Favorite first person shooter campaign this year?

Easily Doom. While I enjoyed the novelty of Titanfall 2, I enjoyed playing Doom more.

Titanfall 2 with it's diversity and creativity certainly puts it way up there in the pantheon of recent FPS campaigns.

But Doom, man. They nailed every aspect of it. That sense of everything being on the brink of chaos, and that I'd be able to keep on top of it so long as I could just moving and shooting. Utter white knuckle challenge that's only further amplified by the music and visuals.

Not just the best of the year, but in the running for best of the decade!

Single player only its Doom. Titanfall 2 is fun but you're almost running through it on auto pilot.

Titanfall 2. I don't get all the hype around Doom. The whole thing just felt so generic to me. Don't get me wrong, I had fun playing it, but I can't think of anything from it that I didn't see all the time from shooters 15 years ago

I don't know if it's my favorite, but Superhot should really be on this list.

@rickrockmann: I already voted for DOOM but I think Superhot was my favorite just because of how new and unique it was. I love the dumb "hacker" UI and the creepy, yet bare-bones story on top of the awesome action.

Doom was everything I expected out of a big-budget faithful reboot. It's entertaining as hell, but it didn't touch me in that weird way that Superhot did.

It's gotta be DOOM

Titanfall 2 is a really good shooter campaign, it's got a decent story and there's just a lot of awesome level designs and locations in there.

But come on. DOOM. There's just no contest here, it's DOOM. Literally any other year, Titanfall 2 would have blown everything else out of the water, but fucking DOOM is so good.

Also you forgot Shadow Warrior 2, which I haven't played but looked pretty cool in the Quick Look. Thought maybe someone might be missing it.

EDIT: And Devil Daggers. Someone mentioned Superhot earlier. It's just been a great year to be a fan of shooters.

I'm kind of with you. It's definitely one of my favourite games this year but it feels so different to the rest of the titles on this list and so far removed from a FPS that it almost belongs in another genre.

Out of those four I'm only played DOOM, so I'm going with DOOM.

DOOM is one of the rare games that motivated me to try and 100% it for the platinum trophy immediately upon completion. I can't really say enough praise about it, though I'll say that Titanfall 2's campaign is solid as hell and has some great set pieces.

Titanfall 2 then Doom

I voted for Doom, but Infinite Warfare is a close second. Titanfall 2 has super memorable moments but it's more uneven than a lot of its fans are willing to admit.

DOOM i guess, but even then for me it's been a weak year for fps campaigns, has there really only been 4 bigger budget shooters this year?
There were a decent number of first person platformer games which came out, and Killing Room can be fun, but the only shooter campaigns we get now are the big 2/3 and an edge case like DOOM, i guess expensive new graphics kills the smaller developers and the newer market of F2P moba's changed things.

DOOM was good but certain design decisions put a damper on it for me, the focus on collectable upgrades with such a big impact on gameplay then losing those upgrades if you want to play the campaign again, always having the feeling that you've left behind the upgrades you missed, and while i appreciate the strategic element of executions giving you health and ammo i never liked having to stop and do them. It puts me off going back to it because i'll have to do the searching all over again.
Titanfall 2 was fine, but all the moments which people were describing as surprising or amazing were things i'd seen and done before in other games, i thought the final moments of that campaign were strange and that they ended it too quickly, and was that guy drinking from the canteen ever actually in the game?

The best FPS i replayed this year was COD2.

I mean DOOM, no other FPS in over a decade has managed to boil themselves down to their essentials and polish that core to a mirror sheen in the way DOOM did. It doesn't rely on gimmicks, or really anything new, it just does what most games don't do these days, in that everything it attempts to do it does tremendously well.

@dgtlty said:

Yeah I loved Superhot, but I viewed it more as a puzzle game than a first person shooter.

Doom's actually the only one I've played so far from that list, but it's my game of the year anyway.

