Duke Nukem 3D

Platform: PC
Developer: 3D Realms
Release: 1996

Back in 1996, a first-person shooter wasn't really the place to go if you were looking for a game with real personality. Instead, the games simply focused on the visceral experience of gunning down as many enemies as you possibly could. Duke Nukem 3D gave a face--and a voice--to the genre. While some of Duke Nukem's lines were pretty hokey, the simple act of adding character to a first-person shooter went a really long way, making the game feel larger and more alive than many of the shooters to come before it.

Duke gives it to the pigs, real rough-style.

But that's not to say that Duke Nukem 3D's only strong point was that Duke himself mouthed off like the star of an action movie. The level of interactivity with the environment was much greater than in previous games. Some of this may seem a little silly now--were we really so impressed back then by something as seemingly simple as toilets that you could flush? But all the little things you could do, from flushing toilets to simply blowing them up, made the world feel all the more alive.

A lot of the game's environments had a more realistic feel to them. Doom was simply set in one hellish level after another. Duke had city streets, complete with adult film theaters, bookstores, and fast-food joints. Combined with the ability to interact with a lot of different objects in the world, this gave the game a wholly unique feel. Lots of hidden movie references and other little touches also enhanced the game's world.

But enough about ambience and environments and interactivity. Duke Nukem 3D's gameplay was also pretty outstanding. The game's single-player campaign put you up against a variety of wily foes in a lot of different environments. Solid boss battles throughout the game's episodes provided some closure to the otherwise endless stream of pig cops and other bad guys looking to knock Duke's block off. The game's network support, which allowed for multiple players to play together over a LAN, added an extremely addictive experience to the list.

He's all out of bubble gum.

Part of what made the multiplayer so much fun was Duke Nukem's weapons. Trip mines, while almost totally useless in single-player mode, were an insane addition to the game that hadn't really been seen in other shooters. Mining common corridors and preventing players from moving freely was a ton of fun. The game's pipe bombs were a lot cooler than typical grenades. And the rest of the list contains crazy weapons, like the freeze gun, which let you freeze your opponents into a block of easily shattered ice and the shrink ray, which let you humiliate your opponents by shrinking them and squashing them flat. The game also had interesting multiplayer options like cameras spread out through the level--you could use these to try to keep tabs on where your opponents were by either sighting them, or noticing that they had picked up certain items, though standing in front of a camera control too long would leave you vulnerable yourself.

Between the game's good-natured attitude, the great level design, and solid engine, Duke Nukem 3D helped shape the world of first-person shooters, and it's an extremely easy choice for our list of the top 10 games in the genre.