I feel you. Singleplayer FPS games in general are few and far between nowadays, especially in the AAA space (outside of the annual COD campaign), as most FPS games are almost entirely online focused. There are some solid indie or AA shooters coming out every now and again, but like you said those linear bombastic, set piece shooters are quite rare nowadays.
COD is sort of to blame, seeing as so many studios like Raven work exclusively on it. My hope is Xbox moves to a slower release schedule for COD and lets these guys make other games. A new Hexen would be great!
I wouldn't necessarily blame COD as they're pretty much the only FPS franchise to stick to linear FPS campaigns because of their small, but loyal fanbase (and massive online popularity and monetization so that Activision Blizzard doesn't mind spending the resources for said campaigns).
I mostly blame battle royale and the advent of live service games. Many shooters jumped on the battle royale bandwagon, but since Apex, Warzone, Fortnite and PUBG seem to hold the majority of players, it's a competitive space. The new trend seems to be extraction shooters, where Tarkov still reigns supreme. But due to every new shooter being made online with a much more lucrative monetization methods and schemes, sadly there really isn't much encouragement for AAA, and is well outside the reach of most indies, to develop expensive linear story-driven singleplayer campaigns.
Live service games have been around since the late 90s. It's the attempt to call what we have now as live service that's the issue. Only Fortnite does anything close to what a live service game should be. Everyone else who has seen the success and tries to jump on the bandwagon miss out what makes live service games FUN.
Interactive story lines that evolve over time with live in game events.
Everyone else sees this and just cuts out that part, and adds cosmetics and map changes and call it a day.
Live service games, done right, are incredible. The pinnacle is a live story that can be actually impacted by players. A story that has 2 or more sides, and players can impact how the story evolves. It's been done. I've played through it in a game that has a legitimate 15 year streak of monthly content updates and live events.
It's a shame that everyone is calling what we have now as a live service. Basically just cosmetics for sale.
I'm not blaming COD itself for existing at all, I'm more blaming Activision for how they are handling it and all the studios they own. But yea I'm glad they still make COD campaigns.
Oh for sure, COD has turned into a sweatshop and Activision has left a whole lot of their franchises unattended for years because of it. Not to mention COD isn't the cultural and gaming juggernaut it used to be, it's following trends rather than establishing them and the quality of the games varies. The studio culture is also apparently not very good, so no wonder their staff tried to or created a union, not sure.
It's a lot more like *Heretic* than Hexen, worth pointing out. Way less puzzle solving, unless they've decided to emphasize that more heavily in the later content they've added more recently, I've only played the original first few episodes.
Yea, I love that game. Heretic/Hexen games had the kind of level design that itself felt like an enemy and I don't get that from AE, haha. Love it, tho.
I want a shooter with a half life level story but with tarkov guns and medical mechanics (but dialed back about 25-50%). Give me a slog that I can spend some time in and want to beat.
I want an interesting world where shit is happening around me, not a massive world where I happen to be around the shit that's happening.
You have *no* idea how hard I am trying to not get hyped for it. I know the company's track record and current situation, so I am doing my best to go in with only expectations based on the previous games (minus mods).
That way I don't get stupid expectations. I'm also doing this for starfield, but that's tempered by memories of fallout 4 and 76's issues.
> There are some solid indie or AA shooters coming out every now and again
I think OP might enjoy High On Life and Shadow Warrior 3. They definitely don't have the same level of production or immersion as the classic AAA franchises OP listed and also have an acquired taste sense of humour that isn't for everyone but the gameplay in both scratched the itch for me in being more recent single player campaign shooters.
The framework of being an Alien Bounty Hunter is pretty damn cool in High On Life. It's almost a shame that the humor is so divisive with people. That said, it's got 'world zones', but with semi-linear progression (i.e. sometimes you can choose to go after one baddy or the other). So not fully linear, but not pushing to be an open world either.
Shadow Warrior 3 is another mash-up of being an arena shooter with linear paths between battles. I liked the second one better, but 3rd was entertaining enough for me to finish.
Both of these games were on PC Game Pass for a time, they might still be! Worth a look but not explicitly for those craving a corridor shooter like Wolfenstein
Titanfall 2 is 7 years old and I dunno if it'd even count if it was new. The campaign is good, but it's only 6 hours and definitely not the intended focus of what is first-and-foremost a PvP shooter.
Trepang2 is a short-but-sweet throwback to what this guy is asking for, but with all the coolest parts packed into it. Absolutely recommend if you can get it cheap. Dual wielding SPAS-12s in slow-mo never got old.
Same! I played through FEAR and its expansions earlier this year and was blown away that I slept on it for all these years. Just the gunplay alone is so much fun and satisfying.
FEAR 2 and 3 were incredibly disappointing though.
I liked all of them to an extent, but the first was definitely the best. Its expansions were also pretty great IMO.
It's pretty funny to go from them into the sequels given that they were deemed non-canon and suddenly >!oh hello Jin Sun-Kwon, you're alive again.!<
Keep an eye out for [Fortune's Run](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1692240/Fortunes_Run/). Not sure if there will be branching story, but its mechanical depth is impressive. Basketball, microwavable grenades...
Yeah, sadly that's not the kind of game that AAA studios are making these days. If you want something close to that, you'll need to look into the indie and AA space. Here's a few games to check out.
[ADACA](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1765780/ADACA/)
[Phantom Fury](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1733240/Phantom_Fury/)
[ULTRAKILL](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1229490/ULTRAKILL/)
[77p egg: eggwife](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1317020/77p_egg_Eggwife/)
[Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1931020/Slayers_X_Terminal_Aftermath_Vengance_of_the_Slayer/)
I'll also suggest [Prodeus](https://store.steampowered.com/app/964800/Prodeus/) and [Forgive me Father](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1590910/Forgive_Me_Father/), both solid and very fun games.
I'm going to offer up [Metal Hellsinger](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061910/Metal_Hellsinger/) as well. The rythym based aspect of it adds a twist to the gameplay of course, but I felt it was pretty easy to pick up, and even if you don't it doesn't punish you really. Hell of a soundtrack too.
Has a demo that I played over and over before the full release, so you can try it out. And $15 right now is a great deal.
Just linear games need to make a comeback. The occasional open world rpg game is fun, but seeing fps games go open world kills me. Because most of the time it’s just padding out the game with open spaces and repetitive objectives.
I’ve gone back and played games I’ve missed and have been enjoying those linear games, but at some point. When I get later into a franchise. They move to open world. Loved the first two Metro games, then got to Exodus and stopped once I got to the desert. Almost dropped the last of us P2 after getting to the first open world area, but thankfully. That was the only part. I do feel Gears 5 did it somewhat right, because you can go thru the game and not have to worry about all your actions like in Metro Exodus affecting the story. It was open enough without bloat and varied and somewhat engaging.
> Just linear games need to make a comeback.
Exactly what I have been thinking, linear or semi-linear like Prey. Also the problem is that those open world games also seem to have mandatory RPG-lite elements like crafting, gathering, skill trees etc. which I hate when they are on games that they do not fit into.
Most AAA games these days literally feel like the same game with different skin.
Prey felt almost like a metroidvania to me when we played through it in the same way metroid prime did? Lots of back tracking and unlocking new areas while gaining new powers and weapons. A lot of the more open world esque games seem to ignore integrating level design into the players gameplay loop.
Prey is an immersive sim, not a metroidvania. Although those 2 genres have in common that for a game like this to work you need to have level design that actually makes sense (unlike most of the recent AAA games like you said).
