2014 has been a pretty good year for shooters. While a lot of people were disappointed by some of the more hyped-up ones like Destiny, while other games like Wolfenstein: The New Order and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare proved that their respective series still had it in them when it came to delivering big-scale, explosive fun.
We’re gonna be seeing some familiar faces in 2015, but also the unexpected returns of some older series and even some entirely new stuff which are looking to bring a lot to the table. A lot of these games we either don’t necessarily know all that much about or haven’t seen much of, but we can’t wait to find out/see more. With that said, here’s our list of the top ten shooters that we’re most excited about in 2015.
Felt like we left something out? Tell us in the comments!
There are a lot of games out there with bullet-time, but none of them are quite like Superhot. The premise? The game moves at regular speed when you’re moving around, but when you stop everything around you goes into slow-motion allowing you to stop and plan what to do next right in the middle of the action. Starting out as a small prototype made for a game jam back in 2013, it quickly became so popular that it made it through Steam Greenlight in under a weekend, prompting a Kickstarter being launched for the development of a full game. It was funded within its first 23 hours.
The concept is brilliantly imaginative, and the prototype is a lot of fun. Superhot is out on Xbox One, PC, Mac and Linux in June 2015, and we can’t wait.
Turtle Rock Studios created some of the best multiplayer ever with the Left 4 Dead series, and it seems like they’re gonna do it once more with Evolve. They’ve essentially taken the Tank fights from Left 4 Dead and expanded on that concept, pitting four humans against one giant, alien monster – and all five are player-controlled.
The four human characters will have different abilities, as will the alien which will be able to – fittingly enough – evolve as the match progresses. A clever concept which we hope will make for a great multiplayer experience. Evolve is out February [something] 2015.
What do you do when you sold your game as really serious and emotionally harrowing but it’s actually more of a ”have a good ol’ time smashing zombies and getting loot with your buddies!” kinda game? Make the sequel completely bonkers, of course!
Dead Island 2 moves the action from the South-Asian island of Banoi to California and takes place several months after the events of the first game. Up until now the series has had four player co-op, and Dead Island 2 will increase the number to a total of a whopping eight players! Players will be able to join other player’s games in a Journey-esque manner where if you’re connected to the internet (and haven’t opted out) other people will be able to randomly go into your world.
With new environments, expanded multiplayer, crazy weapons like freezerays and electric shotguns and some really brutal combat it’s looking like Dead Island 2 will be a whole lot of fun when it comes out on PC, PS4 and Xbox One in Spring 2015.
At this point it’s starting to seem like Homefront is a cursed series. The first one didn’t do very well, probably because it wasn’t very good, and later on its publisher THQ died. Crytek bought the rights to the franchise and started working on Homefront: The Revolution, but quickly handed the rights off to Koch Media and Deep Silver due to money problems. Here’s hoping it doesn’t tank those two companies, because Homefront: The Revolution looks really promising.
Four years after the events of the first game, the eastern US is still under North Korean occupation. The player is part of the American resistance movement, and will wage urban guerrilla warfare in the sandbox city of Philadelphia. You’ll be able to establish bases and safehouses, recruit revolutionaries, steal and assemble your own arsenal and team up with other players online to form a Resistance Cell. Homefront: The Revolution is looking like the game the original should’ve been, and we can’t wait to try it out when it comes out on PC, PS4 and Xbox One sometime next year.
The Battlefront games were not only some of the best Star Wars games around, they were also excellent multiplayer experiences in their own right. It seemed like the series was done for when its developer Pandemic closed its doors - they even had a third installment in development which was nearly finished but was never released – but at E3 2013 it was unveiled that EA were gonna publish a DICE-developed reboot of the franchise.
There’s not a lot of info yet aside from a vague Holiday 2015 release date, Frostbite 3 being the engine used and that there will be levels based on Hoth and Endor, but the simple fact that Battlefront is back is enough to get us really excited.
Taking a step away from the usual focus on the military that the series is known for, Battlefield: Hardline is an explosive game of cops n’ robbers. Dead Space developers Visceral Games take over for this installment, with an apparently non-linear TV series-inspired singleplayer campaign and some new multiplayer modes where cops face off against criminals. There’s Heist, where criminals must steal money from armored cars and get it to an extraction point while the police have to stop them, Blood Money where the two teams compete to steal the most money, Hotwire where the cops go after the criminals in high-speed vehicle chases and Rescue where the cops have to rescue hostages held by the criminals.
Battlefield: Hardline is looking to be an interesting variation on the typical Battlefield experience, and the beta (while plagued with issues) was pretty fun. The game is out on PC, PS4, PS3, Xbox One and Xbox 360 on March 17th 2015 in North America and March 19th in Europe.
Oh hey, another cops n’ robbers game! Siege is seemingly all about being part of a SWAT team, and while we haven’t gotten to see any of the singleplayer we have seen the really fun-looking multiplayer. The one game mode we’ve seen so far is Hostage Release, a 5v5 mode where one side plays as criminals who are holed up inside a house with a hostage and the other plays as a SWAT team that has to rescue said hostage.
The criminals can decide the hostage’s initial location and will be able to reinforce their stronghold with things like barb wire and boobytraps while the SWAT team will be able to choose their entry point and the like. The environments will apparently be highly destructible, allowing for explosives to tear up walls and floors and provide new ways to get around. The concept of this game is really interesting and the gameplay looks quite fun, here’s hoping we get to see more of this new entry in the Rainbow Six series soon.
It seemed like Master Chief had finished the fight in Halo 3, but Microsoft were pretty quick to announce a new trilogy because you can’t keep a profitable character down, baby! However, it seems like even though Halo 5 is a continuation of Master Chief’s story he won’t actually be the main character. That’s probably gonna be Agent Jameson Locke, the main character of the upcoming TV series Halo: Nightfall, who’s hunting down the Chief for one reason or another after all the stuff that went down in Halo 4.
There’s not a lot of information or gameplay from this game to go on at the moment, but the Halo games are generally pretty fun (especially with friends) so it seems like a safe bet that Guardians will be too. Those who want to get their hands on it as soon as possible will be able to play the multiplayer beta when it launches later this year.
Say what you will about Ubisoft’s business practices, they sure do make some fun-looking games. Case in point: Tom Clancy’s The Division.
Inspired by real US events like Operation Dark Winter and Directive 51, the story sees near-future America collapsing due to a virus released on Black Friday and a group called The Division being established and given full reign by the president to combat the threat of the virus and save what remains of the country. Players are part of said group, and will go on missions in an open world New York. The game will be a MMO third-person shooter, with players fighting both AI enemies and other players.
There’s not a lot of info or footage outside of an E3 gameplay demo, but what we’ve seen so far looks really good. The Division is out on PS4, Xbox One and PC sometime in 2015.
Blizzard’s first new intellectual property in 17 years, Overwatch is a highly stylized team-based shooter set on earth in the near future. Like the equally stylized and highly competitive Team Fortress 2 before it, every match is an intense multiplayer showdown pitting a diverse cast of soldiers, mercenaries, scientists, adventurers, and oddities against each other in an epic, globe-spanning conflict.
Mike Morhaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, commented "Overwatch is our take on a vibrant, near-future universe with amped-up characters and action-packed team-based gameplay. With every new Blizzard game, we look at our favorite aspects of a genre and put our own spin on things. Our goal with Overwatch is to create an awesome FPS experience that's more accessible to a much wider audience while delivering the action and depth that shooter fans love."
