Most recommended FPS games?

[Skynet]

A lot of times a common criticism I hear about the first-person shooter genre is being too monocolored (brown terrain everywhere), aping Call of Duty, and monotonous gameplay.

I do not know how genuine these comments are, although I've been considering checking out a few games.  I've played the Mass Effect series (and love it), although it's more an FPS/RPG hybrid.  I already own Half-Life 2 and Portal, and loved them both.

I've tried Call of Duty before, although I did not enjoy the gameplay in either single or multi-player.  If I don't like CoD, then would a lot of FPS games on the market be a bad deal for me?

How about Gears of War?  It seems to fit a lot of the cliche tropes, although I remember enjoying the original back in 2006.  How's the latest one, Judgment?

Halo I pretty much played more than I ever could, and won't be getting back into that anytime soon.

A lot of folks recommend Spec Ops: The Line for subverting the genre in particularly horrifying ways, although I heard the gameplay's lackluster.

Metro series?

Battlefield?

What are people's experiences?

[Sabby]

Depends on what you want. If you'd like a half hour of stress relief, try Painkiller: Hell and Damnation. It just drops you in an area and then a few thousand monsters come at you and you just blow their limbs off 20 at a time.

Or, if you'd like something a little more intricate that rewards precision and reflexes, try Rage. That's one of my personal favourite games. Most enemies are a genuine threat on their own, being very mobile and intelligent, yet are easily taken down, so you spend most of your fights dashing from cover to cover and responding quickly to enemies flanking you, sometimes by wall running and trying to lodge an axe in your face. Most successful shots effect them pretty heavily, so it's easy to graze someone with a shotgun blast and then circle strafe out of cover to finish them off before they can crawl back up on their feet and respond.

[Hemingway]

Wolfenstein: The New Order is an excellent game. I want to get that one out of the way right away.

If you're looking to avoid the colors brown and brown-green, let's see ... Far Cry 3, obviously. Crysis is excellent, even if Crysis 3 disappointed me. Titanfall has a lot of color - and is a generally good game. It might not be for you if you're not into Call of Duty, though.

Battlefield is my preferred online shooter. Hardline looks absolutely pointless, though. ( The same with the upcoming Destiny, too - it's like they deliberately tried to make the game as generic as possible! )

[Sasquatch421]

If you want some color you can always give the Borderlands a try. You can also set up the characters how you want them, and there are some RPG qualities to it as your character levels up. Bulletstorm offers a lot of fun as you rack up points to use to buy upgrades and the character talk is fun to listen to. You also get to control a large T-Rex with attached guns by remote control!

One of my personal favs would be F.E.A.R it's a dark game with excellent A.I. They will try to flank you or even set up cover if caught in the open by overturning table or cabinets. Then of course you add in Alma and everything goes up a notch. The later games aren't as good, but do expand on the story if you look for it. The first game you learn more by listening to phone messages and files you find. Quake 4 is also a game I like or you can find the Doom BFG edition.

If you are with your buddies Left 4 Dead is fun or go Unreal Tournament....

[Inkidu]

Some of those you've named aren't first person shooters, but my recommendations:

Bulletstrom
Call of Duty: Black Ops II
Since you like third-person shooters too try Resident Evil 5 and 6. You don't really have to know the series to appreciate the plots.
Halo Reach
Spec Ops: The Line (another third-person shooter), everyone needs to play that game. If I ran a gaming school it'd be required reading.
Doom 3 might be fun for an old-school kick.

[Formless]

If you're looking for a single player experience , The suggestions everyone made so far are great.

However if you're looking for a multiplayer experience , I'd suggest a main stream game solely for the population the game has. Call of Duty ( My own personal favorite ) Isn't as pleasant anymore , unless you've got your own group to play with.

Battlefield on the new generation of consoles is fantastic , but rather dull compared to games like call of duty and borderlands since it is less action based and more strategic ... in a sense.

However , I'd suggest giving Call of Duty Ghosts a try. But not for the multiplayer or the Single player. But for the Extinction mode. I have to say that it is the best addition to the series they ever added. The story is engaging , but here's the downside of it. You'll have to purchase the DLC in order to have more maps for Extinction and continue the story. But the gameplay is very engaging. Some compare it to zombies in previous installments. But its not really a survival game as much as a mission you'll have to complete.

Though I may suggest ' Sniper Elite '  as well , though I admit that it requires much more patience than I have recently.

You've got bioshock as well.

[HairyHeretic]

Planetside 2. There's nothing else like it.

Hundreds of other players across 3 factions, infantry, air and vehicle combat. It helps to run with an organised group, but once you get an idea of what you're doing, you can solo quite nicely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clcbFOGhxMA

It's free to download and free to play.

[Mikem]

You say you've overplayed Halo. Do you mean the ENTIRE Halo series or just Combat Evolved? Honestly, if you have or will get an Xbox One, get the new Halo: The Master Chief Collection set. Halo, Halo 2, and Halo 3 remastered with current day graphics.

