Counter-Terrorism FPS games

[Lemming42]

There was a huge glut of these in the late 90s and early 2000s. They are, without exception, hilariously stupid as fuck in terms of writing. I really like all of them. Here are some I consider to be the flagship titles of the trend:

Rainbow Six (1998) and Rogue Spear (1999) - these, especially Rogue Spear, are still my favourite tactical shooters ever made. Superb gameplay and level design blends with Tom Clancy's trademark horseshit to create scenarios such as "nazis are trying to kill members of EU parliament", "environmentalists have decided to kill humanity to save the planet", and "the IRA are going to blow up Big Ben". Absolutely love these games.

Delta Force (1998) and Delta Force 2 (1999) - remember Delta Force, those clowns who crashed the helicopters in Mogadishu and fucked everything six ways from Sunday? These games are set in an alternate universe where Delta Force is a highly trained, highly respected team of crack operatives able to take on any challenge. Most of said challenges involve shooting people at big distances.

SWAT 3 (1999) and SWAT 4 (2005) - when you think "SWAT", I know what you think - the highest standards of professionalism, unbelievable trigger discipline, a principled refusal to deploy lethal violence, and never getting the wrong address and filling someone's pet dog full of lead. These games accurately recreate the surprisingly non-lethal adventures of the heroes of SWAT.

Soldier of Fortune (2000) - if you thought Rainbow Six had bad writing, try this on for size. As freelance merc John Mullins, it's down to you to recover stolen nukes. Some have been stolen by ninjas. Others have been stolen by the Ghanaian army. You visit Kosovo, where RavenSoft go to great lengths to portray the then-raw conflict in a highly sensitive and respectful way, by having Mullins shoot people in the testicles and turn people into gibs. One thing's for sure, Mullins will succeed where international counter terrorism agencies have failed.

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes (2004) - if you thought R6 was stupid and SoF was insane, get ready for something far beyond your wildest dreams. I'm not going to tell you the plots of the missions in this game because they must be seen to be believed. Anyway, the game fucking rocks.

That's an incomplete list of course - the other R6 and DF games are worth a look - but this is a good start. Something about these games appeals to me; games set in WW2 or Vietnam or more recent real-world conflicts just upset me and seem utterly tasteless, but these fantastical bullshit stories of heroic Western law enforcement taking on endless waves of imaginary Islamic terrorists, African warlords, radical political groups, and tinpot dictators just makes me laugh. It's all so fucking stupid, fundamentally impossible to take seriously, and wildly detached from reality, and it's therefore the absolute perfect backdrop to classic FPS mass murder.

I assume they began to dry up fast in the late 2000s because the appetite for Western interventionism collapsed, which makes these games even better - they're a time capsule into the End of History era. Just listen to the music that plays in the briefing phase in R6! This track just screams "we're the West, we're morally in the right, and we absolutely will effect regime change in a country our citizens can't point to on a map, and we'll feel damn good about it too":

 

[luj1]

Project IGI 1-2

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Official US Army game. Whichever team you play on, you're always the army and the enemy are terrorists.

 

[aweigh]

All of those games listed are awesome.

Remnants of a better time... before Wokeness.

 

[lightbane]

"environmentalists have decided to kill humanity to save the planet"
They're not wrong here though. It would be impossible to have activists like Gretchen Thunderberg as bad guys nowadays.

 

[rumSaint]

What about Ready or Not?

 

[NecroLord]

I play CS: Deleted Scenes from time to time.
Basically special forces shooter in the Source Engine.
"Rise Hard", the very last mission, is the best one.

Soldier of Fortune is a great FPS, has that 90s Action B-Movie feel.
Delta Force games are also pretty good, including Black Hawk Down.

 

[Avonaeon]

I'd add Sum of All Fears (2002) - It's basically a counter-terror and CQB version of Ghost Recon. Good stuff!
I also think Rainbow 6: Raven Shield deserves a mention. It had some super satisfying gunplay for it's time

 

[Lemming42]

These games are Turbo-Woke. Delta Force forces you (by having the option) to be a black woman.

