Anyone who has played a competitive FPS before has known the feeling of facing someone with far better aim than yourself. It feels like every time you peak a corner you’re getting instantly headshot. Honestly, it takes all the fun out of the game if you are unable to keep up with the aim of the rest of the lobby. In reality, you won’t even get to play the game that much, you will just be dead for the majority of the game.
Thankfully, there is a solution to fix your crappy aim and start hitting your shots: aim trainers! If you think about it, every competitive ‘sport’ in the world takes practice to get better at, even non-competitive activities like writing or mathematics. Why would a competitive FPS be any different? Aim trainers allow you to practice your aim non-stop so habitually take out your targets. Next time you join a CS:GO or Apex lobby, you’ll be the one making people rage-quit instead of the other way around.
There are a ton of different options for aim trainers specifically on Steam and many more that are found elsewhere on the internet. They all provide different pros and cons depending on your style of play, what games you like to play, and how you like to train. I’ll be giving a general overview of the main aim trainers found on the Steam marketplace, let’s get into it!
If you have heard of aim trainers before, KovaaK’s is the most likely candidate. It certainly is not the most budget friendly, but the massive amount of scenarios and aiming styles it can cater towards makes up for the price tag. It even includes an in-game map editor to practice specific maps. For example, if you’re a Valorant player you could whip up a quick mock bomb site of your favorite map in order to get used to pre-aiming certain angles. If money is no issue for you when looking for an aim trainer, there really is no better option than Kovaak’s (except maybe the one two spots below)!
Aimtastic has been my go to aim trainer for the last couple of years for a couple of different reasons. First of all, it is free (there is a pro version, but it feels unnecessary for my needs) which is always a bonus. Second, I really enjoy the realistic ‘look’ of the game (as seen above) with crisp lines and precise targets. Finally, all of the objectives in the game are actual targets rather than character models which I personally prefer, but I would bet that I am in the minority for that preference. Aimtastic will track your progress, high scores, average times, and all of that good stuff just as the more expensive ones would. The downside being that there is no adaptive training that will give you areas to improve on unless you extrapolate that from the data yourself. Either way, it is a great free option that is certainly worth a shot!
Aimbeast is Kovaak’s main competitor in terms of paid aim trainers. It has slightly less scenarios than Kovaak’s, but has all of the other perks like custom crosshairs, map editors, ranked mode, etc. One aspect the Steam community seems to agree on that falls in favor of Aimbeast is that the user interface is much cleaner. Kovaak’s UI tends to look like old TF2 with the style of menu design while Aimbeast has a much simpler, aesthetically pleasing, polished look. Many people favoring Aimbeast also say that the in-game ‘feel’ is a lot smoother than Kovaak’s which may be important for some people. That being said, it is the most expensive aim trainer on this list which can be a difficult justification considering the similarity of all of these products. If money is no issue, Aimbeast may be one to look into!
I would consider Aim Lab to be the most popular free to play aim trainer out there. It offers everything the more expensive aim trainers have and then some, while only being slightly less robust in terms of specific scenario training. Just about everything you could imagine being customizable in an aim trainer is in Aim Lab. It even has similar levels of user analysis that the more expensive options often flaunt. On top of that, the developers worked with Riot and Ubisoft to integrate both Valorant and R6S mechanics/in-game scenarios. If your main game you are training for happens to be one of those two games, then this is the aim trainer for you, no questions asked. Even if you never play either of those games, I would still recommend this as the number one free to play aim trainer available on Steam!
Likely the least popular aim trainer on this list, Apex Aim Trainer is great for exactly what its title suggests, Apex Legends. The in-game environment is quite different from Apex itself, but the character movement feels very real to actual Apex players. No other aim trainer can replicate the slipperiness of an experienced Apex player’s movement quite like this one. The guns also feel quite similar to Apex weapons, although not exactly one to one. I would only recommend this for people specifically looking to improve their aim in Apex Legends.
The newest aim trainer on this list, 3D Aim Trainer was released only a year ago in July of 2021. It is inherently quite similar to Aim Labs with perhaps a bit less customizability in terms of target size, speed, etc. One area it does beat Aim Labs in is in the visual appeal of the in-game world. Aim Labs can become quite dry to look at after an extended period of time, but the 3D space in this aim trainer is quite pleasing. It reminds me of a slightly more polished version of older Halo games. Overall, 3D Aim Trainer and Aim Labs offer many of the same perks and it really comes down to a matter of preference. Thankfully they are both free, meaning you can download both and see which one you like better!
While there are a bunch of different aim trainers available on Steam, each one caters towards a different audience. Some are more for casual players looking to get better at general aim, while others are better for experienced players looking to improve on specific scenarios in specific games. The latter usually ends up costing more but is often justified by the time played. No matter which aim trainer you decide to use, I can *almost* guarantee you’ll see improvements!
Heading image courtesy of gg.deals