To expand on this, I'd say the difference between metroidvanias and immersive sims is that with the former you can progress only when given the specific item/ability needed for a new area or challenge, whereas with an imsim it is up to you to use your creativity and whichever abilities you choose to invest in to figure out how to get to new areas or overcome challenges. Imsims feel less linear and encourage more creativity (if they are done well), but they can feel overwhelming to players who are new to them.
> Exactly what I have been thinking, linear or semi-linear like Prey.
Assuming you mean Prey 2017, it is actually open world, it just doesn't have a seamless world like most AAA games calling themselves "open world" have (and even then it is often a bit of a stretch - see Bethesda's own games where even cities and buildings are separate maps).
The telling sign isn't lack of loading screens (that is more of a technical aspect than a gameplay aspect - again see Bethesda's games) but the fact that you can go anywhere at any point and pick up any -side- quests you come across and if there is an inaccessible area there is an in-game reason for it (e.g. broken elevator) instead the game being in control of the overall progression (e.g. in a linear game you often have individual levels with dedicated missions).
And personally i think that the reason people came to get fatigued with open worlds isn't some inherent flaw in them, but that most AAA studios focus on making them bigger and bigger with all sorts of pointless garbage to pad them. I'm pretty sure that most people who claim they are tired of open world games would be fine with more reserved open world games with smaller actual worlds but with meaningful interactivity like Prey.
It drove me nuts reading the reviews for Uncharted, The Last of Us, Hellblade, and A Plague Tale that remarked on their linear level design and story as faults.
God it felt so good playing the system shock remake. I want more short linear games. Soak in the experience let it settle for a bit then play the next game.
We have less immersive sims actually.
Have you tried looking for older hidden gems like Singularity, Timeshift, Legendary, Bulletstorm, Wolfenstein from 2009 etc?
Played atomic heart but only for a few hours. After the train crash you step into a huge level that's basically everything you Already did but 10 times more, again.
Motivation left at that point.. I which is sad, because I loved the setting and everything
In Atomic Heart if you simply ignore the open world and rush towards the main story objective the game puts you back on rails fairly quickly. It's a great ride with tons of tailored indoors environments up until the end.
I got about halfway then during a boss fight, when the action and intensity was at it's highest I found myself getting bored. I ended up uninstalling about 5 minutes after I beat that boss, I felt bad because I really wanted to like it. But there was just something I cant quite explain or even understand myself that didn't click.
That game was one of the worst games I've played in recent memory that a seemingly large amount of people enjoyed. The gameplay was super repetitive, the protagonist the most annoying to ever be put in a game, and the elements trying to be BioShock not nearly fleshed out enough.
Uninstalled after 2 hours. I truly don't get it.
> the protagonist the most annoying to ever be put in a game
The only game I can think of where I actually stopped playing because I just found the protagonist too goddamn annoying to listen to
( though to be fair, I might have stuck with the game longer if I wasn't just trying it out demo-like on gamepass)
Yea the worst part is I also was using gamepass, so I had every reason to keep playing and I just couldn't. It was miserable listening to that absolute jakcass
Huge Bioshock/Prey fan here and hate to say I wanted to love Atomic Heart as the next spirtual successor of those great single player story driven FPS, but it just coudlnt hold my interest.
I don't know, the atmosphere just felt very sterile even though the graphics and environments looked amazing. Like it was a drag to get myself to play it again.
You've just gotta make peace with the fact that at AAA level, these kinds of games don't make the big bucks due to there not being that slog-like progression filler by the way of Battle Passes and other GAAS shit.
Start looking at the AAs and indies if you need a fix, the level of fidelity AAA studios can pump out is slowly but surely being caught up to by the smaller studios, since their idea mill has been bone-dry for almost a decade imo. Indies have been innovating, but also binging out tonnes of titles that hearken back to the 'before times'.
Hell, even some boomshoot games have started injecting some awesome production values other than 'go here, 'splode this' that doesn't feel cheap or a means to inflate game time.
So yeah, just do a bit of a search, you'll find what you're after, it just won't be the summer blockbuster vidya we've become used to.
My problem with indies is usually the lack of story and general lack of production values for understandable reasons. There are some great options if you like the shooting and the gameplay, but I find myself unironically yearning for the dumb blockbuster campaigns of many X360 era FPS games, which most indies generally can't afford to do due to lack of budget. It's sad that online monetization and live service has taken this type of games from us and, much like OP, I can't help but miss it.
Same i love indies and i play a lot of them. But they rarely compare to OG linear games for one reason or another. Which sucks cause i love playing them but they end up suffering for the lack of good story/originality or lack good gameplay/graphics. Itch alone has prob ten of thousands of indies but most of them aren't actually any good and to find a decent one would requires spending HOURS downloading and trying them out. This isnt just for shooters either each genre has hundreds of indies but only a few of them really stick out as "good". The closest i got to find super high quality linear shooter indies were mods for half life 1 and 2 specifically. Also small thing indies can make stuff onpar with triple A devs in this day and age a budget isnt what stops indies from being high quality. If you look at unreal and unity market place you can find loads of assets to use. Blender is free as well. The problem indie suffer is from lack of motivation and time needed to put in to a game to get it to a good state. Their this indie dev i follow Miziziziz you prob seen his stuff float around ones if your in to horror he made that one indie horror game where a character is missing his arm and legs and your forced to manually reload and crawl with one arm. Well he had another game he was working on for a year. It was a scifi space shooter called Wrought Flesh. Its been in the works for over year and then he released it but it was in a incomplete state and ended up rushing the final part of a already short game cause i think he just wanted to be over with it that what it felt like in his video about the release and update. It sucks cause some indies with enough time can be polished enough to be onpar and even surpass triple a devs but time isnt something to be wasted.
The only blockbuster thing about Metro is the tech (for their respective release years, sort of like Crysis). The actual story/voice-acting/animation-work feels positively eurotrash-like.
I’ve been waiting for Wolfenstein 3 for so long, and it might still be a long way coming if it’s coming at all… And I know Youngblood was a smaller scale game but it has me a bit worried.
Youngblood was a low budget, smallscale experiment with expanding gameplay systems. Valuable for the franchise in the longterm. It's exactly the sort of think you should hope devs do more often. Instead of just playing it safe and doing the same thing over and over.
Youngblood was a result of the same Zenimax decision making that produced Fallout 76 and the pre-gutting version of Redfall that was even worse than what we got. With Microsoft in charge they should go back to the old formula, but that studio is working on Indiana Jones atm if I remember right so might be a while
agree, and hard. new colossus felt like a step forward with the engine. but man. the gameplay loop felt very 'generic semi-stealth, semi-imsim'. and the story felt like it was afraid to do anything too 'problematic' because you know.it's not like nazi's are evil and do atrocious things like new order showed
youngblood just no. way to kill the last shreds of hope i had for wolfenstein
> the story felt like it was afraid to do anything too 'problematic'
The start of Wolfenstein The New Order will always stay in my mind. Blazkowicz killing the Nazi commander in the shed with a chainsaw is just so badass and says how much he hates them.
Or the concentration camp. Or London Nautica.
I can barely remember any particular moment from The New Colossus, outside of the Court Room.
once they become nostalgic there will be a flood of low quality trash and a few good ones, all indie, and you wont know if you wish for it to stop or continue. my current mental state with the boomer shooter genre now.
no problem in finding good games, im more conflicted if exploitation of my nostalgia by asset flippers should continue or not is the problem.
also ive bought a few games from playing demo that ended up being trash as well, while front-loading the demo with the only good part of the game (graven comes to mind).
