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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3092 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 16, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm really looking for a good FPS. Preferably single player, and I'll accept multiplayer PvE, but if it's PvP it's gotta be perfect.

My problems with most shooters these days is very hard to define. Some of them have a floaty characteristic where all the guns feel like laser pointers that magically kill things. Some of them are boring because enemies are bullet sponges (and somehow game designers don't know that this ruins the whole point of shooters?) Many games just lack a soul, and it's hard to even say what's wrong with them.

I've been playing starship troopers and I really enjoy it as a shooter. There are lots of enemies, situational awareness matters, positioning matters, twitch skills switching between targets matters, and the shooting feels weighty when your powerful rifles can stun an enemy bug.

I just tried hell divers today and was very disappointed. It's not a shooter. It's a grenade throwing game with sidearms to get you in to grenade throwing positions. Most of the "grenades" are not called grenades they are called ordinance and are explained by you having a floating artillery ship in orbit. But you call in all this ordinance by throwing a tracking beacon with a countdown timer. And throwing the beacons is exactly the same as throwing grenades. The progression is all about unlocking grenades/ordinance.

It's frustrating to see the relative popularity of the two games. Starship troopers will probably be dead before it gets out of early access. Hell divers might get game of the year.

Edit: thanks for all the many suggestions. It has allowed me to figure out what I'm actually interested in. Which is longer range engagements. I describe it in another comment, but the 0-15 meter engagement distance of most shooters turns me off. To me that is just a melee game masquerading as a shooter.

You ever find a good answer on engagement range?

I’ve been playing STALKER: Anomaly, and despite having modern military styling and lots of Tarkov mechanics, combat is still largely within the 15m window. Against mutant animals, fine, they’re going to rush you. But humans? The opportunities to use a derelict commie block as a sniper nest, or pick off a merc squad caught in the open, are awesome…when they happen. You just spend a lot more time clearing houses. The game rarely has enough space to play with your full range.

I realized "military sim" was the closest genre tag and I bought Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon® Wildlands

It has a big sale on steam right now like 80% off. Usually I can clear out locations with a decent amount of sniping. There are still times when I need to clear an interior building, but it doesn't feel very often.

There are scenarios in the game where I'm worried about bullet travel times and bullet drop.

It's a little bit of a new experience having three NPCs with me at all times to form a squad. I could probably be using them more to clear internal spaces. It makes the game much easier. I've gone down in firefights at least 10-20 times but I've only had a full squad wipe once or twice. The teammates will revive you in the fight. So you are not a bullet sponges and can go down easily but if you were being careful and not getting into a crazy situation you can be revived. Prevents deaths from turning the game into a grind.

The DLC I think also screws up the progression of the game. They gate some good weapons behind the DLC, and not too much starts unlocked. I bought the DLC not really knowing that and had some super good gear immediately.

Oh, is this the one where you can synchronize your team to snipe different targets on your signal? I thought that was cool.

Yes, that is an ability I use often and fully upgraded. Sometimes there will be groups of guys standing around talking to each other and there is no way to snipe them one-by-one without turning the whole situation into a firefight.

I think this is kind of a weird take as I played the hell out of the starship troopers FPS and most gunfights in that game are also extremely close, although it is possible to engage enemies at range with one or two gun variants.

Helldivers 2 has pretty bad gun balance issues and a flawed armor system, that's it. And fighting bots is an entirely different experience than fighting bugs that just rush or ambush leap you, bots can often snipe you crossmap with extremely accurate rockets.

I play exclusively with one of the guns that has a long distance.

I played Helldivers a few years ago. I liked both the gameplay and the very on the nose film version references of Starship Troopers. I recommend it.

As someone who played Helldivers 1 and 2...yeah, HD2 has problems. First off, both primary and secondary weapons are almost useless, as you noted, because too many enemies are too heavily armored, and dealing with armor requires Strategems. It's honestly something of a design flaw in my opinion. Yes you can take down some lightly armored enemies by exploiting weak points, but at higher difficulties that becomes increasingly risky and you're better off calling in an air strike or mail-ordering man-portable anti-tank weapons. The light guns are given center stage in character or loadout customization, but they barely matter when most enemies require heavy weapons to deal with and the ones that don't tend to die as collateral damage.

As for everything being a grenade and short-ranged - that's a holdover from Helldivers 1, where it made sense since that was top-down and had to fit onto a single screen. I agree that Helldivers 2 could use some alternative methods of deploying strategems, say by laser pointer or calling in grid coordinates, or maybe even by attaching a tracking device to big enemies. That would add a lot of mechanical variety. I doubt we'll ever see anything of the sort, though.

Overall I have fun in the game, but I take it for what it is, and it's not a good shooter.

