First-person shooters are a tough genre to get into if someone has never played them before. Mastering moving and aiming simultaneously can be a lot to take in. Shooters have since expanded this concept with tons of new mechanics and improved the design of maps and the way guns fire themselves.
For many FPS fanatics, the genre might appear stale with how many games have copied Halo or Call of Duty. It is certainly a problem, but there are plenty of challenging FPS titles that will give the most experienced gamers a challenge. From competitive multiplayer games to one-life single-player campaigns, here are the 15 hardest FPS games anyone can play today.
Updated on November 25th, 2020 by Derek Draven: We’ve added some more entries to the list of the hardest FPS on the block. Some are old, some are new, but each one is guaranteed to provide a crushing challenge for even the most stalwart of gamers. Invest in a stress toy or a punching bag before tackling any of them.
15 Deus Ex
The original Deus Ex was a marvel of imaginative cyberpunk storytelling and some elite RPG elements married to an FPS framework. It was also bloody hard due to its reliance on tactics instead of running and gunning. Indeed, soldiering in was simply not a viable option.
Deus Ex is also difficult for many other reasons, including an overabundance of choice. Players had to understand how their skill points would affect the gameplay, which meant determining their preferred play style. Without a game plan, it was notoriously hard to slog through without being beaten to a pulp.
14 Killzone 2
Perhaps it’s the controller-only scheme or the dark environments, but Killzone 2 is not exactly the easiest FPS game on the block. There are many sequences where the player can get absolutely pasted by scores of foes, and that means tactics and strategy are as important as keen aiming skills.
Still, Killzone 2 is one of the most visually impressive and atmospheric FPS games of all time, which is one of the reasons gamers still hold it in such high regard. The punishing difficulty level can put a lot of gamers off, but it’s also what has them coming back for revenge.
13 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Shadow Of Chernobyl
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games are renowned for their punishing gameplay, especially when gamers first start off. The wasteland is a dangerous one with horrors just waiting to pop out from the cover of darkness and kill. As such, it’s difficult for many gamers to get their bearings.
Naturally, a combination of practice and character progression helps mitigate a lot of these issues, but that doesn’t make the game any less forgiving. Hazards and horrors lurk around every corner, and run-and-gun techniques simply aren’t going to cut it as they would in a game like Call of Duty.
12 ARMA 3
The ARMA series was designed to be as realistic as humanly possible, which is no surprise given that the developer created software used to train the U.S. military. It’s not quite the same thing, but ARMA 3 is no less unforgiving. In fact, it’s downright difficult for many gamers to get into.
Part of the reason is the play mechanics. Single-shot deaths are plenty, there are no duck-and-cover health regen options, and virtually nothing about the game plays like a commercial FPS title. ARMA 3 is to FPS players what hardcore flight simulators are to aviation nuts.
11 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
This fourth entry in the Counter-Strike series isn’t necessarily one of the hardest FPS titles to play, but it is one of the most difficult to master. Valve implemented several changes to the way the game is played, including the shooting mechanics themselves.
Aiming requires knowledge of weapon spray patterns in order to maximize damage, while teamwork is practically a must to defeat higher level players. One weak teammate can throw the entire team into disarray and leave the other side wide open to claim victory.
10 Rainbow Six: Siege
Rainbow Six: Siege is Ubisoft’s latest entry in the tactical shooter series. Instead of focusing on single-player missions or Terrorist Hunt as Rainbow Six: Vegas did, Siege opted to double-down on its multiplayer systems.
It paid off massively. Siege is one of the largest competitive games in the world thanks to its large Operator roster and destructible maps. The number of strategies players can develop is near endless, which can make it a daunting game to get into. Instant-kill headshots further exasperate this problem by leaving most newcomers in the dust against veteran Siege players that know every angle to pixel-peak from.
9 Devil Daggers
As Rainbow Six: Siege is difficult thanks to its complexity, Devil Daggers is incredibly difficult due to its simplicity. Players only have to worry about the enemies around them and taking them down by firing a flurry of daggers at them.
Watching Devil Daggers seems much easier than it truly is. The whole point is to achieve as high a score as possible before death. Games get more hectic as the timer continues, eventually overwhelming the players with hundreds of enemies on screen. Speed, accuracy, and critical thinking are all required to survive for long stretches in this game, and Devil Daggers requires more from those skills as the swarm of demons increase until it becomes unmanageable.
8 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
Cooperative game modes can’t get much harder than Rainbow Six: Vegas 2’s Terrorist Hunt mode. This game’s PvE activities were borderline masochistic with the way AI was handled.
