Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 completed its beta testing on September 26, and, despite a few hiccups, Kick-Arse actress Chloë Grace Moretz (and, presumably, other people) want to know what to play while waiting for the full game’s release on October 28.
So.. Now the beta is offline what should I be playing in the meantime..?! I rotate through vanguard, ffxiv, gta online, Cold War
— Chloë Grace Moretz (@ChloeGMoretz) September 26, 2022
I’ve always associated Call of Duty games with older brothers and boys in my neighbourhood that wear checkerboard Vans. Because I’m only an older sister and prefer wearing Swedish Hasbeens, I’ve relegated myself to playing Ratchet & Clank games until the end of time.
But when Chloë Grace Moretz asks for games to fill the military-industrial-complex-shaped hole in her hobby time, I must spring into action. I teamed up with Kotaku staff writer Levi Winslow to deliver you a list of shooting-heavy games — mostly first and third-person shooters — to help fill your next month. We’d also love to see you leave some of your own recommendations in the comments. No pressure in disclosing your status as a Vans owner.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
Before there was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, there was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The 2009 sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare has everything you want from an instalment of the franchise: terrorism, racism, and a soundtrack by Hans Zimmer.
Sorry, kidding! We’re all friends here. More seriously, Modern Warfare 2 is one of the more beloved Call of Duty games, and its face-blastingly fast pace will scratch your FPS itch until its twin pops up in October. You might want to stick to its campaign, though — recent Steam reviews warn that the game’s multiplayer is currently run by no-good hackers.
Doom Eternal
While we’re on the topic of face-blasting, Doom Eternal is an ideal option for CoD players most attracted to the quickness and the sick satisfaction they get in gunning enemies down, rapid-fire. This game makes you feel like you’ve gorged yourself on jet fuel and caterpillars, like your stomach is slowly oozing open.
It’s disgusting and perpetually stuck in overdrive. Toothy, scaly enemies throw themselves at you constantly, practically begging you to use your chainsaw on them. The growling, industrial soundtrack helps you feel like even more of an ultra-powerful monster, and I love playing this game even though most FPSes make me hopelessly nauseous.
Control
The action-adventure game Control has much of CoD’s spirit — the darkness, the politics, the omnipresence of black pants — but it hones that spirit into something sharp.
Dangerous. Scary. Rooted in the paranormal, Control can be as frightening as it is adamant about delivering a tight third-person shooter experience. But it unsettles in an inviting way, with a plot that’s captivatingly twisty and unsure about the whole working-for-the-man thing. Fans of CoD’s supernatural storylines will find creepy refuge here.
Dishonored
Call of Duty does have a single-player campaign, though it’s usually forgettable when viewed next to the game’s try-hard online multiplayer.
Still, if you’re looking for a single-player shooter experience that’ll really test your intuition and perception, along with your accuracy and reflexes, Arkane Studios’ Dishonored series will do just that.
Take your pick: Between the series’ 2012 originator, 2016’s sequel Dishonored 2, and 2017’s standalone expansion Death of the Outsider, there’s plenty of shooting and stabbing to go around — just like any Call of Duty game. And with all three games being pretty short, the sort of thing you can probably finish in a weekend if you play straight through, you can definitely have a complete and satisfying Dishonored experience before Modern Warfare 2 comes out. -Levi Winslow
Hunt: Showdown
Dirty, muggy first-person shooter Hunt: Showdown is a multiplayer bounty-hunting game and fully wicked nightmare. Gun down four squealing bosses in a disease-riddled, 19th-century Louisiana to collect a bounty, or simply kill other players and take their bounty instead. Anything goes if you stay alive long enough to safely make it to an extraction spot and leave the game.
Too bad everything in it — both the other players and the decaying monsters that stalk it — want to kill you. Still, it’s brutal fun, just the way you like it.
Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault
Hm, a Ratchet & Clank game? On a COD-inspired slideshow? Strange. But not completely out of left field. Because of its emphasis on assault, I’d say Full Frontal Assault is one of the more COD-minded installments in the 20-year-old creature series Ratchet & Clank.
