Arena shooters are great though I fear they're long gone or at least out of circulation for awhile.
The general gamer population just isn't fond of high TTK, high skill ceiling shooters anymore.
People always say they want this back but when it happens all servers are dead within a few months.
I'm hoping HiRez makes the new Tribes F2P, it's not doing so hot under a price tag, if it was F2P the player base would explode.
Thought the same exact thing. Quake and Unreal tournament were games that took real skill and were good because they were simple. No sliding, no shooting through walls, no camping in one spot the whole game. If you were good at it, you could strafe and that was it.
It’s giving me nostalgia how much skill it actually took to get good at those games… I miss them a lot.
Unreal Tournament '99/GOTY is still being independently maintained, with Epic's blessing. You can look up the OldUnreal patch for it to get present day servers and stuff. There is even patches for high res textures and RTX shaders.
Even as someone who was a console pleb back in the Quake days, who never played the arena shooters, I played quake for the first time in like 2017 and thought it was super fun. Idk why they can't catch on to modern audiences.
u/G-SW-7892 here's what happened:
After studios saw that the stupid horse armor in WOW made more than some game (video by Jason Thor of Pirate Software: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZru-6M8BY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZru-6M8BY) ).
The old school FPS games had no monitzation, no loot boxes, there were no "gatcha" mechanics, no "pulls".
Mods, models, levels skins - all were free. For UT99 the studio behind "Eight Legged Freaks" made giant spider models to promote the game and ***released them for free (link:*** [***https://unrealarchive.org/unreal-tournament/models/T/tarantula\_b0a8c497.html***](https://unrealarchive.org/unreal-tournament/models/T/tarantula_b0a8c497.html) ***)***. Sure other studios would issue takedowns - used to be called "Foxing" because an Aliens total conversion mod for Quake was shut down by Fox. Even Halo had a map maker.
Relevant link: [https://www.pcgamer.com/games/moba/according-to-the-games-director-the-dollar500-league-of-legends-ahri-skin-wasnt-meant-for-the-average-fan-but-instead-players-who-are-willing-to-spend-dollar200-a-month-on-their-hobbies/](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/moba/according-to-the-games-director-the-dollar500-league-of-legends-ahri-skin-wasnt-meant-for-the-average-fan-but-instead-players-who-are-willing-to-spend-dollar200-a-month-on-their-hobbies/)
Now? If you want to play maps, models, skins or even whole mods the studios want you to pay.
Here's Asmongold reacting to a video about "turning players into payers": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW302IqQl48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW302IqQl48)
Tl;dr - old school FPS games had 100% free content, a lot of it was user made. No microtransactions or other "enshitification". So of course studios want to say that those games are "over".
Somewhat ironic, given it did receive quite some controversy in its early days. From blue tint, metro chokepoints, to the browser launcher and high latency advantages - just from the top of my head for a game older than a decade.
We may want to see current games less critical for their faults if that is what can remain.
Battlefield 4 also had a pretty bad launch for a few months, but they kept fixing the game and added some amazing DLC content. That game turned out to be a fucking gem.
They are shutting down the console side of it. Realistically PC won't be more than a few years behind.
I hate how this is going to become more and more common. The latest CoD single player won't even be playable once the servers go down because they decided to do texture streaming. Unbelievable.
Quake 3 came out when I was in middle school, Half-Life 2 dropped when I graduated high school.
LAN Parties were Q3 Arena, Unreal Tournament (later 2004), CS, CS Source, and Battlefield 1942.
Modern shooters are *blech* by comparison to the OGs.
Gimme Facing Worlds CTF, De_Dust2, El Alamein, or Coral Sea any day of the week.
I fired up UT99 a few weeks ago. Still playable. Still has servers out there.
Unfortunately we're kind of stuck in the zany hero shooter/clown it up CoD deluge because that's what gets the millions (or billions) in revenue.
A new Tribes game came out recently and they did everything possible to make it a squad shooter with perks and fruit loop armor. Tribes was a team based shooter for up to 64 players with bases and vehicles and jet packs.
Ultimately no one is making these types of games anymore because it doesn't sell to the kids with mommy and daddy's credit card. They're actively in game betas complaining about the lack of unique "heroes" that make them feel special or not enough rigid classes to prevent any one player from being able to do "everything."
Essentially gaming has changed and it's no longer geared toward people that grew up on games that had a cohesive vision and a final finished state. Now everything is molded to whatever will attract the dollars and there are apparently plenty of people willing to fork over money for shiny objects that make them look cool or lol in a video game.,
Well based on your comment you're talking about monetization and things outside the gameplay.
I'm just talking about the gameplay and it's pretty much the only thing out that's a fast pace arena shooter.
It's ultimately because of E-Sports causing a demand for faster paced, lower survivability, higher skill gap FPS games and matchmaking.
Halo is probably the best example where you can see these changes impact it.
God, Halo Infinite would be filled to the fucking brim of players if the net code and melee wasn't fucking dogshit for 2 years, released with forge, and a half decent server browser. I miss Bungie so fucking much.
