Over the last couple of years, the shooters I've played have shifted drastically. Where you'd once find me hiding in a bush for 20 minutes to avoid losing my fancy gear in hardcore FPS Escape From Tarkov, nowadays the most competitive I get is an evening of unranked Call of Duty. Even then, tense matches of Search and Destroy have been benched for respawn-enabled modes and 24/7 playlists featuring the game's smallest, silliest maps. The emotional investment that kept me stuck into Tarkov is largely gone – the frustration of losing my loadout outweighs the thrill of taking someone else's – and as my real-world commitments have steadily grown, it's become harder to find time to keep up with the game.
While those tougher and more immersive experiences fell to the wayside, nothing stepped up to replace them. I've doubled down on the best strategy games and sunk a frankly unpublishable amount of time into various RPGs over the last few years, yet the shooter-shaped hole was never repaired. This year, that changed. Not by conscious effort, or a magical reconnection with my love of hardcore games – but through a scattershot of 2024's excellent shooters.
Back with a bang
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review: "Raises the bar for all Warhammer adaptations"
In hindsight, it was clear I'd been falling out of love with the genre for ages. But that spark didn't reignite until the September release of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, which did things that I didn't even think possible with modern technology. Seeing thousands of scythe-armed Tyranids wash over the hive world of Avarax (and better yet, having to wade through them with a chainsword and gun) is some of the most fun I've ever had in a third-person shooter campaign. It was the amount of enemies on-screen and the way that you're encouraged to flow between shootouts and melee combat to survive, yes, but it was also the sky-scraping cathedrals and jungle battlefields that seemed to stretch into distant horizons.
It cut through to my core – a reminder of formative evenings spent in co-op campaigns with my brother, illuminated by the fuzzy glow of a CRT screen and scored with the furious button-clattering din that only children unleashed on controllers can ever muster. Gaming itself was still a novelty, and sitting on the floor before that boxy television was a worship of impossibilities – whether Duke Nukem on the Nintendo 64, or the Xbox 360's smorgasbord of Gears of War, Halo, and Call of Duty – that I ultimately charted my life from. Space Marine 2 is the first game in a long time to ever brush those memories, and by playing it, I'd unwittingly made the first step toward rekindling my passion for the genre.
It's fitting, then, that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launched just a month after Space Marine 2. The first Black Ops, released in 2010, was the last Call of Duty game I fell deeply for before leaving the series on hiatus for over a decade. I adored its setting – it's the reason I'm still so fond of The Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival – and although Black Ops 6 had none of that '60s cool, it oozed the same arcade-y dynamism in its multiplayer. Since Black Ops 6 released, I've likely played it more nights than not. I'm a sucker for its weightless fun: there's no waiting for fights, no stakes, just one sugary hit after another. After falling out of love with hardcore FPS titles due to the time and effort they require, Black Ops 6 has been a much-needed baby step back into playing competitively.
But absence makes the heart grow fonder, and Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl was the ribbon on this year of rediscovery. Appropriately, it was the first Stalker game that sparked my interest in "realistic" FPS games. The genre's brutality – along with mundane features like having to eat and drink – created a level of immersion I'd never experienced outside of the best RPGs, with Shadow of Chornobyl's high stakes proving that shooters could be every bit as absorbing as their more adventurous peer. My first playthrough of Stalker 2 was riddled with bugs, but it was also every bit as harsh and unforgiving as the original trilogy. Bandits could be killed with a single well-placed shot between the eyes, but crucially, so could I. Quality ammo was scarce, and every long-distance trip through The Zone meant plotting a course that allowed for a place to sleep, repair my gear, and sell loot. As you can probably tell from my Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl review, it was a love letter to the grit and realism that drew me to hardcore shooters in the first place, a shot of adrenaline for my slumbering inner sicko.
Looking back, it's all rather poetic. But there was never a plan in place to rekindle my love of shooters, or find something I'd lost. These games just happened to arrive at the right time, quiet reminders of why I'd fallen in love with this genre in the first place. In the years to come, I think we'll see developers take note of this year's wins in particular, whether it's more co-op campaigns, mainstream titles getting weird with it, or outright harder experiences. Shooters have come a long way from those fuzzy CRT screen days, but 2024 has proven that we'll likely never run out of ways to make blasting things fun. Who knew?
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