I've never played Metro, but I've seen the gameplay. It caters more to the Horror or jump scare crowd, however you should find the Review done by DasBoSchitt on youtube, he really focuses on the really bad aspects of that game.

Battlefield. If you want a Battlefield game that has a pretty great Singleplayer, then buy Bad Company and Bad Company 2. Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 had shitty singleplayer campaigns. People only play them for the multiplayer anyway, even though I never touch multiplayer. Still though, the two BF: Bad Company's are HIGHLY recommended.

Spec Ops: The Line is also recommended. The gameplay is decent enough but the real focus is on the story and how much of a mindfuk it is. And the "enemy" is a United States Army Battalion. Go figure.

And like Hairy said before me, Planetside 2 is a pretty damn good massively multiplayer first person shooter. However because that it's free to play, it is HEAVILY pay to win. If you don't put money into the game you'll find yourself being just obliterated. A lot. Still doesn't mean you can't enjoy most of it anyway.

If you want something a little different with a decent narrative, try Splinter Cell: Conviction. REALLY interesting game, though it's not an FPS, it's a Third Person over the shoulder shooter, though I'm sure you knew that.

And I just need to ask. You said you played Call of Duty and didn't really enjoy it. I'm assuming it was the more recent games, like the Modern Warfare series? Why not try the pre MW games. The early ones set in World War 2 like the original Call of Duty, it's expansions, and Call of Duty 2.

[Nachtmahr]

Well, as most people here have already pointed out it's sort of all about genre really. FPS in itself is more a concept than a class of games. :P I mean, hell, Spyro: Year of the Dragon has FPS elements in it.

Some of my absolute favorites that I'd recommend to anyone at any times are:

Battlefield: Bad Company 2
Crysis / Crysis 2.
Half-Life, if you like classics, or Half-Life 2, which in my opinion is the best video game to date.

And if you'll allow me to get a little abstract: The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

I know, I know. That doesn't make sense right? Well, it does if you play through it using a bow and arrows, which happens to be my preferred playstyle. I find the combat in Skyrim, and any other Elder Scrolls game for that matter, to be rather bland and dull, with 'click for swing one, or click for swing two' being a rather unintuitive system - But the bow mechanics on the other hand are great! And Skyrim just might have the most satisfying Crossbow gameplay in any game to date.
Of course you can't avoid swinging a sword every now and again - But most FPS games have some kind of melee-element to it.

And just to throw my 2-cents at Mikem: I'd definitely not recommend Plantside 2 to anyone unless they're specifically looking for an MMO. If you're European, you're going to run into a ton of issues just getting the game to run, and then comes the fact that you're pretty much just a waste of flesh if you're not paying. And then comes the issue that's the main selling point of Planetside 2: 1000 V. 1000 person battles? AZZUM!
And yes.. Yes, in theory! However, 75% of your time will be spent doing skirmishes that involve perhaps 5 people tops, desperately trying to find each other in huge bases. Not all that entertaining.

[Nachtmahr]

Oh, and I even completely forgot to mention Enemy Front, a newly released current-gen WW2 shooter taking place in Poland. It's pretty much the first really polished WW2 based FPS to come out in years, if you bar all the fantasy-based ones, like the new Wolfenstein. (Which is actually great too, if you like that kind of Painkiller-style mowing down of enemies with really, really big guns.)

[Inkidu]

Be warned though, Half-Life 2 has not aged well mechanically or systemically at all. It has a fairly archaic feel to it and is a good demonstration of how far shooters have actually come.

[scribus1000]

If you're a fan of DOOM, then what might interest you is a mod that's been done for it called brutal doom. Though there's more than one mod and more than one version of a mod as well. I've seen a COD crossover even.

The below is one such iteration: I'm gonna say 2:40 is my favorite bit of that. Though the exploding barrels before that and the ninja kick immediately after both deserve mention. Putting aside the music--Nothing wrong with it, just not my preference--the compilation looks pretty good to me.

http://youtu.be/iZ9WrEzyq3o

[Lux12]

I'd say try Far Cry 3 or Bulletstorm. Far Cry 3 allows for some truly interesting approaches to combat situations. Similarly, Bulletstorm encourages one to be creative with their destruction and it may be a bit crass, but I'll be damned if it's not fun as hell.

[Sabby]

In defense of Half Life 2 and it's expansions, yes, it does feel a bit dated, but it's designed far better then most modern shooters. Every scenario has some unique twist to it, so every time you enter a new 'level' your learning a whole new game again. It's never a slog from one end of a hallway to another shooting bad guys.

Oh no, I'm stuck in a big house with lots of halls and windows and levels and enemies are breaching, there's no where I can hunker down and camp to take them as they come! What a well designed home invasion level! I wonder how many times they repeat this? Never! Because now you're controlling giant insects to help you advance over enemy fortifications! Gee, this is such a cool gimmick they might use it for the whole game! Nope, now you need to take down giant robots who are advancing on your base, but the only weapon that kills them is close range, and they're surrounded by enemies that negate the weapon! Quick, get in your car! Oh no, your out of ammo, search the houses, be quick, they're so close!