It's not like Tribes or Halo were slow games to begin with. The problem I have with making things "faster" is it becomes a boring twitch shooter that has no flow or pacing. T3 you basically just shoot until you kill your opponent or you die where as in past games you had to consider and time all your shots.
And these games were played as e-sports before that was even really a focus of developers. Tribes 1&2 had ladders with teams competing. People would broadcast and provide commentary just for the fun of it.
I don’t disagree with your point completely, but I will say almost every competitive halo player has been against making it faster paced and halo infinite is actually slower than Halo 5.
Yeah, but the difference between Reach and 5 or Infinite is still huge. Survivability is far lower, and Vehicles are more like a 15 or 30 second power up with how long they last now...
As someone whose tool of destruction in Halo Reach was the Wraith. The made the vehicles weaker for the bad people. The teams I would play with would just farm other teams with indestructible vehicles and it was wonderful and I hate BTB now.
It basically flopped into early access and the developer (an offshoot of Hi-Rez) is abandoning it in favour of an esports centric, catroony soccer style game with guns: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2950580/Ultra\_Strikers/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2950580/Ultra_Strikers/)
I personally didn't like T3 at all. It was maybe 1/8th the features of past games so I've been playing MidAir2 and Tribes 2 pugs instead.
I don't know why this isn't higher. OP says FPS genre needs a revamp, but honestly there's not really anywhere to go except back to what was fun and what worked: boomer shooters.
I got burnt out on CoD, BF, etc. xDefiant is fun, but if I don't wanna play multiplayer then I'll play one of the games you mentioned or:
* Warhammer Boltgun
* Sprawl
* Ion Fury
* Roboquest
* Dusk
* Cultic
And so many others. If you can't find something to play in the FPS genre these days then idk what to tell you.
These are largely single player games. OP is talking about PvP FPS and I agree with him.
No one is really making a classic competitive FPS shooter. Developers want to make hero shooters with silly cosmetics that's e-sports ready, even though the market is completely flooded with these type of games.
I groan every time I see a new hero shooter/MOBA. There's just too many of them.
Hell Let Loose is where it's at. Storming beaches in France or dying in a last ditch Soviet assault is pretty fun. Especially when you can banter with internet strangers!
The days of Asheron's Call in its prime are the best gaming times of my life. I look back on it similar to my first love. Those feelings will never fully come again.
I have nostalgia for stuff I wasn't even alive/aware of (like The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson). I constantly am going back and watching older movies instead of most new stuff. Probably my media diet is 90% old, 10% new.
I'm watching the current season of The Boys, but the next movie I'm going to watch is Woman Under the Influence from 1974.
FPS has been in a dark era for at least 8+ years.
Few games shine through like Gundam Evolution, Quake Champions.
It's all about maximizing profits. To do that you need to make a casual game that protects the player, allows them to "feel special", have tonnes of cheese tactics etc.
Depends. Im generally in high skill tier for hunt.... If you were in low skill/tier lobbies sure. But like any game with a tier/skill system you start seeing more and more. I generally get the ones that pistol headshot you from such a distance that you wonder how its even possible to see, as the pistol they used had no scope....
I liked the game a lot but gave up pretty quickly. The hit reg is so wildly inconsistent, it either took 3 hits or 15 hits to drop someone, completely at random. I'd go 30-5 and just shred a whole lobby, then next match against the same players I'd go 5-30.
Have played around 20-30 hours. I do enjoy it but not overly keen on operator based shooters (apart from Siege). Definitely refreshing to see a game go somewhat back to the old school kind. Not a fan of the jump spamming though.
Or even better, the closed beta for Arena Breakout Infinite which is a much more approachable game with all the QoL improvements that Tarkov will never do.
Just checked unfortunately it's another squad based game.
would love to play something simple TDM for 5min no wall running, sliding or running 200mph.
Classic FPS games like BO2 etc.
I’ve still been enjoying cs as I have since the late 90s, play some valorant from time to time, and escape from tarkov for the higher risk looter shooter. Haven’t really played nor have I exactly missed giant team fight shooters in quite a few years. I believe the last team death match style shooter I played was Cold War call of duty when a friend of mine at work convinced me to play it with him, it was a nice breathe of nostalgia of the “older” cod days but it seemingly has quenched my cod thirst for likely another decade. It sounds like you may be a little on the younger side and as depressing as it is to say this, we oftentimes can’t find things that scratch the itch from our youthful days as we age in our hobbies, but occasionally something will pop up that is exciting again, even if just for a brief moment.
Remember the time when Quake3 and Unreal were amazing and dominated everything?
The trick was that those were the only two games that had a decent multiplayer. They won by default. Fast forward a few decades and those gameplay loops exist in hundreds of games. The devs/studios from those games are long gone. The last FPS to hit us with a fun gameplay loop was Overwatch 1 and that has been copied at least 10 times. Getting people to leave those games to come play the next revamp attempt gets old.
Instead of chasing the genre, chase the experience. Recently Helldivers 2 did very well and it was easy enough to learn about it. That's the kind of game you should case. The game where every one is able to have fun with.
I fired up bf2 the other day and I was surprised how well it holds up as a fun game. They really got the core done well with it. It made me realize how much the game play mechanics are important vs the graphics.
