Combat Online

A multiplayer shooter whose main feature is how little it asks of you. There is no launcher, no account requirement and no queue worth mentioning: you open the page, you are dropped into a lobby with people already fighting, and the whole gap between deciding to play and shooting at somebody is a handful of seconds. The shooting itself is conventional and competent. Maps are built around a few contested angles, the weapons have distinct handling rather than being reskins, and the short time to kill means positioning matters more than reflexes. It does not try to be more than it is — there is no elaborate progression and no cosmetic economy demanding attention — and that restraint is precisely what makes it the shooter people keep in a tab. It rewards learning two or three maps properly and nothing else. The lobbies are the practical difference from installed shooters. Because nothing has to be downloaded, the population turns over quickly and there is usually a game in progress at any hour, which matters more for a shooter's usability than any feature on a box.