Half Life 2 is one of the greatest most well designed shooters ever created.

[Mikem]

Oh oh oh!

If you're going to play the original Half-Life, get Black Mesa, the Source Engine remake. It is absolutely fantastic and stays true to the original. It's completely free and only requires the Source SDK download to function. You won't regret it. It's just beautiful.

[Formless]

Half Life 2 , was so remarkable , it is considered an ' era defining game '.

[Inkidu]

I'm not saying it's not worth playing, but there has been a lot of stuff done in shooters since, and for the better.

[Formless]

A game is worth playing for the content in it , itself.

Modern games and classic games are fun in their own way.

Half Life 2 was good during the time it was released within.

[Inkidu]

A game is worth playing for the content in it , itself.

Modern games and classic games are fun in their own way.

Half Life 2 was good during the time it was released within.

Mechanics and systems are part of the game itself and inform how it's played. So they're important. Things change, but yes it's worth playing.

EDIT: Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light.

Great, detailed shooters.

[Nachtmahr]

Mechanics and systems are part of the game itself and inform how it's played. So they're important. Things change, but yes it's worth playing.

EDIT: Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light.

Great, detailed shooters.

I actually completely disagree with you. I think Half-Life 2 still holds up well today - I really don't see what aspects of it haven't aged well or look/feel archaic. :P In fact, it's even fairly innovative compared to most modern shooters, which in my opinion often feel and handle worse than it. ^^'

As for Metro: I still disagree. :P I've given it about and hour and a half and it just seems like the most dull game released in half a decade. ^^'
It's really pretty, and that's about all it's got going for it. The rest feels really generic, and it's pretty damn annoying how one enemy will go down in 2 shots, and another will take just about 600 bullets without a care in the world!

That, and then the voice acting is just painful to sit through. For whatever reason, everyone in Russia decided that following the apocalypse they'd stop speaking in Russian and just go for the beloved 'English with an entire apple caught in your throat'-accent.
I actually ended up just doing an Alt-F4 when this child started talking to me about spankings. It was just sooo bad. ._.

Edit: Upon further investigation you can actually set the in-game language to proper Russian, and enable subtitles. However, whereas in games like Skyrim and such you will subtitles on everything around you, here you will only get things said directly into your face translated, meaning that you will miss pretty much everything going on around you if you don't speak Russian.
I don't - So now it's bearable to listen to people talking around me, however I've got absolutely no clue what's going on.

[HairyHeretic]

Not entirely sure if you'd consider them FPS games, but both Mechwarrior Online and World of Tanks are quite fun as well.

[Alsheriam]

Titanfall.

[Sabby]

A generally unknown shooter is Clive Barkers Undying. It's a far more varied and cinematic shooter then you'd expect from 2001. Plays pretty fast as well. You're basically a paranormal detective stuck in a mansion filled with cursed inhabitants. You have traditional weapons and steadily learn magic attacks, like resurrecting any bodies that still have all their limbs attached and throwing exploding skulls.

My favourite spell forces them to commit suicide :3

[Inkidu]

Has anyone mentioned Bioshock? Because you know, Bioshock

The second isn't nearly as good as the first, and Infinite is very good, but I think in general Bioshock runs into brand problems. They do things because that's what you expect in a Bioshock game. :|

Still, definitely worth a play.

[Nachtmahr]

Has anyone mentioned Bioshock? Because you know, Bioshock

The second isn't nearly as good as the first, and Infinite is very good, but I think in general Bioshock runs into brand problems. They do things because that's what you expect in a Bioshock game. :|

Still, definitely worth a play.

I completely agree - After the first one they sort of did a lot of things that felt a bit forced, because hey: Bioshock is Bioshock! And they sort of hold back a bit in some parts in my opinion, because they don't want to risk wandering too far away from the original concept. All in all though they're great games for what they are, even if I think they can get a bit too grindy at times. Like, they sort of try and duplicate that Fallout 3/New Vegas feel of combat being weird, but rewarding, except they don't really have any rewards.

I would recommend playing them on higher difficulties though, because for me the most interesting and exciting aspect of the games are definitely the whole magic VS. guns with limited ammo and what not. On easier difficulties you sort of miss out on the whole 'Shit, I'm out of ammo for everything' aspect.

[Formless]

'Shit, I'm out of ammo for everything' aspect.

I think the last time I had that feeling was during Resident Evil 1.

Its good to know some other game can provide that sort of challenge.

[Nachtmahr]

I think the last time I had that feeling was during Resident Evil 1.

Its good to know some other game can provide that sort of challenge.

though not an FPS, but a Third-Person shooter, Dead Space 1 is a pretty good candidate, if played on hard. The curious thing about this particular game is that rather than make all enemies extremely strong, increasing difficulty in this game pretty much just increasing the number of enemies you run into. And  more enemies = more shooting, and more shooting = Less ammo. It provides a rather good challenge in taking down enemies with as few shots as possible to make sure that you have ammo when you need it, and it forces you to focus on killing stuff without shooting at it when you have the chance.