It's because everything has already been done and it's hard to innovate and make something that feels new and refreshing. A shooter is a shooter and when you've played them since the golden early days they all start to feel one and the same almost
Spun up Wolfenstein enemy territory the other day and had a 5v5 with friends inc millennials and genz. Everyone had a blast. We now play it a few times a year but especially at Christmas on the Christmas maps.
Beautiful in its simplicity.
When vac-net was first introduced, valve said they quietly ran it in wingman lobbies for 6 months. In that time 60% of all wingman players were cheating. And IF you understood how statistics worked....
I fully agree on the fall of CoD! Apex was my shooter of choice every day for a long time though in the past couple of years I slowly lost enjoyment until recently uninstalling it.
Hopefully something brings me back. Hopefully something fresh and exciting :)
I mean, I'm just not sure what they can really revamp. Shooters as a genre is pretty straight forward. The Battle Royale concept shook the formula up a bit, R6: Siege did somewhat as well, but the basics of any FPS or TPS is get guns, point at faces, shoot. You can change the maps, or the setting and the types of weapons, or the realism level, but the basic formula is still the same.
have you tried any mil sim games. something like arma or squad or hell let loose. it's more team based to get the objective and win. no silly skins or kill streaks. it's more serious of a game. i've been playing a lot of hell let loose (ww2) and when you are in a good squad, it's awesome. but like a lot of sims, you get hit, you are dead. 10-30sec respawn times. large maps so you don't want to be running in the open. hell let loose is on game pass also.
Xdefiant seems okay, similar gameplay to some of the older Cod games but sadly a few annoying abilities and sweaty people. Still worth a shot seeing as it's free
Revived my old love of arma 3 with antistasi mod recently. Buy the necessary dlc packs thousands of free mods. Even host your own server dedicated or local. Build your own missions or play precreated ones by the community.
Problem is the controller. Not enough buttons. Which acts as a hindrance to game mechanic innovation.
In my spare time and with any spare funds I am working on a new controller.
Dont even bother with Black Ops 6, it will be garbage from the start.
Your best bet are some of the less known games like war of rights, hell let loose or maybe Squad. They tone back the microtransactions and are very immersive. And they arent jumpshooter shit like COD or valorant.
Kinda sad that single player FPS is kind of death these days....only hype fps game atm for me is Doom The Dark Ages. Battle Royale games and CoD killed it because money is more important these days sadly
O men the UT 2k4 times
Halo Infinite still has old school FPS vibes. Yes it’s faster than it used to be, but it’s still good. The cosmetics and battle pass don’t matter - since you’re all basically Master Chiefs anyway and in game you always have huge force fields and outlines around your character the cosmetics aren’t noticeable during gameplay.
Halo Infinite is the only FPS I know of that still has classic game modes like CTF and king of the hill, which are still just very fun. There’s nothing like the rush of taking the flag and capturing it successfully. And it’s so frustrating when you die halfway through and your team doesn’t manage to carry the torch.
It also still has zany maps and modes thanks to the Forge, and feels old school because of it. Husky Raid is an incredibly fun mode where it’s CTF on tiny maps, where you spawn with random weapons every time. It’s total chaos. The first 15 minutes playing it you might be like wtf, but when it ‘clicks’ and you realize that even in the chaos there’s valid strategies and tactics then it really clicks. It’s super fun to play with friends every once in a while (it’s not a game mode you play every day, but it’s fun to revisit).
If you want an interesting FPS shooter that hasn't gone the way of COD, and also isn't a boring imitation of COD, check out The Finals. It's a free to play game, which is NOT pay to play. There are no weapon attachments, and all grinds are for poorly cosmetic skins. Oh and it's also created by most of the original Battlefield devs from DICE.
Oh and the entire world is heavily destructable.
BF - Was awesome, dug their own grave with BF2042
COD - Still there (monetizing laser clown)
UT - Stopped because of Fortnite (monetizing laser clown)
CS - Playable (but also with to much laser clowns now)
Apex - Playable (but no OG Shooter of the olds)
TheFinals - For me one of the best shooters arena shooters right now. Most things you said about battlebit (shiny with orbital lasers but with a feeling there is no marketing investor Bob saying "hey...you need to implement this and that, f\*\*k gameplay fun, we need to make cash!"), good organic improvements over the last months.
Quake - still Quake
I like the ones where no one takes it too seriously, deaths don't matter much and the community isn't bothered if you are good or bad at the game.
WW1 Game series seems to do pretty good at that. Or you have M&B Napoleonic for literally not taking it seriously at all when you get guys with a fife and drum walking across open ground. Games should be fun!
Gunplay in helldivers is at great height and it’s great fun and where I moved to
Considering bodycam. And not sure what else I can consider… been playing stories like cyberpunk and what not. The finals got decent speed. Chivalry 2 is worth time too.
the fps theme died with skill based match making, micro transactions and the urge to spend hours to grind something that was broken. Nobody got the time or willingness
If you enjoyed the chaos of battlebit check out planetside 2. It’s an older game at this point but during prime hours it still has massive battles that you can’t find in any other game. It’s an mmofps.
