Star Wars: Dark Forces
Dark Forces has no right to be as groundbreakingly stunning as it remains today. This came out in 1995, during the golden era of first-person shooters, when teams like id and 3D Realms were heralded as titans of gaming. And then along came LucasArts, the people who made 2D point-and-click adventures, and they knocked it out of the park. This was the first 3D shooter to let you look up and down! Before Quake did it!
But more importantly, Dark Forces had, and still has, some of the best maps ever designed for a single-player FPS. The Wonderfully convoluted explorations of Sith bases, or terrifying, vertigo-inducing cliffs on Hoth, made me feel like I was inside Star Wars for the very first time. Add the mouselook mod, and it completely holds up today, all on the strength of that stunning world design.
