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.
- 134
- 2
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
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?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link