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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   3099 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.

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.

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