Fourteen Shooters to Fill the Gap Before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Lands

On September 26, 2022, the beta for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 went offline, and almost immediately the actress Chloë Grace Moretz, known for Kick-Ass, posted a question to her followers. With the beta gone, what should she play in the meantime? She said she was rotating between Vanguard, Final Fantasy XIV, GTA Online and Cold War. The full game arrives October 28, leaving about a month to fill.

Kotaku Australia took the question seriously. A writer teamed up with Kotaku staff writer Levi Winslow to build a list of 14 picks, mostly first-person and third-person shooters, and invited readers to add their own in the comments. The piece is openly an opinion column, and a jokey one: the lead writer says she has mostly stuck to Ratchet & Clank games, and the list is deliberately stuffed with them.

The first pick is the older one. The 2009 Modern Warfare 2, sequel to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, is described as one of the more beloved entries in the franchise, and its fast pace should hold FPS cravings until its namesake arrives. The caveat is that recent Steam reviews warn hackers currently run its multiplayer, so the campaign is the safer bet.

For players who like the speed and the rapid-fire kills, the list points to Doom Eternal, which it describes as relentlessly in overdrive, with toothy, scaly enemies, a chainsaw and a growling industrial soundtrack. Control gets a nod for sharing some of CoD's darkness and politics while leaning into the paranormal as a tight third-person shooter. Arkane's Dishonored series, Winslow notes, offers shooting and stabbing across the 2012 original, 2016's Dishonored 2 and 2017's standalone Death of the Outsider. All three are short enough that a player could finish one over a weekend, so a complete Dishonored run fits before launch.

On the multiplayer side, Hunt: Showdown is pitched as a muggy bounty-hunting game set in 19th-century Louisiana, where players kill four bosses to collect a bounty or kill other players and take theirs, then must reach an extraction point alive. Respawn's work gets two slots. Titanfall, either the 2014 original or the 2016 sequel, is called one of the best shooters ever made, with tight gunplay and the addition of mechs, though its servers are plagued by hackers. Apex Legends, from the same studio, is credited with gunplay that feels crunchy and tense skirmishes that echo CoD multiplayer, even though it is a battle royale. Splatoon 3 is included with the argument that in the right lobby it can resemble Hardcore Team Deathmatch, especially when players chase kill/death ratios rather than inking turf.

Wolfenstein: The New Order is recommended for its mix of violence and thoughtfulness, though the writer finds its plot occasionally hamfisted. Kotaku's Mike Fahey, in his 2014 review, called it not just a first-person shooter but a character-driven work of art.

Then come the Ratchet & Clank entries, delivered as a running gag. Full Frontal Assault, a PS3 download, is really tower defence; in 2012 Stephen Totilo wrote on Kotaku that it echoed League of Legends and could be as deeply engaging and complex in strategy as its MOBA predecessors, but its departure from the series' genre hurt its legacy. The 2016 remake of the first game is pitched as CoD-like for its hard mode. A Crack in Time and Rift Apart round it out, the latter praised because it features a girl Ratchet. The list closes by suggesting you play the whole Ratchet & Clank Collection.

Whether any of these actually scratches the Call of Duty itch is a matter of taste, and the list does not pretend otherwise. With the October 28 launch four weeks out, the Modern Warfare 2 hacker reports on Steam are worth watching.