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An arena shooter is a subgenre of shooter games and multiplayer games that cover both the first-person shooter and third-person shooter genres. These games emphasize fast-paced movement in enclosed map designs that foster engagement between players.
Arena shooters are multiplayer shooter games with several key characteristics. Players will start with a basic load out that is upgradable via weapons and power-ups contained at certain points in a map. Arena shooters may employ movement mechanics that allow for skillful gameplay, such as strafing to avoid gunshots, using rockets explosions from weapons to jump higher, or using items to otherwise move quickly throughout the map. These mechanics are often paired with relatively fast movement speed. Maps in arena shooters are structured in a way that facilitate interaction and combat among players, often utilizing elements like portals or jump pads to provide additional options for movement. [1]
Arena shooters can be traced back to the early days of first person shooters with the first modern shooter, Wolfenstein 3D (1992), establishing the basic groundwork of shooter mechanics which were later replicated in future games. In these early shooters the weapons were held and aimed in the middle of the screen and did not require the player to reload. Doom (1993) featured faster-paced gameplay and more action on screen. [2] This style of gameplay would continue into the 3D era with Quake (1996) following the same formula.
While Wolfenstein 3D had no multiplayer capabilities, Doom introduced the deathmatch game mode which focused on combat between players on the game's maps. Other games that followed it, including Marathon , Duke Nukem 3D and the first two Quake games also allowed for such matches to be played online or on the local network. Nonetheless, these games still featured single player as the principal mode of play. The first real arena shooters were Unreal Tournament (1999), Turok: Rage Wars (1999) and Quake III Arena (1999). These games, in contrast to previous entries in their respective series, were focused on multiplayer matches, and the single player component focused on playing the same multiplayer maps with computer-controlled bots. More game modes besides the standard deathmatch were also introduced, including the very popular capture the flag mode. [3] Both genres helped popularized the LAN party scene with the popularity of Quake leading to the creation of its own convention, QuakeCon, where numerous people would meet up to compete in professional and amateur tournaments locally. The popularity of the genre was such that certain open-source games in a similar style were also developed in the early 2000s, such as Cube and Warsow .
While the arena shooters were wildly popular in 1999 and the early 2000s, arena shooters have fallen out of popularity compared to other subgenres in the shooter genre. [4] There have been attempts to release new titles in the genre with Quake Champions in 2017. Quake Champions now has a Battle Pass system with several content updates a year. As well as an e-Sports league known as the Quake Pro League. Ran in joint effort by both Bethesda, and Pro Gamer League (PGL). Epic Games also tried to bring back Unreal Tournament with a new entry, but this was put on hold shortly afterward. The majority of arena shooters released today are by independent developers with the likes of Reflex Arena , Diabotical , [5] and Master Arena [6] being popular among a niche group. While there have been some games with "arena" elements in recent times such as Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal (2020), there have been no games in the genre released by major publishers. [7]
Quake III Arena is a 1999 multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by id Software. The third installment of the Quake series, Arena differs from previous games by excluding a story-based single-player mode and focusing primarily on multiplayer gameplay. The single-player mode is played against computer-controlled bots. It features music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly founder Bill Leeb.
Quake is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. The first game in the Quake series, it was originally released for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux in 1996, followed by Mac OS and Sega Saturn in 1997 and Nintendo 64 in 1998. In the game, players must find their way through various maze-like, medieval environments while battling monsters using an array of weaponry. Quake takes inspiration from gothic fiction and the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
Rise of the Triad: Dark War is a first-person shooter video game, developed and published by Apogee Software in 1995. The player can choose one of five different characters to play as, each bearing unique attributes such as height, speed, and endurance. The game's story follows these five characters who have been sent to investigate a deadly cult, and soon become aware of a deadly plot to destroy a nearby city. Its remake was designed by Interceptor Entertainment and released by Apogee Games in 2013. The shareware version of the game is titled Rise of the Triad: The HUNT Begins.
Deathmatch, also known as free-for-all, is a gameplay mode integrated into many shooter games, including first-person shooter (FPS), and real-time strategy (RTS) video games, where the goal is to kill the other players' characters as many times as possible. The deathmatch may end on a frag limit or a time limit, and the winner is the player that accumulated the greatest number of frags.
Urban Terror is a freeware multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by FrozenSand. Originally a total conversion of id Software's Quake III Arena, FrozenSand released Urban Terror as a free standalone game in 2007 utilizing ioquake3 as the game engine. While the game engine is licensed under the open-source GPL, Urban Terror's game code is closed source and its assets are freeware but not open content.
