There are still very few resources in this market. That's why every game has to come out in early access to fund the rest of its development, usually by less than a dozen devs. There's certainly a lot of passion for the first time in a decade, but the genre has a long way to go in its recovery

Honestly a miracle it's even created. And it's from what a single 18 year old kid? Dude has been working on it since he was 13

I honestly welcome more tac shooters, even janky ones. Getting ideas out inspires others and brings innovation. Looking beyond the jank and bugs by many of these solo or small team projects, the level of authenticity we have now over what we’d have if we relied solely on big name devs is insane. It might be the fact I’ve been following Star Citizen for 10 years, but I don’t mind seeing early, buggy, unoptimized versions of games just as long as they push the envelope in one way or another, and show active development. Game dev is slow and that can be frustrating, but I’ll take slow and steady to CoD or Ubi firing up the copy/paste money printer every year.

The genre has 5 problems. 1. You must choose to either play a super dated game, or an incomplete game. 2. The commentary is small enough that it is hard to find people you play with, and if you do they probably won't own the same game you do. 3. When choosing a game to buy/play the question is "which experience do I want more?" When picking a tac shooter it's "each game has a different feature/mechanic set. I want to use them all, but that's impossible so which one do I want to play with now?" 4. The combination of 2 and 3 make it seem like you need to spend a ridiculous amount of time and money to properly experience the genre. 4. Sponsors, nexus, and the algorithm, have turned most content creators into salesmen making it really difficult to find accurate information about the state of the game.

This might be one of the most honest hot takes I've seen in a minute. I enjoy tactical shooters, I absolutely love just vibing out in Ground Branch or some patrol work in Ready or Not, but Ready Or Not is honestly the most "complete" package I've seen and that I wouldn't say is complete. That said, I'm glad these projects are coming out in some capacity, and early access is a great place to have these games get out to those that love them to provide feedback before hitting the masses in force. To be honest, it was Ground Branch that made me get my first true gaming PC just to run it in the first place, so I have to give a lot of credit there.

I'm personally drawn to the strengths of most tactical shooters. Ready or Not, Ground Branch, and others all do some things exceptionally well while doing some other things not so well. Id really like to see a game that takes all the best parts and mashes it into one solid piece of content. Maybe Operator will do that at some point. Edit: "very cool, very based"

I think a developer has made a game and buying it now would be a huge help for him to continue the project, he has a lot to do however he also has a lot of potential. Buying the game and continuing to support and give feedback to the creator is the best way to make this game perfect

My pet peeve with the genre is that they are overly focused on the "shooter" aspect and not the broader range of interaction that is necessary for the experience of soldiering/policing. The consequence of that is the gameplay loop becomes immediately reductive towards shooting(and hitting) as the primary(often sole) metric of which the player's performance within the game is ultimately measured. No matter how good a job you did suppressing the enemy, covering your sector so your guys can do work, talking your sniper onto the target, etc game systems are too unsophisticated to reward the value of those roles and too often those things become immediately secondary in the way the base interaction is designed and systematized. The genre relies far too heavily on *roleplay* as the primary reward system, which the core audience understands but alienates the mainstream player that needs the game to define goals. Otherwise to no surprise they just default to what they understand from mainstream shooters; K/D and trolling. [/rant]

Somebody *finally* fucking mentions campaigns! That's part of why OG Ghost Recon is still one of my favourite tac-shooters (even moreso with the Heroes Unleashed mod). It has a shitload of missions & objective types to run through, whenever you want. And the AI still holds up decently (not perfect but it's 20+ years old). And in regards to Operator - I saw the notification from Steam just before going to bed last night, was pretty surprised - started thinking "might check it out tomorrow, haven't got much on". Then I saw the price - $30 Australian. Like, I get it, but right now, I don't think I can justify that, especially with cost of living at the moment (and especially with only three maps - I'll have them all done in one afternoon). I'm excited for this game, and I want this dev to succeed, but I think I'm gonna hold off a few months, wait for a couple updates.

Imagine if instead of building all these separate games, all these developers just worked together on a single project. We would have had something that rivals AAA by now.

