first-person posts

Welcome to Freeware Friday, a weekly column showcasing excellent games that you can play free of charge!

There are a few games that have had massive influence on those that came afterward, and one of the most influential is the first-person dungeon crawler Ultima Underworld. It built a comprehensive world filled with monsters and intrigue that would later have an effect on everything from System Shock to Elder Scrolls, and it was the first role-playing game to have true 3D graphics, among other features. However, this isn't about Ultima Underworld. Rather, it's about a freeware game made for the Assemblee competition that brings back pleasant memories of plumbing Ultima Underworld's depths. The game is The King, the Queen, and the Jester, and it's mix of first-person action with rogue-like depth make it one of the better games we've played in a long time.

Wolfenstein 3D -- the groundbreaking game that brought the First Person Shooter genre into the light of day -- celebrates its sixteenth birthday today. It can legally drive a car, drop out of high school, and maybe even get married with parental consent now.

Wired celebrated the game's Sweet Sixteen with a brief summary of its history and some quotes about how revolutionary it was. "The key to the whole Wolfenstein thing is that its success -- which was massive -- paved the way for ... thousands of games that mimicked them, transforming the PC into a gaming system best known for FPS titles," said Wired blogger Earnest Cavalli. And it's true -- whether your favorite FPS is BioShock, Call of Duty 4, or even Portal, the genre as we know it today began with good ol' WOLF3D.EXE.

But if you want a reason to hate the masterpiece then think of it this way -- sick to death of World War II games? Wolfenstein 3D started this whole killing-Nazis-in-the-first-person-perspective spree! Yikes.

[Via Joystiq]