)

I'll keep the above the same, but I somehow forgot to initially include Dusk in the retro revival part. Absolutely brilliant game with a creepy atmosphere, imaginative level design, great enemies, satisfying shooting, fun weapons, amazing soundtrack, and is just so much fun. It is an excellent candidate for best FPS of the previous decade and is the closest of the "old school" games to imitating the feel of those old games (but still does not quite hit it exact).

Honorable mentions: Resistance 3, Killzone 3, Halo Reach, Conduit 2,

2020's:
Only thing I will say is that Halo Infinite is a great game and I like it pretty much up there with the better Halo games.

I will make a separate post about TPS games later, running short on time right now.

TPS:

This should not take as long:

Pre Resident Evil 4:

As a kid in the late 90's and early 2000's, I don't really remember playing too terribly many TPS games except for Army Men: Sarge's War on the Gamecube and Star Fox Assault. (I did not own a PS2 until 2010 and an Xbox 360 until 2011) That said in the subsequent years I have played more from the era, but I would not really recommend a good bit of them, particularly the Sarge's Heroes games. However, Dino Crisis on the PS1 was an enjoyable game for me as was Kill Switch on the PS2. I've also managed to play Delta Force: Black Hawk Down entirely in the third person mode before; I had fun.

I also tend to play Star Wars: Battlefront in the 3rd person mode and it is one of my favorite games of its era. I am talking about the original Battlefront and not II, something about the aiming in 2 never felt right to me. At any rate, it is easily one of my most played games ever and I make a point of playing a few maps every few weeks or so.

Another noteworthy game which switches between first and third persons is Unreal Championship 2. Excellent game and about as fun as UT 2004.

Honorable mentions: Freedom Fighters, The PS2 SOCOM games, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, the Syphon Filter games, Ghost Recon 2 on Xbox, and the Ratchet and Clank series on PS2.

Resident Evil 4-Dead Space:

Resident Evil 4 was a game I admired in magazines but did not play until 2016, and yet the game was still revelatory to me. It just eludes strictly being a TPS but it is so important for the genre where I say it still counts. I would described it more as an action game than anything, but that is just me. Regardless, guns feels great and even handguns can feel powerful. The game truly clicks when you are forced to use every movement and weapon Leon has available to your advantage in that opening village scene. You really cannot even do particularly well with what you have equipped and will have to scavenge around after a stealthy approach is no longer an option (it never really was, but getting caught that first time felt like my fault) and you have to scrounge and scrap to survive. I happen to like the story, what there is of it, because it feels like an ideal action film and still can find myself playing the game through again every once in a while. I played the GameCube original first and would recommend any curious to try and do that as well. The game feels best on a GameCube controller and the control scheme was made for it to perfection. Next best thing is the Wii version of the game. This is a trade off, however. It has some extra goodies and the added precision and speed of aiming with the remote I think makes the game slightly better for a game playing experience, also the knife works better there. Modern gamepads just don't quite make sense with the game but at the same time the game does not really make sense with a more modern control scheme, as a result I play less of the Xbox One version... that and the game sometimes refuses to work on that system. Actually, that is it right there. One X is fine though.

The first of the games which were heavily influenced by RE4 would be Gears of War, which I actually played before RE4. The Thanksgiving of 2006 playing this game with my cousin are amongst my favorite childhood gaming memories. Great times, and the game holds up pretty well today as well. Kind of unfortunately, it's such an integral part of my younger life that it's hard to come up with things to say about it. (Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter actually came out before GoW, but its impact for me at the time was much smaller.)

Rainbow Six Vegas 1 and 2 were nearly the same game with only slight changes made in the sequel. That said, the changes they did make like (then) extensive character customization and the ability to sprint were huge at the time. These games were a little ugly even when they originally came out, but the gameplay is still fun and at the time I felt that the cover mechanics were better than those in Gears of War.

Gears of War 2 and Resident Evil 5 were great sequels that made incremental improvements over their predecessors. (I realize that RE5 came out after Dead Space, but I played it after.)

Dead Space was the last of the major RE4 clones and an excellent game. The creepy atmosphere, the absolutely crazy antagonists (probably the best portrayal of people who are actually nuts in a video game if you ask me), and a great selection of weapons make for a game that still sees itself in my rotation. That said, I want to complain about how a common line from reviews from back then said that there "are no weapons" in the game. The first weapon you see used in the game is the plasma rifle and it takes no time at all to purchase one. Just always irritated me. Dead Space marks the end of what is in my mind the most important era for TPS games. It was the last truly great new entries into the genre, just about everything after this point was just a sequel.

Post Dead Space:

Dead Space 2 did not impress me as much as it did nearly everyone else. I don't like Isaac talking as much as he does, I liked him seeming strong and silent before. Now that he talks, it feels like he never shuts up. It also felt like the game had a few too many segments where the player is forced to wait and has to fight wave after wave of those stupid children Necromorphs. The game was not bad, but I felt an unworthy successor to the fantastic original.

I'm actually one of those rare people who really enjoyed Resident Evil 6 for pretty much all the reasons I criticized Dead Space 2. Not sure I understand it myself, but the more actiony gameplay of RE6 did not irritate me as much as the enemy overload of DS2. That said, Chris' campaign is just kind of annoying and just about has to be played on the lowest difficulty to be enjoyable. All the other ones are good fun though. The mercenaries mode is also really fun (though my favorite one is 5's).