Looks promising, I agree with your take. Personally I believe these tactical games should launch with what Rainbow Six Rouge Spear and Ghost Recon accomplished back then (20+ years ago)

Holy crap!!! That shoot house footage had real life levels of immersion! I thought it was your shoot house footage!! Damn this game looks so dope

I think you're pretty accurate across the board, as someone who frequents a couple of communities that play games like RON and Ground Branch etc I'll probably end up picking this up but I'm also aware that I won't be playing it after a few weeks at best whilst I wait for more content. I think I have to give a fair amount of credit to the fact the developer is just one guy I believe but it also means we're all buying this game with our eyes wide open in terms of what we're getting. As long as the developer stays dedicated we could see a really great game in six months+ but then you have a game like Ready or Not which is only just talking about a 1.0 release two years later and an actual team of developers working on it. of course, if the game has support for modding, then the concerns about maps and missions goes out the window.

I agree 100% Said the same but not as eloquently as you on the Steam community for this one earlier! Way too early for release, but I bought it in the hope that this guy does well and delivers on his vision. So what is it with this genre and such slow development? Zero Hour (small dev team, lack of funding) , Ground Branch (larger team, but still small and lack of funding?), RoN (VOID Interactive - small? Also lacking funds?) It is frustrating that we haven't had a 'finished' product since SWAT 4, and Ravenshield. Thanks for entertaining as always!

Opening doors partially with the mouse wheel was a feature in Rainbow Six Raven Shield. Was very handy for both peeking and rolling a flashbang into the room

The nod setup alone is a huge move in the right direction for the genre and hopefully something pulled into other games. Great points and great coverage!

I think you hit the nail on the head with the state of tactical shooters in both the flat screen, and VR market. They are seen as niche, so there's not really any big developers pushing them out. So what you get, are passion projects that are put into early access and then (hopefully) fleshed out over time. As others have said, the devs need the early access funds to keep going on the development, and to guage the interest of the community. It seems like a lot of these games do tend to sit in a long term early access state though, like Ground Branch, which has been in early access for at least 5 years, and was in development for a while before that. The issue with that, is that players get what they can from these games, and then want more. So they either have to wait in the hopes that more comes, or move on to another game. Ready or Not is probably one of the more fleshed out games in recent memory, with decent (not great) squad AI, good enemy AI, and a decent number of maps. With mod support, it also gets the support of player generated content. It's still lacking a cohesive campaign, and ends up feeling like a swat mission anthology. It also lacks a lot of the features the devs were pushing in the beginning, like choosing an insert point, a pre-planning map, sniper support, etc.

I think a big issue for tactical shooters is funding. With the exception of stuff like ARMA, tac fps don't make a lot of money. If we want him to ever finish Operator he probably does need the money he can get through early access to allow him to spend more time on the game by reducing his hours or completely quitting his normal day job. Same for 6 days in Fellujah, INCREDIBLE concept but still a long road ahead. I'll be buying Operator and then let it cook for maybe a year. Even if it never comes to full release, this dude got talent, so maybe it'll allow him to break into the market as a member of a bigger team down the road by making a name for himself with this game.

Hot take spot on homie. I'm fuckin fatigued.

I supported this on Patreon, so I got to play it pre-Steam, and I agree on a lot of points - but it is madly impressive how this guy has done this all by himself, and in arguably, a very short space of development time. Steam buyers will not get that duality, and I think he should have just kept it to Patreon (which seems to earn £7K a month atm), until it was in a more polished state. I'm running a strong PC build, and this game stutters now and then. Operator has legs, but it's not yet ready to walk amongst other Early Access games on Steam, I don't think. Excited to see more of it though, and I hope the games well received by the greater audience outside of the Patreon folks!

I do appreciate the game’s representation of the PVS-14, how it looks and feels plus being able to still use your peripheral vision.

Wish it was VR. I’d be sold.

It's mental how that first bloke you brassed up didn't hear the Helo behind him 😂

2:58 the door handling mechanic goes back to the rainbow six days where you had dynamic door positioning rather than binary, “open”/“closed”. Really like the feature.. for sure adds to that peak and breach method ..

Good analysis. All forms of media have democratized these past couple decades. 20 years ago, legacy 20th century corporate media curated news and entertainment for the masses. Now the masses create their own content. This game is just one example. Your YT channel is among the millions of examples in the video game genre of media. Keep up the good work.

Something i noticed on that "Block III" MK18 with the URGI rail, either the barrel is too short or the rail is too long because you wouldnt be able to lock the collar on that RC2 because its inside the rail lol.

