Matt Ryan’s Top 5 FPS Games Available on Steam

I’ll start this off with a disclaimer. I love Steam as well as any other service that allows you to re-download your games should you lose them in a format and reinstall or any other situation. You buy them once and never have to buy them again. This is brilliant to me and is quickly becoming the method I prefer to purchase my gaming content. That said, this is an opinion piece and should be taken as such.

#5: Counter-Strike Source
For around a decade now, Counter-Strike has been the go-to game for first person shooters that need a quick fix either at home or at the LAN party. Call of Duty carries a lot of weight with it but Counter-Strike brings a presence everyone in the gaming community can relate to. This game had its roots as the most successful mod for the original Half Life and continues to be distributed with Half Life 2. Repetitious, definitely!

#4: Bioshock
2k Boston developed a unique FPS that features an underground city built by a political extremist with a distaste for Russian, American and Christian ideals. The city is home to doctors and scientists that develop practices outside the realm of morality and the result is quite disturbing. People get obsessed with being spliced with genetic code that enhances their natural abilities, eventually becoming mutants that are less than pleasing to the eyes. This is a first person shooter with a lot going for it in terms of unique style.

#3: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Yes, Call of Duty has a new release since CoD4 came out though this game really set the stage for a new level of FPS set in a modern era. It became an instant favorite among serious gamers and features combat in a modern situation. The multiplayer features are copied by many new games coming out including Combat Arms. As you gain points and experience in multiplayer action you also gain rank and access to weapons. This encourages newer players to work towards something while players with more experience can enjoy benefits of having more options available to them. Don’t worry though, you can always pick up someone’s amazingly customized firearm when they die even as a private.

#2: Left 4 Dead
The title says it all. There are four of you left to fight off an endless horde of zombies that have taken over mostly all of the civilized world. Sure there are other survivors immune to the virus that infected the vast majority of the worlds population but before you can get rescued by them you must fight your way through. In roughly 45 minutes you and your three friends fight through around 1,500 zombies in the ruins of human civilization while attempting to keep each other alive. Doing so is harder than it looks especially when you choose to join a random game with team mates you may have never met before. This game is tied in to Steam in such a way that it makes it very easy to find your friends in game and join their servers. This is a first-rate coop game.

#1: Half Life 2
The game that started it all is still probably my personal favorite Steam game out there. This is the second chapter in the story of a scientist that accidentally sets off a cataclysmic chain of events releasing creatures from another dimension in to this world. He fought through impossible odds in the original Half Life to get out of Black Mesa and he continues his struggle on the surface after the world has come under rule of a fascist dictator at the beck and call of his alien overlords. Brilliant game with an amazing presence in the gaming world.