When I first came across some info about the Overkill perk a couple of months ago I was intrigued. Cool but yeah, without actually playing it who knows. After playing with it for a while I actually think it has some promise.

Multiplayer maps have gotten increasingly diverse over the years (in terms of terrain type, size, and diversity of combat styles required) due to a lot of factors including; hardware advancements that allow for larger maps and draw distances, the general evolution of the genre, etc.

The long and short – In the original Quake you could run around spamming the biggest gun you could pick up at anything that moved and be just fine. It’s safe to say we have come a long way from those days. I find myself in situations every couple of minutes that are not suited for the gear I am equipped with (in both BF3 and MW3). This is where the Overkill perk shows some promise.

Following this train of thought I started thinking about what combination of primary weapons would provide the best solution for bridging this gap to help me cope with the scenarios where I am out-geared. 2 scenarios are the most common; 1) I come around the corner with an assault rifle and get owned with a shot gun or a submachine. 2) I have a good line of sight and miss a ton of kills because the targets are out of range of my assault/sub/shotgun. I play mainly objective based games like domination or headquarters so sticking to an environment you are geared for is rarely an option.

For the record I don’t play sniper very often at all. It doesn’t suit my play style and I just plain don’t like it. Therefore, I will never be setting a sniper rifle as my primary because you cannot use attachments on the weapon you set as secondary. So here is where I am in my Overkill exploration. I am testing three builds: 1) Assault as primary with red dot – sniper rifle as secondary – slight of hand/stalker/steady aim. 2) Sub as primary with red dot- sniper as secondary – slight of hand/stalker/steady aim. 3) Shotgun as primary with grip – assault as secondary – slight of hand/stalker/steady aim.

There are a million ways to setup your Overkill builds but these seem to make the most sense for me. I have had pretty much mixed results which you can attribute to me not being used to the kits and the play style required or it could be that the perk is not worth using at all. In many cases being flexible or versatile can get you owned. Because you are not excellent at anything you lose the majority of your encounters by a slight margin to builds that are built specifically for the encounter.

If you have an Overkill build that you are loving leave it in a comment. There isn’t much out there at all about how people are setting it up.