I was pretty excited to learn that CreatorVC, the people behind the In Search of Darkness series, were going to a documentary on First-Person Shooter games. I've been a fan of the genre all the way back when Wolfenstein 3D and Blake Stone were released.
Clocking little over 4 hours & 30 minutes, the documentary starts off great. Covering the origins such as Maze War, Battlezone, and Catacombs 3D, before getting to Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. The coverage for id Software games were insightful and a lot of fun to hear stories from legends like John Carmack and John Romero. A lot of people from id Software were interviewed as well as folks from Apogee and 3D Realms.
Once the documentary gets to the era of Quake 2 and Unreal, it kinda of loses focus. The documentary seems to rush and trying to cover everything up to 2016's Doom. In doing so, they miss other important FPS games like Soldier of Fortune, Red Faction, the Far Cry series, Crysis, and the list goes on. The documentary skims through Call of Duty and Battlefield 1942. Medal of Honor Allied Assault gets the spotlight and totally forgets about the first Medal of Honor game. Goldeneye for the N64 gets attention, while Perfect Dark is mentioned but not well covered as Goldeneye.
Both Half-Life and Half-Life 2 gets solid coverage, as well as Team Fortress Classic and Team Fortress 2. Portal is mentioned as well but no one behind the game were interviewed. In fact, only the creators of Team Fortress were interviewed. No one else from Valve Software, past or present, are in this documentary. Randy Pitchford is the only person from Gearbox Software to be interviewed for the Half-Life add-on Opposing Force (as well as other Gearbox-related games such as Borderlands)
Mods were mentioned for Doom/Doom 2 but skimped on when we get to the Quake 2 and Half-Life era. Both origins for Team Fortress and Counter-Strike were either barely mentioned or not mentioned at all.
Like I said, this documentary tries to cover everything but misses the, big and small, important stuff. The creators of this documentary should've stick to the timeline and maybe stopped at Half-Life, saving the other games for another documentary. If they put the same amount of time, energy & money from the first half onto the last half of the documentary, I would've given it a 10 out of 10.
If you're a fan of id Software's games like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, you're in for a treat. Even the coverage for Duke Nukem 3D and Unreal were fantastic. After that, the documentary loses focus and rushes through the titles, missing other important games in the process.
I give it a 6 out of 10.