Really like this game myself and it´s super fun to hear your opinion on it, and I do really believe that this game has some ridiculous potential as long as the developers goes in the right direction with the game. But it is as you say that the game really misses some content that would make the game less repetitive and more attractive for a bigger audience on the market. But it I believe that it´s an amazing game that really gives you that "real life tactical feeling" and that it´s really a one-of-a-kind in todays market for tactical shooters and that makes it really stand out from all the other similar shooters. And I´m a really big fan of the channel, so it really made my day to see you do a review on one of my favorite games

first time i see an animation for the door opening. love it but you should be able to quick swap to your gun cause if you get stuck in the animation whenever you see an enemy you are dead. i like the passion there's put in this this game. keep it on .

Looks interesting. Wishlisted

I have a fear shooters just uninstalled because the lack of content RON GROUND BRANCH AND SIX DAYS WITH CONTENT AND AI TEAMMATES ILL PASS ON THIS and get more into nba 2k and madden until further notice Danks for being honest control PAIRS

Totally feel the same. Haven’t touched ready or not in forever because there is no reason to play anymore after doing all the missions. And ground branch just feels like an empty sandbox

I'm a pass on this one, I'm afraid, at least for now. I just can't get myself worked up enough to pay $20 based solely on door opening mechanics. (BTW, if I'm not mistaken, the idea of using the mouse wheel to dynamically open the door dates all the way back to Rainbow Six 3--it's not a new idea.)

heavily agree, im tired of these cash grabs when they could take longer to develop and make an amazing game that reaches to so many more people

Between a few of the tactical shooters, Operator looks like it can be a very interesting add by way of the actual Tier 1 side of things. I say this based on the in depth manner that Operator seems to invested in the equipment accuracy and how it plays (zero experience until later today). That said, there are marked differences between this and Ready or Not - both are tactical in the sense of shooting and moving, but Ready or Not is still more a police action based game (most of the time in vanilla). Operator should and could wind up overtaking Ground Branch as a tactical leader by continuously improving, updating and deploying updates at a faster rate. We will see this evening as to how Operator plays out. Thanks for your insight!

Cant wait to see what they drop, I still enjoy it even though its pretty barebones lol.

One problem I have with so many of these indie games, especially when it comes to tac shooters... is they put essentially zero resources or thought into the Art Department. It's always the most random and generic assets, environments, and assets. They don't have a unique identity or art direction and just look incredibly generic. It's hard to take these games seriously when they look so low effort without any art direction.

Fully agree, in a saturated market for FPS, we definitely need more game modes. I strongly feel that co-op is the bare minimum at this point, with SP/AI second. I'm starving for more co-op modes and campaigns. I'm often going back to Rainbow Six 3 to play with a few friends.

The mouse wheel door opening was done in splinter cell Chaos theory on PC.

About the doors, press F and scrolling. Ground branch has that already 😂

That take was right on the money!

Guns with slide/bolt releases should cycle automatically, or have a single hotkey, with charging handles or manual arms using the shift modifier

I know that saying this puts me in a corner and I limit myself from games that I can play like before, but I'm all for VR now and have moved on from flat-screen 2D games. I use to play Arma III and a little of Squad. I stopped playing Battlefield and COD a long time ago. I know it's just a matter of sitting down and running the game and I'm back to the way it was before, but my money goes to VR devs now. FPS 2D games doesn't cut it for me. I still appreciate these games so I got no issue watching whats new in this channel.

my biggest issue with pretty much every tactical shooter has been around since Arma 3. there's never any set in stone objective aside from just going to a location and killing anybody that has a gun. it's a formula that openly admits that it has nothing going on and all it does is encourage people to roleplay which is what people are gonna do by default when they're bored. player driven roleplay as opposed to gameplay driven roleplay, will cause the game to die out pretty quickly since there's nothing extrinsic to keep players coming back. even a game like Ready or Not suffers from this issue, since your only reward in that game is a new high score. which is a pretty arcade-y system for a game that's touting its realism first and foremost. the only reason why Arma isn't dead is because of how modular of a game it is, that it's possible to create your own scenarios or complete them in many different ways. plus it has a campaign that gives you a basic run down of the mechanics. and since the game has a lot of tools in it by default, you'll have a lot to toy around with before you start modding it. Compare that to a game like Ground Branch where the only modularity you get is the number of enemy AI, how difficult they are, what map you're playing on, and what time of day it is. the game died pretty quickly because even after waiting on it to update, nothing new even came out for it, so all you had was just an empty game, where if you've seen one map you've seen them all. In the case of Ready or Not it had slightly more longevity because of how slow, atmospheric, and shocking the whole game was. but it's been a year since it had any updates so the novelty of it is really dry at it this point, let alone the content. Zero Hour is an even worse case since the game basically hasn't changed at all since it entered early access. still suffering from the same issues its always had, and basically just exists to be a bootleg Ready or Not. which is saying a lot since both game pretty much were born of the the Clean House craze from CoD. So all in all they're roleplaying games that don't make you feel like you're playing a role the game tailors for you. and even if it does, the game runs outta content and updates so slowly you forget it even exists. they're fun for a short bit, but they lack longevity and content.

