Wardogs Is Officially One of the Best FPS Games of the Decade

And you don't even have to shoot anyone

"Are you out in the open, or do you have some cover?" I asked my girlfriend as she got picked off by a sniper when we were approaching the hot zone. "I'm by a wall, so I have some cover, but not a lot," she replied. "I'll throw down a smoke and drag you around the corner to revive you. Mike, can you cover me?" I asked our friend. "Sure," he said. "I've got an AK, but I can lay down suppressing fire." I lobbed two smokes, then pulled Erin's body around the corner, so the only people who had eyes on the resurrection were our fellow green teammates, all methodically pushing towards the objective.

In that match of Wardogs, I think I only had one kill after 20 minutes, but despite the lack of combat, I was having a blast. I was playing primarily as a spotter, tagging enemies with a monocular from afar, so their location was tracked on the minimap for everyone on my team, but I was also kitted out with medical equipment to revive any allies who needed it in my vicinity. In the following game, I spent most of my time with a hammer in hand, building a huge fortified base made up of Hesco blocks and barbed wire around a colossal tower that my team had secured.

Developed by Bulkhead and released this month on Steam in early access, Wardogs is a first-person shooter, but its beauty lies in the fact that you don't have to be competent with any sort of weapon to contribute to your team's efforts, and more importantly, to enjoy yourself. In the same way you can focus solely on exploration or base-building in No Man's Sky — or how in Old School RuneScape, you can focus entirely on one particular skill such as woodcutting, fishing, or combat — Wardogs caters to players who may not want to engage with the other disciplines.

As a result, this is a truly one-of-a-kind shooter that lives for those memorable moments. When I was constructing the defenses for our FOB, a teammate set up a few mortars — I hadn't reached a high enough support level to unlock them yet — so I hopped into one once I'd finished building. On my second monitor, I opened my browser to use a third-party artillery calculator, so I could figure out exactly where to aim. In-game, I positioned my mortar accurately, then fired shell after shell, bombarding the enemy team. Every time I watched the shell fly through the air then plummet towards the ground, landing directly on top of enemies camping another tower halfway across the map, I jumped for joy; it was so satisfying. I was killing enemies without putting myself in any danger whatsoever, although it required considerable set up.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm also capable with a gun in my hands. I've spent many a Wardogs match over the last week on the frontline, mowing down enemies with the AK-74, while also sometimes opting for the SKS marksman rifle to pick foes off from a little further away. The gun play in this game is remarkably impressive: weapons feel weighty, the variety of attachments has noticeable effects on how each gun behaves, and while there isn't a huge catalog to choose from (just 33 weapons are in Wardogs right now, including sidearms and launchers), each one has its place.

Bulkhead had a clear target niche in mind for Wardogs, and it was communicated thoroughly in pre-launch marketing: the studio wanted to create a first-person shooter that was considerably more "realistic" than Call of Duty and Battlefield, but more approachable and not quite as hardcore as games such as Squad and Hell Let Loose. It has hit the nail on the head: it certainly shares similarities with those games, but it has carved out an audience consisting of players from both ends of the genre spectrum.

This is an early access game, though, and the team has been crystal clear in saying that updates are going to be slow on the journey to a 1.0 version. Over the last week, the meta has evolved significantly, from players camping with snipers, picking people off in one-shot due to a lack of armor, to flesh rounds (ammo that deals more damage to non-armored targets) reigning supreme, to mortar bombardments ruining bases. Now level four armor is being unlocked by more players, chances are, armor piercing rounds are going to be the next big thing.

Any emerging meta has the potential to halt Wardogs' growth, though, because as is often the case with multiplayer games, the most enjoyable days are at the very start, when fewer people know just what the heck is going on. Once the community figures out the most overpowered strategy — I suspect it's going to be one that revolves around drill spam, to constantly pull the hot zone in one direction — players are naturally going to drop off, as everyone adopts the same strategy and matches run the risk of stagnation. Despite Bulkhead saying content updates will be slow, balance changes will need to happen at a fairly regular cadence to maintain a semblance of the current population.

Perhaps the best part about Wardogs is the fact that it's very much a social game. Pretty much everyone is either on the mic in proximity chat, grouped up in squads (most of which are open, so you can join any you like), or typing in text chat. When the three of us were playing, I got shot at by a sniper at the foot of some bleachers. A teammate next to me chirped up: "Yeah, there are two of them there, taking shots at us. I've had eyes on them for a while."

I informed him that Mike was in the building next to them, so if we could distract the pair, he could come up behind and kill them. The plan was executed perfectly, and our newfound pal joined the squad for the rest of the game. He was playing exclusively as a spotter; he didn't have any kills, but he had a staggering 76 assists from tagging enemies solely for teammates to take out.

Wardogs is one of the most interesting FPS games of the last decade, and arguably one of the best. It has a long road ahead of it, but even if you don't think the actual combat will be for you, either due to the slower-paced nature of it or your lack of ability to actually get kills, if you have friends who are playing, learn how to fly a helicopter instead. Become the best builder you can. Buy a truck each game and ferry supplies to any bases your team has set up. Wardogs posits an intriguing future for the FPS genre on the whole: there's more to this than just shooting guns.