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[Drizzlehell]

This thread is totally motivated by my recent fascination with Killzone Mercenary, which I have been chipping away at almost every day on my Vita in short bursts for the past few months.

It amazes me how a game like this, which is essentially just a linear gun porn shooter with a 5 hour long campaign, managed to keep my interest for that long. And it's all thanks to a number of design elements that inject a lot of replay value into the package. Just off the top of my head, here are the things that you can do beyond just plaything through the campaign on one of the three available difficulty levels:

• complete "contracts" which are basically these challenge runs that you can do for every level that require you to complete the objectives under special conditions, eg. use a specific gun, don't raise the alarm, complete a special objective like throwing a grenade through a vent to flush out enemies from hiding, complete the mission within allotted time, etc.; there are three of those contracts available for every mission, each with its own theme (stealth, demolition, precision)
• collect intel, i.e. optional text/audio logs that contain some cool bits of lore that often refers to other games in the series; what makes these stand out from your garden variety collectable hunt, is that it actually requires a bit of skill as well, either through a hacking mini game that utilises Vita's touchscreen, or by stealthily grabbing enemy commanders and smacking them around during a small interrogation sequence
• earning money that you can use to unlock new weapons and gadgets - the more skilfully you play, the more cash you'll earn, which totally taps into that part of my brain that likes being rewarded for good performance; and the gear that you unlock is all pretty fun to use too

All of that is held together by a really solid combat and fun mission design. I could care less about the story but god damn is it a fun game to play.

The only real blunder here is that it's a handheld game, and I would really love to play a shooter with this much variety and replay value on my TV/monitor, but I kinda struggle to think of any games that put this much attention into optional game modes. Maybe Doom 2016/Eternal, but other than that...?

 

[feynoob]

Go to steam and click on shooter aspect.
You will get a lot of good shooter games.

 

[Hudo]

Dunno if that's really what you're looking for. But I find myself regularly replaying Doom 1 & 2, Quake III, Titanfall 2, Half-Life 2 and Bungie's Halo games.
I recently also replayed Tron 2.0 (great game).

 

[Drizzlehell]

Go to steam and click on shooter aspect.
You will get a lot of good shooter games.

That's not what I'm asking about.

 

[feynoob]

That's not what I'm asking about.

Steam has games that dates as early as 2000.
But the main reason is discovering unknown games.
I found a lot of good games from pirating, which I had no idea they existed.

Right now, all you hear is big games and not the small games.

If you want to be specific, YouTube is your best option.

 

[RagnarokIV]

Headhunter
Portable Ops
Aragami (not shooter)
Tenchu (not shooter)

 

[RoboCain]

Max Payne 3 (Fine Ass Third Person Shooter.)

* Campaign Mode (Play through the story.)

* Score Attack (Killing with style add points, you get a ranking at the end + leaderboards).

* Challenge Mode (You get challenges through the levels like "Killing 5 enemies in a single bullet time use", you get a ranking at the end + leaderboards.)

* New York Minute (Killing enemies adds seconds to a countdown, so try to not run out of time. Also, there is no checkpoints through the level. Die and you'll start from scratch.)

* New York Minute Hardcore (Same as above, but is a full run of the campaign with no checkpoints.)

 

[Husky]

Something which meets your specific criteria might be Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Has fun optional bounty missions, and I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of collectables. I had a great time playing through this series on the hardest non-permadeath difficulty.
Oh my god. I just remembered. I never played Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Maybe I never should? But I guess even weak games can be really fun in co-op.

Dead Space has some of the most amazing lore of any video game. Some of the most interesting intel you could ever collect. In Dead Space 3 you can also create your own guns, and when replaying you can continue adding to those guns. If you play in co-op you'll be able to access more content, and you'll have a different experience depending on which character you play.

Quantum Break's lore is also fantastic, and while replaying you'll be able to make different story decisions, which also adjusts the collectables you can find.

The Evil Within (just the first game) has lots of optional battles with decent rewards. The game will tell you that it's time to run, but you're free to stay behind and fight enemies, and then you'll have more goo to spend on upgrades.

Recently I started playing F'threar (otherwise known as F3AR) with a friend. The first FEAR is definitely the best in the series (with its expansions!), but it's hard not to have fun with F3AR's co-op, and both characters offer a very different gameplay experience. Also, the game has some weirdly impressive small details, even by today's standards. My friend and I are very into that sort of thing (and he even works QA), so we were often stopping to examine the strange attention to detail in a game that otherwise felt like a pretty generic console shooter. The XP progression system should also offer some replay value.
You should play the first FEAR (and expacs) too, but I don't think it offers the optional challenges or collectables you're looking for.

I Am Alive is a lesser-known post-apocalyptic game by Ubisoft. Ammo is very scarce, but you can use an empty gun to intimidate enemies. Usually you might use one bullet per group encounter. You can achieve 120% completion by helping out survivors throughout the game.

Every time I replay The Witcher, the first game, I fall back in love. It's eurojank though, so it's not for everyone. You said "preferably" shooters, so I figured I could slip this one in

I think the Resident Evil games all have unlocks you can only use when replaying. Might be fun.

Edit: WOW I own Killzone: Mercenary. I guess I should give it a go.

 

[Drizzlehell]

Something which meets your specific criteria might be Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. Has fun optional bounty missions, and I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of collectables. I had a great time playing through this series on the hardest non-permadeath difficulty.
Oh my god. I just remembered. I never played Wolfenstein: Youngblood. Maybe I never should? But I guess even weak games can be really fun in co-op.

