Forgotten multiplayer FPSes

[Gothic Box]

I have a weird fascination with forgotten multiplayer fps games. Something about the small, sometimes almost dead community that's been playing the game for years while the rest of the world has moved on or plays CS or TF2 instead for years on end. Sometimes these games were incredibly popular back in their day, sometimes they were never in the limelight. Some are retail products, some became free years later, some are total conversion mods of other games, and some are open source passion projects. I've scoured dead forums, found gameplay montages on YouTube that have over 10K views but the only other videos of the game have less than 1,000, looked on old file sharing sites. I'm going to list all the ones I've found over the years. (Yes, classic doom could be considered part of this list, but this is a doom forum, and this is the everything else board.)

Alien Arena
Team Fortress: Classic
Team Fortress: Quake
America's Army 1,2,3
Day of Defeat
Day of Defeat: Source
Nexuiz Classic
Urban Terror
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
True Combat: Elite
Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
Cube
Cube 2: Sauerbraten
Openarena
Infiltration
Red Eclipse
Tremulous
Warsow
World of Padman
The Specialists
Action Quake 2
Action Half-Life
Pirates, Vikings, and Knights
The Opera
Action Cube
Covert Ops
Goldeneye: Source
Ricochet
Deathmatch Classic
Dystopia
Neotokyo
Insurgency: Modern Infantry Combat
Fortress Forever
Resistance & Liberation
Plan of Attack
Natural Selection
Firearms
Firearms: Source
Zombie Panic
WW1 Source
Tour of Duty
Gangsta Wars
Desert Combat
Wizard Wars
Forgotten hope 2
Soldier of Fortune 1 & 2
Vietcong 1 & 2

I need to get a life.

[Koko Ricky]

You forgot Gore: Ultimate Soldier.

[Gothic Box]

GoatLord said:

You forgot Gore: Ultimate Soldier.

[Koko Ricky]

I remember it kinda sucking even back in the day.

[Chezza]

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

It's dead or at the very least it is in the Oceanic region several years ago. I enjoyed it though.

[Gothic Box]

Chezza said:

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

It's dead or at the very least it is in the Oceanic region several years ago. I enjoyed it though.

Huh, I remembered WolfET but not that. Wasn't that like Quake 4 and Battlefield had a baby?

[MusicallyInspired]

Action Half-Life was SOOOOOOOO good. Would love to play that again. I remember Firearms too. But what about Frontline Force?

[Doomkid]

I was a hardcore Team Fortress Classic player about 10-12 years ago. Fond memories from that one!

I don't think Doom's multiplayer is forgotten anyway, you can get 300 players and thousands of IRC dwellers at peak hour.

[Tritnew]

Hmm, I wouldn't say Red Eclipse is forgotten, if you're lucky you can still find some servers that are active.

Though, they're probably bots for all I know.

EDIT: I might try out Gore: Ultimate Soldier, it looks like it'd be so bad it's good.

[Clonehunter]

I remember scouring Abandoneware sites for old FPS games that could run on my POS computer about a decade and more ago.

Operation: BodyCount was terrible.

PowerSlave became a new favorite and I've been trying to find a legit copy for both the PSX and PC (Though I did grab PSEX when it was out briefly)

And then Chasm: The Rift looked good enough for me to buy a legit copy over downloading it. It's since become a close favorite and I like to mention it a lot.

There was a game based on the Dracula movie with Hopkins and Gary Oldman for DOS. I remember the previews looking like shit and according to the review on a AW site you only had a pistol to fight with anyways. The screenshots showed off an incredulously atrocious looking HUD.


EDIT:
Aaah, I missed the multiplayer part.

PowerSlave DOS had some IPX connect multiplayer I never tried.


Chasm's base multiplayer (Before an addon/patch) was broken as fuck. Spawning outside of maps, and when playing on the single player levels, someone would have to be lucky enough to start in the SIngeplayer start and unlock all of the doors and puzzles as you would normally, because everything would be locked otherwise.

[Doominator2]

Star Siege Tribes.

[snapshot]

* Deathmatch Classic
* Quake 3 Arena (Only bots are left)

[Breezeep]

Zombie master. Lots of memories playing that back then.

[Gothic Box]

DMGUYDZ64 said:

* Deathmatch Classic
* Quake 3 Arena (Only bots are left)

I listed DMC. Also, last time I checked Q3A was rather alive (at least the online server browsers say so) I even saw some prominent quake community players in the player list.