Also, they really dropped the ball on vehicles. In Helldivers 1, vehicles were very difficult to use because of the cramped screen space. Now we have a third-person perspective where vehicles would be a joy to use...and they just don't exist. Boo. And then they didn't include my favorite strategem from the first game, either - oh barbed wire, how shall I inconvenience my teammates without you?

I hear you loud and clear. I think. I strongly dislike games that almost exclusively have hitscan, or nearly hitscan weapons. Among my favorite arsenals is still the Quake franchise. Had a great mix of weapons with different trade offs. Shotgun gave you hitscan with spread so it's effectiveness dropped off fast. Nailgun/Plasma gun/hyperblaster put out a lot of damage, but you had to lead the target. Rocket launcher was even slower, and had splash damage. Then the railgun had a slow fire speed, and required pinpoint accuracy. Every weapon filled a niche and was situationally better than another.

I don't see much of that design anymore. Most guns in FPS are just straight up better than all the others. Doom 2016 brought some of that design sensibility back. But then Doom Eternal gutted it by ripping away most of your ammo supply, forcing you to mostly use whatever you actually had ammo for in the all of 2 engagements it lasted through before rotating senselessly to a different weapon.

You find a good one, let me know.

Check out Devil Daggers or Hyper Demon.

Some of my favourite FPSes:

  • Condemned: Criminal Origins - shooting only makes up maybe one-fifth of the combat and the rest is melee. The melee combat is the most realistic I've ever seen from a first-person perspective in a game. Also one of the top ten scariest games I've ever played. I play it once a year.
  • F.E.A.R. - you've probably played this one. From Monolith, the same people as Condemned, and it's a shame that Condemned doesn't get as much love as F.E.A.R. when it's better in almost every way. Unlike Condemned, F.E.A.R. doesn't really work as a horror game, but the gunplay is satisfyingly weighty thanks to the excellent, visceral sound design. I've only played the original and can't comment on the sequels.
  • No One Lives Forever - a Monolith hat-trick! Made in the era in which shooters could have vibrant palettes and weren't limited to brown, grey and magenta. Endearingly goofy (with flashes of wit) Bond parody that mixes up the formula with stealth and gadgetry. Apparently it's abandonware now, so mods to make it run on modern PCs are a must.
  • Prey - not the 2017 "reboot", the original from 2005. My single hottest take in gaming is that this is a better FPS than Half-Life 2, which loses momentum after the airboat mission. Fight me. The weapons are creative, the gravity puzzles are brainteasing, the villains are creepy. Apparently it owes a debt of influence to Sphere, which I've never seen.
  • Far Cry 3 - my favourite in the franchise (it's a self-contained story, no need to play the previous). People love gushing about how arty and confrontational 2 is, but for my money 3 does everything better than 2: it's both more fun and absorbing to play than 2 and tells a better story, which manages to actually get across the points that it seemed 2 was trying to convey but failed. My understanding is that the subsequent games in the franchise became increasingly homogenous and subsumed under the "Ubisoft sandbox" formula, but the elements work here.
  • SWAT 4 - an excellently designed game but it is haaard. I've tried to play it a bunch of times and invariably have to give up around the fifth or sixth mission.
  • Tribes Vengeance - I feel like this game doesn't get talked about nearly enough. I'm very biased because I have a recurring dream in which I'm not exactly flying but sort of... "skipping", jumping huge horizontal distances and floating back to the ground gently as a feather. When I played this game for the first time in 2022 I was just like "wow. The jetpack mechanics feel exactly like how it feels when I'm having that one recurring dream". But even aside from the jetpack mechanics it's a very tightly designed shooter and the anachronic love story is surprisingly engaging (even in spite of the PS2-era graphics). IIRC the story was written by Ken Levine. It's also abandonware.

Tribes is getting another sequel that's currently in beta by the way.

I was in love with 2 and early Ascend, and nothing has scratched that itch since so I hope it's good.

Far Cry 3

I am a complete simp for 2, but 3 is definitely a better video game. Although the end choice was ironically preachy against video games - iirc you can either save your friends and decide to be a better man as you sail away from the island (put vidya away and engage the real world) or you can stay on the island and "Win" as that crazy chick sexes you and stabs your heart (continue playing vidya leading to hyper stimulation then death).

Far Cry 3

I like 4 more (and Primal even more), but I can't deny that 3 has the best mission in the franchise. You know, the one with the song. Still can't believe people unironically listened to dubstep back then. And the best plot twist in the franchise: turns out Willis is actually a CIA agent.

I haven't played Primal, what makes it your favourite? 4 was pretty great, but I think it shot itself in the foot a bit with its wait ending, because I was kind of annoyed while playing it that it looked way more fun to hang out with Pagan Min. Also did you play Blood Dragon? That was pretty great too, but far too buggy.