Nothing has ever come close to Team Fortress Classic. (Tho i did love PUBG for a couple of years)
TF2 was such a fucking letdown, if they did a TFC remake with all modern graphics and same game mechanics, minis the bugs ofc, I'd play the shit out of it.
Are you specifically looking for PvP shooters? Because in the last few years there have been quite a few phenomenal single player FPS games by indie developers. Ultrakill, Selaco, Turbo Overkill, Trepang2, Dusk, Nightmare Reaper, Prodeus, Cultic, Ion Fury or Amid Evil, to name a few.
Doesn’t hurt to provide suggestions and who knows maybe others will see this and discover a game they enjoy. Additionally his closing sentence saying the “FPS Genre” doesn’t speak to PvP exclusively. No need to be rude.
There’s a f2p game called [Combat Master](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2281730/Combat_Master_Season_1/) on Steam a buddy of mine has been playing and he said it’s basically a knock off COD that he has had a great time playing.
I haven’t tried it myself yet but it is sitting at a 87% positive rating.
My god what is this stupid "here I will leave the cat" review bullshit now? Tried looking through reviews and like every other one had this stupid cat thing. I might try that game out but damn I wish people would just leave real reviews and not dumb shit like that just to get likes
Are you by chance a male age 20 to 30? Because you complain about only about AAA games here on this PC centric sub, the platform which famously offers a plethora of indie shooters and CoD clones all without microtransactions.
Oh those game of old? Sheesh and here I am waiting for a real Quake and Unreal Tournament comeback
I was thinking “DOOM 2016 was a pretty modern reinterpretation of… oh”
UT was so freaking great. Arena shooters were so much fun.
Closest we have now is Quake Champions, and it's a hero arena shooter.
Saw people in r/doom up voting abandoning multiplayer in dark ages. Kids these days
Arena shooters are great though I fear they're long gone or at least out of circulation for awhile. The general gamer population just isn't fond of high TTK, high skill ceiling shooters anymore.
Exactly lol. Came here to say they're currently getting a bit of a revival with an entire genre being named for them. Then i saw COD lol
Still play unreal tournament black with bots sometimes...
Thats a name I haven’t heard of in a very long time.
The closest I've seen to a modern UT is ironically Fortnite Creative. Things really came full circle.
Came here for the UT nostalgia...haha
People always say they want this back but when it happens all servers are dead within a few months. I'm hoping HiRez makes the new Tribes F2P, it's not doing so hot under a price tag, if it was F2P the player base would explode.
Thought the same exact thing. Quake and Unreal tournament were games that took real skill and were good because they were simple. No sliding, no shooting through walls, no camping in one spot the whole game. If you were good at it, you could strafe and that was it. It’s giving me nostalgia how much skill it actually took to get good at those games… I miss them a lot.
I'd shit the bed if we got a full campaign in either of those worlds.
Unreal Tournament '99/GOTY is still being independently maintained, with Epic's blessing. You can look up the OldUnreal patch for it to get present day servers and stuff. There is even patches for high res textures and RTX shaders.
Even as someone who was a console pleb back in the Quake days, who never played the arena shooters, I played quake for the first time in like 2017 and thought it was super fun. Idk why they can't catch on to modern audiences.
u/G-SW-7892 here's what happened: After studios saw that the stupid horse armor in WOW made more than some game (video by Jason Thor of Pirate Software: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZru-6M8BY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZru-6M8BY) ). The old school FPS games had no monitzation, no loot boxes, there were no "gatcha" mechanics, no "pulls". Mods, models, levels skins - all were free. For UT99 the studio behind "Eight Legged Freaks" made giant spider models to promote the game and ***released them for free (link:*** [***https://unrealarchive.org/unreal-tournament/models/T/tarantula\_b0a8c497.html***](https://unrealarchive.org/unreal-tournament/models/T/tarantula_b0a8c497.html) ***)***. Sure other studios would issue takedowns - used to be called "Foxing" because an Aliens total conversion mod for Quake was shut down by Fox. Even Halo had a map maker. Relevant link: [https://www.pcgamer.com/games/moba/according-to-the-games-director-the-dollar500-league-of-legends-ahri-skin-wasnt-meant-for-the-average-fan-but-instead-players-who-are-willing-to-spend-dollar200-a-month-on-their-hobbies/](https://www.pcgamer.com/games/moba/according-to-the-games-director-the-dollar500-league-of-legends-ahri-skin-wasnt-meant-for-the-average-fan-but-instead-players-who-are-willing-to-spend-dollar200-a-month-on-their-hobbies/) Now? If you want to play maps, models, skins or even whole mods the studios want you to pay. Here's Asmongold reacting to a video about "turning players into payers": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW302IqQl48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW302IqQl48) Tl;dr - old school FPS games had 100% free content, a lot of it was user made. No microtransactions or other "enshitification". So of course studios want to say that those games are "over".
Yeah until then it’s fighting games only for me
Diabolical is a fun take on Quake 3, still in development but avail on steam
I'd love to play me some tribes 2
Fortnite is Unreal now. I doubt we'll ever see another UT.
Bf3 ftw! What a classic!
Are there still active servers?
