Newb Looking for a shooter

[Ja'chyra]

Afternoon all

I've decided to give a shooter a try on the pc and was wondering if anyone could make any recommendations. I don't want anything too hard and single player is more important as I doubt I will ever play MP. Not too keen on groups so a single character would be best, and downloading from Steam would be ideal.

So, any recommendations to cut my teeth on?

[Monk]

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.

A definite high point in the franchise and of the shooter genre with a strong campaign. It challenges you to sneak, snipe, and of course just run and gun. There are moments in the single-player narrative that still give me chills when i play through it.

It's also pretty forgiving on the lower settings.

[frogbeastegg]

Bioshock. It's one of the few in the genre I like.

Bioshock has a very good story if you track down the audio logs, especially by the standards of the genre. Rapture has oodles of atmosphere; it's a setting which stands out and has a personality of its own. Its inhabitants are insane and fantastic, their stories tragic. There's some outstanding set pieces in the game, moments that you will fight through and remember for long afterwards. The water effects are simply stunning. There are some gentle choices to make throughout the game. Gentle because none of them will dramatically affect your game experience, so you can't accidentally make the game very hard with a single choice, for example. You get an assortment of standard weapons to play with, and a selection of plasmids which enable to you conjure up fire, lightning etc. Tonics and passive plasmids allow you to tailor your character to your playstyle, whether that's gungho, sneaky, plasmid mad or a mix of all three.

Oh and to quote Monk in the "What are you playing?" topic, "there's a power that shoots bees from your hands. Bees. From your hands."

[Ja'chyra]

Lol, I had a feeling you two might be first in.

Thanks for the suggestions, I have COD5 on the 360 but not that into consoles and I was thinking about Bioshock as well and it's only £13.99.

[Whacker]

Meh, I'll throw in some slightly dissenting opinions, just for flavor's sake and because I can. I personally did not like Bioshock at all. I found it shallow and not remotely close to the game it was pitched as the spiritual successor to (System Shock 2), and the PC port seemed to be a typical afterthought for the console version. COD4 wasn't bad, but it was also an extremely oversimplified shooter on rails. I did like the storyline though, and there is a non-first-person mission that I absolutely loved and was my favorite part of the game, but I wont spoil it.

Personally, I'd recommend Crysis. It is what it is, it's a beautiful, straightforward, fun shooter on rails. Storyline is dumb as can be, the gameplay is terrific, controls are crisp and it's clearly built FOR a PC and WASD/mouse, the atmospheric audio is immersive, the spoken dialogue is funny (horrible accents), and the visuals are stunning.

[Hooahguy]

if you are looking for a long campaign that plays fast, id recommend Rainbow 6 Vegas.
if you are looking for a shooter that makes you feel as if you are actually in special forces (like rapelling down the side of a building, infiltrating a building, fast-roping into an area), R6V is for you. the AI is exellent, both enemy and team mates. the enemy tries to flank you as much as possible, and are pretty good shots. also, with the rebounding health meter, you dont have to play as carefully as you used to do, but still, one shot can easily take you down, so you gotta be careful.
the cover system in the game makes other games look bad, for the system for covering is so great, i feel like ehenver i pass by a low wall or go to a corner in real life, i want to duck down and look around the corner for terrorists.

the story, while the standard run of the mill terrorist-got-a-big-bomb-and-wants-to-kill-people, you dont think of that when you play it. the action is very intense. and its light on the specs.
the game looks amazing, but needs anti-aliasing. also, its an old game, from 2006, so dont expect crysis-like graphics. but i will say, theres something about fighting in a casino that is just AWESOME.
COD4's campaign is good, but short. its main strength is its MP. thats why i say R6V.
and its really cheap. i got it for $10.

[johnhughthom]

I believe Steam has a Bioshock demo, why don't you try that.
Reminds me, I should try it myself. I picked it up when Steam was selling it for £2.99 or something silly and haven't gotten round to playing it. I also have the Orange Box to try as well.

[Zenicetus]

I'd recommend Bioshock too. It's not what a lot of us oldtimers were wanting as a deeper System Shock sequel, but it's a great environment to run around in and shoot stuff. Very atmospheric. It's also fairly easy as shooters go, so it's a good intro if you haven't done many of these.

Deadspace is pretty good as a horror sci-fi theme shooter. You play solo, with minimal puzzles or other distractions... just keep moving forward and kill stuff. The weapon concepts are a little unusual though... maybe not good for a beginner, but come back to it later if you're interested.

The Call of Duty games are popular shooters. I'm not a big fan because the missions are so heavily scripted and linear, but lots of people like them.

Then there are the combination RPG/shooters like Fallout 3 and Mass Effect, both good games but maybe more conversation and character development distractions than you're looking for. Mass Effect does have one nice thing lacking in the other sci-fi shooters here; a minimal shoot-from-cover system.

[CountArach]

Everyone should play Half Life 2 at some point in their life. You can pick it up cheap as part of the Orange Box deal if you can find it. That comes with the Episode packs, Counter Strike Source (If you change your mind and want some online play) and Portal.