I'm currently of the inclination to pick up Operator as the price is fairly reasonable and it's a passion project. Taking into consideration the game as a passion project, in theory the game should continue to see development for quite some time and (hopefully) reach a much improved state. It's also worth noting that Operator is, to the best of knowledge, being developed by a single individual who has been really learning as they go. In contrast the above there is Six Days in Fallujah which released at twice the price of this into Early Access with arguably significantly fewer features (admittedly not all of these make sense) but with a similar amount of content (4 missions as opposed to 3 missions in Operator). Further to this Six Days has had significantly more time for its development (I accept that it's had its issues) from a much bigger team.

I dont think your take was too harsh. Rather instead it's just realistic. I was able to witness the game get released and saw both the positive and negative reviews in the discord server. I instantly noticed the divide on opinion, some saying the game was under baked and some putting it on a pedestal for it's potential. I agree that the game does have potential, it has plenty of things that I look forward to seeing more of in the future, but it was truly too early to be released and quite pricy ($15 - $20 is not something I, to be specifc, am willing to give out.)

Black One Blood Brothers is also made by one guy and it has SOOOOOO much content, but no one seems to care for some reason...

This world have been perfect for a steam demo upload

Don’t miss Decimated!

I would love to see how this game progresses. I bought it as soon as I could, and my main issues with it so far is: The aiming is punishing, especially at longer ranges. The sensitivity is extremely high the first like 5 degrees, so making small adjustments at range is very difficult. The people who have the game can probably understand where I’m coming from. Also, the character customization is quite janky. Your weapon doesn’t save, and I both like and dislike this. I like it because it makes it feel like there’s consequences, and if you die, you restart as a new operator. And the customization of your vest and stuff really doesn’t want to work for me. Like I said, can’t wait to see the progress!

imagine if Tarkov finally got the moving attachments on the rails

I love tac shooters but this is the exact reason I don't buy them anymore, we have all of these somewhat pretty games, with immersive mechanics and costumization, but that at the end of the day have no substance whatsoever. What's the point of just another game with a few maps with brain dead npcs to jump in alone and shoot at? Might aswell jump in Gmod

The mouse wheel door mechanic is lifted from Rainbow Six 3 (the best rainbow six game)

So far I've really been liking it. Definitely has a lot of jank shit but it doesn't bug me that much. The gunplay already feels way better than ground branch imo

I'm really hoping they will provide full controller support soon. I personally use a steam Deck.

Get some!

Reminds me of Geronimo, even though I don’t like it especially the door physics

This game is wild for a 1 person team

I have 2 huge problems with this genre. 1. All these games are barely distinguishable with small differences, 2. meaning thousands or possibly tens of thousands of man hours have been wasted creating the exact same assets and code over and over and over. Operation harsh doorstop fixes both these problems in such a wonderful way. I can't wait for it to get more traction.

How do you get a helmet cam view?

Looks good. Well done by the developer.

Have you tried out the latest updates? The developer has been busy with patches & adding more content such as the Dark Waters level (work in progress) over the past year.

How do I aim down sights in this game???? I’ve pressed and held down every single button on my keyboard! What do I have to do to aim?????? Please help me

I just want a new Ghost recon class type game to come out with good AI teammates and enemies. Fun story and freeplay modes with updated tech and shooting realism

We need this game in consoles, for real we lack this type of game, realistic, clearing rooms and OPERATING LIKE A SOF OPERATOR . Wish more games like these would Come to consoles

Ground Branch has had grabbing/swinging doors long before Operator was announced...