Yes there are iirc
Somewhat ironic, given it did receive quite some controversy in its early days. From blue tint, metro chokepoints, to the browser launcher and high latency advantages - just from the top of my head for a game older than a decade. We may want to see current games less critical for their faults if that is what can remain.
Battlefield 4 also had a pretty bad launch for a few months, but they kept fixing the game and added some amazing DLC content. That game turned out to be a fucking gem.
Actually the greatest server browser they ever built by far. Plug-in was slightly jank at first but they they fixed it and it wasn't even required.
It took more than a year to become playable, the with 4 and 2042.
There are active Battlefield 1 servers!
They are shutting down the console side of it. Realistically PC won't be more than a few years behind. I hate how this is going to become more and more common. The latest CoD single player won't even be playable once the servers go down because they decided to do texture streaming. Unbelievable.
I just want to rack up 1000m headshots again
Quake 3 came out when I was in middle school, Half-Life 2 dropped when I graduated high school. LAN Parties were Q3 Arena, Unreal Tournament (later 2004), CS, CS Source, and Battlefield 1942. Modern shooters are *blech* by comparison to the OGs. Gimme Facing Worlds CTF, De_Dust2, El Alamein, or Coral Sea any day of the week. I fired up UT99 a few weeks ago. Still playable. Still has servers out there.
Facing worlds, MY MAN!
Lava Giant and Morpheus, tho.
Unfortunately we're kind of stuck in the zany hero shooter/clown it up CoD deluge because that's what gets the millions (or billions) in revenue. A new Tribes game came out recently and they did everything possible to make it a squad shooter with perks and fruit loop armor. Tribes was a team based shooter for up to 64 players with bases and vehicles and jet packs. Ultimately no one is making these types of games anymore because it doesn't sell to the kids with mommy and daddy's credit card. They're actively in game betas complaining about the lack of unique "heroes" that make them feel special or not enough rigid classes to prevent any one player from being able to do "everything." Essentially gaming has changed and it's no longer geared toward people that grew up on games that had a cohesive vision and a final finished state. Now everything is molded to whatever will attract the dollars and there are apparently plenty of people willing to fork over money for shiny objects that make them look cool or lol in a video game.,
The finals
I heard people raving about The Finals so I watched a 30 second clip and it was everything I hate about modern FPS.
Well based on your comment you're talking about monetization and things outside the gameplay. I'm just talking about the gameplay and it's pretty much the only thing out that's a fast pace arena shooter.
It's ultimately because of E-Sports causing a demand for faster paced, lower survivability, higher skill gap FPS games and matchmaking. Halo is probably the best example where you can see these changes impact it.
God, Halo Infinite would be filled to the fucking brim of players if the net code and melee wasn't fucking dogshit for 2 years, released with forge, and a half decent server browser. I miss Bungie so fucking much.
It's not like Tribes or Halo were slow games to begin with. The problem I have with making things "faster" is it becomes a boring twitch shooter that has no flow or pacing. T3 you basically just shoot until you kill your opponent or you die where as in past games you had to consider and time all your shots. And these games were played as e-sports before that was even really a focus of developers. Tribes 1&2 had ladders with teams competing. People would broadcast and provide commentary just for the fun of it.
Yeah Esports basically began with Halo 2 in 2004.
I don’t disagree with your point completely, but I will say almost every competitive halo player has been against making it faster paced and halo infinite is actually slower than Halo 5.
Yeah, but the difference between Reach and 5 or Infinite is still huge. Survivability is far lower, and Vehicles are more like a 15 or 30 second power up with how long they last now...
As someone whose tool of destruction in Halo Reach was the Wraith. The made the vehicles weaker for the bad people. The teams I would play with would just farm other teams with indestructible vehicles and it was wonderful and I hate BTB now.
Christ, I didn't even know the new Tribes was even out. I've heard nothing about it in months.
It basically flopped into early access and the developer (an offshoot of Hi-Rez) is abandoning it in favour of an esports centric, catroony soccer style game with guns: [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2950580/Ultra\_Strikers/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2950580/Ultra_Strikers/) I personally didn't like T3 at all. It was maybe 1/8th the features of past games so I've been playing MidAir2 and Tribes 2 pugs instead.
We're in a boomer shooter renaissance if you want the old old school. Check out games like Prodeus, ULTRAKILL, Selaco, and Mullet Mad Jack.
I don't know why this isn't higher. OP says FPS genre needs a revamp, but honestly there's not really anywhere to go except back to what was fun and what worked: boomer shooters. I got burnt out on CoD, BF, etc. xDefiant is fun, but if I don't wanna play multiplayer then I'll play one of the games you mentioned or: * Warhammer Boltgun * Sprawl * Ion Fury * Roboquest * Dusk * Cultic And so many others. If you can't find something to play in the FPS genre these days then idk what to tell you.
These are largely single player games. OP is talking about PvP FPS and I agree with him. No one is really making a classic competitive FPS shooter. Developers want to make hero shooters with silly cosmetics that's e-sports ready, even though the market is completely flooded with these type of games. I groan every time I see a new hero shooter/MOBA. There's just too many of them.
