New, brutally hard tactical FPS by Half-Life Black Mesa dev available to try now

Whether you're playing the original Half-Life or Crowbar Collective's beloved remake Black Mesa, your approach to basically every battle is to run and gun; between the turbo-boosted HEV suit and immense destructive power of the Gauss gun, as far as the HECU soldiers and Xen aliens are concerned, Gordon Freeman is just a death-spraying orange blur. Rogue Point is very, very different. Death is swift, tactics are vital, and even a single enemy can ruin your day. A could-be return to simpler, purer FPS games, Crowbar Collective draws on elements of Payday 2, Tarkov, Rainbow Six Vegas, and even a little Left 4 Dead – but the Half-Life remake dev has its own ideas, too, and now you can see them in action for yourself via Rogue Point's first ever public playtest.

You form a team of up to four players – there is no PvP. Each level in Rogue Point's campaign begins with a briefing screen where you choose your insertion point, purchase your gear, and build your loadout. Similar to the buy menu in Counter-Strike, you replace weapons and equipment on every fresh run; completing objectives or scoring kills earns you in-game dollars, and you exchange those for gear at the start of each new map. It creates a roguelike element, but also keeps the FPS quick and lean. It's not about progression. It's not about perks. It's not about XP, levels, and your character. The focus in Rogue Point is cooperation.

Some missions are a straightforward terrorist hunt: find the bad guys, eliminate them all, and don't get killed. Others involve securing intel or rescuing hostages. You can use breaching charges to bust through blocked doors, foldable ladders to reach higher ground, and other gadgets like lockpicks and stun grenades to give you an edge. Spray and pray is not an option here. You have body armor, but once that's depleted, it takes maybe three or four hits maximum to put you down – even though each level contains only a small number of enemies, any one of them is enough to kill you.

Although you can zoom slightly by pressing the mouse wheel, there is no ADS in Rogue Point. Instead, you rely on cover. Crowbar Collective has made a very simple, very smooth peek system – if you stack up against a wall or hard surface, you can hold down RMB to look around the corner, release it to spring back behind defilade. Movement is weighty and deliberate. You need to stay low, keep your ears open, and communicate with your team.

But even though it invites this kind of complex, cerebral approach to play, Rogue Point isn't bogged down in menus and long load times. Speaking to us back in February, Crowbar Collective studio head Adam Engels explained that the entire Steam download, at that point, was just over 6GB – Engels said the size might increase, but even now, when I just downloaded a build for the playtest, it was only 8GB.

Likewise, with the roguelike-esque loadout screen and streamlined progression and build management, you can start it up, find a team, and get into a game in a flash. The actual gameplay of Rogue Point is painstaking and tense, like a tactical shooter ought to be. But the 'game,' in the broader sense, is incredibly zippy. It feels more 'multiplayer' than 'live-service'.

And now you can try it for yourself. The first public playtest for Rogue Point is coming as part of Steam Next Fest, which runs from Monday June 9 until Monday June 16. If you want to join, just go here.

Otherwise, try some of the best co-op games, or maybe the best multiplayer games available on PC today.

You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We've also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.