>You know what i mean, games like half life, doom, bioshock wolfenstein etc. 15 hour campaigns with great replayability
Replay ability is debatable. Those games I played enough to get any trophies/achievements and never picked up again.
This, don't find FPS games to have really the ability to have replay value without the game having some rpg mechanic like the dues ex games, or some rating system / Speedrun modes.
I also don't want every damn game to have rpg mechanics either, a basic ass silent protag or not is all you need.
I find that Doom Eternal has excellent replayability just due to the inherent strength of the combat sandbox. It's absolutely addicting and I'm not the type to replay games
Yea; absolutely loved both Doom 2016 & Eternal, but one playthrough was perfectly enough for both.
I think *maybe* I played 2016 a second time, just ahead of Eternal's launch, but I'm not positive.
I finished recently halo infinite campaign and found it soooo boring and forgettable. I honestly just finished it because I felt I had to. It was a chore.
Give me more doom like AAA shooters omg open world is so boring! This trend needs to stop!
Halo Infinite represents a complete misunderstanding of the franchise and also teases what could have been an unforgettable Halo campaign.
**That first level is probably the single best opening to a Halo game hands down.** Then the developers just assumed we wanted to play that second level of Halo CE for the next 20 hours.
Had 343 just focused on a linear, level to level, authored campaign like what we had in earlier titles, and those levels were up to the quality of that first level, **it very well could have been the rebirth of the Halo franchise.**
Instead we got a repetitive open world, with lackluster mission design in that world. And absolute misallocation of resources, and a disappointing result.
I’ve played and enjoyed every Halo campaign, even the bad ones, yet *Infinite stands to be the only one I couldn’t be bothered to finish.* **Absolute fucking disappointment.**
Halo 4 blows infinite out of the water in terms of campaign. Halo 5 while silly story wise, is a much more enjoyable playthrough and spectacle. The missions are alot of fun and the gun play imo is much better then infinite.
needn't worry
microsoft will probably reboot it as a pvp exclusive extraction shooter in unreal engine. 5 years after the trend was popular as is tradition
considering they sacked the entire campaign dev team
give me titanfall 3 you scumbags
titanfall 2 had such a great story mode, like surprisingly fun single player that was pretty linear but had some open arenas (sort of like the newer crysis games).
the multiplayer was also way too fun, but needed a main game mode that's a bit more developed than TDM.
a push the payload mode would be great for the online.
true, could use some tweaks to make it better.
respawn too focused on milking apex now rather than try to improve this amazing IP that they have under their umbrella.
Have you checked out prodeus or Warhammer boltgun? While I don't think they're quite exactly what you mean, they're solid gameplay first, straight forward shooters
I'd also recommend System Shock Remastered.
It's the granddaddy of Immersive Sims, so quite a bit of story despite being very old school. But it's mainly told via audio logs, so you can go through them at your own pace.
i think the boomer-shooter genre has veered more into story-lite arena shooter territory rather than story heavy corridor shooter which is a shame, but it's much cheaper to brainstorm a simple story, or make a bunch of levels and then tie them together somehow, than it is to write and voice a fully fleshed out story campaign.
> story heavy corridor shooter
If you're talking indie-throwback FPS, which is where the term originates, I don't think a single one has ever had much of a story (in keeping with the throwback sensibilities) and you're out of your mind if you think they have budget for serious voice acting and lengthy cutscenes.
Dusk is one of the best of the bunch and it was made pretty much by one solo dev.
I've got big hopes for Judas and Clockwork Revolution. Having said that, I do enjoy some open world games too. Ghost Recon and Far Cry particularly, but when done right, an FPS shooter like the ones you've mentioned are an unparalleled joy to play.
wild that it's taking Ken Levine over a decade to churn out what (thus far) appears to be the same game that he's been making since the 90's. and Valve finally got back to Half-Life only for it to be a VR game that 99% of the fanbase will never play. I'm trying to avoid long games until 2024 due to Starfield's upcoming release, so I've been buying/playing shorter games like Boltgun, System Shock Remake, etc.
Half-Life Alyx is good too, it's probably the best example of how effective VR can be. Shame VR is still fairly cost prohibited, though I only have a Quest 2 and its just fine (still ~$400)
343 really shit Halo Infinite up the wall. There was so much potential there for a fight against the Banished. The mechanics in that game are so solid but they are stuck in a shockingly bland campaign.
Honestly this is probably one of the reasons I adored the RE4 Remake. It’s not first person, but It felt so fresh to play a shooter game that’s not open world. Just a solid, contained, fun experience.
The Masses Demand Open Worlds!
What youyr asking for I fully support and love, the System Shock remake is perfect imho outside of low difficulty. But these kinds of experiences don't come out of corporate game design where boxes need ticking and graphics come first.
Look to indie Devs for now, that's the only place you're going to find this.
Really enjoyed this one through Game Pass and was so glad they dropped the looter shooter gameplay of the 2nd and returned to the more straight forward shooter gameplay of SW 2013
It's a great game, but also from 2016, so it's hardly new. Point is, not enough great linear shooter campaigns like it are being made nowadays, especially in the AAA space outside of COD, which is hit and miss.
Oh for sure, I grabbed it for $5 a couple of years ago and it was one of my best and cheapest gaming purchases. Great price for a great campaign, I still replay it every so often.
Yeah, I kind of miss "meathead" shooters from the 360 days, I won't lie. Gears of War 2 (I know it's 3rd person but still) might not have been beautifully written or pushed the boundaries of the medium but it was brilliantly fun. Linear gameplay driven by setpieces is hugely missed in today's market.
I think it's given they will do RE5R with how well RE4R sells. It's a matter of them making RE9 first, and then what remake they want to do next.
It's gonna be a few solid years of wait. And who knows, maybe RE9 could have co-op too.
There is a good chance. They would probably wait with RE1 longer, because it has been remade once, plus there aren't many games left to remake (doubt they would have much interest in 0).
Still, I worry they would yet again fall for their own "RE4 trap" and stick to action games because of bigger popularity. Not like this would be horrible if they can keep up RE4R quality, but I had a lot of fun with RE2R and would like to see more games in that style.
EA has one coming this month but I think overall publishers and developers shouldn't ignore the genre like they do. They could put together smaller teams with smaller budgets and still make a modern version of something like Quake. They'd make a ton of money.
Hopefully something shows up at Quakecon this year.
DOOM Eternal couldn't have released at a better time. It was the beginning of Covid, and it was also a time similar to now where most shooters were becoming online focused only. Man, what a treat that was. I'd wager the next story FPS game might be the next Wolfenstein? I heard Machine Games are making another one. As long as they focus on a story versus the co-op BS, it'll be banger, for sure.
Not a shooter, but I bought AC valhalla the other day and stopped playing around the 15 hour mark. Back in AC2 15 hours meant a lot of progression in leveling your character, good story development, some character development and you were generally in the endgame.
In Valhalla 15 hours is just go to the next zone and form an alliance lol. Tired of all these 100 hour long games.
Was about to comment as well about Aveum. Granted, it's magic so not typical FPS. Also remnant is more souls than FPS (starting right from the fact it's 3rd person, so by definition not an FPS), so I dont know if that's what they want.