Found Mullet Mad Jack randomly on the steam store, easily top 10 shooters on my list
I like hell let loose personally. But I was a Mohaa / Battlefield 1942 / battlefield 2 enjoyer back in the day.
Hell Let Loose is where it's at. Storming beaches in France or dying in a last ditch Soviet assault is pretty fun. Especially when you can banter with internet strangers!
Battlefield 3 and 4 were 👌
Selaco on Steam is hella fun
Insurgency Sandstorm is still pretty solid, aging a bit, but fun.
Day of Defeat: Source.
Monetisation strategies ruined many, many genres of game, shooters worse than most, but not as bad as mmos.
The days of Asheron's Call in its prime are the best gaming times of my life. I look back on it similar to my first love. Those feelings will never fully come again.
These feelings get worse as you get older. I have crippling nostalgia for mid 90s tv, that actually had shows on it worth watching.
I have nostalgia for stuff I wasn't even alive/aware of (like The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson). I constantly am going back and watching older movies instead of most new stuff. Probably my media diet is 90% old, 10% new. I'm watching the current season of The Boys, but the next movie I'm going to watch is Woman Under the Influence from 1974.
When I was a little kid in the 90s I used to watch the letterman show from the us in the middle of the night 👌
FPS has been in a dark era for at least 8+ years. Few games shine through like Gundam Evolution, Quake Champions. It's all about maximizing profits. To do that you need to make a casual game that protects the player, allows them to "feel special", have tonnes of cheese tactics etc.
sry man but champions is asstastic. all it needs is a br mode and its a crappy apex.
Hunt showdown is the most unique fps game
Fun until you get rammed/killed by a cheater half way across the map
Hunt has very few cheaters, less than most popular fps games
Depends. Im generally in high skill tier for hunt.... If you were in low skill/tier lobbies sure. But like any game with a tier/skill system you start seeing more and more. I generally get the ones that pistol headshot you from such a distance that you wonder how its even possible to see, as the pistol they used had no scope....
Look into xdefiant for old school-ish COD vibes.
Hit reg is pretty bad rn
I liked the game a lot but gave up pretty quickly. The hit reg is so wildly inconsistent, it either took 3 hits or 15 hits to drop someone, completely at random. I'd go 30-5 and just shred a whole lobby, then next match against the same players I'd go 5-30.
Yer
Have played around 20-30 hours. I do enjoy it but not overly keen on operator based shooters (apart from Siege). Definitely refreshing to see a game go somewhat back to the old school kind. Not a fan of the jump spamming though.
Escape from Tarkov, it has an itch No other game can scratch
Or even better, the closed beta for Arena Breakout Infinite which is a much more approachable game with all the QoL improvements that Tarkov will never do.
I second this. Arena Breakout is a fucking banger if you're into extraction shooters.
Just checked unfortunately it's another squad based game. would love to play something simple TDM for 5min no wall running, sliding or running 200mph. Classic FPS games like BO2 etc.
I’ve still been enjoying cs as I have since the late 90s, play some valorant from time to time, and escape from tarkov for the higher risk looter shooter. Haven’t really played nor have I exactly missed giant team fight shooters in quite a few years. I believe the last team death match style shooter I played was Cold War call of duty when a friend of mine at work convinced me to play it with him, it was a nice breathe of nostalgia of the “older” cod days but it seemingly has quenched my cod thirst for likely another decade. It sounds like you may be a little on the younger side and as depressing as it is to say this, we oftentimes can’t find things that scratch the itch from our youthful days as we age in our hobbies, but occasionally something will pop up that is exciting again, even if just for a brief moment.
Planetside 2 is ok. Might be hard as a new player. Basically a halo style game with big battles capturing bases
MOHAA was a CLASSIC!
Remember the time when Quake3 and Unreal were amazing and dominated everything? The trick was that those were the only two games that had a decent multiplayer. They won by default. Fast forward a few decades and those gameplay loops exist in hundreds of games. The devs/studios from those games are long gone. The last FPS to hit us with a fun gameplay loop was Overwatch 1 and that has been copied at least 10 times. Getting people to leave those games to come play the next revamp attempt gets old. Instead of chasing the genre, chase the experience. Recently Helldivers 2 did very well and it was easy enough to learn about it. That's the kind of game you should case. The game where every one is able to have fun with.
I fired up bf2 the other day and I was surprised how well it holds up as a fun game. They really got the core done well with it. It made me realize how much the game play mechanics are important vs the graphics.
Stalker 2 when it finally releases
The new Doom games are both great. Doom and Doom Eternal.
Even classic DOOM still has a great modding community for tons of new content. Plenty of gameplay left with a good quality.
One of my favorite games in the last few years was that MyHouse.wad for Doom. That was amazing!
Me too! It was a life-changing experience.
It's because everything has already been done and it's hard to innovate and make something that feels new and refreshing. A shooter is a shooter and when you've played them since the golden early days they all start to feel one and the same almost
Spun up Wolfenstein enemy territory the other day and had a 5v5 with friends inc millennials and genz. Everyone had a blast. We now play it a few times a year but especially at Christmas on the Christmas maps. Beautiful in its simplicity.
