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I don’t dislike large-scale games with an abundance of side content and post-game shenanigans. That said, if I had to choose between those and something with a definitive point of conclusion, I’d usually pick the latter. I like games that end because I like having a moment where I can say, “okay, we’re done, let’s move onto something else.”

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An equal footing and just slightly above Joel & Ellie’s rollercoaster tale.

Unfortunately, linear action games that wrap up in a reasonable timeframe aren’t really in style anymore; it seems like every new blockbuster release has a needlessly gigantic open world stapled onto its side, presumably to keep you playing them for as long as realistically possible, if not in perpetuity. If you’ve been feeling burnt out by bloated open worlds lately, it’s a good time to take a step back and try some more linear titles from years past, whether they be character-action games, shooters, or action-platformers. You get plenty of fun and quality action, and when you reach the end, you feel good and satisfied. Unless you’re a completionist, I suppose, but that’s a separate matter.

10 En Garde!

Swashbuckling Style

Released August 16, 2023

Developer(s) Fireplace Games

Publisher(s) Fireplace Games

Platform(s) PC

Genre(s) Action-Adventure

Everyone loves a good swashbuckling, swordfighting hero film. One hyper-competent, alarmingly suave rogue ducks, dashes and deflects their way through a small army of guards and thugs with nothing but a single rapier and a razor wit; it’s classic cinema. As it turns out, that vintage format also applies brilliantly to action games, as we see in En Garde.

In En Garde, you play as Adalia de Volador, dashing hero of the people, as she cuts down the corrupt guards of the devious Count-Duke. It’s all very Princess Bride-coded, with charming, witty characters and tongue firmly planted in cheek. Of course, the main draw is the sword play, as you’re encouraged to fend off multiple troops at once with Adalia’s rapier, carefully countering and slashing them as they rush you in a crowd.

In addition to your sword, you can make full use of the environment in large-scale arena battles, kicking buckets onto heads, dropping chandeliers, and rolling barrels to blind, stun, or bowl over combatants. The more foes you cut down without being damaged or stalled, the more of a proper swashbuckler you’ll become.

9 Gori: Cuddly Carnage

The Most Early-2000s Game To Release In 2024

While bloated open worlds have become the order of the day for big-box titles, the indie scene is more down to experiment and iterate upon other genres and formats, linear action included. Case in point, in 2024, I happened to hear down the grapevine about a high-flying, irreverent action game called Gori: Cuddly Carnage, and felt a certain kinship I hadn’t experienced in decades.

Gori: Cuddly Carnage is a post-apocalyptic action game in which mutant toys have all but completely wiped out humanity, with the only remaining freedom fighter being the genetically-enhanced cat, Gori, and his talking hoverboard. Said hoverboard doesn’t just fly, it can also deploy gigantic blades and hammers, perfect for slicing and smashing horrifically mutated rainbow unicorns. Gori is a very mobile protagonist, and when he really gets going, he transforms into a whirling dynamo of blades spinning out across the arena, which is always a hoot.

The pace of this game is positively breakneck, quickly funneling you through platforming hoverboard challenges and large-scale arena battles, bookmarked by all kinds of giant, gross bosses. As I mentioned, it’s a very irreverent game, given its abundance of unicorn mutilation, and it all reminds me of the kind of charmingly edgy content I used to see on Newgrounds when I was a kid.

8 Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time

An Action-Platformer Classic

Released October 28, 2003

ESRB Teen // Blood, Suggestive Themes, Violence

Developer(s) Ubisoft Montreal

Publisher(s) Ubisoft

Franchise Prince of Persia

Number of Players 1

Steam Deck Compatibility Playable

PC Release Date December 2, 2003

Platform(s) PlayStation 2, Xbox (Original), Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Game Boy Advance, PC, Mobile

Genre(s) Stealth, Platformer, Action, Adventure

There’s a certain dry irony to a Ubisoft title being in a list of games to play when you’re tired of open-world bloat, but it is important to remember that Ubisoft games didn’t always use to be like that. In the early 2000s, linear action titles were Ubisoft’s bread and butter, with both their most-popular and most-heavily-advertised being Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

Sands of Time is an action-platformer game in which the titular Prince, armed with the time-controlling Dagger of Time, must navigate his palace after it’s been taken over by a scheming vizier and his sand monster legion. The game flips rather elegantly between freerunning platforming and free-flowing sword combat, bolstered by surprisingly engaging and witty narration from the Prince himself. It’s a game that knows how to draw you in with its premise and keep you engaged with consistently interesting gameplay.

