What games got you into tactical gaming?

[Sierra117 10]

I'd like to see what led you into becoming a tactical gamer. My own story is that of a quest to fill a gaming need within me. I began when I first played Ghost Recon 2 & Ghost Recon 2:Summit Strike for the original Xbox console. It was a different experience from the corridor shooters I was used to and I wanted more. The path then led to Rainbow Six 3, also for Xbox. I know you old school gamers will say that the console version was a watered down shell of the PC edition, and I agree, but back then it was all I knew. A ray of light appeared at a local Gamestop where the Xbox ports of the first Ghost Recon and GR: Island Thunder were on sale. My mind was blown; I had to completely change my play style to match the old school realism and I was hooked. Then, while searching Amazon for other games to expand my small library, I came upon the tome of enlightenment, Operation Flashpoint:Elite. I agree that the criticism of Codemasters is well deserved, but I have to extend my thanks to them for releasing the port of Op Flashpoint and Resistance on the Xbox. Through that game my need was met and it led me to BIS and these forums, where I finally found like-minded gamers.

That's my tale, what's yours?

[jakerod 254]

I think the first tactical game I ever played was Damage Inc. if that is considered a tactical game. I played it at a friends house. Rainbow Six for the Nintendo 64 was the first tactical game I owned. Delta Force 2, although not technically a tactical shooter, was the next one. Someone I met on there eventually led me to Operation Flashpoint. I played the demo for 3 months until I got it for Christmas (I think I was 13 at this point). I also played the Rogue Spear demo for a while. My finest moment being the one where my entire team got blinded by our own flashbang thanks to the moron who threw it into the lead's back. I also played the SWAT 3 demo, eventually bought the game, couldn't run it well and let me neighbor borrow it. Haven't seen it since. Played Ghost Recon and GR: Desert Siege for a while too Let my neighbor borrow it, haven't seen it since. My coworkers got me SWAT 4 for my birthday in 2011 and I enjoyed that. Other than those I have been hooked on BI games. I played a few of the other Ghost Recons on consoles too but only so that my brother and I would have something to play together.

[jeza 5418]

for myself it was swat 1 & 2, what really kicked it off was rainbow six 1.

[Phantom Six 25]

America's Army was the first game that got me into tactical shooters although I'm mainly a coop guy so I play the coop missions on there. I later on played Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and it pisses the hell outta me with the ubi connection fail and all that stuff plus no custom content and its all water down... I later on tried some of the original Rainbow Six and then Roguespear and Ravenshield (yea I'm late :p) my friend let me have his original Rainbow Six and I played Ravenshield at his place. Fun, tactical, love the terrorist hunts and the custom contents available for it. While looking through some old school games because I was sick of some of the newer games I saw old school Operation Flashpoint though I never played it before, I heard it was one of the greatest game ever. Around that time, Operation Flashpoint Sunken Dragon came out so I gave that a try because everyone on steam told me not to get ARMA 2 because it was really buggy at that time. Sunken Dragon was a disappointment when Codemaster just like gave up on it >.> . Eventually I got ARMA 2 CO during black friday of 2011 and that became the best game I ever got for tactical shooters and now I'm just craving for more tactical shooters :P . I'm looking forward to Takedown, ARMA 3, and Ground Branch :D

[froggyluv 2136]

Hehe, we'll Im showin my age with this one but this is where it all started for me

6Ugz2r4A3SY

[Beagle 684]

Hidden & Dangerous from 1999.

[GRS 10]

Original Ghost Recon which I always played as a regular shooter just with less health. And then OFP helped me appreciate what tactical games really offer.

[rye1 22]

SWAT 4, RVS, Arma 2 (of course!)... and being in a community where most of the time tactical consciousness and understanding is mandatory.

[jblackrupert 14]

Leisure suit Larry :p

[Maio 293]

UFO Aftermath :) I played OFP before that, but something ticked inside after playing UFO.

