Best Looter Shooters

Today, this genre is gaining popularity as quickly as "battle royal". It is easy to understand its essence, because it is expressed in the name: loot in English means "booty", that is, we are talking about action movies, where the purpose of battles and the basis of the hero's development are trophies received after defeating the opponents. This mechanic turned out to be simple, exciting and ideal for online shooters, although its roots go back to the classic RPG, where almost from the very first games were hunting for some rare armor and artifacts. The second important condition of any looter-shooter is an emphasis on PvE-battles. Which, in general, is logical: it is much easier to get a valuable item in a fight with a computer enemy than with another gamer. We tell you what works you should pay attention to if you are interested in such games.

And let's start with the first The Division. We'll start with the first, not the second part, because it's cheaper and looks more interesting - thanks to the combination of Christmas in New York and apocalypse pictures. Sometimes Ubisoft organizes promotions and opens free temporary access to the game, so there is always a chance to try it for free. We can not ignore the fact that after the release of "Division" in 2016, all fans of action shooters started talking about looter-shooters, because it was an important milestone for the development of the genre, finally firmly established online. Everything here was done like in the textbook: the developers provided a huge number of trophy items of equipment, allowing you to strengthen the heroes, and an abundance of PvE-firefights.

The action of the game is set in the universe of Tom Clancy's books. The U.S. government has created a special unit, whose agents must take on the defense of society in the event of social collapse. And it happened: villains put a pathogen on banknotes, which mowed down most of the Americans on Black Friday. The authorities are inactive, there is no police on the streets of New York, and you as a Strategic Homeland Division fighter have to fight with looters who have seized power in the country. There are a lot of similar operatives on the map - you can team up with them. Help will be especially useful if you decide to go to the Dark Zone, where there are both PvE battles and free PvP. Rest between raids is available in peaceful hubs, where NPCs give tasks and gamers communicate with each other.

Borderlands series has become a classic of looter-shooters. But if the first and the second parts you will be able to pass alone, then in the third part you will have a very hard time without the support of your comrades. The action movie is created for battles of a squad of four participants against crowds of ordinary enemies and powerful bosses. Kilograms of gunpowder are consumed in a matter of minutes, so that the heroes of the galaxy get new guns and equipment items as a reward, and there is plenty of this goodness in the game, with different levels of rarity. You can collect a collection of a particular manufacturer, and it will not be a fashionable whim, because the brand of the weapon depends on its additional property. Malivan guns, for example, hit enemies with elemental forces, and Hyperion produces guns with built-in force shields.

Gearbox studio's action movie takes you to the distant future, when people travel through space on starships. But not all corners of the galaxy are safe: some of them are captured by bandits, whose leaders broadcast their crimes live, because they are not afraid of anyone, but only want glory. However, they won't be unpunished for long, because you are the one to take care of the case. The story begins on the planet Pandora, and then, as the complexity of battles increases, moves to other systems - like Athens, Prometheus and Eden-6. Each location looks different: there are shootouts in caves, in deserts and on the streets of cities. Mining, respectively, also varies from one world to another, so whichever of the four classes you choose, the space for its development will be open in any case.

Although the fans of the dilogy dislike the second part, it is the one we recommend to get acquainted with. Firstly, unlike the prequel, it is available on PC, not only on consoles. Secondly, you can play it for free. Of course, if you want to enjoy the epic story about the confrontation of good and evil forces in space, and at the same time to test your skills in all modes, you will have to buy DLC. But first, just try shooting - in the tutorial and some missions you can do it without spending a penny. Destiny 2 shooting mechanics can be taken as a model for all first-person shooters. There is nothing surprising here, because Bungie studio, which gave the world Halo series, worked on the project.

You play as a Guardian who must fight monsters from other worlds for the revival of humanity. The remnants of people on Earth are helped by the Wanderer - a machine and a living being in the form of a giant sphere hovering over the planet. It gives the characters supernatural skills. There is a choice of class in the game: you can be a titan, a warlock or a hunter. But the key feature is the abundance of loot, mined in PvE modes throughout the solar system. Trophies in the form of guns and artifacts allow you to create a unique hero and find your own style of combat. Also in Destiny 2 there are a lot of elements for changing the appearance of heroes, their ghosts (helpers) and sparrows (vehicles).

This cooperative action game has everything you'd expect from a looter-shooter: monster fights, loot that lets you upgrade your heroes, and team play where everyone has a role to play. But in addition to this standard set DRG also offers a destructible environment in the spirit of Red Faction. Here you get the role of dwarves, who are mining on different planets. The map is randomly generated, but no matter where your fate takes you, you can destroy any rock to get ore, block the path of enemies, or simply make a passage. Of course, the task is not so easy, because bearded miners are opposed by monstrous insects, which will be burned, poisoned, shot, blown up and crushed by the tracks of armored vehicles.