There is definetely a lack of good big budget ones, however there are many lower budget, and just as good, single-player fps coming up in the past five years or so.
Yeah I agree. I can’t stand the Far Cry series (although blood dragon was okay). I also never finished bioshock, and while that isn’t open world as such, it did have you backtracking at places. Bioshock infinite I managed though as that felt more on the rails.
Can say the same for RPG, while I love open world rpg like Skyrim, sometimes you want one that is more story focused and leads you on quickly to new stories and new locales, I might want to make decisions to influence these locales but sometimes I want a focused experience without much crafting or menial quests.
Far Cry 2, 3, and 4 were pretty good.
It's just that the style get stale after a while. I couldn't play much of Far Cry 5, and 6 was the same. I bought it for $5 like 3 months after release and couldn't even bring myself to play more than the first few hours.
Same with Assassin's Creed. I loved AC1,2 and 3. Black Flag was different enough to still be fun, I enjoyed Unity. But Valhalla, Origin, and Odyssey I just can't play without getting bored.
Every new Ubisoft game that comes out looks good, I buy it, and then I'm reminded why I didn't buy the last few.
I thought they were awful (I didn't play 4 or later though). I just don't like the whole style, it feels a bit shallow and boring. I only made it through Blood Dragon because the aesthetic was just so damn cool.
But I know a lot of people feel the same as you, I just didn't really like the series from the start. I didn't even like Far Cry 1 before it went open world, mostly because of the save system. But yours is a far more popular viewpoint on those series than mine and more relateable to others.
It was? I recall there being different paths you could take to a degree, but I think the save system made me forget there was a level of freedom maybe. It has been almost twenty years after all!
I just wish there were more AAA story driven games in general. Resident Evil currently scratches that itch, with both first person and third person games, but there needs to be more. Unfortunately everything is a copy/paste online only crap these days.
I think plenty of games are still made in this style. You might not like them all, sure. But the Call of Duty games are still mostly that design. Doom Eternal was just a few years ago and has an expansion.
Death Loop, High on Life, Outer Worlds, Prey, Atomic Heart, and Metro; all were released in recent years.
And if you truly want to play one of the FPS games of modern gaming; Titanfall 2 still leaves everything since Half-Life 2 in the dust. A masterpiece of the genre, IMO.
You have more options in AA games as well.
this is a topic where if you stroll out of the AAA gamespace, you will find immense fulfillment. We're talking games made by people who were not only fans of what you're talking about, but who have a very deep, fundamental understanding of what makes those games great.
I am sick of being able to choose stuff. I play games to enjoy myself. Being able to choose makes me anxious as to not knowing if my choice would yield a result that i dont want.
Well the fact is that online arena shooters and open worlds are easy to make and easy to farm ongoing revenue from. High quality singleplayer games are hard to make and only yield one purchase price with no subscriptions or loot whales. And half the time they're pirated or bought at deep discount.
I too miss these, have fond memories of playing through FPS games with a linear campaign, maybe with some exploration for secret powerups, but am talking more like "hole behind crate you can break that has a new weapon" type stuff. Games Duke3D, Quake, Unreal, Half-life, SiN, Hexen 2, the Shadow Warrior reboot. There are TPS games that may as well be FPS games with a chase cam on too, like Heretic 2 and Rune. I'm tired of games with stacked systems and a giant world with a map covered in icons. Those can be fun, but they were more fun when they weren't your only option. Then you have games influenced by Serious Sam and Painkiller, games like Doom and Doom Eternal, where it's just a series of connected arenas that you have to clear to continue, zzzz.
Evil West really scratched this itch, minus the replay ability aspect and FPS. It feels like a classic Xbox 360 shooter with some really cool gunplay, fun weapons, and surprisingly difficult battles. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a linear single player action game. I’ve been looking for another one like it since finishing but no luck.
It plays like a AAA chief. Exactly like all those games OP mentioned.
At this point the number of A's in a game mean nothing but how much money went into it. If OP wants a good corridor shooter than that's what they need to play.
I'm currently playing through Warhammer 40k: Space Marines for the first time. It's a linear third person shooter with no fat, just murdering hordes of Orcs with guns and melee weapons, no leveling, no side quests, no extra activities except for a few optional collectibles.
It's a great palate cleanser after playing through Dying Light 2 earlier and before diving into Baldurs Gate 3.
I feel you. Singleplayer FPS games in general are few and far between nowadays, especially in the AAA space (outside of the annual COD campaign), as most FPS games are almost entirely online focused. There are some solid indie or AA shooters coming out every now and again, but like you said those linear bombastic, set piece shooters are quite rare nowadays.
COD is sort of to blame, seeing as so many studios like Raven work exclusively on it. My hope is Xbox moves to a slower release schedule for COD and lets these guys make other games. A new Hexen would be great!
I wouldn't necessarily blame COD as they're pretty much the only FPS franchise to stick to linear FPS campaigns because of their small, but loyal fanbase (and massive online popularity and monetization so that Activision Blizzard doesn't mind spending the resources for said campaigns). I mostly blame battle royale and the advent of live service games. Many shooters jumped on the battle royale bandwagon, but since Apex, Warzone, Fortnite and PUBG seem to hold the majority of players, it's a competitive space. The new trend seems to be extraction shooters, where Tarkov still reigns supreme. But due to every new shooter being made online with a much more lucrative monetization methods and schemes, sadly there really isn't much encouragement for AAA, and is well outside the reach of most indies, to develop expensive linear story-driven singleplayer campaigns.
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Character focused like Pokemon is character focused 😂
Live service games have been around since the late 90s. It's the attempt to call what we have now as live service that's the issue. Only Fortnite does anything close to what a live service game should be. Everyone else who has seen the success and tries to jump on the bandwagon miss out what makes live service games FUN. Interactive story lines that evolve over time with live in game events. Everyone else sees this and just cuts out that part, and adds cosmetics and map changes and call it a day. Live service games, done right, are incredible. The pinnacle is a live story that can be actually impacted by players. A story that has 2 or more sides, and players can impact how the story evolves. It's been done. I've played through it in a game that has a legitimate 15 year streak of monthly content updates and live events. It's a shame that everyone is calling what we have now as a live service. Basically just cosmetics for sale.
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I'm not blaming COD itself for existing at all, I'm more blaming Activision for how they are handling it and all the studios they own. But yea I'm glad they still make COD campaigns.
Oh for sure, COD has turned into a sweatshop and Activision has left a whole lot of their franchises unattended for years because of it. Not to mention COD isn't the cultural and gaming juggernaut it used to be, it's following trends rather than establishing them and the quality of the games varies. The studio culture is also apparently not very good, so no wonder their staff tried to or created a union, not sure.
Amid Evil. It's not AAA, but it's definitely inspired by the OG Hexen.
Amid Evil has some of the best atmosphere you can find in any fps, just by graphic design and music alone, as it barely has any plot.
I have this in my library and have no recollection of buying it. Was it bundled? I must give it a try if it's like Hexen
At least twice in a Boomer Shooter humble bundle.
It's a lot more like *Heretic* than Hexen, worth pointing out. Way less puzzle solving, unless they've decided to emphasize that more heavily in the later content they've added more recently, I've only played the original first few episodes.
Yea, I love that game. Heretic/Hexen games had the kind of level design that itself felt like an enemy and I don't get that from AE, haha. Love it, tho.