Its the same as the Tactical gear/arms industry. The more competition the more effort they have to put in. it all pushes the industry to a higher standard unlike games like COD and battlefield in the recent years

I also wish we had more tac shooters but i want some pvp action man. All these tactical games besides ground branch have pvp and ground branch is dead on multiplayer

guys a 12 year old made this as a school project and hes 15 now lets not be to harsh to judge lets see u do this.

Thank you for the shoutout to the singleplayer-only people like myself. 😊

Gotta say one thing. Seems nearly every "newish" tactical shooter IE Ground Branch etc. Bad this is they all look the same, customization, weapon mods and in general game play. They look so similar that all these games are hard to tell apart and lastly all of them are EA titles as well. The market is just saturated with these modern tactical FPS games.

if this game had even a few more people to add content and fix bugs, it would be pretty damn top tier as a tac shooter

where can i buy it

I really thought this was going to be a hit piece on Drewski for a second

Playing R6 3 made see game like ready or not have alot to go before the hit market. Current market is far cry from the ps2-360 era tac shooters.

Ridiculous amounts of muzzle flash

Just a heads up, YT is unsusbcribing your subscribers again. I though it was strange i had not seen any new stuff from you, i had to look up your channel to find it and subscribe again.

I did a double take when you said “20 bucks”. Wtf was this guy thinking? Three missions total, and no f*ing way there’s going to be a modding community before it dies. Does the dev think that he can keep a player base for the next decade while he finishes it?

How do I toggle lights

How do I use my mic on this game

What button is for cycling through white light, laser, etc?

J Dog the Wise did a video like this just a few days ago. Hit on similar points as you.

Considering it’s one guy, it’s well surpassed any expectations I had

Issue is its 1 guy, GB has both a team and a publisher. Early access is a way to get funding

Cool

time to sell a liver😭😭

How did you activate the helmet cam

Bit of a long shot, but is this coming to series X by any chance?

I got the game and I can’t chamber a round even though I press the button

If this goes on mobiles,.it may be the best thing to play on my phone,.

played it, and it does do some REALLY cool stuff, and its attention to detail is superb. You can tell the dev is really trying to do something cool, with so many original systems that are rarely seen (bullet penetration and bullet holes that you can actually look through, the weapon manipulation and customization, the whole ATAK device, and much more). I also like the medical system, I see a lot of people dogging it for being simple but I'm really confused by that lol, simple compared to what? Maybe simple compared to ACE medical in ArmA, but compared to practically every other tactical shooter its a great step in the right direction since most games are still just a 'Press _ to heal' (like squad or RoN). BUTT, the game is a buggy shit show right now, from the character customization bugging out (switching clothes, but some pieces of old clothing down despawn so your character ends up wearing a buggy looking mess with 4 computers phasing into one another), to missions not having an end, having no indication how many mags you have, there's no way to save your modded guns (which take awhile to set up), very very very little content, buggy menus, confusing interface, and on and on. I think it was a poor choice to release this early as it will give the majority of players the completely wrong vibe and I could see a lot of people being turned off by it, but personally I'm hopeful because what is there is very unique and seems to have a lot of good work behind it (like the penetration and customization systems, they aren't easy to create). I also love the references to the show Seal Team lol. I'd love to see the game get full workshop integration, and have the dev just focus on systems, mechanics, locomotion, and shit like that while the community builds heaps and heaps of assets and maps. That's the best way I think for a solo dev to approach a project like this, by leveraging a passionate community to amplify content. I'm cautiously hopeful

how do you get this damn game

do someone how to change camara angles PLSSS

for me I am getting tired of the tac games even though we have very few of them simply because every time one gets released its an alpha game that does 1 or 2 things that are extremely cool and unique but then the rest of the game is either broken or trash. These games can be ditched at any time or take YEARS to get anywhere decent if not finished and each of these games are charging £20 +. It makes it hard for me to want to purchase these games when I know it could either be abandoned or take years before its worth ACTUALLY playing. Sometimes I would rather it just not get released and have time to work on it and tease us first rather than release these glorified tech demos that cost the same price as some new, good and complete games on steam.

I think tac shooter developers need start bringing these to console

Damn can we get these games on console

This game was definently published too soon. I just bought it and downloaded it, as soon as I open it crashes and won't even open. I do have the required specs, but I thought that the dev could work on the game more.

Video starts at 1:42

In case you want to skip 8 minutes of describing every detail and see what The Problem is @8:25

I honestly see this types of game more in the VR genre, KBM is not that suited for this stuff I think

i hope my 20 helps make the game better i see potential