Assemble! - Shooter Archetype Squad - The Close Combatant

Welcome to Assemble!

Here, we'll look at several different characters across multiple series to see who would form a perfect team for a certain genre. From fighting game rosters to RPG adventuring parties, different types of characters tend to show up frequently. What we'll do here is look at those archetypes to see what character is the best fit for that slot, and in the end, we’ll have the best team for the job. These articles will also be shorter entries, compared to some of the more long-form articles here, focusing on one or two characters at a time.

Despite a perception of a lot of these titles as generic war games, some shooters allow players to dive into an engaging story in a captivating world, taking the role of interesting characters with varied weapons, abilities, personalities, and motivations, especially with the popularity of hero shooters like Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, and Paladins. In this series of Assemble articles, we will be assembling a hero shooter roster using characters from several different shooters, based on different character archetypes.

The picks will be based on the different themes and tones of the characters and the worlds they inhabit as well as the roles they fill on a team or the kinds of weapons they use. Only characters that originated from video games, shooters particularly, will be observed here. Both first and third-person shooters will count and so will first and third-person action games if their main method of combating enemies is gunplay. Finally, I’ll only be discussing games and characters that I am at least somewhat familiar with. While this means I won’t discuss every shooter in existence, there should still be a good amount of variety with the series explored.

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THE CLOSE COMBATANT

To loosely quote a page from TV Tropes, “a guy who doesn’t wield a weapon while everyone around him does is either cocky enough to think he doesn’t need one or skilled enough to know he doesn’t need one.” Another shorter quote warns, “Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.” This character abides by the first while ignoring the second.

The Close Combatant is a character who stands out among a shooter roster as one who uses a melee weapon, usually a sword or a war hammer, or even just his fists, while everyone else has a gun. They may still have a gun as part of their arsenal, but most of their kit involves getting up-close to fight. This character can be difficult to use since they have to be played just right to avoid just jumping into the middle of a group to get blown to bits, but they are often very powerful when they can get their hits in. They are definitive risk-reward characters.

Our pick for the Close Combatant is…

Doomfist from Overwatch.

Even his name should clue you in to what he’s about. While Doomfist is able to shoot, with a shotgun built into one of his arms (he’s a cyborg for those who don’t know), the majority of his kit consists of attacks using his Doomfist Gauntlet. He has a ground-pounding Seismic Slam attack, a Rising Uppercut that knocks enemies skyward, and his devastating Rocket Punch attack, which can one-hit K.O. opponents if he knocks them into a wall. Finally, there’s his Ultimate, Meteor Strike, where he super-jumps into the air and comes down moments later, striking the ground for massive damage. He plays like someone wanted to put a fighting game character in a first-person shooter.

Street Fighter is just down the hall and to the ri... What? You’re NOT in the wrong game?

For effectively translating hand-to-hand combat into a shooter environment, we now add Doomfist to our roster.

ADDED!

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What did you think about this article? Want to see what other characters get picked for our roster? Do you think someone would fit this role better besides whoever got picked? Make your voice heard in the comments below. 

Thanks for coming!