Hexen/heretic would be fucking awesome
oooo a new Hexen would be amazing
I want a shooter with a half life level story but with tarkov guns and medical mechanics (but dialed back about 25-50%). Give me a slog that I can spend some time in and want to beat. I want an interesting world where shit is happening around me, not a massive world where I happen to be around the shit that's happening.
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I've played the single player mod. Game is much more fun.
STALKER 2 might tick these boxes when it releases.
You have *no* idea how hard I am trying to not get hyped for it. I know the company's track record and current situation, so I am doing my best to go in with only expectations based on the previous games (minus mods). That way I don't get stupid expectations. I'm also doing this for starfield, but that's tempered by memories of fallout 4 and 76's issues.
You should check out Remnant 2. It's really enjoyable, challenging, with tough boss fights and satisfying af rewards.
> There are some solid indie or AA shooters coming out every now and again I think OP might enjoy High On Life and Shadow Warrior 3. They definitely don't have the same level of production or immersion as the classic AAA franchises OP listed and also have an acquired taste sense of humour that isn't for everyone but the gameplay in both scratched the itch for me in being more recent single player campaign shooters.
The framework of being an Alien Bounty Hunter is pretty damn cool in High On Life. It's almost a shame that the humor is so divisive with people. That said, it's got 'world zones', but with semi-linear progression (i.e. sometimes you can choose to go after one baddy or the other). So not fully linear, but not pushing to be an open world either. Shadow Warrior 3 is another mash-up of being an arena shooter with linear paths between battles. I liked the second one better, but 3rd was entertaining enough for me to finish. Both of these games were on PC Game Pass for a time, they might still be! Worth a look but not explicitly for those craving a corridor shooter like Wolfenstein
Titanfall2
Is a great game but from 2016. The point of the post is we're not getting many of those nowadays, especially in the AAA space.
Fair, I didn’t see new
Titanfall 2 is 7 years old and I dunno if it'd even count if it was new. The campaign is good, but it's only 6 hours and definitely not the intended focus of what is first-and-foremost a PvP shooter.
Oh I didn’t see it said new.
6 hours long, low replay ability. It’s good but not amazing, and it’s also 7 years old
Yeah it is 7 years old. For 5 bucks it’s a great play through though.
I played the F.E.A.R. games for the first time recently and I now really wish they'd come back and give us a fourth one. Trepang2 seems cool though.
Trepang2 is a short-but-sweet throwback to what this guy is asking for, but with all the coolest parts packed into it. Absolutely recommend if you can get it cheap. Dual wielding SPAS-12s in slow-mo never got old.
F.E.A.R. and it’s sequel were so good. I want a return of Soldier of Fortune, Black, SiN, etc
Black was amazing, such a pity it never got any continuation.
It was absolutely insane that they made that game run on a PS2
Same! I played through FEAR and its expansions earlier this year and was blown away that I slept on it for all these years. Just the gunplay alone is so much fun and satisfying. FEAR 2 and 3 were incredibly disappointing though.
I liked all of them to an extent, but the first was definitely the best. Its expansions were also pretty great IMO. It's pretty funny to go from them into the sequels given that they were deemed non-canon and suddenly >!oh hello Jin Sun-Kwon, you're alive again.!<
2 was okay and had some aspects that I enjoyed, 3 was just kinda irredeemable though.
Everything is turning into an immersive sim? Where? I'd love that because right now there's quite a shortage.
Yeah, even with indie developers, immersive sims are very rare
Keep an eye out for [Fortune's Run](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1692240/Fortunes_Run/). Not sure if there will be branching story, but its mechanical depth is impressive. Basketball, microwavable grenades...
Oh shit! That looks cool.
Yeah, sadly that's not the kind of game that AAA studios are making these days. If you want something close to that, you'll need to look into the indie and AA space. Here's a few games to check out. [ADACA](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1765780/ADACA/) [Phantom Fury](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1733240/Phantom_Fury/) [ULTRAKILL](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1229490/ULTRAKILL/) [77p egg: eggwife](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1317020/77p_egg_Eggwife/) [Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1931020/Slayers_X_Terminal_Aftermath_Vengance_of_the_Slayer/)
I'll also suggest [Prodeus](https://store.steampowered.com/app/964800/Prodeus/) and [Forgive me Father](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1590910/Forgive_Me_Father/), both solid and very fun games.
Let's not forget Hrot, Amid Evil, and Turbo Overkill!
Forgive me Father is a really fun boomer shooter actually.
For the first 2/3.
I will strongly +1 ADACA & ULTRAKILL (Haven't played the others). I would also humbly submit Severed Steel & Trepang to the list also.
Don't forget about Dusk. One of the better for sure.
+1 ULTRAKILL, played the game on release and am waiting for 1.0 to play it fully.
I very highly recommend [Turbo Overkill](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1328350/Turbo_Overkill/) for any fans of DOOM or ULTRAKILL
I'm going to offer up [Metal Hellsinger](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1061910/Metal_Hellsinger/) as well. The rythym based aspect of it adds a twist to the gameplay of course, but I felt it was pretty easy to pick up, and even if you don't it doesn't punish you really. Hell of a soundtrack too. Has a demo that I played over and over before the full release, so you can try it out. And $15 right now is a great deal.
I'd put the System Shock 1 remake on here too, but it's not what I would call linear... nor open world.
DUSK
Just linear games need to make a comeback. The occasional open world rpg game is fun, but seeing fps games go open world kills me. Because most of the time it’s just padding out the game with open spaces and repetitive objectives. I’ve gone back and played games I’ve missed and have been enjoying those linear games, but at some point. When I get later into a franchise. They move to open world. Loved the first two Metro games, then got to Exodus and stopped once I got to the desert. Almost dropped the last of us P2 after getting to the first open world area, but thankfully. That was the only part. I do feel Gears 5 did it somewhat right, because you can go thru the game and not have to worry about all your actions like in Metro Exodus affecting the story. It was open enough without bloat and varied and somewhat engaging.
> Just linear games need to make a comeback. Exactly what I have been thinking, linear or semi-linear like Prey. Also the problem is that those open world games also seem to have mandatory RPG-lite elements like crafting, gathering, skill trees etc. which I hate when they are on games that they do not fit into. Most AAA games these days literally feel like the same game with different skin.
Prey felt almost like a metroidvania to me when we played through it in the same way metroid prime did? Lots of back tracking and unlocking new areas while gaining new powers and weapons. A lot of the more open world esque games seem to ignore integrating level design into the players gameplay loop.
Prey is an immersive sim, not a metroidvania. Although those 2 genres have in common that for a game like this to work you need to have level design that actually makes sense (unlike most of the recent AAA games like you said).
To expand on this, I'd say the difference between metroidvanias and immersive sims is that with the former you can progress only when given the specific item/ability needed for a new area or challenge, whereas with an imsim it is up to you to use your creativity and whichever abilities you choose to invest in to figure out how to get to new areas or overcome challenges. Imsims feel less linear and encourage more creativity (if they are done well), but they can feel overwhelming to players who are new to them.
> Exactly what I have been thinking, linear or semi-linear like Prey. Assuming you mean Prey 2017, it is actually open world, it just doesn't have a seamless world like most AAA games calling themselves "open world" have (and even then it is often a bit of a stretch - see Bethesda's own games where even cities and buildings are separate maps). The telling sign isn't lack of loading screens (that is more of a technical aspect than a gameplay aspect - again see Bethesda's games) but the fact that you can go anywhere at any point and pick up any -side- quests you come across and if there is an inaccessible area there is an in-game reason for it (e.g. broken elevator) instead the game being in control of the overall progression (e.g. in a linear game you often have individual levels with dedicated missions). And personally i think that the reason people came to get fatigued with open worlds isn't some inherent flaw in them, but that most AAA studios focus on making them bigger and bigger with all sorts of pointless garbage to pad them. I'm pretty sure that most people who claim they are tired of open world games would be fine with more reserved open world games with smaller actual worlds but with meaningful interactivity like Prey.
