The smell of freshly shot guards in the morning...
Everyone has a favorite Shoot Em Up be it Goldeneye, Perfect Dark or Quake 2.
But where do all those gun toating games come from?
The first true shoot-em-up was the extremely violent and gory Wolfenstien on the PC.
The game was banned in Germany and saw you as a young special forces dude battle your way through a series of floors in Castle Wolfenstein. The aim was to stop the Nazi experiments going on there. More recently the game has been re released in an updated version.
It must be said that the true age of the shoot em up began in 1997 when Goldeneye, the Bond blaster was brought to the N64. With its mix of blasting and actual thinking to be done the game was quickly acclaimed as a classic in Gaming circles not just by 23 year old nerdy students but also by teenagers.
GE did something that not even Wolfenstein 10 years before had done, and that was to bring out the agent in gamers. Goldeneye MADE you sneak around and not go in guns blazing. Without Goldeneye I am sure that the Multiplaying sub Genre of Gaming would not be as 'Technical' as it now is. Ducking diving and weaving, it was Bond to a tee.
And of course now there is Perfect Dark. Developed by Rare, the masterminds behind Goldeneye, it was tipped as a classic from the day it was announced.
After a delay of nearly a year it was released on June 30th 2000. Joanna Dark replaced Bond in a sequal of sorts to Goldeneye. With a more complex enemy AI it was much more of a challenge to handle the guards and now they could hear your footsteps.
If Goldeneye was a revolution then Perfect Dark was a whole new world.
And to think it all started over 10 years ago with Wolfenstien....
-Chriz Shipman
