7. Unreal Tournament 1999: Game of the Year Edition
One of the fathers of what arena shooters are today, Unreal Tournament 1999 is a futuristic first-person shooter with a nice amount of content for its age, like weapons, gameplay modes, characters, skins and voicepacks. Adding the fact that the game has a high number of user mods and maps of all kinds.
Unreal Tournament takes place in the future where war between humanity and an alien race named ‘Skaarj’ takes place. After humanity had an unhoped success against the Skaarj, due to the war and because the internal situations were ignored, riots and ‘incidents’ started to happen. Because of that, the NEG (New Earth Government) placed a law for ‘consensual murder’ which states that any 2 persons can fight to the death under organized conditions in order to channel the aggression. Because of the popularity, Unreal Tournament is born.
The Campaign side of the game focuses on having Arena fights using all the available gamemodes like deathmatch and capture the flag. The match ends when the time has expired or when one of the teams/players have achieved the goal.
The players have access to an entire arsenal number of weapons, which can be found lying on the ground in each map. Each of the weapons have an alternate way of firing usually being a completely different type of firing mechanism. You get to play with pistols, miniguns, shock and bio rifles, flak, grenade and rocket launchers and my personal favorite: The Redeemer (Which is a guided mini-nuclear rocket).
Several gamemodes are available for the play in UT99: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Assault (In which you have to conquer a base in an amount of time then defend it), Domination, and Last Man Standing. Players also get to choose between 8 bot difficulties or allow the game to set the difficulty itself based on player’s abilities.
You can add mutations which alters the overall gameplay; thus you can add relics or make the game a one shot, one kill style with shock rifles. You can also choose some options that affects the playability of the game like air control and even the game’s speed. In-game you can issue orders to bots and depending on your luck they will either listen to you or not. Each of them will make their opinion known through the radio.
The game has tons of player made mods like new weapons, textures, maps and even entire gamemodes. I recommend the Jailbreak mode. Works like a Team Deathmatch only that when you get killed, you’re teleported into a jail. Your teammates’ objective is to free you from the jail by reaching enemy base and press the button.
When every member of a team gets into the jail, they’re killed by its trap which is different, based on the map. As weapon pack I recommend the Nali Weapon Pack 3 since it includes more ultimate weapons, and all the other weapons are completely changed, both as model and firing mechanism. For example the rocket launcher has now around 5 types of rockets each consuming a certain amount of ammo.
Pros:
– One-of-a-kind game
– Lots of maps and gamemodes
– Excellent bots
– Modding community still alive, after 16 years.
Cons:
– I have no idea if there are any.
Similar Games: Unreal Tournament Series, Quake III Arena
6. PAYDAY 2
One of the few games that is focusing completely on co-op and also one of the few games where you’re completely the bad guy. You play as one of the 4 robbers that aim to grab a huge amount of money and retire peacefully after.
Payday 2 is based on character class, each character having its own skill tree that is upgraded by leveling up. You can choose between characters that can deploy automatic turrets or plant C4, each of them having unique roles and usefulness. You can rob pretty much anything: Car salons, painting museums, banks, jewelry stores, run escort missions and so on. The arsenal is not small but it will require a good team and a considerable amount of grinding in order to get the best loadout.
Almost each mission can be done in 2 ways: Typical, where you go shooting every policeman that tries to take you down. Killing civilians will give penalty in form of lost cash. And silently, in which you need to wear light armor and small weapons in order to not attract attention on yourself (a meter will show you before starting the game how obvious you are) but will end up more rewarding due to the stealth bonus. Of course, knowing the map entirely is crucial in succeeding this type of gameplay.
You have access to a high amount of fire weapons, melee weapons, masks and items that allow you to customize the later mentioned. You can use different material and paintjob schemes to decorate your mask. You unlock weapons by leveling up your profile. Unlocking weapon mods is a little more difficult and relies on luck or map knowledge. You can unlock weapon mods by any of the 3 following methods:
– Drawing a weapon modification card:
At the end of each payday, players get to choose between 3 cards that are flipped on their back, so you can’t know what you’re actually selecting. Amongst the possible rewards, there’s the weapon modification card, showed as 2 rifles crossed. The other rewards are extra money and mask modification items. Each mod that gets unlocked this way costs money to purchase and you can’t own more than 2 of the same kind.
– Completing a Gage Courier side-mission (Gage Mod Courier DLC required)
In each map there are a number of differently colored figurines. When collecting a required amount of them, you receive a weapon crate that contains free mods. Unlike the Weapon Mod Card, there can be an unlimited amount of the same mod.
– Unlocking achievements (Including DLC Achievements)
Some of the achievements will reward the players with new mods. They will cost money in order to own them, but like the previous method, you can own an infinite stock of them.
However, if you choose to remove a mod from the gun, you will lose that item and not get a refund for it either. The player can do up to 25 Prestige Level-ups (called Infamy), which require to reach level 100. To do an Infamy Level-up, you need to spend a certain amount of offshore money.
