An FPS game doesn't need flawless gunplay to achieve greatness, but it certainly helps. The recoil animation, sound design, hit reactions, weight, and responsiveness all combine to define a game's gunfeel​​​​​, and when they all hit the mark, you get something truly magical. Even if the rest of the campaign consists of nothing but awfulness, a shooter might still be worth playing if it feels amazing to fire a pistol, an SMG, or (most importantly) a shotgun.

For this article, let's just focus on the heart and soul of first-person shooters. These are excellent games to throw on when you want to blast something in the face and feel like a badass while doing it. While I wouldn't necessarily include all these titles in a "best FPS games" discussion, they are all fairly complete packages, even if their gunplay far exceeds everything else.

For the sake of variety and novelty, I'm going to cover both AAA and indie releases.

Let's start with perhaps a surprising pick, especially since Selaco has yet to leave early access. Built by Altered Orbit Studios on a heavily modified version of GZDoom, this indie darling smashes the environmental violence of F.E.A.R. with modern immersive sim pacing and voxel graphics, creating a symphony of destruction that makes even missed bullets feel impactful.

Every shot leaves an impact, be it the (now dead) enemies or the surrounding environment that has been reduced to fragments of drywall, ceramic tiles, and glass. Gunfeel isn't solely defined by how good it feels to pull the trigger, but also by what happens after the bullet leaves the chamber.

Source link