Oh, and Dead Space also happens to have what I'd consider easily the most satisfying and well-designed guns I've seen in the last generation of games. So much weight and power between everything, and instead of tonnes of 'pewpewpew, ratatatatata, pewpew!' you get a bunch of tools, not guns but tools that go 'POW! POW! POW!'

[Drake Valentine]

Not sure what console we are talking bout here since some games are exclusive.

Titan Fall is pretty good.
Killzone 3 is better to me than the next gen one.
Battlefield is alright.
Warhawk(think name of it was, haven't played it in awhile) is interesting.
CoD franchise is just filled with campers, find one in every game and sometimes a team of them.  In fact, I was on a team that wanted to camp one side of the map and I was 'nope *wanders off and starts ranking up k/ds while they camped and still had bad kdrs after the match.*'

The next Rainbow Sixx(think it was) looks promising. So does the Division.Also I played Destiny(preorder so got to try out its alpha) and it is also okay for its combat arena stage.

[Nachtmahr]

I actually think it's sort of funny - And it's a little off topic, so I'm sorry - But how many people are really upset about people 'camping' in multiplayer shooters. xD

Especially when talking about games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, which aren't as much FPS games as they are 'war simulators'.

I mean.. In no war ever since 50's was it an actual strategy to get 16 guys and send them guns blazing against enemy lines and crossing your fingers. :P I don't really play multiplayer games, so of course I can't really take sides in an argument like this, but.. I don't know - As someone who likes stealthier playstyles and scoped weapons: I don't get the camper-hate. It's kinda how war works, and more often than not the better strategy, encouraged by the mechanics and the map. xD

(Let's face it: If developers didn't want to encourage camping-playstyles, they wouldn't add a 16x scope in all their games. :P)

[Formless]

Well being a constant Call of Duty player , I only see those who takes the game beyond its serious boundaries that gets too worked up about how others play , be it camping or using the ' obvious class build '.

With such mentality , they expect everyone to put as much effort into their playing as they do. But that is the easy way towards frustration and losing the fun aspect of the game.

On the other hand , I many times tried the ' camping ' tactics. But it was rather dull. Too many things had to match up in order for it to be fun and effective. A certain map , a certain traffic flow , certain class builds. And most of all , idiots who would rather take the same path trying to kill the camper instead of flanking.

Players who play a game for what its intended to be , i.e. kick back and have some fun , may not be too annoyed by campers.

But I'll be honest. It does tick me off when I am one kill away from my Juggernaut when someone sitting cozily in their camp spot and pick me off when I wasn't aware of them. I mean ... Damn how did I not see him? ::)

[Nachtmahr]

Well being a constant Call of Duty player , I only see those who takes the game beyond its serious boundaries that gets too worked up about how others play , be it camping or using the ' obvious class build '.

With such mentality , they expect everyone to put as much effort into their playing as they do. But that is the easy way towards frustration and losing the fun aspect of the game.

On the other hand , I many times tried the ' camping ' tactics. But it was rather dull. Too many things had to match up in order for it to be fun and effective. A certain map , a certain traffic flow , certain class builds. And most of all , idiots who would rather take the same path trying to kill the camper instead of flanking.

Players who play a game for what its intended to be , i.e. kick back and have some fun , may not be too annoyed by campers.

But I'll be honest. It does tick me off when I am one kill away from my Juggernaut when someone sitting cozily in their camp spot and pick me off when I wasn't aware of them. I mean ... Damn how did I not see him? ::)

^

Thanks a ton! My point exactly! If you get killed by a camper: Fair enough, you might have not been paying all that much attention to your surroundings, or just not have thought of the possibility of someone lying in some remote spot, ready to pick you off.

If you die the exact same camper, in the exact same spot again? Now that's 100% on you! You know he's most likely there, and if you choose to go down the same path, get picked off, and complain? Oh come on! 'Fool me once...' am I right? When I've done any camping in battlefield and such, the people who get angry are, 75% of the time at least, the people who will constantly run into my line of fire, again and again, when they've got a choice of 10 paths or whatever. At that point, it doesn't matter if I've got a high-caliber sniper rifle or blowpipe for heavens sake. xD If you're that silly, you might as well die in an attempt to do origami in a shed right next to the enemy tank parking lot!

[Drake Valentine]

I digress.

Some games can make it harder to camp, the Battlefield ones for example with destroyable buildings or have vehicles on map will solve that.

CoD lacks that feature and most of the maps are not as large as some of the Battlefield ones. In fact CoD has very few 'large' maps. There isn't much tactical about sitting somewhere in corner of a map the entire game and I do not see how people can really just do that. People that put money in a game just to sit in one spot and wait for someone to shoot throughout the entire game? Really? I can understand if you were somewhere sniping on a map, but just holding yourself up in one area through the match waiting for someone to either enter or walk by is 'lame.'