Doom, no contest. Fast-paced, exhilarating, very mobile gameplay? Check. Fun battle arenas and non-single corridor level design? Check. Carrying all the weapons instead of just two or four? Check. A story that does not break your pace every 10 minutes for boring and unnecessary exposition? Check. A wide variety of diverse baddies to slay instead of just having a guy with a rifle, and then a guy with a shotgun, and then maybe a slightly more tougher guy with a LMG? Check. It successfully breaks away from the prevalent stale and (in my opinion) regressive formula that has been plaguing FPS games for a long time and that's what puts it far above any other shooter in recent years.

If we're not counting more RPG heavy games like Dishonored 2 or Mankind Divided and more melee focused games like Dying Light The Following then its doom followed by battlefield. Otherwise Id say Dishonored 2>Dying Light>Doom>MD>BF1

Really bummed I haven't had time to play Shadow Warrior 2. Im thinking it would be at the end of that list. I really liked the first one.

Wolfenstein: TNO... er, Titanfall 2 - the creativity in level design and mechanics made it feel like a Valve game. I love how the enemy characters taunt you over vidcom like in Star Fox.

DOOM was a series of claustrophobic corridors that connect to box-y arenas and felt very dated to me. I don't have any attachment or fondness to the originals, so that could be why its throwback design ethos and abrasive aesthetic do nothing for me.

Does Dishonored 2 count if you ran through on High Chaos and killed everyone in sight?

Doom and then Titanfall 2. Titanfall 2 had an excellent campaign but Doom felt like it was going to be rubbish, like there was no way they'd make a game like that. Right from the start up until the end the Doom campaign felt brilliant and it ended with me wanting more. TF2 ended with me thinking of an ending I'd have liked more until the post credit scene.

I'm enjoying the hell out of Titanfall 2 but what diversity and creativity are you talking about because I wouldn't say that's one of it's strong points at all. Unless you are talking about the campaign which I have no intention of playing, that could be amazing for all I know.

While I think there were more contenders for GOOD campaigns, I think Doom really did a remarkable job or mixing old with new while making it exciting and humorous. In any other year one of the others would have won, but this year I think Doom hit a lot of high marks.

@picky_bugger: well this is a thread about your favorite CAMPAIGN of the year.

Months ago I rented and played through the Doom single player on normal and enjoyed it quite a bit. While I thought the collectibles were neat in execution there were times where hunting for secrets was dragging down the otherwise breakneck pacing of the action. Other than that I can't say anything bad about my time with it.

The problem is it wasn't very memorable. I remember having a great time shooting demons. But other than that it is Doom God killing stuff, pushing buttons, and holy fuck it's Metal as fuck. I don't remember much about what happened more than just relishing in the absurdity of what a throwback style of game it is.

This is a case where I am way more of a nerd for the sci-fi(/anime) of Titanfall 2 than the Metal of Doom. Obviously things about the way it's structured feel somewhat slapdash but I don't know, I appreciated the simple cohesion and escalation of a very short but sweet "robot pal" style story. That game makes me feel like games with mecha have been getting it wrong for years. It's the kind of anime power fantasy I've been wanting FPS games to have since I was a kid. Get in a robot, get out of a robot. How hard could it be to make it control well and feel cool as hell? We've come a long way since Shogo: Mobile Armor Division.

Sounds like you remember DOOM perfectly well to me.

Two weeks ago I would've said DOOM without thinking twice and would've laughed at any other game on this list compared to it. Then I played Titanfall 2. While I still voted for DOOM because it absolutely nailed every, single piece of that campaign, Titanfall 2 was just an incredibly fresh and fun campaign. Both games do a great job of not taking themselves too seriously and letting the players have fun with the mechanics, and both games have mechanics that are just so damn tight. Both Titanfall 2 and DOOM feel incredible but for different reasons. With Titanfall 2 it's all about fluidity and movement and DOOM is just speed and force. I can't recommend these two games enough, and coming from someone who hasn't been in love with the FPS genre for the past few years that's pretty surprising to me.