Besides that, for the first 5 levels, your spending cash will be erased as well as your skills and unspent skill points. As a reward, you get some cosmetic items like a card showing your Infamy level, soundtracks and sound effects as well as XP Requirement Reduction, increased drop rate of Infamous-grade items and so on.
While the grinding can be obnoxious, I still recommend it to play with your friends and have fun blasting every blue uniform out there. But watch out for the Spec Ops.
Pros:
– Lots of jobs to take
– Focused on co-op
– Tons of weapons and masks
Cons:
– Too many DLC’s (As of 7th Sept, there are 35 DLC’s with a total price of 105€; granted, some of them are free.)
– Tons of grinding required to have a good loadout
– The cops are way too accurate with just a pistol on normal difficulty
Similar Games: Payday: The Heist
5. Will Rock
I present you Serious Sam’s cousin: Will Rock. While Sam goes around, wreaking havoc through Mental’s army in Egypt and Mayan areas, Will Rock gets rid of the bad guys in antique Greece. Zeus, resurrected somehow by the Olympian Restoration Army has kidnapped your girlfriend, Emma. Recruited by Prometheus, you, Willford Rockwell, are to take Lightning Gods’ minions and himself down and also to rescue your girlfriend.
Starting only with a shovel and a pistol with infinite ammo you get to meet in the first level statues that shoot with their eyes, Minotaurs that throw fireaxes and can multiply themselves upon their death and of course, armored skeletons.
Your arsenal comes in balance to all kinds of enemies you’ll meet, getting access to more conventional weapons like shotgun, minigun and grenades but also unconventional ones like the ‘Medusa’ gun, acid gun and my favorite, Mini-Atomic Gun.
You’ll get to visit all kinds of places from Athens, like Zeus’ temple, the Parthenon, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and you even get to visit the Underworld (or hell for short), killing Cerberus and even more skeletons on a jumpy comical version of the ‘Hall of the Mountain King’ song. There’s not much left to add about this game except for the fact that if you enjoy hordes of enemies in the style of Serious Sam, you will really enjoy this game as well.
Pros:
– Fast paced, you’re not allowed to waste time
– Great soundtrack list, including the famous Twisted Sisters’ song ‘I Wanna Rock’
Cons:
– Ends too soon, only 10 levels.
Similar Games: Serious Sam Series
4. Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
In my opinion, the best Serious Sam game ever made. Developed by, at that time, indie team called Croteam, Serious Sam puts you in the shoes of Sam ‘Serious’ Stone, sent to fight against an evil mastermind called Mental and save Earth from complete annihilation. Though as players will learn, it’s not that easy. But don’t worry, Sam’s witty comments will keep the players entertained during the whole game.
You start by surviving a crash with your spaceship. 10 steps further and you’re already welcomed by enemies. And lots of them. Humans, bulls, huge human scorpions, harpies, a small army prepared by Mental in the honor of you arriving there. After you teach everyone there that you’re better, you might want to explore the map a bit. Each map will contain a nice number of secret areas that might or might not harm you…
God knows that I’ve been hurt too many times by the secrets, especially when I discovered them by mistake; either that or got the heck scared out of me. Your arsenal consists in quite a few weapons, both conventional and sci-fi kind. You get to waltz around with revolvers, rocket launchers, cannons, laser weapon, snipers, miniguns and so on.
Besides that, you can find various pick-ups like the Serious Bomb, a weapon that eradicates everything around you, speed boost, damage boost and others. There are several types of enemies that you might want or not to encounter: 4 types of beheaded humans, most of them carry their head in one arm while they shoot/throw with the other aaaand the 4th one thought his head is useless so he got 1 bomb in each hand and started running towards while screaming … though I do not know how he managed that feat.
If he collides with you, well, he takes a nice chunk of your health with him. Luckily, all enemies are able to take friendly fire from their allies, so if there are multiple kamikazes one near another, you can shoot one to make most of the others explode as well.
Next on the list comes the brother of Goro, a 4-armed demonic beast that shoots big balls of flaming stuff capable of guiding themselves towards you. Those can be shot or avoided, but they will not go away so easily if they’re avoided. Harpies follow them and they’re quite showing their feature through the minimalistic clothing.
As guessed, those can fly and they either attack with the claws or shoot balls of electricity if they’re far away, but those are unbreakable. Next on the list are enraged bulls, which will keep coming towards you in attempt to throw you in the air. There are plenty more but I won’t go through all of them.
Besides the massive amounts of lead that Sam will use, he’ll have to also use his (read: your) wits to solve the puzzles needed in order to pass through the map. There won’t be any lack of bosses that will require tons of ammo sent towards as gift with great velocity, so be sure to save some for them.
Croteam made sure that the environments won’t become dull too fast so they made you go through everything: Green areas with Mayan pyramids, or Mayan cities, ice worlds, desert, lava areas, even a peak through the Tower of Babel and a cemetery.
Pros:
– Tons of fun and enemies at the same time
– Nicely designed puzzles
– Sam’s comments
Cons:
– Ends too soon.
Similar Games: Serious Sam Series