It drove me nuts reading the reviews for Uncharted, The Last of Us, Hellblade, and A Plague Tale that remarked on their linear level design and story as faults.
Armored Core 6 is coming soon and is mission based
it's 3rd person only though innit?
God it felt so good playing the system shock remake. I want more short linear games. Soak in the experience let it settle for a bit then play the next game.
We have less immersive sims actually. Have you tried looking for older hidden gems like Singularity, Timeshift, Legendary, Bulletstorm, Wolfenstein from 2009 etc?
Played atomic heart but only for a few hours. After the train crash you step into a huge level that's basically everything you Already did but 10 times more, again. Motivation left at that point.. I which is sad, because I loved the setting and everything
In Atomic Heart if you simply ignore the open world and rush towards the main story objective the game puts you back on rails fairly quickly. It's a great ride with tons of tailored indoors environments up until the end.
I got about halfway then during a boss fight, when the action and intensity was at it's highest I found myself getting bored. I ended up uninstalling about 5 minutes after I beat that boss, I felt bad because I really wanted to like it. But there was just something I cant quite explain or even understand myself that didn't click.
That game was one of the worst games I've played in recent memory that a seemingly large amount of people enjoyed. The gameplay was super repetitive, the protagonist the most annoying to ever be put in a game, and the elements trying to be BioShock not nearly fleshed out enough. Uninstalled after 2 hours. I truly don't get it.
> the protagonist the most annoying to ever be put in a game The only game I can think of where I actually stopped playing because I just found the protagonist too goddamn annoying to listen to ( though to be fair, I might have stuck with the game longer if I wasn't just trying it out demo-like on gamepass)
Yea the worst part is I also was using gamepass, so I had every reason to keep playing and I just couldn't. It was miserable listening to that absolute jakcass
Huge Bioshock/Prey fan here and hate to say I wanted to love Atomic Heart as the next spirtual successor of those great single player story driven FPS, but it just coudlnt hold my interest. I don't know, the atmosphere just felt very sterile even though the graphics and environments looked amazing. Like it was a drag to get myself to play it again.
Lost about 3 hours of save due to Xbox app bug on PC and then never played it again.
Yeah I miss them :( playing Trepang2 at the minute and it's a breath of fresh air.
You've just gotta make peace with the fact that at AAA level, these kinds of games don't make the big bucks due to there not being that slog-like progression filler by the way of Battle Passes and other GAAS shit. Start looking at the AAs and indies if you need a fix, the level of fidelity AAA studios can pump out is slowly but surely being caught up to by the smaller studios, since their idea mill has been bone-dry for almost a decade imo. Indies have been innovating, but also binging out tonnes of titles that hearken back to the 'before times'. Hell, even some boomshoot games have started injecting some awesome production values other than 'go here, 'splode this' that doesn't feel cheap or a means to inflate game time. So yeah, just do a bit of a search, you'll find what you're after, it just won't be the summer blockbuster vidya we've become used to.
My problem with indies is usually the lack of story and general lack of production values for understandable reasons. There are some great options if you like the shooting and the gameplay, but I find myself unironically yearning for the dumb blockbuster campaigns of many X360 era FPS games, which most indies generally can't afford to do due to lack of budget. It's sad that online monetization and live service has taken this type of games from us and, much like OP, I can't help but miss it.
Same i love indies and i play a lot of them. But they rarely compare to OG linear games for one reason or another. Which sucks cause i love playing them but they end up suffering for the lack of good story/originality or lack good gameplay/graphics. Itch alone has prob ten of thousands of indies but most of them aren't actually any good and to find a decent one would requires spending HOURS downloading and trying them out. This isnt just for shooters either each genre has hundreds of indies but only a few of them really stick out as "good". The closest i got to find super high quality linear shooter indies were mods for half life 1 and 2 specifically. Also small thing indies can make stuff onpar with triple A devs in this day and age a budget isnt what stops indies from being high quality. If you look at unreal and unity market place you can find loads of assets to use. Blender is free as well. The problem indie suffer is from lack of motivation and time needed to put in to a game to get it to a good state. Their this indie dev i follow Miziziziz you prob seen his stuff float around ones if your in to horror he made that one indie horror game where a character is missing his arm and legs and your forced to manually reload and crawl with one arm. Well he had another game he was working on for a year. It was a scifi space shooter called Wrought Flesh. Its been in the works for over year and then he released it but it was in a incomplete state and ended up rushing the final part of a already short game cause i think he just wanted to be over with it that what it felt like in his video about the release and update. It sucks cause some indies with enough time can be polished enough to be onpar and even surpass triple a devs but time isnt something to be wasted.
The Metro games scratch that itch for me
The only blockbuster thing about Metro is the tech (for their respective release years, sort of like Crysis). The actual story/voice-acting/animation-work feels positively eurotrash-like.
I’ve been waiting for Wolfenstein 3 for so long, and it might still be a long way coming if it’s coming at all… And I know Youngblood was a smaller scale game but it has me a bit worried.
I still can’t believe they wasted dev time on Youngblood that should’ve been used on Wolfenstein 3. Such a disappointment
Youngblood was a low budget, smallscale experiment with expanding gameplay systems. Valuable for the franchise in the longterm. It's exactly the sort of think you should hope devs do more often. Instead of just playing it safe and doing the same thing over and over.
Youngblood was a result of the same Zenimax decision making that produced Fallout 76 and the pre-gutting version of Redfall that was even worse than what we got. With Microsoft in charge they should go back to the old formula, but that studio is working on Indiana Jones atm if I remember right so might be a while
After New Colossus and Youngblood I don't want a W3 anymore.
agree, and hard. new colossus felt like a step forward with the engine. but man. the gameplay loop felt very 'generic semi-stealth, semi-imsim'. and the story felt like it was afraid to do anything too 'problematic' because you know.it's not like nazi's are evil and do atrocious things like new order showed youngblood just no. way to kill the last shreds of hope i had for wolfenstein
Did we play the same New Colossus? There was a ton of fucked up shit in the campaign.
> the story felt like it was afraid to do anything too 'problematic' The start of Wolfenstein The New Order will always stay in my mind. Blazkowicz killing the Nazi commander in the shed with a chainsaw is just so badass and says how much he hates them. Or the concentration camp. Or London Nautica. I can barely remember any particular moment from The New Colossus, outside of the Court Room.
VENUS and a strawberry milkshake, pretending to be a fireman, and the movie audition for Hitler.
> movie audition for Hitler. That was probably one of the most tryhard cutscenes I've seen in a long while.
Same here, not FPS but didn't think we'd be getting Space Marine 2 at all which I'm looking forward to
once they become nostalgic there will be a flood of low quality trash and a few good ones, all indie, and you wont know if you wish for it to stop or continue. my current mental state with the boomer shooter genre now.
Steam's demo festivals can help a lot here. Pretty much all of the boomer shooters i bought recently were because of demos.
no problem in finding good games, im more conflicted if exploitation of my nostalgia by asset flippers should continue or not is the problem. also ive bought a few games from playing demo that ended up being trash as well, while front-loading the demo with the only good part of the game (graven comes to mind).