DOOM for me, but as I'm making my way through Titanfall 2 I can see how someone could make the argument for it. Theres some really crazy stuff in that campaign. Looking at both games as whole packages (including their multiplayer offerings) I might say Titanfall is the more, complete, successful game, but I digress.

Only looking at single player though though I think I prefer how DOOM plays, and I felt much more attached to the world, setting, and sparse narrative of DOOM. I actually really love the story in DOOM. Its few characters are so incredibly well acted that they really draw you in, and I'd go so far as to compare it to the film "The Witch", in that it's narrative is very thin, but the world and atmosphere it creates is almost perfect. The Witch is obviously a more self-serious piece of media but I think the comparison stands. DOOM also contextualizes the original DOOM and DOOM II in a very creative way that even justifies why the series has such a dumb name.

For me all TItanfall's campaign has is it's gameplay and the moments they built around that. It's a fantastic campaign, and it has some crazy good moments in it, but that's all it has. The story feels disjointed and I'm not attached to the setting. DOOM, however feels complete in its single player. It has great combat, an incredible setting, and a vague story I found very appealing.

On paper, Doom's willingness to buck all modern FPS paradigms is a big, big deal. By rewinding the script twenty years, that game has essentially manufactured a philosophical shift within the first-person shooter classification. There's probably an argument somewhere that'll give that credit to, like, Wolfenstein or something. But Doom modernizes essentially the entirety of what made that franchise so enduring in the first place, and does it so easily that it becomes difficult to parse that recognition elsewhere.

But, personally, I felt there was a point at which Doom plateaued. It's a long, worthwhile campaign, but that breadth of time causes the experience to melt into a single recollection. I can't really pick out specific moments of the campaign I loved, standout setpieces or breathtaking revelations. Instead I have to refer to the totality of Doom. That's not an altogether bad thing--it means the game maintained a consistent level of (extremely high) quality throughout. But it also means I'm more than a little numbed by its relentless and specific cadence.

I was floored by Titanfall. Again, on paper, I think it's hard for Titanfall to mount a meaningful argument against Doom and the way Doom bends the form of the FPS to its will. Titanfall, for what it's worth, still devotes itself to the Call of Duty archetype. Heavily scripted setpieces, gunplay less concerned with strategy than visceral feel. But the on-paper comparison misrepresents one fact.

Titanfall is a pound-for-pound giant.

Make no mistake, Titanfall is a roller-coaster. Every second of Titanfall builds toward something, some greater climax. It ramps and peaks in ways other games simply can't. There are no fewer than three sequences in Titanfall 2 that left me speechless, sequences I will surely refer to in conversation for years to come. Like Doom, Titanfall takes an aggressive look at traditional FPS mechanics and introduces those mechanics into unfamiliar practical scenarios. Even if I could acknowledge the game's shared DNA with Mirror's Edge or Portal or Singularity, it still felt packaged and presented in a way that felt unique and wholly individual.

It isn't even simply mechanical, though. Titanfall offers truly effective storytelling and honest-to-goodness worldbuilding. BT is probably my favorite singleplayer character of the year, and if you'd tried to tell me in 2014 that I would eventually give a shit about Titanfall universe, that I would actually be able to name specific factions and their actual motives with any clarity, I would have laughed in your face. But here we are.

Doom, by contrast, does some of its worldbuilding and its storytelling behind the scenes in the form of audio logs and notes left behind in the wake of the hellspawn insurgence--but if your game treats its own narrative as an extraneous detail, then I, as your game's player, will be sure to as well.

Doom's argument might be better, but Titanfall's campaign is definitely my favorite.

@humanity: Ha yeah my post was pretty dumb actually. I was reading and posting at work when I should have been busy.

As an actual question, as someone who's played bits of COD and Battlefield campaigns and thought they were pretty bad and definitely not something I'd want to play is there anything in the Titanfall 2 campaign for me?

I haven't played any.

No. He said first person shooter. Dishonored is clearly not a shooter. It's just a first person action game when you play like that.

Doom was great on many levels but I don't think it had the multiple "wow moments" I felt when playing Titanfall 2.

