My gaming life started (post ZX Spectrum that is) with Wolfenstein, Doom 1/2, Quake and UT99. UT99 was the one and only time I played competitively in a clan. Enemy Territory was the last time I played and enjoyed online gaming. So all of those games were huge for me but Half-Life was a game changer as it had an actual story all be it minimal. Deus Ex and SS2 introduced me to the RPG hybrid and these days I have no interest in shooting for shooting's sake.
When using timeline for me it would be:
- Pathway Into Darkness (hugely better than Wolfenstein but certainly Mac only),
- Doom (blew up anything),
- Marathon (huge, I could admit that System Shock was a bit superior, but Marathon had modern shooter controls on start this making its gameplay much superior),
- Doom 2 + ton of wads + Marathon 2 + Marathon Infinity
- Aliens vs. Predator on Jaguar, yep I'm one of the ten proud owners of the console, at least it had one great game, this one.
- Dark Forces, clearly more sophisticated, but it's not at same level than was games as Marathon and System Shock.
- Po'ed on 3DO, yep one of the 100 proud owners of the console, ha well this one got multiple great games including an amazing version of Wing Commander and Po'ed.
- Then Duke Nukem 3D was really huge for its time and before Quake single player it's this one that made Doom 1&2 look really dated. Dark Forces did it before but not as much.
- Some meh like Quake and Unreal.
- Then UT and Q3A, that was huge. Quake was for me a disappointment in single player, and for MP I played more Doom 1 and DN3D. But then came UT and Q3A, single player Q3A was much better, but both are MP games and for that UT blew up Q3A.
- Doom 3 that alas sort of killed my computer of this time, but for me it was a great one, and I never shared the negativity around it.
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and had a lot of fun single player, but SP had a limit with such game, alas. So tried MP and it was great but I was really needing to play better and I didn't bother try.
- Then bye shooters and I played some much later than their release, for the most noteworthy late plays: Prey (original), Half-Life 1&2, Far Cry, System Shock 2
- Then I tried again play shooters, but modern shooters aren't my cup of thea at all, I would really need a gameplay coming back to true dodging. It's up to the point that beside few very rare exceptions, for me ME series has a quite better shooting gameplay than almost all modern shooters.
- From this period I would quote: Mass Effect 2&3, EYE Divine Cybermancy, Duke Nukem Forever, Serious Sam 3, Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3, and MEA.
