Also Turning Point: Fall of Liberty which had some very interesting ideas but is also a bad game. It's from 2007 or so on PS360 + PC.

Almoststew1990 wrote:

The music itself is actually very good, especially for a budget title like this. I actually extracted the music from the CD to save to my normal PC to listen to in decent quality. I put a song on Dropbox which will play within the browser (it's a 36mb WAV) https://www.dropbox.com/s/4aqzsuut41sj2lk/NOR … ANDY-3.WAV?dl=0

That's not bad at all! Some of the instruments are a bit general-MIDI-ish but can't complain. They get the job done. Thanks for the upload!

Almoststew1990 wrote:

Also Turning Point: Fall of Liberty which had some very interesting ideas but is also a bad game. It's from 2007 or so on PS360 + PC.

That was another game that had a long and troubled development (if I recall correctly, it was originally supposed to come out on the original XBox?), and, as you say, it had a promising premise, but was executed very badly.

Gunmetal (1998)
I specify the year because there was a different game called Gun Metal released later for the Xbox and i unfortunately have no experiences with that one, also not entirely sure if it's that obscure or not but since I've had a ton of trouble finding any information about it beforehand, i thought it was.

I personally thought it was a pretty neat game, although i'm possibly biased about it since it was possibly my first FPS game ever.
Thought the story was interesting and the customisation of your vehicle was cool.

These are not really obscure, but aren't talked about much either.

The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki

https://www.mobygames.com/game/fortress-of-dr-radiaki

Operation Body Count

https://www.mobygames.com/game/operation-body-count

Depth Dwellers

http://www.mobygames.com/game/depth-dwellers

The Terminator: Rampage

https://www.mobygames.com/game/terminator-rampage

Well, Ethnic Cleansing looks and plays like special elementary school children modded the leaked pre-alpha for an engine developed by a consortium Chinese shovelware companies. Not good...

DosFreak wrote:

Can't really contribute on the unknown shooter front but ones I rarely see mentioned and they are all worth playing: […]
Show full quote

Can't really contribute on the unknown shooter front but ones I rarely see mentioned and they are all worth playing:

Black Mesa
Corridor 7
Dead Island
Dying Light (Counting this and Dead Island on the list)
Painkiller series
Red Faction series
Rune (Sequel is coming!)
Soldier of Fortune
Strife
Tribes Series
Tron 2.0

Soldier of Fortune was a pretty big deal back in the day. It also got all the Anti-Video Games, Viloence in the Media and Parents Groups riled up due to its graphic nature. It was the first FPS that actually modeled realistic (though quite extreme and over the top) regional and varied hit damage on a body (if you shot someone in the arm with a shotgun, part of the arm would actually fly off and blood would spray everywhere, that sort of thing). The controversy got so bad the company ended up implementing a child lockout system so parents could disable the graphic violence; there was also a “Low Violence” version released (and sold retail) with the gore permanent disabled. They did this after Canada classified the game as a “Pornographic Film” in order to restrict the game to persons over the age of 18. (Yes, this actually happened.)

Tribes 2 though, wasn’t nearly as popular as it should have been. It’s still considered by many (myself included) to be the best “Open World Teamplay FPS” ever. It was a *very* ambitious game and way ahead of its time! It had huge sprawling maps, you could drive vehicles (tanks, fighters, troop transport flyers), you had a choice of character class (light, medium and heavy) that were well balanced with fair trade offs, you could choose a loadout for your character, including an invisibility cloaking device, vehicle creation stations, repair packs, automated turrets you could deploy, manual turrets you could deploy and be manned by players, motion sensors that would ping your teams map when an enemy passed it (good for protecting the flag in your base) and tons of other little neat things. Oh, did I mention the jet packs? Everyone had jet packs and could fly! The servers supported up to 128 players at a time on each map. When a server was full you could get some epic battles going!

It’s basically Battlefield II, only better, well balanced and actually fun! Sadly it came at a time when the majority of people were still on dialup internet (it really required broadband). It also didn’t have any integrated voice chat, which it desperately needed for real coordination. However, if you had broadband and got in a clan that ran a TeamSpeak server, it was an absolute blast. It provided the perfect balance of fast paced skirmishes, strategy and vehicle combat that was absolutely perfect.

Here’s my pick for a FPS series that’s not talked about enough: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Sex

The original game (and addons) provided a very realistic take on tactical combat. This wasn’t a game you could just hop into and start shooting people. You could spend more time in mission prep than actually carrying out the mission! Picking your team, their loadout and setting up the waypoints for your AI teammates to follow all took a lot of patience but man, pulling off a mission without ever alerting the enemy was a thrill!

This was all later streamlined in Rainbow Six: Raven Shield and Vegas, where you could give your AI squad commands on the fly (point your crosshairs at a point and send them there to hold, you could then command them to breach a door or take out a specific target on your command).

RS: Raven Shield is also one of my all time favorite Tactical FPS for online play. I loved the realism (you could only take one or two hits before you were dead; no med packs and if you got hit in the legs, you’d limp at half speed, a hit to the arms would affect your aim, a hit to the chest would stun you for a split second and blur your vision). Man, I spent hundreds of hours playing Raven Shield with my buddies back in the day. Good times.

timb.us wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

Here’s my pick for a FPS series that’s not talked about enough: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Sex

Ah, are you sure about that last word or are you thinking of a VERY different game to the one I remember?

Teggun wrote:

Gunmetal (1998)
I specify the year because there was a different game called Gun Metal released later for the Xbox

I was scammed out of what I thought was going to be "Gunmetal" but ended up being that stupid unrelated game in question "Gun Metal".

I thankfully got a refund promptly, but left negative feedback for misleading listing (because not only did it show up in my search it had been listed with the boxart for the Mad Genius Software title I was looking for!)

That aside, I've streamed that game on Twitch years ago.

Tribes 2 was popular then. The account system and the rather poor performance was the biggest drawback though (especially from those who easily pirated Tribes and expected the same no-drm deal)

Rainbow Six (the original) was popular online as well. It was already scratching that tactical itch that Counter-Strike (once considered a poor man's Rainbow Six) eventually dominated a year later.

gca wrote:

timb.us wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

Here’s my pick for a FPS series that’s not talked about enough: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Sex

Ah, are you sure about that last word or are you thinking of a VERY different game to the one I remember?

Whoops... Damn you auto-correct! Yes, Rainbow Six.

(I imagine “Rainbow Sex” would be a game about an openly gay special-ops team. Think Rainbow Six meets the Hot Coffee mod.)