Admittedly, some aspects of Sands of Time have aged better than others, and the version available on Steam is not without its… quirks. But it’s still an excellent game, and if nothing else, it’ll tide you over until the remake.

7 Bayonetta

Rule Of Cool Rules

Released October 29, 2009

ESRB M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes

Developer(s) Platinum Games

Publisher(s) Sega

Franchise Bayonetta

Platform(s) PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Switch, Nintendo Wii U, PC

Genre(s) Action

Generally speaking, any of the heavy-hitter titles produced by PlatinumGames is a good choice for a linear action experience. That’s the whole ethos of the character-action genre (or “spectacle fighter,” if you prefer); battling through a series of enemy-packed arenas and climactic boss fights in a gradual escalation of scale. Of course, if we’re talking about character-action games made by Platinum, the conversation must begin with Bayonetta.

The titular Bayonetta is an ancient witch, battling the forces of Heaven in the modern day with her quartet of enchanted pistols and the giant demons she summons out of her own hair. It’s a game that values pure spectacle in all things, from the various unlockable guns and weapons to the multiple forms of giant hair monsters to the absolutely ridiculous plot and dialogue. It is not a game you should take even the slightest bit seriously, and I adore it for that.

Bayonetta is almost constantly action-packed; while it’s a strictly level-based affair, you can return to any stage you’ve beaten to play it again. You’ll probably want to, because everyone has at least a couple of action moments they love enough to play more than once. Like most of Platinum’s games, Bayonetta is very replayable, though it’s also more than fine to just play and enjoy once if you’re in a hurry.

6 Titanfall 2

Short And Sweet Shooter

Like its predecessor, Titanfall 2 was supposed to be an online multiplayer shooter first and foremost. It certainly was that, but it also had a single-player story campaign, and somewhat ironically, that linear campaign is remembered more fondly than the multiplayer that was supposed to sell the whole experience.

Titanfall 2’s campaign stars Jack Cooper, a rank and file Militia rifleman who’s forced to take the mantle of Titan pilot in an emergency, assuming authority over BT-7274. The campaign regularly switches between having Jack fly solo, jumping and leaping about with his enhanced Pilot suit, and controlling BT, stomping through giant battlefields and letting loose with oversized ordinance. No single section of the game overstays its welcome, and there’s almost always another awesome action setpiece right around the corner.

Compared to similar games, Titanfall 2’s campaign is a bit on the short side, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s like a good mid-budget, 90-minute movie. It sticks around just long enough to get you liking the characters and give you a few memorable moments, and then it gracefully departs on a strong climax. Wouldn’t it be nice if more games could do that?

Learn The Rules Of Nature

Returning to the Platinum well, one of the developer’s best-known games isn’t actually from one of its original IPs. Rather, it’s a spin-off title from the Metal Gear series, showcasing a mad fusion of Hideo Kojima’s storytelling and Hideki Kamiya’s game design. The resulting Frankenstein was Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and much like that monster’s creation, there are a lot of severed limbs involved in it.

Rather than Snake or his various offshoots, Revengeance stars cyborg ninja Raiden four years after his return in Metal Gear Solid 4, now a PMC employee battling the world’s warmongers. While it technically has the stealth elements of the main series, Revengeance is first and foremost a character-action game, throwing you headfirst into pitched swordfights against all manner of cybernetic soldiers and miniature Metal Gears.

Revengeance has a bit of a learning curve to its attacking and parrying systems, but once you figure them out, it becomes so much fun to knock enemies off their footing and dice them into little pieces. Literally, Raiden’s Blade Mode lets you freely chop up defeated foes into as many little chunks as you think you can get away with.

4 Hi-Fi Rush

Bash To The Beat

Released January 25, 2023

ESRB Rated T: Fantasy Violence, Language

Developer(s) Tango Gameworks

Publisher(s) Bethesda

Platform(s) Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC, PS5

Genre(s) Action

How Long To Beat 8-10 Hours

OpenCritic Rating Mighty

You want a good test case for linear games still having an edge over open-world games? Hi-Fi Rush shadowdropped at nearly the exact same time as Forspoken, an exceptionally bloated open-world game, and proceeded to completely eat its lunch in both sales and overall popularity. Fresh beats and likable characters go a long way, as it turns out.