You can flee to Rainbow Six for refuge, only to find out you're still a black woman.

And John Clark says he has the best intel analyst in the world joining our team... a black woman!!

You can seek refuge (but not in the sense of being a refugee, that would be woke) in the tough macho mercenary world of Soldier of Fortune, only to find out your first partner is black and your second partner is a woman. Add those together and what do you get? That's right. Black woman. On top of that, Mullins is a race traitor who kills decent honest hwhites just because they happen to not share his politics (ie they're homicidal neo-nazi terrorists).

VERDICT: WOKE

Thanks for reading this week's issue of LEMMING42's WOKEWATCH.

 

[Lemming42]

What about Ready or Not?

I liked this a lot, great mechanics and the writing was even funnier than SWAT iirc which is crucial for these games. The level where you have to take down the gamer dude and it plays tense horror music as you raid his Gamer Cave properly made me laugh.

My dream game right now would be a new Rainbow Six made on the Ready or Not engine. With the insane enemy reaction times and such, it seems like the mechanics are a better fit for R6 than SWAT.

"environmentalists have decided to kill humanity to save the planet"
They're not wrong here though. It would be impossible to have activists like Gretchen Thunderberg as bad guys nowadays.

It would be impossible, but chiefly because if you suggested "Gretel Thunderbird has teamed up with South American mafiosos, a rogue billionaire, and the global criminal underworld to develop a deadly virus to wipe out 80% of humanity" as a plot, you'd be laughed out of the room before the game ever got made.

Wonder what else Clancy could come up with if he was really pushed. "Bob Ross has gone neo-fundamentalist and is planning to blow himself up with a tactical nuke at the World Fair to protest rising paint prices", "Mary Berry is assassinating world leaders to form a one-world government with herself as the head to get more kids interested in baking", "Oprah Winfrey has teamed up with a resurgent neo-nazi movement in a plan to cut off the world's oil supply because she's disappointed in low literacy rates among inner-city kids"?

 

[aweigh]

These games are Turbo-Woke. Delta Force forces you (by having the option) to be a black woman.

You can flee to Rainbow Six for refuge, only to find out you're still a black woman.

And John Clark says he has the best intel analyst in the world joining our team... a black woman!!

You can seek refuge (but not in the sense of being a refugee, that would be woke) in the tough macho mercenary world of Soldier of Fortune, only to find out your first partner is black and your second partner is a woman. Add those together and what do you get? That's right. Black woman. On top of that, Mullins is a race traitor who kills decent honest hwhites just because they happen to not share his politics (ie they're homicidal neo-nazi terrorists).

VERDICT: WOKE

Thanks for reading this week's issue of LEMMING42's WOKEWATCH.

These games aren't woke no matter how much it makes you seethe.

 

[Lemming42]

Has anyone tried Ground Branch? Steam keeps recommending it to me and it sells itself as being like Rainbow Six, but there's so little info on it and even its fans seem to say "do not play it, it's shit, especially in single-player".

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

What about Ready or Not?

This game performance on my PC is dog shit so I never got to properly play it but anything like SWAT is a good thing.

 

[JarlFrank]

Today I'd rather play a terrorism FPS game because the current governments deserve it.

 

[anvi]

I grew up playing these games, I loved them. Rainbow Six was the best thing ever at the time, and is really hardcore. If you take one bullet you are dead and have to start again. Rogue Spear had an amazing feature where you can open doors bit by bit by scrolling the mousewheel. It let you crack the door slightly to see in the room etc. It's a big deal when you are raiding a factory full of metal doors or whatever. Delta Force games blew my mind and it's still what I like the most from an FPS. I want to do some outdoor sniping and shooting, then I want to infiltrate a building Rambo style, and set explosives, big ones, and then I want to flee in an exciting manner. That series was awesome at that. Many games do not live up to that awesomeness.

SWAT 3 and 4 I probably played more than anything. They are like timeless games somehow, even though FPS is very graphics oriented, they still look and feel good. The Elite Force mod for SWAT 3 is great.