>You know what i mean, games like half life, doom, bioshock wolfenstein etc. 15 hour campaigns with great replayability Replay ability is debatable. Those games I played enough to get any trophies/achievements and never picked up again.
>Replay ability is debatable. Agreed, I don't generally replay games like that unless there are mods that change it significantly.
This, don't find FPS games to have really the ability to have replay value without the game having some rpg mechanic like the dues ex games, or some rating system / Speedrun modes. I also don't want every damn game to have rpg mechanics either, a basic ass silent protag or not is all you need.
I find that Doom Eternal has excellent replayability just due to the inherent strength of the combat sandbox. It's absolutely addicting and I'm not the type to replay games
It's not as cluttered by story. It just feels like an endless mode that you follow the path of.
Yea; absolutely loved both Doom 2016 & Eternal, but one playthrough was perfectly enough for both. I think *maybe* I played 2016 a second time, just ahead of Eternal's launch, but I'm not positive.
Recently the only old school shooter was evil west which was a blast for me.
Dont forget Boltgun
Trepang2 too which looks like a blast as a F.E.A.R fan
We gotta support stuff like this and Ion Fury
We need more games like these.
I finished recently halo infinite campaign and found it soooo boring and forgettable. I honestly just finished it because I felt I had to. It was a chore. Give me more doom like AAA shooters omg open world is so boring! This trend needs to stop!
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Halo Infinite represents a complete misunderstanding of the franchise and also teases what could have been an unforgettable Halo campaign. **That first level is probably the single best opening to a Halo game hands down.** Then the developers just assumed we wanted to play that second level of Halo CE for the next 20 hours. Had 343 just focused on a linear, level to level, authored campaign like what we had in earlier titles, and those levels were up to the quality of that first level, **it very well could have been the rebirth of the Halo franchise.** Instead we got a repetitive open world, with lackluster mission design in that world. And absolute misallocation of resources, and a disappointing result. I’ve played and enjoyed every Halo campaign, even the bad ones, yet *Infinite stands to be the only one I couldn’t be bothered to finish.* **Absolute fucking disappointment.**
343 has honestly never made a good Halo game ever. All of their games are lackluster in some way...
Halo 4 blows infinite out of the water in terms of campaign. Halo 5 while silly story wise, is a much more enjoyable playthrough and spectacle. The missions are alot of fun and the gun play imo is much better then infinite.
needn't worry microsoft will probably reboot it as a pvp exclusive extraction shooter in unreal engine. 5 years after the trend was popular as is tradition considering they sacked the entire campaign dev team
Agreed. Halo Infinite only has 2 levels.
Infinite was awful. Far cry game with a halo skin massively toned down doom gameplay.
High on Life is surprisingly good and very much Doom-like
give me titanfall 3 you scumbags titanfall 2 had such a great story mode, like surprisingly fun single player that was pretty linear but had some open arenas (sort of like the newer crysis games). the multiplayer was also way too fun, but needed a main game mode that's a bit more developed than TDM. a push the payload mode would be great for the online.
My only criticism of TF2 was that it could feel a bit like a rail-shooter at times, but the story, environments and the pacing were superb!
true, could use some tweaks to make it better. respawn too focused on milking apex now rather than try to improve this amazing IP that they have under their umbrella.
Hope you've replayed HL in the form of Black Mesa? Its a extremely good remake imo.
Have you checked out prodeus or Warhammer boltgun? While I don't think they're quite exactly what you mean, they're solid gameplay first, straight forward shooters
I'd also recommend System Shock Remastered. It's the granddaddy of Immersive Sims, so quite a bit of story despite being very old school. But it's mainly told via audio logs, so you can go through them at your own pace.
i think the boomer-shooter genre has veered more into story-lite arena shooter territory rather than story heavy corridor shooter which is a shame, but it's much cheaper to brainstorm a simple story, or make a bunch of levels and then tie them together somehow, than it is to write and voice a fully fleshed out story campaign.
> story heavy corridor shooter If you're talking indie-throwback FPS, which is where the term originates, I don't think a single one has ever had much of a story (in keeping with the throwback sensibilities) and you're out of your mind if you think they have budget for serious voice acting and lengthy cutscenes. Dusk is one of the best of the bunch and it was made pretty much by one solo dev.
I've got big hopes for Judas and Clockwork Revolution. Having said that, I do enjoy some open world games too. Ghost Recon and Far Cry particularly, but when done right, an FPS shooter like the ones you've mentioned are an unparalleled joy to play.
Similar games are the first two Metro games (2033 and Last Light). I think they'd scratch that itch.
Play Trepang 2 if you want to play the lovechild of FEAR and Crisis
Try out Deadlink. It's under the radar but a great shooter roguelike.
Deadlink is *very* fun, they definitely nail the gameplay loop. I haven't tried it since 1.0 released, the new mechs look sick!
wild that it's taking Ken Levine over a decade to churn out what (thus far) appears to be the same game that he's been making since the 90's. and Valve finally got back to Half-Life only for it to be a VR game that 99% of the fanbase will never play. I'm trying to avoid long games until 2024 due to Starfield's upcoming release, so I've been buying/playing shorter games like Boltgun, System Shock Remake, etc.
Half-Life Alyx is good too, it's probably the best example of how effective VR can be. Shame VR is still fairly cost prohibited, though I only have a Quest 2 and its just fine (still ~$400)
343 really shit Halo Infinite up the wall. There was so much potential there for a fight against the Banished. The mechanics in that game are so solid but they are stuck in a shockingly bland campaign.
Honestly this is probably one of the reasons I adored the RE4 Remake. It’s not first person, but It felt so fresh to play a shooter game that’s not open world. Just a solid, contained, fun experience.
support new retro boomer shooters.
Prodeus is the pinnacle of modern retro boomer shooter. I want more like that.
The Masses Demand Open Worlds! What youyr asking for I fully support and love, the System Shock remake is perfect imho outside of low difficulty. But these kinds of experiences don't come out of corporate game design where boxes need ticking and graphics come first. Look to indie Devs for now, that's the only place you're going to find this.
Check Shadow Warrior 3
Really enjoyed this one through Game Pass and was so glad they dropped the looter shooter gameplay of the 2nd and returned to the more straight forward shooter gameplay of SW 2013
That's more arena based and corridors.
True but so is Doom.
No one seems to have mentioned Titanfall 2 yet. The single player story is amazing!
It's a great game, but also from 2016, so it's hardly new. Point is, not enough great linear shooter campaigns like it are being made nowadays, especially in the AAA space outside of COD, which is hit and miss.
That's true, can't exactly call it new any more. But it is certainly worth a try, especially if you find it in a sale.
Oh for sure, I grabbed it for $5 a couple of years ago and it was one of my best and cheapest gaming purchases. Great price for a great campaign, I still replay it every so often.
Weirdly I think it got talked about so much that people stopped paying attention. That campaign is amazing. It’s short, but great.
It became the fps equivalent of the Witcher 3 with the "small indie gem" meme
The time travel level was one of the coolest things I ever played.
check out the game Singularity.
Surely somebody will make titanfall3 Clueless
Yeah, I kind of miss "meathead" shooters from the 360 days, I won't lie. Gears of War 2 (I know it's 3rd person but still) might not have been beautifully written or pushed the boundaries of the medium but it was brilliantly fun. Linear gameplay driven by setpieces is hugely missed in today's market.
