Top 5 Count Down: Part 5

The day is finally here for me to finish this countdown, it has been a long time since we arrived at end of this chapter but I promise it will finish with a bang. It was hard trying to fit so many great developers into the top 5 without leaving out a few but to me all the ones that made it had changed the industry one way or another. This is no different for me with the last spot remaining however I feel that 2 particular developers both had huge influences in the same genre so I am obligated to include both.

Number 5. Valve/Epic games

Today the first person shooter genre is ultra popular whether on PC or consoles. It has many multi-million selling hot franchises around the world and also used as the measuring stick in many competitive gaming events. But before you had a scream fest with the annoying 12 year olds on Halo or endured another nadefest by some noob in Call of the Duty there were Counter Strike and Unreal Tournament. No Valve and Epic games are not the ones that invented first person shooter but like my previous posts they are the most influential.

In the case of Valve, first person shooters were a very niche genre at the time with the likes of Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and a online sensation known as Quake. But one thing in common that made the genre not very popular was all these games were run around in a place that resemble a maze and shoot whatever that moves. In 1998 Valve changed that with the release of Half-Life, it offered an amazing story based experience and for the first time players felt like they were in the shoes of an action hero ridding world full of baddies rather than just a gun and point shoot. One could say if its not because Half-Life then there won't be any story based shooter such as Halo today. Oh and did I mention some of the mods that were made from Half-Life such as Counter-Strike became one of the most popular online game ever? Yeah those are minor details. Today Valve also operates one of the biggest digital distribution service of PC games in the world with Steam, but personally I think Valve needs to go back and develop good games rather trying to control the PC market like they are doing now.

Picture of Gabe Newell, head of Valve and someone every PS3 owner hates. Did I mention he makes millions? yeah he doesn't care what you think.

In the case of Epic Games they were definitely not the first or even the biggest name at the time. In coming Unreal Tournament in 1999 with refined game mechanics, balanced game play and new game modes that were not seen in any previous online multiplayer FPS. But rival ID software has been in the genre since the dawn of mankind with heavy hits such as Quake arena that offers virtually the same experience as Unreal, but something happened that made Unreal grab more popularity from the maker of games such as Wolfenstein and Doom. Maybe it was the new game modes that was finally different from standard death match or balanced game play, it is hard to explain what exactly happened that made Unreal series the standard for online FPS and Unreal engine the standard graphic engine. Just thinking about how many games that uses the Unreal engine is mindboggling, especially games you don't even think about such as RPGs and action games.

nothing beats Epic's director Cliffy B aka "Dude Huge" sawing someone with a chainsaw rifle.

with waves of waves of new FPS coming out each year its pretty easy to say that it has become one of the most popular genre out there but at the same time Unreal and Half-Life still measure up many of today's top games with their deep history. That concludes my top 5 countdown of 5 best video game developers of all time, it turned out to be 6 but whatever its my blog so deal with it.

honorable mentions: Sega, Capcom, Konami, Namco, Rare.

games to play by Valve/Epic games

Half-Life 1/2 (and the various mods)

Left for Dead

Unreal Tournament 3

Gears of War series