Haha, kidding! Again! Full Frontal Assault has a fairly different approach to shooting than COD — it even has a different approach to it than other Ratchet & Clank games. Unlike those games, which are mostly third-person shooters with platforming elements, the PS3 download Full Frontal Assault prioritises tower defence.
In 2012, Stephen Totilo wrote on Kotaku that the game had parallels to multiplayer online battle arena League of Legends, and could be “as deeply engaging and as complex in strategy as its MOBA predecessors.” Ultimately, Full Frontal Assault’s departure from its genre hurt its legacy, but its novelty as a jumbled-up shooter makes it worth a try.
Titanfall 2
Respawn’s mech-piloting shooter Titanfall is quite simply one of the best shooters ever made. Gunplay is tight and precise. Movement is fluid and exhilarating. The guns are punchy and unique. Firefights are tense and frenetic. All the good qualities of a Call of Duty game are amplified in the Titanfall series, with the added benefit that you can also operate a big-arse robot to fight other big-arse robots. What’s not to like?
Yeah, the servers could use some TLC, especially with hackers exploiting the multiplayer experience, but even still, Titanfall is an exceptional shooter. Whether you play the OG 2014 game or the 2016 sequel, Titanfall is usually a pretty good time if you’re a Call of Duty fan. -LW
Wolfenstein: The New Order
As hothouses of melancholy historical fiction, any Wolfenstein first-person shooter would appeal to a COD devotee, but I’m focusing on post-World War II instalment The New Order for its intriguing balance of blood and care. Though its plot can sometimes be a bit hamfisted in its quest to make you cry, The New Order succeeds in adding thoughtfulness to a typically mindless, bloodthirsty genre. You can still kill, like, a shit ton of Nazis, though.
“This isn’t just a first-person shooter,” Mike Fahey wrote in his 2014 review for Kotaku, “it’s a character-driven work of art.”
Ratchet & Clank
Weird, there’s another Ratchet & Clank game on this list? I have no choice but to go with it.
The 2016 remake of the first instalment of the Ratchet & Clank series is almost exactly like all of the Call of Duty games. It has an engaging story that facilitates some good, clean, fun shooting, and has a hard mode you can use as an excuse to scream at eighth graders on voice chat.
Apex Legends
Respawn Entertainment’s battle royale shooter Apex Legends has sustained its popularity for a few reasons, but the biggest one is how good the gunplay feels. I mean, this is the team that made Titanfall, after all, one of the most exhilarating shooting franchises to grace consoles in a minute.
Putting a few bullets in some online randoms is crunchy and impactful, and the game’s tense skirmishes in tight corridors mirror some of the best action in Call of Duty’s online multiplayer.
While they’re not totally the same genre — one’s an action shooter, the other’s a battle royale — Apex Legends is still a solid FPS that’ll help kill plenty of time until Modern Warfare 2 drops. -LW
Splatoon 3
This is a fun one. You wouldn’t think Nintendo’s colourful and eclectic paint-splattering shooter would come close to the white-knuckled ferocity of a Call of Duty game, but trust me, get in the right lobby with the right players and Splatoon 3 transforms into a COD-style Hardcore Team Deathmatch.
Some folks take Splatoon way too seriously, gunning for a high kill/death ratio as if that’s the point. But that fact alone, mistaking Splatoon 3‘s turf-inking objective for a kill-dominating one, makes the game feel right at home alongside all the other Call of Duty shooters. -LW
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
Another Ratchet & Clank, huh? It’s starting to feel targeted at this point. It’s almost like I love Ratchet & Clank and want to marry it. But no, all this Clanking is relevant to this slideshow. Trust me.
This Ratchet & Clank is very similar to Call of Duty — you need to imagine that Ratchet and Clank’s eternal enemy, Dr. Nefarious, is a Soviet country of your choice and that Ratchet himself is from Omaha. This game also has fairly elastic rocket travel, so you can move around and complete small challenges not unlike the minigames in Black Ops or WWII. Ratchet & Clank is more or less the same series as Call of Duty. Just close your eyes.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
I like this Ratchet & Clank because there is a girl Ratchet.
Ratchet & Clank Collection
You know what? You should play all of them.
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