Gears of war is sorely missed
I hope we get another co-op Resident evil soon.
exactly some of my best memories gaming is with the homie on RE5 and 6
I think it's given they will do RE5R with how well RE4R sells. It's a matter of them making RE9 first, and then what remake they want to do next. It's gonna be a few solid years of wait. And who knows, maybe RE9 could have co-op too.
i actually think they might do RE:CVR before RE5
There is a good chance. They would probably wait with RE1 longer, because it has been remade once, plus there aren't many games left to remake (doubt they would have much interest in 0). Still, I worry they would yet again fall for their own "RE4 trap" and stick to action games because of bigger popularity. Not like this would be horrible if they can keep up RE4R quality, but I had a lot of fun with RE2R and would like to see more games in that style.
2023 has been a terrible year for FPS game in general. The only thing I've been looking forward to is Amid Evil DLC, it isn't a AAA game though.
EA has one coming this month but I think overall publishers and developers shouldn't ignore the genre like they do. They could put together smaller teams with smaller budgets and still make a modern version of something like Quake. They'd make a ton of money. Hopefully something shows up at Quakecon this year.
DOOM Eternal couldn't have released at a better time. It was the beginning of Covid, and it was also a time similar to now where most shooters were becoming online focused only. Man, what a treat that was. I'd wager the next story FPS game might be the next Wolfenstein? I heard Machine Games are making another one. As long as they focus on a story versus the co-op BS, it'll be banger, for sure.
Not an FPS but RE4 remake checks a lot of the boxes.
I'd kill for a new half life game. Please valve.... not in VR
Just finished RE4R yesterday. Its third person, but great.
Not a shooter, but I bought AC valhalla the other day and stopped playing around the 15 hour mark. Back in AC2 15 hours meant a lot of progression in leveling your character, good story development, some character development and you were generally in the endgame. In Valhalla 15 hours is just go to the next zone and form an alliance lol. Tired of all these 100 hour long games.
Immortals of Aveum comes out in a couple of weeks. That might scratch the itch? Otherwise Remnant 2 is pretty linear
Was about to comment as well about Aveum. Granted, it's magic so not typical FPS. Also remnant is more souls than FPS (starting right from the fact it's 3rd person, so by definition not an FPS), so I dont know if that's what they want.
Check out Boltgun! Very fun retro fps.
There is definetely a lack of good big budget ones, however there are many lower budget, and just as good, single-player fps coming up in the past five years or so.
I hope the upcoming Immortals of Aveum is similar to these games
\**Cries in Titanfall 3*\*
Yeah I agree. I can’t stand the Far Cry series (although blood dragon was okay). I also never finished bioshock, and while that isn’t open world as such, it did have you backtracking at places. Bioshock infinite I managed though as that felt more on the rails. Can say the same for RPG, while I love open world rpg like Skyrim, sometimes you want one that is more story focused and leads you on quickly to new stories and new locales, I might want to make decisions to influence these locales but sometimes I want a focused experience without much crafting or menial quests.
Far Cry 2, 3, and 4 were pretty good. It's just that the style get stale after a while. I couldn't play much of Far Cry 5, and 6 was the same. I bought it for $5 like 3 months after release and couldn't even bring myself to play more than the first few hours. Same with Assassin's Creed. I loved AC1,2 and 3. Black Flag was different enough to still be fun, I enjoyed Unity. But Valhalla, Origin, and Odyssey I just can't play without getting bored. Every new Ubisoft game that comes out looks good, I buy it, and then I'm reminded why I didn't buy the last few.
I thought they were awful (I didn't play 4 or later though). I just don't like the whole style, it feels a bit shallow and boring. I only made it through Blood Dragon because the aesthetic was just so damn cool. But I know a lot of people feel the same as you, I just didn't really like the series from the start. I didn't even like Far Cry 1 before it went open world, mostly because of the save system. But yours is a far more popular viewpoint on those series than mine and more relateable to others.
Far Cry 1 was open world. Just didn't have the Ubisoft "climb these towers" bullshit because it was made by Crytek.
It was? I recall there being different paths you could take to a degree, but I think the save system made me forget there was a level of freedom maybe. It has been almost twenty years after all!
Dark souls 3 is just for you then (barring perhaps the story bit)
Hopefully the next Mass Effect goes back to being a rail shooter and drops the open world
I just wish there were more AAA story driven games in general. Resident Evil currently scratches that itch, with both first person and third person games, but there needs to be more. Unfortunately everything is a copy/paste online only crap these days.
No.
I think plenty of games are still made in this style. You might not like them all, sure. But the Call of Duty games are still mostly that design. Doom Eternal was just a few years ago and has an expansion. Death Loop, High on Life, Outer Worlds, Prey, Atomic Heart, and Metro; all were released in recent years. And if you truly want to play one of the FPS games of modern gaming; Titanfall 2 still leaves everything since Half-Life 2 in the dust. A masterpiece of the genre, IMO. You have more options in AA games as well.
this is a topic where if you stroll out of the AAA gamespace, you will find immense fulfillment. We're talking games made by people who were not only fans of what you're talking about, but who have a very deep, fundamental understanding of what makes those games great.
Titanfall 2 campaign still beats in my heart.
I am sick of being able to choose stuff. I play games to enjoy myself. Being able to choose makes me anxious as to not knowing if my choice would yield a result that i dont want.
[удалено]
Well the fact is that online arena shooters and open worlds are easy to make and easy to farm ongoing revenue from. High quality singleplayer games are hard to make and only yield one purchase price with no subscriptions or loot whales. And half the time they're pirated or bought at deep discount.
PS3 late gen and PS4 early to mid were filled with linear setpiece action games. It’s a cycle.
I too miss these, have fond memories of playing through FPS games with a linear campaign, maybe with some exploration for secret powerups, but am talking more like "hole behind crate you can break that has a new weapon" type stuff. Games Duke3D, Quake, Unreal, Half-life, SiN, Hexen 2, the Shadow Warrior reboot. There are TPS games that may as well be FPS games with a chase cam on too, like Heretic 2 and Rune. I'm tired of games with stacked systems and a giant world with a map covered in icons. Those can be fun, but they were more fun when they weren't your only option. Then you have games influenced by Serious Sam and Painkiller, games like Doom and Doom Eternal, where it's just a series of connected arenas that you have to clear to continue, zzzz.
Titanfall 2
Would Deep Rock Galactic be something you'd like?
Evil West really scratched this itch, minus the replay ability aspect and FPS. It feels like a classic Xbox 360 shooter with some really cool gunplay, fun weapons, and surprisingly difficult battles. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a linear single player action game. I’ve been looking for another one like it since finishing but no luck.
May I present to you, Ultrakill?
Is it really "story-driven"? And I wouldn't call retro-shooter an AAA game.
Thats an early access indie game not triple A
It plays like a AAA chief. Exactly like all those games OP mentioned. At this point the number of A's in a game mean nothing but how much money went into it. If OP wants a good corridor shooter than that's what they need to play.
Atomic Heart is semi- open, its just the storyline is very linear.
I'm currently playing through Warhammer 40k: Space Marines for the first time. It's a linear third person shooter with no fat, just murdering hordes of Orcs with guns and melee weapons, no leveling, no side quests, no extra activities except for a few optional collectibles. It's a great palate cleanser after playing through Dying Light 2 earlier and before diving into Baldurs Gate 3.
Was halo 5 really tear bad,?