Gears of War 3 is another astounding entry in the series and by far the most played one by me. Ever other week or so I'll probably spend a few hours in Team Death Match. The singleplayer campaign does drag for what feels like maybe two hours too long though. The Horde mode was also less fun for me that it was in 2. Regardless, this was easily the height of the Gears series.

Lastly is the extra mode which escapes me from Resident Evil Revelations 2. It is so fun I have ignored the base game which was relying more on body horror than the series even usually does. Also, the feedback from this game's weaponry is some of the best in the series and the hook is incredibly satisfying.

ooooh boy


BLOOD
SWA4
STALKER
Duke Nukem 3D
Doom
Doom 2
Hexen
Heretic
Quake
Quake 2
Call of Duty
Call of Duty UO
Call of Duty 2
Call of Duty 4
Singularity
Urban Chaos Riot Response
Dusk
Amid Evil
Doom 2016
Doom 3
Doom 64
Doom External
Project Warlock
Shadow Warrior
Tek War
Unreal Tournament
Unreal
Serious Sam
Half-Life
Gunman Chronicles
Half-life 2
Left 4 Dead 2
Postal 2
FEAR
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Thief (cheating)
Ghost Recon
Rainbow Six
Shogo
Battlefield 1942, Vietnam, 2
Medal of Honour Allied Assault
Cruelty Squad
Arthurian Legends
Alien Vs Predator 1+2
Metro 2033/Last Light



that's a few of em

I always find myself coming back to Far Cry 2 time and time again. Not in a ritualistic yearly kind of thing, just a "wow, I had such a good time with this game, I should play it again".

I was going to type Far Cry 2 also. I really was obsessed with that game for a while.
One of those high watermarks, at least in my personal gaming history, and one of the last great games Ubisoft made before going completely bonkers.

I also had an unhealthy addiction to UT and UT2004 for years, lol. But those aren't so great if not playing online with folks.

Other shooters:

Side Scrolling:

The Contra (III is my favorite) series is also excellent as is Gunstar Heroes. Another side-scrolling shooter I really enjoy is Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project. (Not including Metroid games here as those are more like action-adventure games to me with shooting as the combat.) Aliens Infestation is also great. The Metal Slug series is all kinds of metal.

Arcade Shooters:

Really liked Dead Space Extraction, Resident Evil Umbrella and Darkside Chronicles, House of the Dead 2, 3, and Overkill, and Ghost Squad.

Not sure what to classify these as:

Star Fox 64, Omega Boost, Gun Griffon 1 and 2, Panzer Dragoon series (2 is my favorite), and Sin & Punishment 1 and 2 (Star Successor being a particular favorite). Honorable mention to the nearly fantastic Daemon X Machina for everything about it except its final mission which can jump off a cliff. Less honorable is Armored Core games in general. About the best top-down shooter not in a ship would be Shock Troopers. I cannot get into Ikari Warriors no matter what but Shock Troopers controls smoothly and using weapons feels intentional as opposed to forcing Rambo into a Chuck Norris movie.

Space Ship shooters:
I am not good at playing games, but that does not mean I do not enjoy these types of shooters. In no real order. Detana Twin Bee is a fun and funny Cute em up. If I like a space ship shooter it's going to be because it is a game with enjoyable shooting and fast, responsive controls. Otherwise, as good as they are, there are fewer ways to describe them than other styles of shooter. More would be the Soldier games on the Turbografx. Any of them would be fine, as well as anything with Blazing or Lazer or some version of that.. The former is much friendlier than other similar games. Last Resort is also great especially on Wii with the Tatsunoko vs Capcom Fight stick. Star Parodier is also anotehr great Turbografx Cute em up that I enjoyed very much on the PC Engine Mini.

Debatably, space ship shooters are more mind set than anything and you really have to want to play these games. Some beat em ups can be played casually, even STALKER can be popped in and dropped casually but these games need nearly religious devotion in order to persevere through them.

Last one I remember finishing was Ion Fury, which was very good, if a bit long and with a few too many generic underground levels (everything 'above ground' was top notch)

If I had to pick a personal top 5:

Half-life 2
Unreal
Quake 4
STALKER
Unreal Tournament 2003/4

Ion Fury.
It's just the best. And if it's not the best, it's pretty damn close!

I loved reading your posts, both of them!

Me, I don't care for many games that are categorised as "shooters". I love the Resident Evil games - I don't like Wolf/Doom/Quake type games (minimal world interaction, mostly just shooting and running around, minimal story elements). I liked Wolfenstein (2009) a lot better than Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

It's 2022 and many "genres" have lost all meaning. If you can shoot a projectile, somebody will call it a shooter (exaggerated, but not without point).

I'm a big fan of the Far Cry series, Medal of Honor, Dead Sace...

Half-Life above all.
And the old Jedi Knight, which is somewhat a hybrid, with adventure/rpg elements in it

You are too kind, thank you so much. Always appreciate when someone likes my writings.

I've played a fair amount of the classics, but my favorite after all these years is probably still American McGee's Alice. That one I though was a pretty special experience, in mood, aesthetic, gameplay.

Playing classic Quake 1 using the Super8 qbism mod was pretty fun for an enchanced "retro" experience. "Quake like you remember it" I remember as a description from a review site somewhere.