Before you play too many dull games, lay System Shock 2. It's a sci-fi survival horror RPG/FPS and it is really deep and very moody. It is complex like Deus-Ex but a lot harder. Resources need to be managed well and you need to think about your upgrades. It has a great story and is bizarre. I consider it to be in my top 10 of truly great games. You might want to read the readme to edit a file to disable respawn - I did that.

I gave up on several in your list - still have the original CDs and manuals. Yech. Another FPS I bailed on was Marine Sharpshooter. Another title that was good but hard and I stopped at a rescue mission because it was too hard is Vietcong. I also have the VC expansion called Fist Alpha. Never even loaded it. 

I've played SS2 multiple times, even managed to get the coop working once which was fantastic. Still one of the best games ever even if it hasn't aged so well graphically.

Yeah I didn't add I've already played through the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games.

Undying I'd totally forgotten about, man that game was fun. I know I've got the CD somewhere too! Guh. Shogo I know a friend of mine quite likes, should give that a poke too.

@Necros - yeah Strife is cool. Feels a bit like a proto-Deus Ex imo...way before it's time, which is a great shame. It would be a fun game to expand on, adding better stealth elements and evening out the rather dodgy weapon design.
Oh and make the maps less confusing :( 

I think I'm going to end up splitting this lot into 'justly forgotten' and 'should be remembered' lists :p

PS I'm onto the second episode of Daikatana, and I can't stop giggling. This game is like someone wanted to make a 'how not to make a professional FPS' example that's fifty times bigger than it should be.
Everything from the weapons to the levels to feel and general design decisions are just so appalling I'm getting quite a lot of fun out of it. It's like a Mystery Science Theater episode in game form. 

eps 2 and 3 of Daikatana were good werent they?

Another vote for Undying and WoT, both of which I'm pissed about since I ant run them on win7. 

Was great. 

the bethesda terminator games ruled too. i had massive amounts of fun with the future shock demo and later with the full version as well.

if no one wants to read my wall of text, these are the games i mentioned

chasm [only if curious]
tekwar [for the lolz?]
wheel of time [i say play it]
dark forces
outlaws [play 1 or 2 levels a day, too much too boring]
witchaven [only if curious]
cyclones [weird aiming but fun]
erradicator
cybermage [never played it, but looks funky]
last rites [doomy zombies with friendly bots] 

Seriously, 2,5d shooters era was the best. There are no past-Quake games that are as good as Doom, Blood or Duke as a plain no-bullshit FPS.
Anything of late (and not so late) that claims to be 'old-school' shooter is a primitivised fps with dull flat arenas for levels that looks like a step backwards from Doom of 93. I guess Wolf3d is their standard for old-school. 

WOT & Undying. 

eps 2 and 3 of Daikatana were good werent they

Well so far in ep2 the architecture and scale got more interesting but the actual layouts turned into Hexen 2... so not really. Also so far the only well implemented weapon is the discus, and the monsters are pretty hilarious. For all the talk of quantity of different monsters, Romero seemed to forget that Doom/Quake have a huge degree of variety in attack forms/health/speed.

Only reenforces my feeling that it's a good job he didn't get his way with Quake, because if this is the kind of mess we'd have ended up with when his 'design is law' runs riot, holy shit. Okay the iD team might have implemented it with actual bite rather than making everything in the game feel soggy and bland but the overall...urgh.

imo iD are very good at making an FPS that *feels* right, much more so than Epic or other devs. Even as much as I dislike Doom 3, it still feels solid and weighty. Rage was the same. It's quite remarkable how crisp and solid Quake feels compared to other shooters of the time, and other than the graphics is the main reason I think the game was so great, and has aged so well.

The only game in this huge group that I actually kept going back into to replay is Blood. Very flawed game but also really great fun. Much better than Duke 3D :) 

i'm sure i've romanticized this a bit, but i've always felt the early iD team was as good as they were because of the conflict between carmack's focused and methodical personality and romero's nearly random and crazy ideas.
but maybe it was in spite of that. :P 

 

everyone's bushing the blood 2 ? saying its kinda shitty and all that jizm , but i found its pretty spectacular . 

 

yay or nay? 

Was fun at first but it got too repetitious and predictable after awhile. It did have its moments though. 

Needed to leave the facility. It's odd that they didn't do that. 

Glados is the facility, it wouldn't have been Portal without her, but thats where the "2" comes in.

It feels like they copped out. 

 

Anything around post-2003 isn't really old skool, imo. If it looks and feels old skool, then it's just a bit shit.

Undying just gets in there. It's long and unique, has a story... it's a game i'll still remember in 30 years time. Definitely must-play.

Blood I played through maybe 1/4 of it and decided it was shit and deleted it forever.

WOT is a good looking game... though I think it went a bit down in quality in the second half

Daikatana was bad enough after a few levels - that got deleted.

Gunman Chronicles I liked... it was a Halflife mod but released as a full standalone game.

Definitely play SOF1/2, NOLF1/2 and RTCW - they're all classics.

There's also FAKK2, Alice, Rune if you want include third person. 

Speaking of 3rd person action btw, remember that melee action\hack&slash game Blade of Darkness with awfully bland environments and pretty cool fighting system and hardcore difficulty? Probably not, because it wasn't any successful...
Now PS3 hit Dark\Demos Souls is pretty much a remake of it, it even inherited dull looks of the original ;) 

Who doesn't remember Blade Of Darkness?? Fairly good summary, the fighting system was great even though it was bloody hard. Good lighting compensated for the average environments. I liked it a lot once I got used to it. 

Have to pop in here...gotta agree on the awesomeness of 2.5d shooters

Coming back on the mention of Cybermage : played it ages ago - controls are a little funky, disregard the first sewer level. But once your used to the controls and past the first level your in for a good time. Its a comic book adaptation with the author involved in the game creation.

Blood, all time favorite, there are still some very good levels/episodes being released. 

http://www.cyberpunkreview.com/cyberpunk-games/cybermage-darklight-awakening/ 

Kona... "Blood I played through maybe 1/4 of it and decided it was shit and deleted it forever.
*flame*flame*flame*
You did not decide it was "shit", you didn't like it, the game sure is not "shit"! It shits all over you rather.

Yeah, there :P 

On another note, anyone else grab Section8:prejudice in the steam sale ?
I am surprised this game got so little attention post release...gfwl maybe, but its a pretty good tribes/quake wars hybrid thingy, beats the pants off BF3 for me.