Shooter video games or shooters are a subgenre of action video games where the focus is almost entirely on the defeat of the character's enemies using the weapons given to the player. Usually these weapons are firearms or some other long-range weapons, and can be used in combination with other tools such as grenades for indirect offense, armor for additional defense, or accessories such as telescopic sights to modify the behavior of the weapons. A common resource found in many shooter games is ammunition, armor or health, or upgrades which augment the player character's weapons.
Quake is a series of first-person shooter video games, developed by id Software and, as of 2010, published by Bethesda Softworks. The series is composed of Quake and its nonlinear, standalone sequels, which vary in setting and plot.
Cube is a free and open-source first-person shooter video game. It often is mistaken with its engine (zlib-licensed), the Cube Engine. The engine and game were developed by Wouter van Oortmerssen.
A first-person shooter engine is a video game engine specialized for simulating 3D environments for use in a first-person shooter video game. First-person refers to the view where the players see the world from the eyes of their characters. Shooter refers to games which revolve primarily around wielding firearms and killing other entities in the game world, either non-player characters or other players.
Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict is a first- and third-person arena shooter video game developed by Epic Games and published by Midway Games. It was released in April 2005 for Xbox. The game is part of the Unreal franchise, and is a direct sequel to 2002's Unreal Championship. Unreal Championship 2 was designed from the ground up to take full advantage of the Xbox Live gaming service.
In shooter games, rocket jumping is the technique of using the knockback of an explosive weapon, most often a rocket launcher, to launch the shooter into the air. The aim of this technique is to reach heights, distances and speed that standard character movement cannot achieve. Although the origin of rocket jumping is unclear, its usage was popularized by Quake.
A cooperative video game, often abbreviated as co-op, is a video game that allows players to work together as teammates, usually against one or more non-player character opponents (PvE). Co-op games can be played locally using one or multiple input controllers or over a network via local area networks, wide area networks, or the Internet.
Mobile Forces is a first-person shooter video game developed by Rage Software using the Unreal Engine and published by Majesco Entertainment. The core team of Rage Games who developed Mobile Forces went on to become Realtime Worlds.
In video games, first-person is any graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character, or from the inside of a device or vehicle controlled by the player character. It is one of two perspectives used in the vast majority of video games, with the other being third-person, the graphical perspective from outside of any character ; some games such as interactive fiction do not belong to either format.
Outtrigger is a first/third-person shooter video game developed by Sega AM2 for the Sega NAOMI arcade cabinet and the Dreamcast. The game was originally released in 1999 for the arcades and was later ported over to the Dreamcast in 2001. The player character of Outtrigger is a member of an anti-terrorist group, and can be chosen between default characters with different specialties or a custom character, and can utilize a number of power-ups. Reception to Outtrigger was generally positive, praising the gameplay and mechanics, though criticizing the removal of online play in the European version of the game.
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
Xonotic is a free and open-source first-person shooter video game. It was developed as a fork of Nexuiz, following controversy surrounding the game's development. The game runs on a heavily modified version of the Quake engine known as the DarkPlaces engine. Its gameplay is inspired by Unreal Tournament and Quake, but with various unique elements.
Gun Buster, also known as Gunbuster (ガンバスター) and released in North America as Operation Gunbuster, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Taito and released for arcades in 1992. In contrast to on-rail light gun shooters at the time, this was one of the first arcade games to feature free-roaming FPS gameplay, the same year Wolfenstein 3D was released on personal computers.
Based on Id Software's open stance towards game modifications, their Quake series became a popular subject for player mods beginning with Quake in 1996. Spurred by user-created hacked content on their previous games and the company's desire to encourage the hacker ethic, Id included dedicated modification tools into Quake, including the QuakeC programming language and a level editor. As a game that popularized online first-person shooter multiplayer, early games were team- and strategy-based and led to prominent mods like Team Fortress, whose developers were later hired by Valve to create a dedicated version for the company. Id's openness and modding tools led to a "Quake movie" community, which altered gameplay data to add camera angles in post-production, a practice that became known as machinima.
Diabotical is a 2020 multiplayer-only first-person shooter developed by Swedish team GD Studio. It is in the arena FPS genre and features gameplay similar to Quake III Arena and its successors, with a variety of game modes, weapons, and complex movement mechanics. Diabotical uses an engine written from scratch, the "Glitch Engine".