I'm not a huge Duke Nukem fan, but that new episode included in the 20th Anniversary Edition was pretty good.

@inevpatoria: Fantastic post, duder.

I like Titanfall 2 better in general, so that's my vote. Doom is really fun but Titanfall is short, sweet, and to the point. I thought Doom got pretty samey and felt a bit too easy, for that style of shooter. Titanfall is also easy ,but it mixes things up more and its over before you get tired of it. When it comes down to it, I would rather replay Titanfall than Doom.

Doom, no competition.

As much as I love Titanfall's campaign I just can't get past how great Doom is.

@picky_bugger: I thought the Infinite Warfare campaign was really great and the Titanfall 2 campaign is equally good in a different way. I suppose Titanfall 2 is slightly less cinematic a slightly more puzzle-platformy (although the platforming is really very surface level here). Where Infinite Warfare has this really well done, bombastic space opera campaign with a lot of the thrills being presented in typical Call of Duty fashion, Titanfall relies on a few cool moments and generally more traversal puzzles than combat encounters, which are laughably easy for the most part and take a back seat to everything else in that games single player campaign.

I've been dragging my way through DOOM for the past 6 months and finished Titanfall 2 in a day, so that may be an indication. Besides that, TF2 does some really unique and crazy stuff and all of the missions were pretty solid while introducing you to the gunplay, Titan mechanics, and traversal.

DOOM so far seems to just do the "What if you were a guy with a shotgun" thing really well. It's super fun, but I don't see yet why people dig it that much.

I know this game didn't come out this year but F.E.A.R. in VR was amazing Doom 2016 was great but for me F.E.A.R. still has the most satisfy combat and to play it on my Rift was a long dream that finally came true this year.

Even if it's more a "puzzle" game, SUPERHOT is maybe the most satisfying shooter I've played this year. Right after that's probably Doom and then Titanfall 2. Overwatch also deserves a high-up spot, if only by being the first shooter I've properly managed to play online since Unreal Tournament 2K4.

I loved Doom, way more than I thought I would (the original 2 were some of my all time favorites), but Titantfall 2's campaign was more unique... and fun, if you did the RIGHT THING and played on the harder difficulties! Same with Doom really, normal is the new easy in almost all cases. But I wanted a new, better Mechwarrior and Titanfall 2 feels like that to me. I haven't and probably won't touch the multiplayer, even.

Thanks, man! Means a lot!

@jec03: by far the best AI in any shooter. Sad to say this in 2016.

I pretty much only play games on my PS4 so thats why I didn't mention Superhot. It looked amazing though so sorry for forgetting to mention it. For me this was a tough choice. I loved how Doom and Titanfall played but I honestly fell off of Doom towards the end of it. Even though Infinite warfare didn't play as well, it did more with it's characters in the amount of time I played it than did Titanfall 2. Also Ethan>BT. All three did different things really well to me, but in the end I choose Titanfall 2. There's really nothing like it and it has the best platforming that I've ever played in a FPS.

Maybe I just have to go through it more on hard (or, second to the hardest), but I really struggled to find motivation to get through Doom. I didn't love it. Battlefield 1 was surprisingly really good! Call of Duty is decent, and really interesting on hard with it's non-regain health system. Titanfall 2 is probably my favorite of them, butt I have yet to beat any of them on hard, and I've only played a bit of each of them on that difficulty, but had funner with all of them in that respect.

Doom! I haven't played COD and I haven't finished BF 1 (enjoying it thus far). Titanfall 2's campaign was pretty good as well but nothing topped Doom for me.

Doom.

If Doom didn't exist, Titanfall 2 would have been the winner..but damn..DOOM.

Doom I do believe. TitanFall 2 I have yet to play. But let me give a shout out to Shadow Warrior 2. Following the logic of a previous poster, I would suppose it was an action rather than a pure shooter. But shooting was as prominent as swordplay, magic and the more esoteric aspects of martial arts such as chi and karma. I had a good time with that game.

Looking forward to TitanFall 2.