Can anyone recommend me a good casual-competitive FPS?
Overwatch was one of my all-time favorite games, but I just don't like OW2. I tried, it's just not the vibe anymore for me. I tried a couple other hero shooters, like Team Fortress 2, which I couldn't really get into. I've been thinking back to when I was last really into a shooter, and it was probably the original Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops 2. Before that was Halo 3. I did also like Advanced Warfare when that came out.
These days, all of the popular modern shooters seem to be battle royals, which are fine (I liked Apex a lot for a while), but it's not really what I'm looking for. Beyond that, they're often F2P but loaded with microtransactions and shit. I am just so sick of that pricing model, I just want to pretend like it doesn't exist. lol I'm fine buying a game outright, but if there's a bunch of DLC or in-game currency of any kind, I'm out.
I'm also not looking for something like CS where everyone you play with is god-tier and is doing trick shots, cause that's frustrating.
So I guess I'm looking for a classic COD/Battlefield-ish FPS with the modern touches (like leaning around corners, etc.), that's either paid or free but does not paywall any content. It can be newer or older as long as it's not hard to find matches online. I'm also not super picky about art direction, but it'd be cool if it had good graphics.
Aaaand the icing on the cake: if it can run on Linux (natively or via proton), you get infinite bonus points. It's not a total deal-breaker if I have to switch to my Windows partition, but I do prefer Linux.
I know that's a tall order. Is there anything good in 2023 that would check most of these boxes?
Strangely, I’m currently on the search for the exact same thing :D Your post was weirdly close to my own thoughts about this that I got stuck on it. Maybe you might try „Insurgency: Sandstorm“. Very very good Gunplay, some years old by now but at least in the EU or US it’s really not a problem to find a full match in about some seconds. There’s no grind - all weapons and attachements are unlocked right away, the only thing you can buy are weapon skins. It is on the „realistic“ end of the casual spectrum tho. Also, compared to COD or OW, the rounds feel rather slow.
Another one you can check out is „BattleBit Remastered“. It’s pretty hyped right now and kinda like what Battlefield should have been. It is extremely hectic and chaotic. The gunplay and customisation is really really good. Personally, it wasn’t really for me and I just could not get over the Roblox-Graphics… this one also works perfectly on Linux with Proton!
Honourable mention: with its Steam-Release it’s also a breeze to run OW2 on Linux! If you want to give it another try.
Edit: forgot this one. As you mentioned Halo - have you tried Halo: Infinite? This one is fucking infested with microtransaction tho… there is no chance to grind the content humanely possible without paying
Battlebit Remastered is great. Plays like Battlefield and can have huge player counts. You can play on Linux as well (I do). The devs said that sometime in the future they would be implementing FaceIt anti-cheat that would be Windows-only, which wouldn’t allow Linux players on official servers, but community servers could just keep the Easy-Anticheat so you’d still be able to play, just on community servers. And the anticheat thing hasn’t happened yet and I don’t know when it will
EAC is fine, actually. They planned on moving to another Anti-Cheat that is definitely not supporting Linux (forgot the name), but this has been postponed atm
Titanfall 2 is always fun, although maybe a bit fast paced for what you’re looking for. It runs on Linux through proton really well and has a pretty active community still - there’s a fan run server client called Northstar in case the official servers go down or are overrun with cheaters.
Worth watching some gameplay vids of Battlebit and seeing if that looks interesting to you. Feels a lot like classic battlefield, but has very simple graphics.
Battlefield 4 is another option that I like, you can usually pick it up with all the DLC for really cheap.
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