Bonus Episode 247: WARDOGS Might Fix Shooters. HUNGER Definitely Won't

Two new shooters are coming in 2026, and they could not be more different. WARDOGS — the 100-player, three-team FPS from Bulkhead and Team17 — keeps sounding better with every playtest detail: a Counter-Strike-style economy stretched over large-scale warfare, a running profit-and-loss counter on every life, and yes, you can tip your medic $500 to get revived first. HUNGER — the extraction RPG set in plague-ravaged Napoleonic Europe — is… a musket game.

We get into why per-life stakes are the thing modern shooters lost (Battlefield respawn slop, we're looking at you), whether Bulkhead's Battalion 1944 track record actually matters, why the extraction genre still doesn't have its definitive mainstream game, and why a 15-second reload might be the worst idea of 2026. Also: Tarkov wipe hype, the Black Flag remake launching buggy, and whether we should finally try Hunt Showdown.

One of these games gets our full buy-in. The other is Bloodborne with muskets and a UI from hell. We report, you decide.