Especially in the wake of Call of Duty 4, we had a surfeit of gray-brown military shooters - Battlefield 3, the rebooted Medal of Honor, and of course Black Ops and the direct Modern Warfare sequels defined the mid-'00s FPS aesthetic. It got samey. But the backlash was too severe. Today's shooters practice a banal visual maximalism, with loud colors, big shapes, and cartoon characters. Even the ostensibly more-grounded FPS games, like Counter-Strike 2, Far Cry, and present-day CoD, have strayed into neo-psychadelia. And that's just part of the problem. Loot boxes. Microtransactions. Empty customization. Wraith Ops, a new shooter published by Hell Let Loose's Team17, is coming to challenge it all.
Developed by Grassrootz, Wraith Ops takes the multiplayer FPS game and strips it back to basics. There are no loot boxes. There are no wacky skins. You get 60 weapons, multiple attachments, and six maps - with fast TTK and a realistic, location-based damage system, Wraith Ops is designed for tough but meaningful play, where it's about the match itself and not the grind.
You have perks, but the goal is to make them worthwhile, and only include ones that have a significant impact on how you play. Similarly, you can customize your character, but all the available items and clothing are consistent visually to a military shooter, and none of them make any difference to your health or damage; they're purely cosmetic.
You can host your own servers, the maps are designed with "no unnecessary choke points," and Wraith Ops is a premium game - it's not free to play. Previously known as Project Wraith, the new trailer makes the name change official. You can see it below:
There's no release date for Wraith Ops yet, but you can already wishlist it on Steam. Just go here.
Otherwise, try some of the other best multiplayer games, or maybe the best war games on PC.
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