The first-person shooter world is a diverse one populated by so many games, many of which boast a competitive scene that feeds into the wider esports ecosystem. From VALORANT to Counter-Strike, Apex Legends to Rainbow Six, and Call of Duty to Overwatch, first-person shooters are ten a penny these days.
In a recent interview, a former Counter-Strike pro player took a dive into the spread of games on the market, ranking them by how tough they are to master, from the perspective of a successful esports athlete.
‘It’s Pretty Easy’
Fredrik ‘roeJ’ Jorgensen sat down for a lengthy interview ahead of the Thunderpick World Championship to review his career and sum up the state of the industry. Jorgensen started competing professionally in 2017 and retired earlier this year, but not before claiming more than $300,000 in winnings.
He revealed in his interview that he was earning around $8,000 a month at ‘his peak’, even though his team wasn’t qualifying for many major tournaments or sizeable events.
When the conversation turned to which games are the hardest to master, Jorgensen offered a breakdown of the top seven titles put to him, with only one being something other than a first-person shooter: Fortnite.
According to Jorgensen, the toughest first-person shooter to master is Apex Legends:
Apex Legends is pretty hard to be honest. I think it’s like one of those battle royale games if you’re not good at the game or you don’t really understand what’s going on, I think you’re just gonna get killed instantly and you just spend your time flying down.
At the other end of Jorgensen’s scale sat Call of Duty, one of the oldest and most popular first-person shooter franchises in the world:
When I think about Call of Duty, I think about Modern Warfare 2, where you just go in and you just play a team deathmatch and you just basically have to kill and you respawn and repeat. I think that’s one of the easiest games you can play.
Obviously, actually killing people is probably a bit harder, but just, you know, the sheer mechanics of the game is pretty straightforward. So, I say Call of Duty on that one. It’s pretty easy.
Counter-Strike, which was the game that put Jorgensen on the map, came in just two spots beneath Call of Duty on the scale, beaten in the toughness stakes by Rainbow Six Siege.
Do you agree with roeJ that Call of Duty is the easiest shooter to get good at? Let me know in the comments.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
Dude saying team death match is all you need to know the cod pros don’t even use that game mode