Our greatest FPS is a sport that’ll have you ever saying, “1v1 me, bro”, however in a great way. For extra awards, take a look at our Game of the Year 2024 hub.
Jake Tucker, Editorial Director, PC Gaming Present: STRAFTAT makes me really feel previous. Not like the way in which my knees crunch as I get away from bed every morning or the way in which I do not perceive TikTok, however in the way in which STRAFTAT channels the FPS video games that I used to waste hours in as a teen.
The 1v1 battles sound hypercompetitive: The “two gamers enter, one participant leaves” styling on the coronary heart of STRAFTAT might evoke the thunderdome, however there’s an inherent ridiculousness due to the gathering of random ranges that lays issues out like Mario Social gathering for murderers. In a single you may battle in a maze of corridors with assault rifles, in one other you are sliding down an icy slope hurling landmines at one another, or combating one another with repulsor weapons and knives as you attempt to knock your opponent to their doom.
STRAFTAT’s greatest energy is that regardless of how foolish it appears to be like, the weapons really feel nice, the janky artwork fashion at all times lands, and the extent design is on level. Every spherical will take seconds to play out and it is intensely aggressive, critical stuff. That is the core of issues and it holds STRAFTAT collectively as a result of regardless of how foolish the maps get or how ridiculous the weapons are, it is clear the Lemaitre Bros have a deep understanding of how they need these 1v1 matches to play out, and so they have not compromised on that imaginative and prescient. So, I suppose it really is a Thunderdome. However the members are going at it with nothing however rubber knives and a yoyo.
Morgan Park, Employees Author: It truly is one thing particular. Like a contemporary LAN get together in a can, STRAFTAT is a essentially social FPS with the type of quick-session magnetism that makes of us wish to huddle round a Discord stream and name “subsequent.”
I am unable to say sufficient about these 70+ maps: a deep pool of battlegrounds each common and intensely bizarre, just like the one the place the one gun pickup is on the finish of an impediment course, or the one which’s simply the Crimson Room from Twin Peaks. STRAFTAT is that bookmarked Workforce Fortress 2/Unreal Match server with all the great maps. And in some way it is free.
Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: It is so good to have a Quake-adjacent shooter that drips with slapstick. You possibly can’t assist however chortle when your first seconds of life, sprung from the gate (“SPRINT, SLIDE, GRAB GUN ASAP”), instantly culminates into “You discovered a baseball bat, however your opponent discovered a rocket launcher or a gatling gun.” Futily swinging the factor as you get completely vaporized by some man named Bathroom Boss 99, your physique ragdolling right into a bottomless pit. It is Soviet Looney Tunes.
Ted Litchfield, Affiliate Editor: My solely drawback with STRAFTAT is that I have been enjoying it sufficient to get “annoying good” on the sport. Not really good, like adequate to beast all comers in random queue (there are some scorching palms on the market) or maintain my very own at a purely theoretical—at the least on the time of writing—STRAFTAT event, however adequate that it is getting onerous to suggest STRAFTAT to extra easygoing, well-adjusted associates. I do know that we would load in and I might wall soar and crouch slide to the primo weapon spawns I do know by coronary heart, grinding my buds into the filth and making them by no means wish to play any sport with me once more, not to mention STRAFTAT.
And that is a rattling disgrace, as a result of that is an FPS with some real everyman enchantment. It does not attempt to hook you with development loops tied to restricted run seasonal content material or no matter. It retains me coming again with a joyful “yet another spherical” magic that has me feeling like I am enjoying CS 1.6 or The Specialists at a LAN get together in 2009.
Jake Tucker: I, for one, have grown bored with Ted apologising profusely as he murders me on map after map
Morgan Park: I have been on either side of that one Ted. Confirmed it to a pal who did not need me to go simple on him, however I gained sufficient to show him off the sport. Then I performed with one other pal who simply embarrassed me for a half hour straight. Not precisely STRAFTAT’s fault, however a celebration mode with extra gamers would go a good distance!