[Pencil of Doom]

Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament and Counter Strike:Condition Zero.
CS:CZ is much better than CS 1.6, it has better perfomance on low-end pcs, has better models, unlike 1.6's atrocious ones like the hands, they are skinny, enhanced old levels with more detail.
It also has a very intelligent AI for hostages, the best in the whole series, throw a granade, they will shout and run away, duck when there's shooting going on with thier hands on thier heads, raise thier hands when they see cts and call for them, scream when a terrorist kills a ct and they see it and sometimes they even try to escape after a few minutes have passed, not to mention if a terrorist sees one of them escaping, they will run back to the place they were before.

[Megalyth]

GoatLord said:

You forgot Gore: Ultimate Soldier.

"You forgot X" always seems to be the first reply to a list like this. Then you have the guy complaining about the complainer (that would be me).

I used to play Wolf ET, Q3A, and Half-Life DM religiously back in the day. Good times.

[snapshot]

* One Unit Whole Blood
* Duke Nukem 3D
* Shadow Warrior 1997
* Redneck Rampage

Barely people join .

[Tritnew]

^I'd say Shadow Warrior, Redneck Rampage and Blood are kind of dead when it comes to MP, but sometimes me and a couple of Duke friends would play some DM and Coop on Megaton Edition.

But vanilla Duke MP is pretty dead sometimes, I got to join a game of it once though.

[snapshot]

I only See people playing hDuke most time there .

[Tritnew]

Pretty much. I think I asked if one of them can make a Blood server so we can play, but most people stated that Blood wasn't all that great, at least when it comes to MP.

[MrSkeltal]

Painkiller's multiplayer was rather popular in its heyday. Was part of one of those E-Sports events in 2005 as well.

[MusicallyInspired]

J.B.R said:

CS:CZ is much better than CS 1.6, it has better perfomance on low-end pcs, has better models, unlike 1.6's atrocious ones like the hands, they are skinny, enhanced old levels with more detail.
It also has a very intelligent AI for hostages, the best in the whole series, throw a granade, they will shout and run away, duck when there's shooting going on with thier hands on thier heads, raise thier hands when they see cts and call for them, scream when a terrorist kills a ct and they see it and sometimes they even try to escape after a few minutes have passed, not to mention if a terrorist sees one of them escaping, they will run back to the place they were before.

Yes, but standard CS was free. Also, there's the fact that all those AI improvements veritably change the gameplay approach. Some people probably preferred the simpler AI to their playstyle.

I've never played CZ. I've always wanted to yet somehow never got around to purchasing it. However, I'm boycotting Gearbox at the moment so I can't bring myself to do it.

[Avoozl]

Chezza said:

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

It's dead or at the very least it is in the Oceanic region several years ago. I enjoyed it though.

I loved that game, it was my first online class based MP FPS.

[snapshot]

Tritnew said:

Pretty much. I think I asked if one of them can make a Blood server so we can play, but most people stated that Blood wasn't all that great, at least when it comes to MP.

CTF and FFA are fun, but not for Duke3D players it seems .

[Tritnew]

Gothic Box said:

http://i.imgur.com/izDrTX3.png

Seriously? I think the game is pretty decent.

At least until I get through the later levels, but I liked how shit got real instantly in the campaign.

[qdash]

You already named everything. :C

[Gothic Box]

Doomkid said:

I was a hardcore Team Fortress Classic player about 10-12 years ago. Fond memories from that one!

I bought TFC for $0.54 during the summer sale, there's a few active servers with a good amount of players. Sadly not as many as DoD 1.3, or even HL1.

NoisM said:

You already named everything. :C

Gothic Box said:

I need to get a life.

[Doomkid]

Tritnew said:

Pretty much. I think I asked if one of them can make a Blood server so we can play, but most people stated that Blood wasn't all that great, at least when it comes to MP.

There's a fella who goes by meleemario in #dmstuff who is literally always looking for people to play Blood, him and another dude Gengar play regularly, you should get in on it. Even connecting all the way from Australia, Blood DM via DosBox was quite playable as far as ping goes, it's just not really my cup of tea compared to Doom DM, sheerly due to movement speed and weapon balance.

[Tritnew]

Oh damn, I'll have to get onto that.

Thanks!

[Dragonfly]

The list is missing a couple of fun games. Red Faction / Red Faction 2, codeImp's Bloodmasters (albeit not a FPS) is also missing, if it counts.

Seeing Urban Terror and OpenArena on your list takes me back! Great fun. I preferred Q3A but getting my friends to pay for a game back then was nearly impossible.