Among games that have defined the Real-Time Strategy genre, Command & Conquer is seen as one of the most influential titles. The C&C franchise, along with Warcraft and Starcraft, shaped the identity of RTS games during the '90s and would influence the designs of countless similar strategy titles in later years. Even though the franchise ended with a whimper instead of a bang, it managed to create an indelible impact on the history of videogames. Join us as we take a look at the rise and fall of Command & Conquer.
Medal of Honor. A series that has forever changed the way first person shooters are made. When the franchise debuted in 1999, no other action game had managed to successfully capture the intensity of the 2nd World War for which Medal of Honor is now famous. Its cinematic scope was a breath of fresh air in a crowded market of formulaic shooters and it quickly became the design template that many other developers would base their games upon. Even if you’ve never played a Medal of Honor game, you’ve certainly felt the repercussion of the iconic series. But what happened to EA’s once-great property? The franchise that formerly saw massive, worldwide success, with games that kept raising the bar for other first person shooters, hasn’t seen a release since 2012. To answer this question, we will not only cover the story behind the series’ rise to prominence and ultimate downfall but also provide a comprehensive overview of all the Medal of Honor games that have and haven’t seen the light of day.
magine the following scenario: you, the player, are tasked with stealing top-secret documents from a former research institute-turned-military complex swarming with enemies. You manage to slip into the main building undetected, narrowly avoiding the eyesight of your adversaries – but just as you reach the target, you are spotted, and the alarm goes off. Undeterred, you reload your previous save with the intention of making the alert go away – only to be confronted with the same relentless wailing. You load the next save in your list – and once again, the haunting sound is still there. It’s as if the ghost of your previous, inept incarnation has polluted your world with its spectral presence – and there’s nothing you can do about it. This scene epitomizes the often baffling, yet thoroughly fascinating series of first person shooter survival horror games developed by GSC Game World, Stalker. Stalker is not a series of finished products, but rather, a work-in-progress, a palimpsest whose texture inscribes the history of its troubled development. All the hardships, discarded ideas, and unrealistic ambitions that dogged the games’ development haunt them in the form of innumerable bugs and frustrating design flaws. And yet, despite – or perhaps even because of these faults, the series managed to attract a sizeable cult following, spawning an abundance of mods, fanfiction, novels, as well as films, and even inspire courageous fans to enact their fantasies in the game’s real life setting: the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The story of the Stalker series illustrates that sometimes, success is only possible if it straddles the border of disaster.
The year was 2006. The PlayStation 3 was fast approaching, and the creators of Sony’s most celebrated 3D platformers were hard at work creating experiences that would appeal to the upcoming console’s mature audience. Naughty Dog, the acclaimed creator of the kid-friendly Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter series, was busy developing Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, an action-adventure game that would follow a gun-toting daredevil’s journey into unknown territory. Sucker Punch Productions, which had recently risen to fame with its swashbuckling Sly Cooper series, was working on Infamous, a gritty action title starring an electricity-wielding superhero. And Insomniac games, which had fathered the lighthearted Spyro and Ratchet & Clank series, was on the verge of releasing a science fiction first-person shooter set in 1950s England. A shooter called Resistance: Fall of Man. With a lengthy single-player campaign and a robust multiplayer suite that mixed the realism of Activision’s Call of Duty with the fantastical of Bungie’s Halo, Resistance: Fall of Man seemed poised to become a massive franchise. And yet, despite receiving an initial groundswell of support and multiple sequels, over a decade later and the name Resistance is all but absent from the current PlayStation ecosystem. Where the Uncharted and Infamous series enjoyed acclaim well into the life of the PlayStation 4, Insomniac’s Resistance franchise would ultimately fail to escape the orbit of the PlayStation 3, collapsing almost as soon as it would peak with the release of Resistance 3 in 2011. This is the story of the rise and fall of the Resistance series.
In the early 2000s, World War 2 shooters were seemingly everywhere. Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and an endless stream of clones and knock-offs pervaded both personal computers and home consoles. While fun, these experiences were often formulaic, casting players time and time again as frontline soldiers in bombastic, but heavily scripted action sequences across the war’s greatest flashpoints. Running and gunning alone into the thick of battle was the name of the game, with little in the way of realism. In the midst of this glut of homogenous experiences, one series of World War 2 shooters stood out above the rest: Brothers in Arms. Developed by Gearbox Software and published by Ubisoft, Brothers in Arms emphasized real-world tactics and teamwork over mindless gunplay, forcing players to work together with their in-game allies to overcome conflicts. While Brothers in Arms would experience a wave of popularity following its debut in 2005, bolstered by its affecting narrative and unique gameplay, its fame would gradually wane overtime. Changing market conditions, a stream of middling mobile releases, and Gearbox Software’s shifting priorities would slowly but surely drown the series out of the public conscience. And though there is reason to hope that the series may yet live again, an ill-fated attempt to revitalize the series in 2011 suggests that a new entry may still be far on the horizon. This is the rise and fall of Brothers in Arms.
In 1998, a little known company named Valve released a first-person shooter named Half-Life and changed the face of gaming. Where other shooters struggled to provide even a semblance of a story, Half-Life had brains to match its brawns; a stirring tale featuring a realistic human cast and a protagonist that was more than a hand and a gun unfolded before the player’s eyes as they progressed through each level. As Valve grew, so too did Half-Life’s reputation, with Half-Life 2 in 2004 once again revolutionizing the genre, and its episodic expansions, Half-life 2: Episode One and Episode Two, further raising the bar. The series didn’t release consistently, and occasionally suffered unexpected and painful setbacks; but when it did, it seemed as if Valve could do no wrong – until the series suddenly stopped. Shifting priorities, a lack of motivation, and other, more nebulous factors would lead Valve to put Half-Life on ice in the middle of its prime, leaving a generation of gamers adrift, and an opus unfinished. And yet – Half-Life lives on. Be it in the innumerable games and series it inspired or provided the computative bedrock for, an undying stream of mods, or other media based on the franchise, Half-Life’s DNA is permanently embedded in the fabric of the video game industry, and will likely remain so for some time. As sad as it is that a Half-Life 2: Episode 3 or a Half-Life 3 will likely never happen, and as frustrating as it is that Valve remains belligerent as to precisely why, the series, for the most part, has only really fallen… out of Valve’s hands. This is the rise and fall of Half-Life.