Looking for a mindless shooter game

I'm looking for a game with decent production quality, but something that doesn't require a lot of thought or high stress to do well, and just have fun. All too often I get involved in games and it requires a lot of thought or they're high stress when I just want to go and shoot things and not worry a whole lot if I die, but don't want to die all the time, that's no fun.

edit: I'm looking at Serious Sam HD First and Second Encounter (already have them on Steam) and Serious Sam 3: BFE except it's $40! quite a bit for a mindless shooter don't you think?

 

The Painkiller games fit the bill for mindless shooting. Bulletstorm isn't mindless per se--there's some strategy involved in some boss fights and you can pull off ridiculous combo moves like electrocuting enemies with alien fireflies or knocking them into giant cacti--but it's not stressful. And while I haven't played it myself (yet), Shadow Warrior looks real fun.

 

Hotline Miami is pretty mindless. It does get a little tough at times.

 

Borderlands 2 fits your bill perfectly.

I'm playing it right now, and looting so many fun and interesting gun combos is a blast.

 

I've played through Bulletstorm, and it was great fun, wish there were more like it.

I've tried Painkiller but just couldn't get into it, maybe will give it another go.

Borderlands I've tried couple times, and seems like something I'd enjoy, just never got very far in campaign. Perhaps I'll give it another go. I just don't want a game that gets frustrating from trying to pass a level that gets too complicated or die way too easily. There's times I want a challenge and others where I just want to shoot stuff and not get frustrated.

I'm looking at Serious Sam 3 and Shadow Warrior but both are $40 at the moment. Need to wait I guess for a good sale.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions so far. Much appreciated.

 

Bulletstorm was fun for the first couple of hours, then it just became tedious, especially on higher difficulty levels where you have to constantly think about skillshots or risk running out of ammo (or don't mind leashing/kicking every damn enemy you see).

It's funny you mention Serious Sam 3 BFE, because the game has been sitting in my Steam library since Christmas yet I never got around to playing it!

Red Faction Armageddon sounds like something that might fit the bill. Tons of fun with good graphics that won't melt your hardware (a single 780M is enough to push 70+ average FPS on Ultra settings with 8x MSAA). The game gets a lot more fun once you beat it, since you unlock "cheats" which can be bought to unlock more weapons and skills. I played through the entire campaign at least 4 times, and I still crave for more, because it's just so damn fun.

 

Serious Sam, Duke Nukem, Rise of the Triad.

 

titanfall w/ smart pistol

 

Shadow Warrior!

 

Team Fortress 2, Loadout both fun and free. CS:GO is also usually pretty inexpensive.

There are TF2 servers with no respawn timer, so if you die, you can rejoin immediately.

 

Duke Nukem 3D.
Hard Reset.
Bulletstorm.
Half-Life <del>3</del> 2 + episodes. Not exactly mindless, but damn fun game.

 

Do you want single player or multiplayer?

From what I've heard Unreal Tournament 1999 or 2004 may fit your needs.

 

Halo pc - not really mindless, but its a funny game for online multiplayer game.

 

Quakelive ?

 

Serious sam 3 is a great mindless twitch shooter. Don't pay more than $10 tops, i got all of them in a humble bundle a while back.

TF2 is really fun

Borderlands 2 is worth it if you like the RPG elements.

 

left 4 dead 2 is pretty fun, i don't see it as high stress, it's pretty fun especially when you play with a group of friends and try funny stuff

 

Pretty much any zombie shooter is mindless haha.

Get it?

 

Haha very punny.

 

Single player is preferred. MP is ok, as long as there isn't a huge learning curve or if newbs get toasted if most servers are full of veterans.

Although I remember tons of fun with Quake and UT back in the day. Maybe time to resurrect those.

 

Borderlands is at its best co-op, the SP is a little on the boring side, definitely played worse.

Get the Epsilon build for Quake. I actually started playing it recently. Nice trip down memory lane with somewhat modernized graphics. I have the game and both expansions through steam and works great with that version ( if you own the original CD total you'll want to rip the audio tracks, I love the Reznor soundtrack)

http://www.xpfree.org/epsilon/

 

mindless shooter game: CS with bots, or cod 4 with bots

 

The Alien Breed trilogy is just what the doctor ordered for mindless shootin'. Even if it's a top-down game, it can get very intense at times and it's very good for bursts of action:
Alien Breed

Then there's Brutal Doom:
Brutal Doom mod - Mod DB

It's surprisingly good, adds modern functionality and gameplay to doom and it's a real blast.

And even though it's not a shooter per se, Wings of Prey is very shooter-esque at its basic setting, without increasing realism. Connect a gamepad and go to town, blasting enemy planes from the skies. Try out the demo:
Wings of Prey on Steam

 

Unreal Tournament 99 with the Monster Hunt mod. The Monster Hunt mod is online, but it really is insanely fun mindless fun and that mod is solely the reason why I keep coming back to the game and playing it, even 15 years later.

Monster Hunt is basically you with a team VS. thousands upon thousands of monsters! The players have unlimited lives, and the sole goal of this mod is to kill all the monsters and make it to the end of the map. There are literally 1000+ community-made maps available on the servers, and most of them are designed like a single-player map would be, where you follow through the map until the end completing various objectives, all while fighting countless monsters. The monsters start out weak like giant flies and such, and then you end up fighting 100 foot Titans that throw gigantic boulders and the Alien Queen that fires rockets from her stomach! There really is no game/mod out there that is like this, which is a shame because I would love to see a remake of this mode in the newer Unreal 3 Engine.

The mod can be found here, no other downloads needed, the servers host all the maps: Monster Hunt mod for Unreal Tournament - Mod DB

The "destination-monster-hunt" server is really the best and most active monster hunt server out there. Once you install the mod you will see the "Monster Hunt" game mode available on the list of the multiplayer tabs.


***Edited*** Here is some gameplay:

 

Serious Sam
Painkiller
Shadow Warrior
Hard Reset

 

Have you tried Killing Floor?

 

All things considered Killing Floor isn't very mindless. It requires a lot of thinking, timing, and positioning, otherwise monsters will eat your face.

 

Haha I love Killing Floor. If class it as pretty mindless once you work out you better be near a shop once everyone's dead.

 

Killing Floor is an awesome game, but the thing that's holding me back now are the servers. I find a great server with a big player count (I like playing with 15+ people in that game), stay there for a good while and level up my perks, then poof.... servers gone.... just disappeared and I'm like ? This happened multiple times now, and now the only big ones left last time I checked were the ones with the settings I hate.

Anyways, I'll be back to gaming in a week or so, if any of you guys wanna get a group together for some Monster Hunt give me a shout, I really need to release some stress, stress balls are for wimps, I need to hunt some low poly-count monsters

***EDIT*** just noticed my Steam tag in my signature says the last game I've played was Day One Gary's Incident..... now I know where this sudden burst of grey hairs came from