I would not consider CoD a war stimulator game in multiplayer mode; there are better candidates for that such as former mention Battlefield, Bullet Storm, Warhawk, and there was one more which name is eluding me. CoD overall smaller base maps are meant for the 'ahem' running around guns blazing tactics, not sitting somewhere in a corner like a little girl through the entirety of a match waiting on kills.

[Wheeler97]

I enjoy Battlefield 3 and 4 for my FPS. I used to play Call of Duty but lost interest after Modern Warfare 2.

There have already been a lot of suggestions, so the following are some of my preferences.

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 is great fun, though older. It is first-person that very fluidly switches to third-person when taking cover, and the aiming systems align well as you go between the two.

I also loved Ghost Recon Future Soldier. I haven't tried Phantoms, the new online-only Ghost Recon. These are third-person shooters, but you did say that you liked Mass Effect, which was third-person.

[Nachtmahr]

I have recommended the game 'Enemy Front' in this thread, and for that I'm so very, very sorry. I've played a fair chunk of it now, and once I looked at it with critical eyes, rather than ones that had just spent 30 Euro's that I didn't actually have at the time.. Don't go anywhere near this festering pile of broken bull****.

There are so many bugs, glitches and weeping flaws in the design of this game that I barely even know where to begin. It's story is weak, it's characters are weak, nothing really makes sense about the setup you're given, and apparently Nazi's are psychic and can detect sneaking people 100 meters away from them, through 5-foot thick walls of solid rock, which they will proceed to shoot you through with alarming accuracy. The difficulty is an outright joke, with the choice of 'Walk in the park, Walk in the park or easy', except as mentioned before when the game decides to cheat. There are also some terrible crashing and save-corrupting issues, not to mention the awful pop-in, where furniture will spawn on top of you 5 seconds after entering a room, rooting you to the spot and forcing you to reload.

Oh, and you can only reload saves, and not in any way physically save the game. All saving is done through reaching checkpoints, and where this might not sound outright awful, it is when these can be very, very far away from each other, leaving you to slam your face against a brick wall full of pointy bits until you break through.

I thoroughly suggest not buying this game.

[Liquiddragon]

I don't have much time left for playing fps but when I do have even a little time I have three games I go to...

Counter-Strike - not first choice anymore but I've been playing the game since it first came out and I had dial up internet so for me it's mostly nostalgia and because I do enjoy the game still.

Team fortress 2 -  This game is a lot of fun.  The people are great and there is a class for everyone to enjoy.  Best part about it is it's totally free!!  You can buy stuff through the game but it's all cosmetic and definitely not pay to win. 

Battlefield 4 - just a great game overall.  I saw someone mention hardline earlier and yeah it's ok...  Just stick to battlefield 4.  The new dlc that just came out has some great well balanced maps that actually makes you feel like you always fighting for momentum.  Some of the old maps are soo big you have to work to keep up with the action. 

Those are the 3 main fps I recommend.  Another recommendation I have is the fallout series.  You "could" play them in first person.  It would be a unique way of doing it but would be fun.  Fallout 3 and new Vegas are the ones I would recommend. 

[Mikem]

Oh, oh I forgot about a couple of WW2 shooters.

Brothers in Arms, and it's sequel, Road to Hill 30.

[Nachtmahr]

I've been giving Homefront a chance, and what I found was that it wasn't particularly endearing. In fact, it turned out to be annoying, more so than anything else.

The menus are broken, and some are simply just disabled for.. Reasons I guess. The gameplay is bland, and by no means inventive, but probably as generic as it gets with modern shooters. The plot is questionable and sort of goes with the whole theme of 'It's okay to be a racist, as long as it's towards someone that America doesn't like'. At the same time, it paints the rather dull image of a hag-tag crew of policemen, civilians and perhaps a single soldier or two sprinkle din there can mow down an entire, trained army with postmodern equipment that'd make a green beret weep.

What's even more annoying is that this game came out at a point in time where 'interactive cutscenes' were all the rage, so where you can press a single button to skip the pointless story in some games, this one decides to slap the objective 'Follow' on your screen, and then force you to sit through 20 minutes of forced dialog between cardboard-cutout characters that the game expects you to feel something for I guess. While it is mildly humorous that you can decide to spend said 20 minuted ignoring them, and staring at a man milking a goat instead, it just doesn't excuse the fact that you aren't allowed to play the game until the game feels like it. But I gave it yet another chance after this 20 minute period of doing absolutely nothing, and I was given a brief gauntlet-section that starts with one guy talking a lot, and then finishing it all up by adding 'Just follow the plan'. For those who don't know, this means that you are going to be severely punished for trying to be the slightest bit creative with how you go through the game, and it doesn't fail. If you don't follow the plan then you're going to die, over and over again. It's as simple as that. Thanks to this laziness on the developers part, the whole game feels more like an unpleasantly long tutorial for moderns hooters in general, than a game.