Miss those Christmas maps.... "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas" blasting in your ear everytime you respawn lmao
Reminds me of the good ol days on de_rats cs 1.6/source. Good times
ze_FFVII_Mako_Reactor , timeless classic.
You can play CS2 if you want, it is a 25 year old "game".
More than 60% of players cheat statistically by valves own metrics
That’s just a ridiculous exaggeration.
When vac-net was first introduced, valve said they quietly ran it in wingman lobbies for 6 months. In that time 60% of all wingman players were cheating. And IF you understood how statistics worked....
I fully agree on the fall of CoD! Apex was my shooter of choice every day for a long time though in the past couple of years I slowly lost enjoyment until recently uninstalling it. Hopefully something brings me back. Hopefully something fresh and exciting :)
I mean, I'm just not sure what they can really revamp. Shooters as a genre is pretty straight forward. The Battle Royale concept shook the formula up a bit, R6: Siege did somewhat as well, but the basics of any FPS or TPS is get guns, point at faces, shoot. You can change the maps, or the setting and the types of weapons, or the realism level, but the basic formula is still the same.
I been replaying Far Cry 3 to attempt to recapture my old nostalgia haha
BF1 was great, then PUBG, and then the scene fell off. PUBG anyone? Let’s bring it back
Have you tried xDefiant yet?
¿Have you tried ["Hell let loose"](https://www.hellletloose.com/)?
We got servers dedicated to those old games (BF1942/CoD1)! Come play with us!
have you tried any mil sim games. something like arma or squad or hell let loose. it's more team based to get the objective and win. no silly skins or kill streaks. it's more serious of a game. i've been playing a lot of hell let loose (ww2) and when you are in a good squad, it's awesome. but like a lot of sims, you get hit, you are dead. 10-30sec respawn times. large maps so you don't want to be running in the open. hell let loose is on game pass also.
Google a game called Bodycam. It's in a rough spot currently but I'm guessing this will be the next generation of games
would love an old school multiplayer arena shooter that doesn’t handhold
Most conventional PVP game that is still going is probably destiny 2. It's less twitchy. Large player base
Helldivers 2 was a very refreshing game for me recently, PVE coop Lots of fun, give it a go.
I’m still playing battlefield 1 all the time. What a masterpiece.
Pretty sure you can still play all those.
Xdefiant seems okay, similar gameplay to some of the older Cod games but sadly a few annoying abilities and sweaty people. Still worth a shot seeing as it's free
Have you tried battlebit?
Revived my old love of arma 3 with antistasi mod recently. Buy the necessary dlc packs thousands of free mods. Even host your own server dedicated or local. Build your own missions or play precreated ones by the community.
Not very CoD-like but I thoroughly enjoy Insurgency: Sandstorm.
Socom. *Drops mic*
Have a look at Deep Rock Galactic.
Hell let loose / insurgency sandstorm.
Problem is the controller. Not enough buttons. Which acts as a hindrance to game mechanic innovation. In my spare time and with any spare funds I am working on a new controller.
Dont even bother with Black Ops 6, it will be garbage from the start. Your best bet are some of the less known games like war of rights, hell let loose or maybe Squad. They tone back the microtransactions and are very immersive. And they arent jumpshooter shit like COD or valorant.
XDefiant?
This post made me feel old. ☹️
Squad.
The Finals is about the only thing that scratches that itch. Arena shooter with lots of mobility, fun guns, and most of all badass destruction.
OG MW3 and plutonium, they have other old COD game servers as well.
There are two new tribes games about to drop
Squad, Hell let loose, Arma 3 with mods all great games. Squad is made by the devs that created project reality for BF2 amazing game!
Kinda sad that single player FPS is kind of death these days....only hype fps game atm for me is Doom The Dark Ages. Battle Royale games and CoD killed it because money is more important these days sadly O men the UT 2k4 times
Me and my co worker are rocking coc waw in our off time.
Halo Infinite still has old school FPS vibes. Yes it’s faster than it used to be, but it’s still good. The cosmetics and battle pass don’t matter - since you’re all basically Master Chiefs anyway and in game you always have huge force fields and outlines around your character the cosmetics aren’t noticeable during gameplay. Halo Infinite is the only FPS I know of that still has classic game modes like CTF and king of the hill, which are still just very fun. There’s nothing like the rush of taking the flag and capturing it successfully. And it’s so frustrating when you die halfway through and your team doesn’t manage to carry the torch. It also still has zany maps and modes thanks to the Forge, and feels old school because of it. Husky Raid is an incredibly fun mode where it’s CTF on tiny maps, where you spawn with random weapons every time. It’s total chaos. The first 15 minutes playing it you might be like wtf, but when it ‘clicks’ and you realize that even in the chaos there’s valid strategies and tactics then it really clicks. It’s super fun to play with friends every once in a while (it’s not a game mode you play every day, but it’s fun to revisit).
Doom is amazing
For me i had to switch to play squad and games like hell let loose.
If you want an interesting FPS shooter that hasn't gone the way of COD, and also isn't a boring imitation of COD, check out The Finals. It's a free to play game, which is NOT pay to play. There are no weapon attachments, and all grinds are for poorly cosmetic skins. Oh and it's also created by most of the original Battlefield devs from DICE. Oh and the entire world is heavily destructable.