Dead Space has some of the most amazing lore of any video game. Some of the most interesting intel you could ever collect. In Dead Space 3 you can also create your own guns, and when replaying you can continue adding to those guns. If you play in co-op you'll be able to access more content, and you'll have a different experience depending on which character you play.

Quantum Break's lore is also fantastic, and while replaying you'll be able to make different story decisions, which also adjusts the collectables you can find.

The Evil Within (just the first game) has lots of optional battles with decent rewards. The game will tell you that it's time to run, but you're free to stay behind and fight enemies, and then you'll have more goo to spend on upgrades.

Recently I started playing F'threar (otherwise known as F3AR) with a friend. The first FEAR is definitely the best in the series (with its expansions!), but it's hard not to have fun with F3AR's co-op, and both characters offer a very different gameplay experience. Also, the game has some weirdly impressive small details, even by today's standards. My friend and I are very into that sort of thing (and he even works QA), so we were often stopping to examine the strange attention to detail in a game that otherwise felt like a pretty generic console shooter. The XP progression system should also offer some replay value.
You should play the first FEAR (and expacs) too, but I don't think it offers the optional challenges or collectables you're looking for.

I Am Alive is a lesser-known post-apocalyptic game by Ubisoft. Ammo is very scarce, but you can use an empty gun to intimidate enemies. Usually you might use one bullet per group encounter. You can achieve 120% completion by helping out survivors throughout the game.

Every time I replay The Witcher, the first game, I fall back in love. It's eurojank though, so it's not for everyone. You said "preferably" shooters, so I figured I could slip this one in

I think the Resident Evil games all have unlocks you can only use when replaying. Might be fun.

Edit: WOW I own Killzone: Mercenary. I guess I should give it a go.

Youngblood is better than its reputation would suggest. People were just angry that Bethesda tried to make it into a live service looter shooter, and not a very good one at that. But I think that it has improved combat over Wolfenstein II, which to me had an infuriatingly uneven difficulty curve and lack of proper feedback to received damage. Youngblood fixes those two things so if you can stomach the fact that it's kinda repetitive with its recycling of locations throughout various unmotivated side missions, then I guess you will have some fun just from the sheer mayhem alone. I have a lot of memories of absolutely wrecking a bunch of Nazis and then proudly examining the gory aftermath of my actions, it was really satisfying. I liked the two main characters too, despite them receiving some backlash (although I dunno why, they're at least something different from constantly brooding Blazko).


I loved playing Fear 3 with my brother too, lol. Also a far better game than its reputation would suggest.

And yeah, I totally recommend Mercenary. It's like one of the best Killzone games, lol. I was also planning to revisit Resident Evil 4 remake too, so that's another good suggestion.

 

[diffusionx]

The Club, long-forgotten shooter from Bizarre. It is intentionally structured like a racing game with a scoring system and meant to be replayed over and over for high score. It's on Steam but I doubt it is easy to run on a modern PC, and not even BC so you need a Xbox 360 to play it.

 

[Husky]

Youngblood is better than its reputation would suggest. People were just angry that Bethesda tried to make it into a live service looter shooter, and not a very good one at that. But I think that it has improved combat over Wolfenstein II, which to me had an infuriatingly uneven difficulty curve and lack of proper feedback to received damage. Youngblood fixes those two things so if you can stomach the fact that it's kinda repetitive with its recycling of locations throughout various unmotivated side missions, then I guess you will have some fun just from the sheer mayhem alone. I have a lot of memories of absolutely wrecking a bunch of Nazis and then proudly examining the gory aftermath of my actions, it was really satisfying. I liked the two main characters too, despite them receiving some backlash (although I dunno why, they're at least something different from constantly brooding Blazko).

I loved playing Fear 3 with my brother too, lol. Also a far better game than its reputation would suggest.

And yeah, I totally recommend Mercenary. It's like one of the best Killzone games, lol. I was also planning to revisit Resident Evil 4 remake too, so that's another good suggestion.

I believe you on Youngblood. Maybe it will be really fun to play in co-op.

 

[kvltus lvlzvs]

Timesplitters 2 and 3 are goat in this regard imho

 

[fart town usa]

You should get PSVR2 and play The Light Brigade, Cosmodread, Synapse, Crossfire: Sierra Squad. Many more too.

VR is a beast when it comes to gun porn shooters with replay value.

 

[Drizzlehell]

You should get PSVR2 and play The Light Brigade, Cosmodread, Synapse, Crossfire: Sierra Squad. Many more too.

VR is a beast when it comes to gun porn shooters with replay value.

Yeah, Synapse quickly became one of my favourite VR games after I tried it recently. It's also the only roguelike that I had actual fun with, lol.

 

[Queso de Grande]

Give Bullet Storm a try. It has really fun combat and a score attack mode.

 

[fart town usa]

Yeah, Synapse quickly became one of my favourite VR games after I tried it recently. It's also the only roguelike that I had actual fun with, lol.

Sick, I didn't know you had PSVR2. Definitely add The Light Brigade to your wishlist. It's similar to Synapse but slower paced and has awesome gun loading mechanics. It's a super tense game, kinda supernatural WWI style. Much slower paced than Synapse but real similar gameplay loop.

FWIW, I'm not too keen on roguelites too but I love those two games. So much fun.