[maddogx 13]

I guess for me the first truly tactical first person game I played was Operation Flashpoint. I had occasionally played games like Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament and Counterstrike before that, but for me these were always just run an gun shooters, and they never really drew me in. At the time, I almost exclusively played real-time strategy games such as the Command & Conquer series, Warzone 2100, Total Annihilation...

OFP was the first FPS that actually captured my attention and had me playing more than just at LANs. For the past 10-11 years, BIS games have been pretty much the only ones that I've played almost consistently, right through to the next iteration of the engine. Other games come and go. ARMA is forever! :D

Edited June 5, 2012 by MadDogX

[Serclaes 0]

I can't remember exactly which games came first but I always liked the tactics behind games. I can remember commanche gold, jagged alliance 2 and even CS 1.5 when played with the right people. Then I got introduced to OFP on a LAN (a friend bought me the GOTY since I was a few months too young), played MFCTI through the night and got hooked.

[kernriver 4]

Hidden & Dangerous 1

[jw custom 56]

Hehe, we'll Im showin my age with this one but this is where it all started for me

Ohh i played a lot of airborne ranger on PC back when games were great(Leisure Suit Larry).

I played...

Spec Ops: Rangers Lead the Way

Hidden & Dangerous

Rainbow 6

Operation Flashpoint

Ghost Recon

...and probably a lot of other titles i don't remember right now.

[CameronMcDonald 146]

The most memorable ones were:

Delta Force

Rainbow 6

Ghost Recon

H+D

System Shock

OFP, ohgodyes

...I admit to playing a lot of CS too. Boarding school will do that to you.

[Nicholas 5]

I remember playing Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear as a kid. My dad bought Operation Flashpoint and I played that a lot when I was younger. I didn't play as much after a while, but then found the demo for ArmA: Armed Assault. Been playing steady since.

[[evo] dan 79]

SOCOM 3 and Americas Army 2 for me. SOCOM 3 was the first shooting game I ever bought, before that I had only been playing racing games.

[slatts 1978]

Back in my early days we had rainbow 6, at age 6 I was suited to football games so never really got the idea of it. Kept dying but I liked the idea of one hit kill. Also had Kill.switch which I thought was great :D

Then my brother got OFP and the rest is history

[batto 17]

Rainbow Six 1 but Rogue Spear kicked it off. H&D demo looked awesome but back in the day it was too much realism for me. I was such a CoD kiddie...

[viper[cww] 14]

Hmm... Ghost Recon, Operation: Desert Storm, Golden Eye, Halo, Original SOCOM and some others I can't quite remember.

[Guest]

I always liked any game in which I could shoot, so many I cant even remember but I waisted dozens of keyboards due to me destroying all buttons which were used to fire (mainly spacebar) :)

But Ghost Recon (the original one, not the suki GRAW series) got me into tactics definatly.

[mr burns 133]

Hehe, we'll Im showin my age with this one but this is where it all started for me

YOUTUBE]6Ugz2r4A3SY[/YOUTUBE]

oohhh, Airborne Ranger! Clunkiest movement controls of any C64 game :D

Despite having played all the old stuff too, the penny really dropped when Doom arrived.

Having become a total sucker für 3d games then, and reading somewhere that Doom was used by US Marines for training (oh yes) i went to playing mostly "open sky" maps in doom..

.... until some (longer) time later browsing through a PC magazine i saw this 1st preview screen of something never seen before:

There it happened.

[rundll.exe 12]

I played Delta Force for a few weeks and it opened my eyes to large environments, when suddenly a friend came over with a copy of OFP 1.00, and I've never looked back. So I don't have a long history is tactical shooters, but OFP made all other shooters obsolete for me, and the Arma series still does.

[JdB 151]

Rainbow Six and shortly afterwards Hidden & Dangerous, Spec Ops 2: Green Berets and Delta Force 2.

[Tonci87 163]

Tactical? Well that would be C&C then FPS tactical? OFP and Rainbow six (what a coincidence, currently I´m reading the book)