I haven't played Blood Dragon, no.

Actually, Primal has the best song in the franchise, simply because it's so unexpected when it starts playing. But that's not the only reason I liked it. It's mostly the setting that drew me in. Every Far Cry since 3 has been mostly the same: rebels, crazy dictator, outposts, weird dream sequences, you know the drill. Primal throws all of this out. Well, except outposts. And you can ride around on a sabretooth tiger, making your enemies flee in fear.

The only major drawback is the hunter vision mechanic. Any "X vision" mechanic that alters the palette and highlights useful stuff will invariably be too useful and you will spend most of your time with it on, be it night vision, instinct mode, vampire sight or what you call it. I tried playing without it (as I switched the minimap and the detection indicators off as well), but too much of the gameplay relied on it.

If you haven't played Trepang2 it's probably worth trying. It's not as good as F.E.A.R. 1, but it's the closest thing I've seen. I will have to say that the moment-to-moment gunplay is pretty much the only thing going for it. The story is extremely predictable - I guessed the shape of the 'twist ending' in the first mission. It's even worse as a horror game than F.E.A.R is and lacks a cohesive atmosphere. But if you like slowing down time and shredding bad guys with a shotgun it is a fun game.

@cjet79 I doubt this is the game for you. It's got boomer-shooter fast movement though I think the feel of the guns is better. There are also some bullet-sponge type enemies that show up in different numbers based on the difficulty. There's a free demo though so it might be something to look into.

I saw an article about it a few weeks ago and added it to my wishlist, looks sick.

I did try the demo, wasn't for me, but it helped me narrow down what I actually wanted which is more range on engagements.

So boom shoot is out, and you're ideally looking for something more current. So we'll skip the usual list of 96-08 'classics' I'm sure you're aware of to one degree or another.

Have you checked out the Metro series? I've yet to play the third entry, but I quite enjoyed my time with the Redux versions of the first two. They don't lean into the pure shooty aspect of games like Halo or Destiny quite as much, although they are still shooters first and foremost. There's a lot of quiet exploration, sneaking around, and even a few linear mini-tours through underground Moscow. I'd describe it as STALKER without the jank and sandbox elements, if you're interested in that kind of tone and atmosphere.

I also grew up with Halo and miss good FPSs. Closest I’ve come lately is Titanfall 2, which has a good campaign that does some really cool things with level design.

Space Hulk: Deathwing is reportedly fun on co-op. I would be up for a motte gamers group.

James Bond: Quantum of Solace is 2008 but little known and actually really good if I remember properly.

I did enjoy Titanfall 2.

I have no idea it if it's what you're looking for, I haven't tried any of the games you liked or didn't like, and I don't fully understand your descriptions of what you want and don't want, but Borderlands 2 is a pretty good singleplayer FPS.

Fuck the shooting. Playing as a psycho in borderlands 2 is one of the greatest video game experiences I’ve ever had

I was just about to recommend Hell Divers 2 even if it's an FPS. From the gameplay I've seen, it does every ST does and better, and while I strongly prefer an FPS perspective, in a coop shooter it's not nearly as aggravating as wall peeking is something like Gears of War and the like.

Let me know if you pick it up, I might do so myself, it looks like a blast. Ah it looks like it isn't your cup of tea.

Well, maybe you'll try Tarkov one day, but I feel like the anxiety would kill you, and ping limits mean I can't even carry you through the new player on-boarding waterboarding.

There's Darktide, but I have my own gripes with that game and can't wholeheartedly recommend it, but it is satisfying to shoot the guns. There's a game called Grey Zone Warfare entering EA soon, which has PVP but far less of it than Tarkov, and will have dedicated PvE servers if you want to play it like a hardcore Ghost Recon with buddies. I'm quite optimistic about it, if only because the devs read and responded to my autistic screeching about milsim medical systems in their feedback section and even seem to have implemented a few of my suggestions.

I just wish that Darktide didn't include rootkit anti-cheat. I would love to play it, but I'm not willing to install that kind of crap just for video games.

There's Darktide, but I have my own gripes with that game and can't wholeheartedly recommend it, but it is satisfying to shoot the guns.

Extremely repetitive, but damn if they didn't nail the feel of it. Mechanically one of the best games I've seen in recent times.

Well, maybe you'll try Tarkov one day, but I feel like the anxiety would kill you, and ping limits mean I can't even carry you through the new player on-boarding waterboarding.

Tarkov does look mechanically like a game I'd be interested in, but the gameplay doesn't interest me as much. Its more that I dont get anxiety when playing games. Which might seem like 'oh then its perfect for you', but no, it just means I repeatedly suck at them. Anxiety is a feature of human psychology, not just a bug. It gives you some degree of heightened awareness and increased focus.

