Call of Duty

Call of Duty (released on October 29, 2003) is a first-person shooter video game based on the Quake III engine. This war game simulates the infantry and combined arms warfare of World War II. The game was published by Activision and developed by Infinity Ward.

In September 2004 an expansion pack to Call of Duty was released titled Call of Duty: United Offensive. It was produced by Activision, and developed by Gray Matter Interactive, with contributions from Pi Studios. The Mac OS X version was ported by Aspyr Media, Inc. In Late 2004, the N-Gage version was developed by Nokia and published by Activision. Other versions were released for PC, including Collector's Edition (with soundtrack and strategy guide), Game of the Year Edition (includes game updates), and the Deluxe Edition (which contains United Offensive expansion and soundtrack).

Since October 13, 2006, the original game, Call of Duty: United Offensive, and Call of Duty 2 have been available for purchase via Valve's content delivery platform, Steam.

A sequel, Call of Duty 2, was developed by Infinity Ward and was released in October 2005. There are also Call of Duty games developed for consoles, but with separate storylines, such as Call of Duty: Finest Hour by Spark Unlimited and Call of Duty 2: Big Red One by Gray Matter Interactive and Treyarch.

The next game from the series is entitled Call of Duty 3 and it was released in November 2006.

World of Warcraft

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans is a real-time strategy computer game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment ^[1] in 1994. Originally developed for DOS, the game was subsequently ported to version 7 of Mac OS making it fully playable on the Macintoshes of the era. Currently an open source project, game engine Alpha, has as one of its goals to Recreate the game engine of Warcraft 1. The project is in early development. The real-time strategy genre had been pioneered by Dune 2, among other games, but Warcraft (along with Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer) is widely credited for the genre's rise in popularity. Warcraft and its sequels went on to become one of the most successful franchises in computer gaming history.

The game is set in the Kingdom of Azeroth, part of the fictional Warcraft Universe. The events that take place in this game are known in Warcraft lore as the First War or the Great War.

The Unreal Tournament

Unreal Tournament, UT, (sometimes referred to as UT99 or UT Classic or UT1 to differentiate from Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004 and Unreal Tournament 2007) is a popular first-person shooter video game. It is Epic Games's 1999 follow-up title to Unreal and focuses mainly on multiplayer action. It was launched in direct competition to id Software's Quake III Arena which was released 10 days later. Although Quake III Arena had slightly better graphics, streamlined gameplay and a widely adopted engine, UT had superior bot AI, "alternate fire" for weapons which introduced a further element of strategy, and a larger variety of multiplayer capabilities.

As with the original Unreal, the ease with which players can create and release mods to the core game is a key factor contributing to UT's longevity. UT improved upon the mod-friendly nature of its predecessor with support for mutators such Sniper Arena, Instagib, BunnyTracks, MonsterHunt, Jailbreak and more. Further, UT "Clan", or gaming teams, and a score of UT dedicated clan and fan community sites continue sustain Unreal Tournament's popularity even over half a decade after its initial release.

Counterstrike

Counter-Strike, commonly abbreviated to CS, is a team-based, tactical first-person shooter game which originated with a total conversion mod created by Minh "gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe, of Valve Software's first-person shooter, Half-Life. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source.

Counter-Strike pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in rounds of competition won by completing an objective or eliminating the opposing force. The latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source, is based on the Source engine developed for Half-Life 2. Signs of Counter-Strike's wide influence can be found in mods for games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and other standalone shooters such as Global Operations, Americas Army, Call of Duty and many more.

As of May 2006, Counter-Strike is still the most widely played online first-person shooter in the world. In 2002 there were over 30,000 Counter-Strike servers on the Internet (second place was Unreal Tournament with about 9,800). In 2004, GameSpy statistics showed over 85,000 players simultaneously playing Counter-Strike at any point in time, and in 2006, Steam regularly shows over 200,000 players for Counter-Strike^[1] (this includes Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike). According to statistics gathered by Valve's content-delivery platform, Steam, these players collectively contribute to over 4.5 billion minutes of playing time each month,^[1] solidifying its position as the most popular online first-person shooter in history. Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004,^[2] forcing players to switch to Steam (to which a section of players responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2).

Need for Speed Series

Need for Speed (NFS) is a series of racing computer and video games by Electronic Arts, released on platforms including personal computers, GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation, N-Gage, and various others consoles. The games consist of racing with various cars on various tracks, and to some extent, include police pursuits in races.

The Need for Speed series was originally developed by Distinctive Software, a game studio based in Vancouver, Canada. Prior to Electronic Arts purchase of the company in 1991, it had already created popular racing games such as Stunts and Test Drive II: The Duel. After the purchase was made, the company was renamed Electronic Arts Canada. The company capitalized on its experience in the domain when it began developing the Need For Speed series in late 1992.

Electronic Arts Canada and Electronic Arts Seattle continued to develop, and expand the Need For Speed franchise for many years. In 2002, another Vancouver-based gaming company, named Black Box Software, was contracted to continue the series with the title Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. Black Box was acquired by Electronic Arts shortly before the game's publication and the company was renamed Electronic Arts Black Box. Since then EA Black Box has been NFS's primary developer.

Since the release of Need for Speed: Underground, the series' plot and gameplay have been heavily influenced by The Fast and the Furious and its sequels.