Oh, and after this brief gauntlet that really wasn't anything more than a QTE without any prompts, you're greeted by, yes indeed: Another 'interactive' cutscene that you can't skip!

2,5/7

Pretty for it's time, but bland and pointless.

[Revelation]

I'm gonna give a bit of an oddball recommendation here.

Eye: Divine Cybermancy is a bit of a weird FPS. You play as an agent of a secret demon fighting organization in a science fiction/cyberpunk/fantasy hodgepodge. Besides the completely loopy and surreal story the game has an amazing and slick art direction that oozes style and substance. The gameplay can be kind of fun too, as you increase your characters abilities in various things like gunplay, body enhancement, melee, hacking skills, and psionic skills from creating various duplicates of yourself to simply teleporting into an enemy to killing them. As mentioned, theres a hacking system in game as well and if you fail at hacking a door, the door is gonna hack you back and it's not fun!

The downsides might be that while the AI is at times interesting or unique, it can also sometimes feel really stupid and the game can just throw a ton of mooks at you to try and deal with these stupid AI's. The sometimes shoddy translation can make understanding the already strange plot even harder so that could also damage immersion as well. Theres also 32 (Not 4 like I previously said. 32.) player coop, which means the game gets even more insane when playing with friends. the game also goes on sale frequently, I picked it up for about 3 dollars and have gotten about 60 hours worth of gameplay from it.

I will also say that this game is seriously a hot mess. The game is very confusing. You will not really know what is going on when you get thrust into character creation. You will not know what is going on halfway through the game. The game does not explain things very well. The UI is pretty damn confusing and you are best off looking online for a guide. You will gain Brouzouf without really knowing why. In coop a door will hack you and cause you to shoot your friends. You will break your legs, and then your legs will be OK.

But if you want to play a game where guns have a visceral meaty feel and where your sniper rifle takes off a guys arm, this is it. If you want to play a super speedy ninja dual wielding katanas jumping several stories into the air, or a powered armor psychopath with a minigun mowing down your foes, or a hacker/mind controller who remotely hacks into the brains of your enemies to brainwash them, or if you want to jump off a roof and kill a helicopter with your exploding sword? This is the game that lets you do all of those.

[TheGlyphstone]

Only one person's mentioned the Borderlands games so far (BL1, BL2, and the upcoming Pre-Sequel, basically BL1.5), which is kind of a shame

As said, it's a FPS with a heavy injection of RPG elements. Combat is pretty bog-standard modern FPS...shoot stuff, limited arsenal of guns, regenerating shields+ health pool. You customize your character via leveling up to gain new abilities or boosts to existing ones from 3 different skill trees (per character), or via an account-legacy system of achievements to get 'Badass Points' spent on unlocking account-wide bonuses. Quests are handed out by NPCs, both main-story and a dizzying assortment of side quests, and the loot is randomized in the best hack-and-slash fashion for endless swapping, upgrading, exchanging, and replacing. And it allows up to 4-person co-op while still being tuned for single-player. The AI is acceptable - enemies act independently without coordination, but individually they're fairly smart as far as seeking cover, strafing, and stuff like that.

And of course, the setting, which I think is the best part of the whole thing. The utter, balls-to-the-wall morass of bugnuts insanity, zaniness, and jokes/references of varying subtlety levels that is the planet Pandora turns Borderlands from an otherwise competent but unremarkable Diablo 2 With Guns into a black-comedy madhouse that revels and wallows in its own silliness while still remaining oddly poignant at times. When you're setting aside your quest to save the world from an unstoppable alien monster sealed away for thousands of years to help out an ethically suspect doctor who needs a delivery picked up from his literal 'arms dealer'...yeah. The whole game is like that.

[Drake Valentine]

I liked Borderlands and 2, just that, I lost interest after awhile of playing the game. It is an interesting concept with 'Diablo' like weapons and whatnot, but overall the game felt like it was lacking something. Single player wasn't as fun since you don't have multiplayer experience. I doubt I will get the prequeal since I never beat either of the two games- that is how quickly my interest in them vanished. Not saying they are bad, they just didn't fully meet my standards and expectations to maintain an active level of interest in playing it any further than I did.

Destiny on the other-hand. Now that is an interesting game 'mostly.' You can character build. Adjust your features, choose between three races and three-five classes? Think it was three classes, unsure. I know only one gets 'sniper' rifle and everyone else gets a shotgun for their secondary gun or whatever it was. Also, weapons have levels, maybe even special abilities. Been playing around with the alpha, though level cap is 10 on it(alpha, no doubt it is much higher in actual game whenever it releases.) Enjoying what I played so far, wish you could take cover though, but no game is perfect I guess. Also the classes branch off into another class or two other classes, but those are locked in the Alpha and only one is revealed for each class with another sot shaded out and teased for the other possible class. Also I noticed there were world events when playing around(the game is an MMO shooter after all) so sometimes special things happen and you can participate if you want for experience rewards and maybe loot. Unsure on the latter of rewards, I haven't put that much time in it.