Soldier of Fortune was amazing tech and I had fun playing it online too. I prefer the others though. IGI not sure I played those I'll check em out. The Delta Force Land Warrior series I kind of like but it gets a bit dumb and durebro ish. I don't know that series that well but one was cool. One not so much. I mostly play Arma 3 with mods like Antistasi for that kind of big war fps. Hidden & Dangerous 1 and 2 I love as well.

 

[Iucounu]

"environmentalists have decided to kill humanity to save the planet"
They're not wrong here though. It would be impossible to have activists like Gretchen Thunderberg as bad guys nowadays.

It would be impossible, but chiefly because if you suggested "Gretel Thunderbird has teamed up with South American mafiosos, a rogue billionaire, and the global criminal underworld to develop a deadly virus to wipe out 80% of humanity" as a plot, you'd be laughed out of the room before the game ever got made.

I think it quite possible, with oligarchs using the naïve Greta as cover for their criminal exploits --just like in real life. But Greta as an equal partner in crime would just be silly.

 

[Iucounu]

these fantastical bullshit stories of heroic Western law enforcement taking on endless waves of imaginary Islamic terrorists, African warlords, radical political groups, and tinpot dictators just makes me laugh. It's all so fucking stupid, fundamentally impossible to take seriously, and wildly detached from reality, and it's therefore the absolute perfect backdrop to classic FPS mass murder.

I assume they began to dry up fast in the late 2000s because the appetite for Western interventionism collapsed, which makes these games even better - they're a time capsule into the End of History era. Just listen to the music that plays in the briefing phase in R6! This track just screams "we're the West, we're morally in the right, and we absolutely will effect regime change in a country our citizens can't point to on a map, and we'll feel damn good about it too"

I'll add (original) Ghost Recon, despite gameplay being more military than counter-terrorism. The base game is about saving Eastern Europe from a Soviet resurrection, the Desert Siege expansion is about setting things straight in the Ethiopia-Eritrea civil war, and Island Thunder is about forcing US democracy on Cuba.

 

[Avonaeon]

IGI not sure I played those I'll check em out.

I recently completed the first one. It's a great game, but hard as nails. If you like the hardcore approach you might like it. Some really great sound design in it.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Tom Clancy's trademark horseshit

you know, soon after his first book got published, tom clancy had cia knocking at his door asking "how the hell do you know these secrets?".

 

[Arryosha]

I'll add

SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs for PS2

Splinter Cell series

And don't forget Deus Ex

 

[NecroLord]

Today I'd rather play a terrorism FPS game because the current governments deserve it.

Deus Ex.

I don't know of other true FPS titles that legitimately put you into the role of directly opposing the government of any one country.

 

[PsihoKekec]

I played the first three R6 a lot, I remember watching the map of the oil platform mission and thinking to myself ''I'm going have to repeat this one a lot, wont't I?'' and then finishing it on the first try. I liked the (totally unrealistic) heartbeat sensors, that showed you when the tango is turned away, so you could give breach-in team a signal to go.

 

[Icymad]

Today I'd rather play a terrorism FPS game because the current governments deserve it.

Deus Ex.

I don't know of other true FPS titles that legitimately put you into the role of directly opposing the government of any one country.

Deus Ex didn't do that, you where against a illegitimate new secret organization that took over the government and not even the same cabal that controls it today, it's no different than a COD game in which Makarov kidnaps the Russian president and take over the russian military to wage war. If they did that it would cause a political shitstorm like this game did:



If Deus Ex even came close to this it woudn't be released.

 

[Vincente]

VERDICT: WOKE

Thanks for reading this week's issue of LEMMING42's WOKEWATCH.

Your appointment to HQ should be finalized within the week.

 

[Icymad]

You can flee to Rainbow Six for refuge, only to find out you're still a black woman.

My gay race communist senses are tingling, how accurate are those stats? Leadership (nagging) seems about right, eletronics seems about racist, self-control is too high, should be self worth stat or something, assault should be higher.