Best PC FPS for newbie?

Im after a FPS, havent played shootem ups for ages, and I’m not that bothered about online play yet (Need to get back into aiming well first!). Whats the best one to get me started? Black Ops gets mixed reviews on amazon, but that might just be geeks with high expectations.

COD – which ever one best matches the spec. of your computer.

That said, for less shootiness and more role playing I am currently really enjoying Fallout 3 ( a recommendation from here ).

double post.

CODS awful your better off playing Counter strike much better game

battlefield bad company 2

Counter Strike, good choice.
I’m playing the most recent Wolfenstien at the moment, suits my gameplay needs just fine.

Any Quake game is a good call. They are just basic FPS games done very well, none of this fancy faffing with special abilities/powers and other nonsense.

Quake 2 will be very hard to get hold of because of it’s age, but it’s a classic. 3 is good if you’re thinking of multiplayer later, and 4 is just a good scare/shoot fest that can either be very easy or almost impossible depending on difficulty setting.

Or the original Half-Life. Awesome game. If you can be arsed with the faff of Steam and it’s pointless, CPU consuming stupidity and piracy paranoia then get it with the source engine or even have a go at Half Life 2. Half Life 1 does show it’s age, but it’s still good fun.

Quake3 is a very good call. In fact, it’s now free via Quake Live…and it runs in your browser…doesn’t get much better than that

http://www.quakelive.com/#!home

Portal might be good if you’re not that used to the movement controls etc. It’s not a “proper” FPS in the sense that you haven’t got things shooting at you all the time and it has a strong puzzle element, but it’s an outstanding game in its own right, and would also be a good introduction to the key skills.

From there you could easily progress to Halflife and its sequels, all of which can be had for a stupidly good price (see here).

+1 for Half Life series

+1 for Steam being a complete pain in the arse of a program that chokes connections and slows down PCs immensely.

Have to disagree about Steam being a system hog – maybe back when it first came out, but not these days. If you have a PC capable of running any vaguely modern game then the overhead Steam needs is a drop in the ocean. (Using a paltry 20MB of RAM on my system)

Interesting.

I’m running a new version of Steam (recently downloaded when I re-installed Orange Box) and I’ve found it very buggy and slow. It also struggles to get a download speed greater than 5kb/s.

The system is no dinosaur either: Quad core 3ghz with 6GB DDR2

Probably just a bad install of the client, but then it’s a program I have never liked right from the off.

Hmmm, definitely shouldn’t be having issues on that hardware. I’m no expert so I won’t speculate on the cause, but maybe worth having a peek at the Steam forums to see if there is a known issue with any of your system. (Unless you’re running Vista, in which case blame Vista 😉 )

Another vote for the Half-Life series and Fallout 3.

Re: Steam, I’ve never had any issues with it on a lowly Core2Duo and 2GB of RAM, when it comes to downloading its too bloody good, literally uses every available ounce of bandwidth, so nobody else in the house can even browse effectively. They really need to introduce a bandwidth limiter.

CoD:Black Ops is well worth getting IMO, especially if you’re not planning to go on-line initially. It has an excellent single-player campaign (I actually bought it primarily for the on-line multi-player but really enjoyed the single player campaign). Not too steep a learning curve to get into, especially if you play it on easy mode.

Counterstrike and CS:Source are very good but they’re all about the on-line gaming and most of the people playing it are pretty skilled (in comparison with your average on-line CoD player anyway). The weapons have better physics to but that also means the learning curve is steeper (you can still spray & pray with a lot of CoD weapons, you can’t really in CS).

Fallout 3 is the best game I’ve played in a long time, it’s just so engrossing and you never get bored of seeing a head splatter in slow motion.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is an old favourite of mine, you can probably get that for a few quid and it will run on any machine.

yep I’d agree with FuzzyWuzzy, CS is really just for online play, still by far the most popular multiplayer FPS. It’s good fun, but not for beginners I’d suggest as most servers are populated by gamers who’ve been playing it for a long time!

The single player Black Ops campaign is ace. If your PC is relatively powerful, I’d definitely start there. My other favourite is Bad Company 2, particularly the Vietnam update (which has more of a Battlefield feel to it = good). One to watch is the upcoming Battlefield 3.

As much as I love Bad Company 2, I don’t think it’s a great choice for a newbie…unless you’re happy to spend most of your time dying (sometimes instantly) and waiting to respawn 😀

An early CoD or Medal of Honor can be picked up pretty cheaply, play through the single-player campaigns then splash out on later title if you get into it. Good training!

Half Life 2 is a good shout, again easy to pick up pretty cheaply and comes with Counterstrike which still has well populated MP servers.

As much as I love Bad Company 2, I don’t think it’s a great choice for a newbie…unless you’re happy to spend most of your time dying (sometimes instantly) and waiting to respawn

yep, a fair point!