One of the most original FPS games of the current generation is also one of its most fiendishly addictive. A snappy and ultra slick shooter, Splitgate answers the question: “what would happen if Halo and Portal had a baby?” Well, not only would the tyke have a seriously twitchy trigger finger, it would also behave far better than you would ever think. With an impactful arsenal that matches the Master Chief’s armory at its best, Splitgate’s frenzied free-to-player multiplayer mayhem always feels satisfying. Yet it’s the additions of those portals that add a layer of strategy and bristling chaos to what’s already becoming an iconic FPS.
Riot Games’ attempt to take CS:GO’s competitive FPS crown. It’s like a mix of Valve’s twitchy shooter and Overwatch’s over-the-top heroes: it is, at its heart, still a tactical FPS in which positioning is king and you die in one headshot, but every class has flashy skills and abilities that can turn the course of a round. Some of them let you leap high in the air, others ping enemy positions, while ultimate abilities can damage enemies through walls and clear out entire areas. It’s more colorful than CS:GO, but the clean visuals prove that the emphasis is on substance over style.Its short stint in Early Access is a testament to how much polish Riot put into its design, and how balanced its maps and heroes are. Both will only improve over time.
The best Call of Duty campaign ever made… and it’s not close. Dragging the series kicking and screaming from the bloody and muddied trenches of WWII, Modern Warfare re-energized an FPS juggernaut with a breakneck, perfectly paced campaign that’s been copied by countless other military shooters since, yet never been remotely matched.
Kicking down doors with the iconic Captain Price in an electrifying, rain-lashed tanker infiltration. Watching in scarcely believable horror as the character you’ve played half the game as gets vaporised by a pesky little mushroom cloud. Holding your actual breath as a sniping duo scuttle through the tall, grassy fields and empty, echoing playgrounds of Pripyat in the all-timer of a mission, ‘All Ghillied Up’. The original Modern Warfare is so good, you could throw every other COD at it and the remastered 2007 FPS would still boast more memorable moments than the entire series combined.
How to describe Borderlands 3… you could say it’s the underlying principles of the first and second Borderlands wrapped up in a more pristine shell. Or you could call it World of Warcraft: The First-Person Shooter. With its heavy emphasis on loot, loot, and more loot, Borderlands 3 drowns players in a sea of guns with varying abilities and stats (including a gun that shoots saw blades, and one you can throw like a boomerang while it carries on firing, wounding anyone nearby), conveniently color-coded by rarity. The colorful cast of characters breaks away from the traditional “fighter, wizard, rogue” archetypes, and each hero is memorable in their own right.
It doesn’t quite have the character of Borderlands 2. We miss Krieg. Oh, Krieg, you crazy barbarian poet. And none of Borderlands 3’s villains fill us with anger the way Handsome Jack did. But in terms of shooting and looting, preferably in co-op, it still stands as the zenith of the Borderlands formula.
Happy-KingDom 