I want to play an easy shooter where you feel like you’re in a flow state aiming at targets, the only time I’ve ever felt like that was in the PS2 Medal of Honour, kneecap, helmet shot, head shot or up till MW4 original.
I’ve tried the latest CoD and the cinematics and cutscenes are just overblown.
Borderlands would be a kind of turn off your brain type but they haven’t made a new game in awhile.
Helldiver had great shooting but the grind, limited levels and multiplayer means I wasn’t too invested in it after a hard days work
Deep Rock Galactic, play solo on the lower difficulties and just vibe and mine. Bosco the robot that follows you on solo missions can kill pretty much everything for you most of the time, or you can have it do the mining and tasks while you shoot everything in sight.
Rock and stone!
Is slime rancher technically a shooter game?
Is Portal technically a shooter game?
It has a gun that makes holes.
All guns make holes.
A caulk gun fills holes.
Not energy guns.
It’s a farming sim. You’re just farming with a gun
Gun/vacuum *
but are you shooting the gun? if yes then it might fit the bill
Well it’s not bullets but you do shoot objects/creatures out of it
If you shoot tarr at the other slimes, it’s kinda like bullets.
I really like some of the Halo games for this, especially any levels that don’t involve The Flood. The inventive hit-boxes, slow movements, the vehicles that are fun to just drive around, and the addition of gameplay modifiers, they’re pretty cathartic for me.
Hell you could even jump into a custom Firefight mode if you just want to kill waves of enemies.
I love playing reach in God mode with infinite abilities just mowing down enemies. Just remember to turn on Grunt Birthday Party.
Serious Sam is mindlessly dumb in the good way.
Really not sure how to interpret ‘cozy’ here, but tbh the Farcry series are great for me in that they’re my casual shooters. I say this meaning that I do the shooting when I want to do the shooting – otherwise I’m off paragliding or picking flowers or something else low stress and soothing. To me, in that regard, they’re very cozy.
Warframe is my go to when I just want to blast tunes and murder everything without too much thought.
Well, as others have noted I think “cozy” is probably a loaded term in this context. However, I will throw these recommendations into the ring also: The first couple of Serious Sam games, and also Painkiller. Both of them are firmly in the “murdering tons of dudes” genre, and are significantly less tactical than the likes of Medal of Honor/Call of Duty/Battlefield.
That is to say, not at all.
There is none of that sucking your thumb to regenerate health, popping out from the chest-high walls inexplicably strewn everywhere taking potshots with your gun like a hillbilly jack-in-the-box. Rather, their gameplay loop involves herding and managing a massive horde of enemies, prioritizing your targets, and keeping yourself moving. Like a sheep dog with a chaingun.
People try to call the original Doom games a horde shooter. They really aren’t. These two, however, definitely are.
You’ve convinced me to finally play Serious Sam. I’ve had it on Steam for years.
It can be charitably described as above, and uncharitably described as “Hold down S and LMB for an hour at a time”. I kind of bounced off these. They aren’t bad games, in fact they were pretty popular but most of your gameplay loop is going to revolve around getting the attention of a horde of goons and then backpedaling while you whittle the group down from 80 dudes to none.
also, just noticed your username. Cool Eragon reference, took me a second to remember that it meant “dragon” in the elven language.
I mean, I played several other horde shooters. Firing continually while backpedaling is the most vintage of infantry tactics, after all. I get that these games are old and simpler, but their base gameplay must still be fun if they were so popular back in the day. I’ll at least give it a shot, since I already have them anyway…
If your looking for a shooter with a flow state, give Neon White a look. It’s a FPS platformer where you pick up gun cards and you choose if you want to use the card as a gun to shoot demons, or throw it away for a movement ability (double jump, dash, etc.) as you try to get to the end of the level as fast as possible.
If the platforming and racing doesn’t sound like it’s for you, I saw someone else brought up Ultrakill and I wanted to recommend that as well
Neon White was my suggestion as well. Ultrakill is fun but is going for a more Devil May Cry style game where score and style matter significantly.
Neon White i found a little confusing at first until I got the feel of it. Its a movement puzzle game, with some shooting. Precision and repetition are key to learning the levels and beating them quickly, and once you get into its groove, time flies by. For being a time-challenge game, I find it surprisingly relaxing and forgiving.
Can’t believe I had to scroll down this far to find Neon White but I’m glad someone mentioned it! It is pretty much the flow state shooter, should be perfect for OP.
Borderlands is like that. You can even tune the difficulty in 3 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands
I don’t play actual shooter myself, however, both Pokemon Snap games fit your description - might be worth a shot.
Splatoon singleplayer maybe? Side Order is built for casually grinding out runs.
Doom 2 was already covered so I’ll go with Roboquest, indie arena roguelike shooter with randomized weapons and perks but static arenas/mobs/bosses. Once you get a handle on the movement it’s one of the comfiest shooters I’ve played in years.
I don’t know if it counts as “cozy,” but Metal:Hellsinger is an extremely vibey shooter, as you can kind of just zone out, bop your head to the music, and vibe to the music in flow state while playing. Kind of zen, actually.
This !
I miss No One Lives Forever.
Yeah, it really needs a Revival.
Wait a minute… There is a remake? Who is it by?
No remake. No One Lives Forever Revival is a site offering it for download with patches for Windows 10 and Widescreen.
Ohhh, Ok, thanks for letting me know!
Even though they’re not traditional shooters, the Ratchet and Clank games are really fun. There’s a pretty big genre difference in the games in the franchise, with generally the earlier games being more platform-ey, especially 1 & 2. A lot of the humor from the original trilogy still holds up today.
There’s definitely some “unfun” parts in the games (giant mech fight from rac2 and the hacker from rac3 come to mind) but overall cozy imo. Some of the most unique and fun guns in any game.
If you’re looking for strictly more shooter, check out Ratchet Deadlocked. There’s barely any platforming and no mini games that I can remember, it’s pretty much all shooting. NG+ makes it super cozy. It’s really nice to play emulated.