[Sasquatch421]

I do have one other I can recommend at the moment: Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon... Pretty much a throwback to the 80's action flicks with humor thrown in. Names are totally out there (Rex Colt who just happens to be a cyborg) A reto styled FPS with 80's action music, lot's of one liners and Jane Fonda on the paper money. You upgrade your weapons by doing side missions and killing the wandering wildlife. The leveling system is different from Far Cry 3, here you pick up your character upgrades by just getting to the next level. No decision making just get to level 9 and get any perks that go with it. Might be too simple for some, but opinions vary all the time.

Also to point out if you keep your eyes open, the old movie references are all over... The pistol is called the AJM 9 and the weapon description says its named after a Detroit police officer who died in the line of duty "fighting the creeps "of the Detroit mega slums". It is also a dead ringer for the pistol wielded by Robocop so you can probably guess what AJM stands for?

I really have thought about Destiny when it comes out, but the online only part makes me pause. I'm on a farm in Nebraska and my internet isn't the greatest at times...

[Nachtmahr]

I'm gonna give a bit of an oddball recommendation here.

Eye: Divine Cybermancy is a bit of a weird FPS. You play as an agent of a secret demon fighting organization in a science fiction/cyberpunk/fantasy hodgepodge. Besides the completely loopy and surreal story the game has an amazing and slick art direction that oozes style and substance. The gameplay can be kind of fun too, as you increase your characters abilities in various things like gunplay, body enhancement, melee, hacking skills, and psionic skills from creating various duplicates of yourself to simply teleporting into an enemy to killing them. As mentioned, theres a hacking system in game as well and if you fail at hacking a door, the door is gonna hack you back and it's not fun!

The downsides might be that while the AI is at times interesting or unique, it can also sometimes feel really stupid and the game can just throw a ton of mooks at you to try and deal with these stupid AI's. The sometimes shoddy translation can make understanding the already strange plot even harder so that could also damage immersion as well. Theres also 32 (Not 4 like I previously said. 32.) player coop, which means the game gets even more insane when playing with friends. the game also goes on sale frequently, I picked it up for about 3 dollars and have gotten about 60 hours worth of gameplay from it.

I will also say that this game is seriously a hot mess. The game is very confusing. You will not really know what is going on when you get thrust into character creation. You will not know what is going on halfway through the game. The game does not explain things very well. The UI is pretty damn confusing and you are best off looking online for a guide. You will gain Brouzouf without really knowing why. In coop a door will hack you and cause you to shoot your friends. You will break your legs, and then your legs will be OK.

But if you want to play a game where guns have a visceral meaty feel and where your sniper rifle takes off a guys arm, this is it. If you want to play a super speedy ninja dual wielding katanas jumping several stories into the air, or a powered armor psychopath with a minigun mowing down your foes, or a hacker/mind controller who remotely hacks into the brains of your enemies to brainwash them, or if you want to jump off a roof and kill a helicopter with your exploding sword? This is the game that lets you do all of those.

I tried this out for a bit, and I just couldn't find head nor tail of it. I think most of the text was poorly written or translated using Google Translator or something, while everything around me seemed completely nonsensical. Did I just get a bad first impression, or is all this true - And if it is, does it get any better later on? o.O I think I made i through the tutorial, and that was it - And I was frankly astonished that it could somehow be considered a fully released title.

[Drake Valentine]

I tried this out for a bit, and I just couldn't find head nor tail of it. I think most of the text was poorly written or translated using Google Translator or something, while everything around me seemed completely nonsensical. Did I just get a bad first impression, or is all this true - And if it is, does it get any better later on? o.O I think I made i through the tutorial, and that was it - And I was frankly astonished that it could somehow be considered a fully released title.

Same. I gave up on it. Interesting concept, bad presentation.

[Formless]

And the new Call of Duty became ... A halo/titanfall rip off.

I'd suggest it but ... I'm not even sure if I'm gonna like it.

[HairyHeretic]

Are there really that many unique FPS games out there? Each one is going to have the opportunity to draw some influence from other games that have introduced new ideas / mechanics or have sold well, in the hope of drawing on that success themselves.

I don't mind an FPS using someone else's mechancis if the game is good.

[Formless]

I wouldn't say a unique feature to game when it comes to mechanics. But the execution of said mechanics what always settles the debates.

In other genres such as Classic RPGs , some games provide a better character customization options as you level up , while others just provide a lackluster system that seems to be strung together for the sake of it being there.

A perfect example would be the Final Fantasy Series. The game starts out with unique characters , but midway through the game , the characters slowly become carbon copies of each others.

So my worries about his whole new Call of Duty is how well will they execute these mechanics. Flaws are bound to arise but how big these flaws will be.

[Revelation]

Same. I gave up on it. Interesting concept, bad presentation.

