A looter shooter is a video game genre that seamlessly blends RPG features with a point-and-click shooting game.
If done well, adding randomness to components of the game helps it feel more alive. You’ve spent so much time in this environment that you’ve become familiar with it.
Looter shooter games present a whole new century of gaming experience. The language, violence, gore, and sexual themes are second to none.
When you ask what a looter shooter game is, the definition sometimes takes its meaning a little from the name.
Success does not happen by chance. It isn’t coincidental or unjustified, and it isn’t the result of pure luck. Success results from much trial and error, blood, sweat, and tears.
It comprises originality, emulation, careful observation, and precise effort. Success is not a fluke; it is the consequence of hard work, with the goal that the ultimate result will make you better.
It necessitates effort and time. Asking the question, what is a looter shooter game? In that regard, I can’t help but think of one of the newest and most popular video game genres: the looter-shooter.
Looter-shooters, often known as “shooters,” is a sub-genre of video games characterized by completely random arms and ammo, rapid gunplay, and the hunger to obtain this procedurally produced weaponry for the best fast-paced gunplay possible.
Furthermore, looter-shooters tend to strive for durability. The unpredictability of loot drops and continued content offered via extensions, season passes, and other means keep players involved.
Character advancement is emphasized in these games, just as in RPGs, one of the two genres central to this hybrid.
However, although a skill tree or level structure is not essential in a looter-shooter, weaponry constantly boosts your player.
With Flagship Studios’ Hellgate: London, the experiment began in 2007. Hellgate was the first game to blend the adventure role-playing genre with first-person shooter elements to create a new beast. It answered the question of what a looter shooter game is just by the gameplay of its games.
It was developed by a team led by former Blizzard workers. The game provided great players with a reasonably enjoyable grind centered on equipment randomness and character stat upgrades.
Furthermore, Hellgate was widely touted as a “games as a service” title, implying that the producers intend to support and provide extra content for the game long after it has been released—usually at a cost.
These characteristics would become hallmarks of the looter-shooter subgenre, giving it durability rivaled only by MMOs (massively multiplayer online games).
Despite nailing the “looter” element of the looter-shooter genre, Hellgate’s “shooting” portion fell short, possibly due to the developer’s inadequate experience with shooters.
The ranged classes just failed to produce the punchy, kinetic gunplay we’d come to anticipate from shooters, whereas Flagship understood how to weave melee fighting into the game—hence the bulk of the six classes using it. It was completely flattened.
When the game first came out, it received severely mixed reviews. Outlets highlighted the game’s glitches, repetition, gunplay, and excessive price ($10 per month or $150 for life) as some of its major flaws.
Flagship filed for bankruptcy in 2008, only one year after Hellgate’s publication. Although Bandai Namco Games decided to support gamers until February 2009, it was evident that Hellgate’s concepts needed much development before becoming mainstream.
Fortunately for us, the reorganization and subsequent “birth” of looter-shooters as we understand them today were only a few months away.
When we first stepped foot on Pandora in 2009, we were still answering the question of what a looter shooter game was.
We were joined by Cage the Elephant’s “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked,” a dusty planet teeming with bounty-seeking alien civilization tech and wealth beyond their wildest dreams.
We met four “Vault Hunters”—Lilith, Brick, Mordecai, and Roland—and the Borderlands franchise, which has become one of the most recognizable looter-shooters.
Unlike Flagship, Borderlands was created by Gearbox Software, a firm recognized for its work in shooters. And whereas Flagship failed to create engaging gunplay, Gearbox got the art down pat.
Gearbox’s experience with shooters and Randy Pitchford’s love of RPGs led the firm down the same route as Hellgate and created Borderlands.
In an interview with Glixel, Pitchford said, “The thing which motivates us toward the progress and that realization and that decision in typical RPGs, that sort of lengthy loop, it’s not mutually exclusive with all the short-term, the visceral, base-level joy we have from the correct kind of moving and shooting in a shooter.” “These two components were just sitting there,” says the narrator. Considering these two items are not mutually exclusive, there’s a real chance we can break new ground if we combine them. That was always the case with Borderlands.”
While Borderlands did not invent the shooter-looter genre, it did establish its current mold and solidify its place in video game history thanks to its hilarious conversation, cell-shaded graphics, and inventiveness.
On the other hand, the initial Borderlands game was only a launching pad for Gearbox, who would go on to stretch the genre even more in a few years.
Warframe, a free-to-play looter-shooter created by Digital Extremes, was released in 2013.
The game was launched quietly, to mostly positive reviews and minimal interest; what it lacks in early response more than makes up for its sheer length.
Warframe had over 150,000 players online a few months ago, making it the 16th most popular game on Steam, topping even Among Us and Dead by Daylight.
So, after all these years, what keeps Warframe alive? The game received a fresh, free expansion earlier this month, making it the tenth from its 2013 release.
Thanks to its extensive community and game support, Warframe has established itself as a GaaS, or “game as a service. “
Warframe introduced a hitherto unpopular video game concept, microtransactions, to the shooter looter genre to compensate for the game’s and expansions’ free-to-play nature.
While the game can be played purely via grinding, micropayments allow players to buy in-game things with real money, avoiding the monotony that the looter-shooter genre often brings.
Since introducing microtransactions in Warframe, practically other looter-shooters have followed suit, including our next release, which started implementing them a year into its development cycle.
While much of the game follows the standard looter-shooter structure, a few aspects of Destiny distinguish it from previous games, including its MMO components.
Despite rejecting the title and pitching itself as a “shared-world shooter,” Destiny has much in common with many modern MMOs besides the “shared-world” aspect.
First and foremost, Destiny has clans, which function similarly to guilds in MMOs.
It also includes strikes, raids, and other timed events that are updated regularly by the creators and, happily, are free of charge and do not require a subscription.
Furthermore, the game has a centralized hub where you can communicate with up to twenty other players, and public events allow you to join up with other players and take down larger targets while traveling the many planets.
While Destiny is not an MMO in the typical sense, it incorporates many of their best aspects and has put a unique spin on looter-shooters.
Risk of Rain 2 was published on all consoles in August after leaving early access. While Chucklefish released the first Risk of Rain in 2013, Gearbox released Risk of Rain 2, which may explain the series‘ abrupt shift from “Metroidvania” to looter-shooter.
Despite this shift in the genre, Risk of Rain 2 retained the roguelike components of its forerunner. This allowed the game to profit from the present roguelike trend and provided it with the edge required to be considered a unique entry in the genre.
The game received quite positive appraisals and sold over four million copies on PC alone at one point.
Overall, looter-shooters are a relatively new genre, and while the basic premise is well-developed, how this concept is best performed remains a point of contention.
Is it the game’s grind or the developer’s community interaction and continual development that ensures its longevity? And how important is lifespan in the first place? Do we regard these games as standard games with limited lifespans and many entrants or as MMOs with ever, long-term commitment? How can we balance single-player adventures, increased multiplayer action, microtransactions, and redundancy?
Finally, looter shooters provide a unique and psychologically fulfilling experience by combining the long-term reward of character development with the instant satisfaction of high-octane shoot-outs.
Looter-shooters will continue to have a particular place in the hearts of many gamers in 2021, with titles like Borderlands, Destiny, and Warfare one of the most popular titles in the genre.
However, this sub-genre has become a staple in the games industry, making it even more intriguing that it only began 14 years ago.
I believe this article clarifies what a looter shooter game is.