Harder difficulties would cause enemies to have perfect accuracy and use tactics such as throwing disorienting grenades or flanking the player much more often. Worse, the player’s friendly AI was detrimental to the experience as they would sometime refuse to listen to orders. While easier in co-op with real players, this game’s learning curve and instant-deaths on higher difficulties definitely tested the patience of most gamers.
7 Far Cry
Crytek knows how to make graphically demanding games. Most know them for the original Crysis that to this day still runs less than stellar, but they were also the original creators of Far Cry.
Earlier levels encouraged players to scout out enemy encampments and plan out a method of approach. This made for a great gameplay loop that Ubisoft’s Far Cry games use. That is until the second half of the game. In typical Crytek fashion, the standard human enemies are replaced with enemies that would fit better in another game. In Far Cry’s case, mutants overtake the island and take entire magazines to kill. Mutants can also three-shot the player with full health and armor, single-handedly souring the entirety of Far Cry’s otherwise stellar campaign.
6 Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
Serious difficulty in the Serious Sam games is the ultimate challenge. Enemies have much more health while Sam is much more susceptible to damage. Every Serious Sam game is challenging on this difficulty, but none are harder to beat than Serious Sam: The Second Encounter.
Croteam dramatically increased the number of enemies in each encounter with The Second Encounter. Levels are much larger, the weapon roster has expanded in smart ways, and the enemy roster is highly varied. These major improvements in most difficulties become a burden on higher difficulties where making two mistakes can be disastrous. It gets worse when the game decides to place the player in a small room filled with hundreds of enemies.
5 Doom Eternal
Even though Doom Eternal released earlier this year, it has made a large impact on the FPS genre. This game will force players to enter a rhythm while demon-slaying to earn their black belt in destroying the forces of Hell.
It does a fantastic job at this even on the lower difficulties, but this game is at its most adrenaline-fueled on Ultra Nightmare. A single mistake doesn’t just cost your life but it ends the current playthrough. Perfection is mandatory if anyone wants to beat this game on its hardest difficulty, but few games can improve someone’s aiming and positioning skills quite like Doom Eternal.
4 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Competitive shooters are some of the hardest games to become great at. These games require players to master the weapon sandbox, movement, maps, and have great communication with others.
No competitive shooter does this better than Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Valve’s constant updates turned this game into an Esports juggernaut in the industry. It wouldn’t be possible without the game’s immense skill ceiling. CS:GO is easy enough to learn, but mastering it is something professionals spend thousands of hours doing. Games in this game can be casual fun or death marches depending on the team matchups.
3 Escape From Tarkov
Combine the original Ghost Recon titles with survival shooters like DayZ and the result is Escape From Tarkov. No shooter on the market can get the heart pounding quite like this one.
Players get one life in each match to scavenge what they can and take on fellow PMCs and Scavs that patrol each map. Death can be from a headshot from hundreds of meters away or from hemorrhaging blood after a nasty gunfight. The stakes are high in Tarkov, and a single error can have massive consequences. Besides managing your character’s hydration and inventory, risk and reward is the glue that holds Tarkov together so well. Stick past its daunting difficulty and players will find one of the most satisfying and memorable experiences a first-person shooter can provide.
2 Call Of Duty: World At War
Call of Duty: World at War’s campaign is a memorable experience gamers won’t soon forget, if only for its absurdly hard campaign. Beating World at War on Veteran is a serious test of one’s patience.
Enemies will spawn infinitely until the player completes certain objectives, all the while they’re throwing half a dozen grenades every few seconds. A handful of bullets will down the player, forcing them to restart from a checkpoint. World at War’s later levels where players fight alongside Victor Resnov really show how broken this game’s single-player is on Veteran.
1 Halo 2
Mentioning the hardest FPS games ever created wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Halo 2’s Legendary campaign. This difficulty was not thoroughly tested by Bungie before the game released, resulting in a perplexing mess that leaves players frustrated by its obsession with instantly killing them.
Jackal snipers one-shot. Hunters one-shot the player. Certain missions such as Gravemind rely on enemy AI RNG to beat. Halo: The Master Chief Collection also requires players to complete a full Legendary playthrough in less than 3 hours for a certain achievement. Sadly, the campaign can get even harder. Halo 2 also introduced hidden Skulls in levels that add modifiers such as doubling enemy health points. Hardcore Halo fans will sometimes play through this campaign on Legendary with every Skull active, otherwise known as a LASO run. These campaign runs are nearly impossible to complete. Anyone who’s completed a LASO run of Halo 2 has completed the hardest campaign in FPS history.
![\"IT電腦補習](\"http://itteacheritfreelance.hk/test/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/logo2-2.png\"){kind=logo}
www.itsec.hk
www.itsec.vip
www.itseceu.uk
Leave a Reply