Me having a huge knowledge and interest in FPS games made me the target audience for this film. In fact, this was one of my most anticipated film releases of all time. I backed this project and waited eagerly for its release. Was it disappointing? No. But I certainly expected it to be better in some aspects, but to compensate the film surprised me that it shines in other aspects I did not expect it to shine.
For one, the film is massive. It runs for 4h35min, and it is the 3rd longest film (that is in a single part) that I have seen in my life. And the longest film that I watched in a single sitting. But I'm happy to say that even with some parts overstaying their welcome a bit, I don't think it should be cut. In fact, I wouldn't have minded it being even longer and covering even more games, or expanding on some of the covered ones that were only talked about briefly.
The film featured a lot of video games and of all the games mentioned or shown in the film I only haven't heard of two of them. And both of them are almost twice as old as me, so I wasn't surprised that I did not know them.
It would have been really great if the film talked about some obscure games I haven't heard of, but considering it is about the whole history of the FPS genre, there were already tons of important major stuff to cover. And this is where the film shines and fails a bit. It shines, cause it somehow covers a few, while not completely obscure, but for sure not as well-known games such as Prey (2006) or SiN Episodes: Emergence (2006) and some others which was unexpected and so awesome to see being covered. On the other hand, the documentary somehow does not cover some very important games like Bioshock, Far Cry, Far Cry 3, Crysis, DOOM 3 and maybe Killzone. Yes, you do get 3-second clips showing Far Cry, Killzone and Bioshock, but they are so important to FPS history that they really deserved full coverage. I'm sure there are many important ones that I didn't mention that they missed.
What is quite odd is the pacing. The first half of the film, is almost chronological history, then it jumps to focus on multiplayer games and from that one it jumps back and forth to random directions. It's a real mess of an order. They should have either gone fully chronological or made their sections less scattered. That is also the reason why some parts began to drag. They covered all 3 Halo games in a row, it took so long and I was a bit tired of it. This wouldn't have been a problem if they talked about other games in between Halo games.
What is the biggest shock of all is that there is absolutely no coverage for VR games. None. They covered many categories of lesser importance which I really appreciate, but no word on VR games is almost a sin. Also, only one on-rails shooter was mentioned.
I also have some serious complaints about the subtitles too. These are the official subtitles of the film that came together with the film. While great for the most part, I noticed a few grammar mistakes and spelling mistakes, but there was one which is just awful. In one moment "COD" is mentioned which stands for 'Call of Duty' and it wasn't even the first time the acronym was said in the film. But the subtitler misheard the word and wrote "Kai" instead... I suspect that the subtitles were done either by someone who doesn't play video games or barely plays them or just didn't care enough about this at all. Cause under the context it was clear that it should have been "COD", even people who never played games could've figured this out as the term was mentioned before already and when it was said there, the footage of one Call of Duty game was shown... Epic fail.
I also realised how much important information this film doesn't tell like when did regenerating health trend began, which game invented the weapon position being on the right instead of the middle, the history of NPC A. I. evolution as well as technical settings customization, many important visual graphical and technical innovations showcase and plenty of other important things were all either not discussed at all or barely touched.
Still, all the flaws aside, this is a great work. It has a huge pile of information in it. While I knew a lot of what it showed already, I also heard a lot that I didn't know before, so I'm glad I watched it. This documentary serves quite well to people who barely know anything and would want to learn the history of FPS and it probably isn't useless to most of the huge nerds and experts either.