There are a lot of enemies here, so the "every man for himself" style in the game is inappropriate. The main thing at the moment of danger is the right equipment of the character. There are four classes in total: scout, engineer, driller and gunner. Each of them has its own set of cells in the inventory and arsenal available for use. Taking into account the infinite variability of customization of dwarves, procedural generation of levels and destructibility of everything around, DRG is quite successful without a plot - there are enough situations that arise during missions for fun. At the same time, the game combines curiosities with an element of horror, because the caves are dark and full of surprises. What if there is a swarm of overgrown beetles lurking in one of the tunnels?

This is what a cartoon Valhalla could look like: the heroes find themselves on the surface of an unknown planet, surrounded by enemies, so immediately the shooting starts, and then, after passing through the portal, there is a boss battle. Did you win? Do the same thing all over again. And then again, and again. And the locations change all the time - there are more than a thousand of them in the game, so it's almost impossible to run into two identical ones in a row. Variety in the endless battle brings loot, which allows you to create complex combos of dozens of items. Some items make you run faster and jump higher, while others increase damage, create black holes that suck enemies in, and call for help. There are plenty of options, but since loot drops randomly, it's the chance that determines your fighting style.

The game has several difficulty levels, as well as additional modifiers, which from the start change the rules of the upcoming battle. You can, for example, make the enemies double in number or make them fire at your own. This means that with each new approach you will be faced with surprises, and robots, bought for virtual gold, or people - partners in cooperative mode, will help you to cope with them. Even some artifacts here are designed to be passed by a group - like flags that heal everyone who enters their area of effect. Risk of Rain 2 also uses gacha mechanics: gamers unlock new heroes by fulfilling certain conditions during missions.

If you are looking for an entertaining shooter with a full-fledged story and hand-crafted levels, and not just an endless run-and-gun shooter, check out Outriders. This game is very different from other representatives of the genre, where the unspoken rule "the longer the better" applies, and writing a story with an ending is taboo. But People Can Fly studio, which gave the world Painkiller, Gears of War and Bulletstorm, has its own atmosphere. The developers offer a finished work at full price. And those who are used to try first, and then decide to buy, can download the demo - in Steam the trial version is available for free. It is also desirable to call your friends to the battle, because the single mode here is purely nominal. Even if you play without support, you will still need a connection with the server, as in multiplayer.

The action is set in a dystopian sci-fi universe where war rages. While humanity bleeds to death in the trenches of Inok, your heroes will have to land on an alien planet and pass all its tests to unravel the mysteries of evil and finally challenge Ereshkigal herself. There are four classes to choose from, but the squad can have up to three members, so you can't have a traditional role-playing party with all the main types. It's for the best, because this way you and your comrades will show your wit and face the consequences of your choice. Surviving in the scorcher will help you to change the difficulty level freely. Want better loot? Make the tasks harder. And if someone from the group is not pulling, it makes sense to lower the heat.

In Escape from Tarkov, the entire gameplay is centered around the theme of loot. There is only one measure of success here: if you managed to take more from the map than you brought to it. It doesn't matter how many enemies you shot and how many you managed to escape from. It doesn't matter how steady your hand is or how sharp your eye is. All that matters is whether there was something valuable in your locker or bag, and whether you managed to get it out of the level without getting ambushed. The real treasure is the stuff that a newcomer is unlikely to pay attention to, like nuts and bolts, stew, rye breadcrumbs, and computer boards. Then you sell the loot to the characters who gave you the mission, simply auction it off, or keep it for yourself. And you equip your character for a new raid.

"Tarkov" can be a real torment for those who are not ready to learn - to memorize maps, choose the safest escape routes, soberly assess their strength. But for fans of adventures in the spirit of "Stalker" and fans of firearms, the action game by Battlestate Games studio will turn into a holiday. In the midst of apocalyptic devastation, where zombies do not roam, soldiers of private military companies are operating. They fight among themselves in abandoned supermarkets, farms, recreation centers, factories and city streets, using any tactics that come to mind. Those who have gained experience make their own guns from spare parts bought or obtained in the raid. Because shooting in the game is done with manic scrupulosity - any factor, even the most insignificant, can become decisive.

Finally, the novelty, which, according to the Steam store, shortly before the release became the most anticipated game in the world. There is not much surprising here. The First Descendant offers Destiny-style gameplay, only with third-person view, available for free, and it's also one of the first looter-shooters made on Unreal Engine 5. Here you fight to save humanity from the alien Valgus and their obsessive leader Karel. Battles take place in sci-fi scenery, and among the enemies you can find both skittish "targets for shooting" and giants, on which you need to climb to damage different parts of their bodies. Don't miss out on the loot: guns, artifacts and modules to upgrade your hero or his weaponry.

The First Descendant can be called a looter-shooter with targeted farming. That is, each item has some probability of appearing at the place of defeating the enemy (not 100%), but where exactly this item is hidden is known in advance. So the process of arming, unlocking new heroes and improving their equipment comes down to a simple order of actions: from peaceful Albion you go to the desired location, kill enemies there, then return with trophies back and repeat everything as many times as necessary to achieve the goal. For example, for the battle with a boss, against which there is no sense to go out without a powerful defense against poison. Other gamers do the same thing on the map - they can join you at any time if they wish. In general, this is a classic of the genre with nicely designed shooting.

What kind of looter-shooters do you like?