// PC GAMER — GAMING
Finding a great new Discord hangout game that's not a roguelike still feels like striking gold
Turok: Origins was one of the most fun things I played at last week's Summer Game Fest.
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Last year's explosion of 'friendslop' games inspired by Peak's phenomenal success may be a recession indicator, but I'm still here for it: I love seeing indie developers focusing on small, cheap, creative games built around the idea of hanging with the pals. But the game industry's tendency to pile onto a promising trend does mean that if you go looking for a new co-op game on Steam, the selection is likely to be dominated by what's been most successful in the last couple years. Lo-fi 3D games riffing on Peak; survival crafting; roguelike mechanics slapped onto anything from gambling to cowboys to Dark Souls.
I've got nothing against those games, but they don't get me gassed up the way finding a purer—and if I'm being totally honest, more old-fashioned—form of Discord hangout game does: the linear, 7/10 co-op first-person shooter.
That was exactly the description that crossed my mind when I played Turok: Origins at Summer Game Fest last week. It may sound like damning with faint praise, but I truly mean it as a compliment.
The prequel to the dino-shooting '90s FPS is a three-player co-op game that lets you switch between first- and third-person at will; I played two missions and shot a whole bunch of both dinosaurs and aliens, frequently popping off abilities that launched volleys of magic missiles or beam attacks at them instead of bullets. It wasn't until we fought the boss of the second mission that I figured out how the health system worked, because up to that point I'd mostly been mashing buttons, watching shit explode, and chatting with one of the game's developers over a headset mic that was trying valiantly to filter out a whole lot of background noise.
There's something reassuring in the confidence of a game that knows exactly what it is and executes on what it promises with workmanlike precision. Call it the opposite of eurojank, where you admire the ambition of a game reaching for more than it can really deliver on. Turok: Origins, at least from the bit I played, isn't attempting to tell a nuanced story (though there is one) or deliver the most amazing-feeling FPS guns you've ever used (though they feel pretty good!). It's also, crucially, not built around the lure of keeping you playing forever with procedurally generated guns or a roguelite progression system.
I think it might be my perfect Discord hangout game.
I should probably be clear about what exactly I mean by "Discord hangout game." The definition will naturally vary depending on the size of your Discord group, of course, and how much time you have to play games. To me, there are a few key characteristics:
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