Hi-Fi Rush is a hybrid character-action and rhythm game, in which young slacker Chai finds himself armed with cybernetic enhancements that force the world around him to move to the beat of his music player. There’s a big emphasis on platforming and arena combat as you’d expect from this genre, but it all runs to the beat of the backing track. Environments pulsate in time with the music, enemies attack on the beat, and launching your own attacks with a good rhythm makes them stronger.

Besides having an exceptionally novel approach to this kind of gameplay, Hi-Fi Rush is also a very colorful game, jam-packed with distinctive, lovable characters and compact, yet engaging story arcs. Of course, it should go without saying that the game’s soundtrack is the stuff of legends, even if you have streamer mode turned on.

3 BioShock

Darlin’ It’s Better, Down Where It’s Wetter

If we’re talking about linear action games, you can’t go wrong with a good first-person shooter. A lot of modern shooters have gone the open-world route to varying degrees of success, but one of the best shooters of all time, at least in my humble opinion, knew how to keep things on task: BioShock.

BioShock is a game that probably needs no introduction, but here it is anyway: you play as an unfortunate chap who, following a plane crash, finds himself stranded in the undersea city of Rapture, where the citizenry have been horrifically mutated by genetic experimentation. You can defend yourself with various firearms like pistols, machine guns, and shotguns, though you can also wield that genetic wizardry yourself as Plasmids, firing off bolts of lightning or moving things with your mind.

BioShock’s story and mystery is carefully interwoven into its gameplay, so it has a good reason to keep you moving at a steady clip. Technically, you can backtrack to areas you’ve been to before if you’re hunting for secrets, but the maps are concise enough that this usually doesn’t take longer than ten minutes or so.

2 Resident Evil 4 (2023)

Remake Or Original? Both Are Good

The original 2005 version of Resident Evil 4 was the definitive action game of its era, the game that every other third-person shooter tried to ape for years after the fact. Perhaps unsurprisingly, its 2023 remake is of a similarly high caliber. Honestly, if you’re craving linear action games, either version of Resident Evil 4 is a smart pick, but for the sake of brevity, we’ll go with the remake.

Both versions of Resident Evil 4 star Leon S. Kennedy, now a government agent following the Raccoon City incident, on assignment in Spain to rescue the President’s kidnapped daughter from a cult of parasite-worshippers. The remake uses the concise over-the-shoulder shooting from the previous Resident Evil remakes, combined with the quick-draw knife combat from the original version. The gunplay feels very snappy and responsive, which is good, because you need to be tuned-in to avoid getting your head sawed off by a mutant villager.

Resident Evil 4 technically has some light open world elements in the form of side paths, sidequests, and secrets, but they’re only really there for the curious or completionists. It’s very easy to just stay on the critical path and shoot your way through the opposition, and indeed, that’s the best way to preserve the game’s brisk pace.

1 Devil May Cry 5

Wacky Woohoo Pizza Time

Released March 8, 2019

ESRB M for Mature: Blood, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Violence

Developer(s) Capcom

Publisher(s) Capcom

Multiplayer Online Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer

Franchise Devil May Cry

Platform(s) PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S

Genre(s) Action

How Long To Beat 11 Hours

Metascore 89

OpenCritic Rating Mighty

Do we have time for one more character-action game? By gum, I think we do, and what else would it be but the cardholder of the whole genre, Devil May Cry? The Devil May Cry series is always a perfect pick for linear action, perfect for clearing in a few sittings, though if you want an entry that meets the best middle point between spectacle and accessibility, Devil May Cry 5’s the one to beat.

Devil May Cry 5 has three playable characters: our classic hero Dante, fledgling Devil Hunter Nero, and mysterious newcomer V. The story has you switching between their perspectives as you progress, giving you plenty of time to get a feel for each of their unique gameplay mechanics and weapons. Its combo combat system is tried and true, rewarding those who really figure out the ideal flow of action with ridiculously-long combo strings and remarkable high scores.

Devil May Cry 5 has a decent amount of side content like hidden missions and the Bloody Palace if you’re so inclined, but if all you want is an awesome series of action setpieces, it’s got all that and a bag of chips. Just don’t be surprised if you like it so much that you feel compelled to go back and play the rest of the series.

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