I was a little apprehensive about the subject matter of Bitmap Books’ latest FPS tome, the lengthily-titled Hurt Me Plenty: The Ultimate Guide to First-Person Shooters 2003–2010. I had no worries about the quality of the book, so to speak – I’ve reviewed (and purchased) numerous Bitmap Books offerings before and never felt as though they failed to justify their asking price, or were lacking quality where production, research and aesthetics were concerned. No, my issue was a slightly more snobbish one – being that 2003-2010 was hardly what I’d call a golden period for first-person shooters. In fact, I’d argue that it was very much slim pickings for the genre, at least for the lion’s share of the time.
Ultimately, though, it’s that dearth of truly iconic efforts that makes the book as interesting as it is. Little has previously been written about the lion’s share of games that are covered here, with many titles completely unknown to me such as Nina: Agent Chronicles or Ubersoldier II: The End of Hitler. These naturally rub shoulders with more well-known titles such as Killzone, Half-Life 2 and Doom 3, but the major thought I had from reading through its pages and experiencing the many extraordinarily brown screenshots is that I am profoundly glad it’s not me who had to cover all these relentlessly beige military shooters. Don’t mistake that for criticism of the book – it’s the message, not the medium. I’m just a big old fuddy-duddy who laments the shift in the FPS landscape around the time of the original Half-Life (covered in Volume 1 of this series), moving away from more complex, secret-packed bespoke levels into more scripted storytelling at the expense of compelling gameplay. But this stuff absolutely needs to be chronicled and that’s precisely what has happened here.
The book is, as ever, gorgeous – while the games featured are rarely pleasant to gaze upon, they are represented with hundreds of high-quality screenshots printed large enough to actually appreciate the detail therein, and the pages are as plush as I’ve come to expect from this publisher. Each game is given enough space to go into decent detail, overcoming an issue I had with Run ‘N’ Gun, and the breadth of the content makes for an interesting overview of a rather maligned era while leaving space for a further book perhaps taking in 2011-2020 and the birth of the “boomer shooter” subgenre. Interviews with the likes of Nightdive (the studio behind many recent FPS remasters) id’s Tim Willits and Garry himself, Garry’s Mod’s own Garry Newman (amongst others) flesh out the read and add further context to this strange, tumultuous period in first-person gaming.
Of course, games such as Call of Duty saw their rise to prominence within the 2003-2010 timeline, not to mention Bioshock and Halo’s sequels, all covered here and gamely illustrating the changes in the genre landscape compared to where we sat during the time of Volume 1. As I’ve often discussed, it’s the wilderness years of any given genre or franchise that are the most interesting to excavate, and Hurt Me Plenty delves into a galaxy of gunplay through which I’ve discovered a fair few exciting games to check out, or enlightening reasons why certain profound failures may not have been within the control of their developers. Predictably It’s another excellent book from Bitmap Books, one that showcases a passion for more than just the avowed winners in the harsh world of gaming. Nothing shines without contrast and the yo-yo-like quality of the games covered in this book will see you adjusting your gamma left and right. Little FPS reference there, sort of.
Hurt Me Plenty: The Ultimate Guide to First-Person Shooter 2003-2010 is available from Bitmap Books.