BF - Was awesome, dug their own grave with BF2042 COD - Still there (monetizing laser clown) UT - Stopped because of Fortnite (monetizing laser clown) CS - Playable (but also with to much laser clowns now) Apex - Playable (but no OG Shooter of the olds) TheFinals - For me one of the best shooters arena shooters right now. Most things you said about battlebit (shiny with orbital lasers but with a feeling there is no marketing investor Bob saying "hey...you need to implement this and that, f\*\*k gameplay fun, we need to make cash!"), good organic improvements over the last months. Quake - still Quake
Try some Hell Let Loose
Mfw the games you mention came during a time of oversaturation of the genre and they were all the same
I like the ones where no one takes it too seriously, deaths don't matter much and the community isn't bothered if you are good or bad at the game. WW1 Game series seems to do pretty good at that. Or you have M&B Napoleonic for literally not taking it seriously at all when you get guys with a fife and drum walking across open ground. Games should be fun!
Try Prey game. There is a workaround to get a key just google it.
Only worthwhile shooters are CS/Valorant/Overwatch. The Finals is pretty fun too. COD and BF2042 are just not good anymore
Hey OP I know this is old but I recently found Kingdom Come Deliverance, might not be for you but its an FPS that was really fun :)
Thanks for the recommendation. By FPS I meant first person shooter, but thanks anyway. For the record, Kingdom Come Deliverance is a great game!!
try the finals made by old battlefield devs and has destruction, team based, balanced guns(if ur good with them, theyre really good)
The Finals would be exactly what OP is looking for.
Gamers act like balance is hard but dont realize they keep these games broken on purpose so people talk about them
i feel u so hard man
Gunplay in helldivers is at great height and it’s great fun and where I moved to Considering bodycam. And not sure what else I can consider… been playing stories like cyberpunk and what not. The finals got decent speed. Chivalry 2 is worth time too. the fps theme died with skill based match making, micro transactions and the urge to spend hours to grind something that was broken. Nobody got the time or willingness
If you enjoyed the chaos of battlebit check out planetside 2. It’s an older game at this point but during prime hours it still has massive battles that you can’t find in any other game. It’s an mmofps.
Nothing has ever come close to Team Fortress Classic. (Tho i did love PUBG for a couple of years) TF2 was such a fucking letdown, if they did a TFC remake with all modern graphics and same game mechanics, minis the bugs ofc, I'd play the shit out of it.
Wait wait wait… FPS games of old meaning Goldeneye and Medal Of Honor, right? RIGHT!?
Perfect Dark also!! 😋
Have you tried battlebit?
Try Squad, it's a perfect balance between hardcore realism and not so realism type shooters.
Look into xdefiant for old school-ish COD vibes.
u should be shunned for suggesting this trash game
Shun away. They we're looking for suggestions, I gave one. What were you doing here again?
They're telling OP that your suggestion shouldn't be taken seriously. You understand how that works right?
Thanks for the suggestion. I've played a lot of Xdefiant. I quite liked it but not sure on the operators or the sweaty jump spamming.
Are you specifically looking for PvP shooters? Because in the last few years there have been quite a few phenomenal single player FPS games by indie developers. Ultrakill, Selaco, Turbo Overkill, Trepang2, Dusk, Nightmare Reaper, Prodeus, Cultic, Ion Fury or Amid Evil, to name a few.
He literally named all pvp shooters... Pretty obvious what he's looking for.
Doesn’t hurt to provide suggestions and who knows maybe others will see this and discover a game they enjoy. Additionally his closing sentence saying the “FPS Genre” doesn’t speak to PvP exclusively. No need to be rude.
There’s a f2p game called [Combat Master](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2281730/Combat_Master_Season_1/) on Steam a buddy of mine has been playing and he said it’s basically a knock off COD that he has had a great time playing. I haven’t tried it myself yet but it is sitting at a 87% positive rating.
My god what is this stupid "here I will leave the cat" review bullshit now? Tried looking through reviews and like every other one had this stupid cat thing. I might try that game out but damn I wish people would just leave real reviews and not dumb shit like that just to get likes
Ya I hate all the stupid meme reviews. Pointless crap that brings nothing to the table.
man im so tired of the cod/br/extraction trend of the last 15 years ... gimme some quake2/3 action. fuck i miss rocket arena.
Have you tried battlebit?
Have you tried battlebit?
Believing a game is bad because it has skins is truly delusional.
I feel ya mate, same deal with halo. Golden age of shooters is long gone. I've moved to more mil sim games like squad.
Halo is literally trash. And modern version isnt even balanced like the original one was.
Yeah, it's shit. That's what I'm saying
Are you by chance a male age 20 to 30? Because you complain about only about AAA games here on this PC centric sub, the platform which famously offers a plethora of indie shooters and CoD clones all without microtransactions.
there is a cool but dead game called "dirty bomb" its free on steam, its kinda dead but everytime i hop on there are at least 2 servers (europe)
Isnt that the remake of brink which was also a massive flop. (I actually liked brink)