Grey Zone Warfare

This looks very interesting. Combined with me bouncing off a few other recommendations, I think I've figured out why I have a problem with many shooters: engagement distance. So many "shooters" these days are basically melee distance. Everything is tight corridors, with enemies popping out right in front of you. Most engagements take place 0-15 meters away from the player. Almost every 4 person co-op shooter that follows the mold of left 4 dead is like this.

Halo on the highest difficulties is nearly impossible to win at 0-15 meter distances. Most covenant weapons were not instant hit. They have travel distance, but most human weapons are instant hit. So optimal engagement distance is more like 15-50 meters. And the maps often allow you to actually fight at those distances. Its also why I think the flood levels are so hated and controversial.

If you've ever actually shot a modern firearm you'll realize very quickly how insane a 0-5 meter engagement distance is. 5-15 meter engagement distance makes some sense within buildings. In a city environment between buildings it can be more like the 15-50 meters. Outside of cities engagement distances in modern combat are like hundreds of meters, and most of the killing is done by artillery rather than small arms. So many games going for that close engagement distance nerf the hell out of the weapons to force it to happen.

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam is my favorite realistish shooter; the firearms are done exceptionally well in my opinion. But it's also purely PvP, so.

Overall I think it's easier to sell realistic mechanics in a PvP package than in a PvE or solo one - the latter two are usually about power fantasies, and I guess it's more convenient to make players feel powerful by letting them get a good eyeful of the enemies they're obliterating with their overpowered player weapons.

What about the grittier WWII shooters then? I'm occasionally playing "Hell let loose" with some friends and on average you die not even knowing what hit you.

Is there a single player mode? Multiplayer is usually just not fun for me unless it's PvE

No, unfortunately not. It does seem to check all your other boxes though. The grittier WWII Shooters in general tend to have a weightier feel for the weapons, people die in just 1-2 shots and engagement is usually at a considerable distance.

Well, there's Ultrakill which is all about speed and precision, running, jumping and sliding all over the place. You can parry and reflect back a lot of stuff, even your own attacks.

The only traditional FPS I've been playing is Entropy: Zero 2. It's basically a fan-made Half Life 3 but from the perspective of the Combine's top Elite. Gameplay is pretty traditional Half Life 2 stuff, with a couple of new bells and whistles. Turn subtitles on, much of the casts speaks like they've had their jaws replaced with machinery - which they have.

There are a lot of good retro shooters (sometimes called Boomer shooters, even though they really target Gen-X/Millennial nostalgia). Amid Evil, DUSK, and Cultic are good examples made in modern engines. Ion Fury and its DLC is excellent, and is made in a descendant of the original BUILD engine used to make Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, and Blood (and, uh, Redneck Rampage, I guess). Shadow Warrior, by the way, got a more modern reboot in 2013 which itself got a sequel. It's pretty fun.

sometimes called Boomer shooters, even though they really target Gen-X/Millennial nostalgia

I hate this term. The only real Boomer shooter was shipping out to Saigon.

It's just a part of the general shift of the word "Boomer" to mean just, well, old.

I always thought it was unrelated to the generation and just referencing booms.

Some of the boomer shooters feel too "floaty" to me. Part of me just wants to move fast and shoot stuff. but another part of me likes the balance of "no you can't float instantly anywhere and shoot super accurately". I grew up in the Halo shooter era, not the boomer shooter era. So I'm maybe looking for games that imitate Halo 2 more than doom/

Doom original is very floaty to me. I have been thinkning of doom 2016.

I also must admit I have some level of graphics requirements. Post 2015 at least. And I'm just throwing that out there as a random year. But really I don't know of any games I play before that date.

Thanks for suggestions though.

You haven't tried Doom 2016 or eternal?

Doom '16 was most fun I had with a non-realistic shooter since Unreal Tournament.

If he doesn't want floaty BS, he should play a realistic shooter like Squad or Post Scriptum. One of those is bound to somehow replicate the inertia mechanics Red Orchestra 1 had.

If you enjoy Halo, maybe give Destiny 2 a go? The game isn't perfect and Bungie seems to be losing their way, but even at their worst they know how to make shooting guns feel real good.

Yeah, I hate Destiny 2 because they basically took away things I spent money on and both pvp and pve just feels like a treadmill of weekly chores/missions, but man do they know how to make shooting things fun.

FPS games aren't really my thing but I've recently heard good things about Trepang2 but it's apparently very short. I've also heard near universal acclaim for Titanfall 2 and it's, from what I've read and heard, the epitome of move fast and shoot stuff.

Sunset Overdrive is pretty great, lots of different feeling weapons.

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