I tried this out for a bit, and I just couldn't find head nor tail of it. I think most of the text was poorly written or translated using Google Translator or something, while everything around me seemed completely nonsensical. Did I just get a bad first impression, or is all this true - And if it is, does it get any better later on? o.O I think I made i through the tutorial, and that was it - And I was frankly astonished that it could somehow be considered a fully released title.

As I said, the game does suffer from a poor translation. There is a mod out for it that does a better job at translating the dialogue but on the other hand it does remove some of the actual wordplay and motif from the game.

And yeah, it's a hard game to really get into. It's a fairly large wall to scale at first and even after that it just might not be a good game to peoples standards. I have 60 hours in it, I loved the surreal charm and how nothing seemed to make sense... But once you finish the game, all the bizarre, dreamlike, and just out there quirks and things about the story and dialogue will make much more sense. But before then, the game can seem really weird, buggy at times, and just a sloppy mess of ideas.

With that in mind it's still one of my favorite FPS games once I felt myself immersed into it.

[Nachtmahr]

That's the thing - It seems like it just wants to do a little too much. The tragic beauty of the game is that it wants to spin plates on it's head while playing the banjo and painting an up-to-scale replica of the Last Supper with it's toes, and it does all of those things. It's even fairly good - But it's just too much. Everything more or less functions as it's supposed to, but there's just too many features to keep track of. I love open-ended gameplay and being given options as to how I want to deal with a situation. In fact, scrap 'options' - I love it when a game lets me be creative and just solve a situation my own way, like how Crysis 1 would offer you an open battlefield, a variety of tanks, rifles and hidden paths. But E.Y.E just gives me a few too many, too abstract and obscure options, without ever really explaining the pros and cons of each one. And the tutorial system is a bit junky to be honest - And the way communication works feels rather archaic.

Comparing E.Y.E to my golden standard of Half-Life 2 I'd say that it's both a decade ahead and a decade behind.

Oh, and not allowing me to switch the toggled ADS (Aim Down Sights) off? That's a big minus!

[Sel Nar]

My list of Most-reccomended FPS games.

Wolfenstein 3D.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
Wolfenstein 2009
Wolfenstein: The New Order

Doom
Doom 2
Final Doom
Brutal Doom
Doom 3

FEAR
FEAR2

The Operative: No One Lives Forever
No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way

System Shock 2 (Note: Very Strong RPG Elements in this; can be played as a non-shooter, but generally you want at least one 'bang' skill)

Sniper Elite V2
Sniper Elite 3

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl
STALKER: Call of Pripyat

Metro 2033
Metro: Last Light
(Get the Redux pack which is reelased in just over a week; full revamp of both games)

Alpha Protocol can be played as a shooter (Third-person perspective); the game gives you incredible freedoms in that regard.

Dead Space
Dead Space 2 (and Severed DLC)
Dead Space 3 (And Awakening DLC)

(All third-person, all damn good action-horror games)

Resident Evil 4 and 5 also count as good Third-person action-horror.

[Drake Valentine]

Wasn't there an old PC game that was kind of like Doom or a Doom-ish clone? Like original old school pixel-ish graphics.

[Sel Nar]

Off the top of my head, Blake Stone, Heretic, Hexen, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D... There's been a metric Fuckton of 'Doom Clones'

[TheGlyphstone]

It, and its immediate predecessor Wolfenstein 3D, founded the FPS genre after all. And Doom was, in a way, a Wolfenstein clone.

Doom, Quake, Half-Life, and Halo, in chronological order, are the four games I'd give the most credit to for creating what we know as the FPS genre. A lot of other games innovated on their respective formulae, but for the most part, minus a few oddballs, were/are "______ clone with Twist X". Medal of Honor gets honorary credit not for gameplay elements, but for setting off the endless run of WW2-themed shooters.

[Drake Valentine]

Thats it. Quake reminded me of Doom.

[TheGlyphstone]

Thats it. Quake reminded me of Doom.

Quake was itself a Doom clone, but with the use of 3D polygons instead of pre-rendered sprites, and it introduced multiplayer modes other than straight-up deathmatch. It was also the first game to feature rocket-jumping.

[Drake Valentine]

Quake was itself a Doom clone, but with the use of 3D polygons instead of pre-rendered sprites, and it introduced multiplayer modes other than straight-up deathmatch. It was also the first game to feature rocket-jumping.

Not saying it was a bad game, actually like Quake(if it was one I am thinking of.)  I dunno, one of them had some sort of flying demon like creatures that shot fireballs at you(I believe.) And one of the final levels was hard as fuck. >_< Not sure if it was Quake, Doom, or some other FPSer. Only things I remember were flying demon critters, a chainsaw(maybe), and some demon dogs and weird monsters. Think the final level had shit ton of enemies and lava, plus I think you had to go to one end of the game pretty much to a box thing to end the level(if any of that makes sense.)

[Formless]

The only game I can think of that looks like the original doom on PC was ' Blood'.

That face grabber was a menace.