CULT CLASSIC

Paint the town red with blood in CULTIC

- Ted Litchfield

I loved Cultic Chapter One when it came out in 2022. Now, with the release of its second chapter, the full game is one of the best shooters of 2025. This exercise in demon worshipper annihilation is a meat and potatoes boomer shooter that primarily distinguishes itself by executing everything at a very high level: Great maps, great guns, great enemies, plus one-of-a-kind art direction and suffocating jaunts into pure horror.

Cultic has an arsenal of staple FPS guns – pistol, shotgun, magnum, machine gun, etc – but they hit different. They all have great feedback and sound effects, with headshots turning noggins into geysers of raspberry preserves, as well as gorgeous spritework for their viewmodels. I love that creator Jasoszz went with the funkiest historical firearm for every weapon: The starting pistol is a Mauser ‘Broomhandle’, the SMG a British Sten Gun, and the sniper rifle some kind of experimental, side-loading paratrooper rifle the Nazis deployed during the “conscript teenagers then try to find Odin and steal his powers” phase of World War II.