The most popular first-person shooter games

Released in 1996 for DOS, this beast is not a new game so much as an ultra-hard remix of Doom II, crafted by level designers who apparently thought “too much ammo” was ...

Before he was shooting Mecha-Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D, B.J. Blazkowicz was chasing the actual biblical spear that pierced Jesus. Spear of Destiny is the lesser-known prequel, but n...

Doom was released by id Software in 1993. It is widely regarded as one of the most influential and groundbreaking video games of all time, particularly within the first-person shoo...

Here’s where Duke goes full legend. Duke Nukem 3D isn’t just a shooter; it’s a cultural moment. The game exploded onto DOS with outrageous humor, interactive envi...

Quake is a 1996 first-person shooter that helped redefine what players expected from PC action games. Its dark, industrial environments, grotesque enemies, powerful weapons, and fu...

When Bungie released Marathon, it offered far more than fast shooting by combining exciting combat with an unusually deep science fiction narrative delivered through computer termi...

Heretic is what happens when someone looks at fantasy and thinks it needs more fireballs and a lot more attitude. Built on familiar shooter foundations, it swaps sci-fi corridors f...

If Doom was the apocalypse, Doom II: Hell on Earth was the encore nobody asked for but everyone wanted. Released in 1994, it doubled down on everything: bigger maps, nastier monste...

Wolfenstein 3D is one of the landmark first-person shooters, placing players behind the eyes of an Allied soldier fighting through Nazi strongholds packed with guards, dogs, secret...

Hexen: Beyond Heretic expands on its predecessor with a confidence that borders on theatrical. The world is darker, the puzzles more intricate, and the overall experience richer, t...

If you ever wanted to feel like you were trapped in a washing machine armed with lasers, Descent is your game. Released in 1995, this claustrophobic, six-degrees-of-freedom shooter...

Ah yes, Blood (1997)—the cheerful little game where you rise from the grave, wield a pitchfork, and quote evil-sounding movie lines while setting cultists on fire. It’s...

Before Half-Life, there was Chasm: The Rift, a game where time-traveling mutants explode into limbs and every room looks like it was decorated by a doom-metal band. A first-person ...

If System Shock was a warning, System Shock 2 is the full-blown nightmare that follows. This time, the horror seeps into every corner of the experience, blending RPG mechanics with...

Deus Ex is a critically acclaimed action role-playing video game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive. It was released in 2000 and was designed by Warren Spect...

System Shock drops you into a space station run by an AI that has clearly read too many villain manuals and decided to try them all at once. SHODAN, the game’s iconic antagon...

Quake II is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and released in 1997. It is the sequel to the original Quake and was a significant milestone in the evolution...

Terminal Velocity is all about speed, freedom, and blowing things up while flying at ridiculous velocities. The open environments give a sense of scale rarely seen at the time, and...

Released in 1990, Day of the Viper is a first-person shooter before shooters really found their footing. Imagine a blend of Doom and a bargain-bin puzzle game, but with robots. You...

Turok: Dinosaur Hunter throws the player into a first-person adventure where prehistoric creatures have apparently decided that modern civilization was a terrible idea. Armed with ...

The Terminator: Rampage puts you behind the controls of a combat vehicle in a future where humanity's relationship with Skynet has gone about as badly as expected. The game combine...

The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a stylish first-person shooter that mixes espionage, comedy, and action with the confidence of a secret agent who has absolutely no intention...

A remake with ambition and tragedy, Duke Nukem 3D: Reloaded promised to bring the king back in modern glory. It looked great, played smooth, and... was never officially released. W...

Released in 1994, Magic Carpet is one of those rare games that feels like someone mixed a fantasy novel with a flight simulator and then added enough explosions to keep everyone ha...

In 1983, Battlezone asked: what if vector graphics could give you war-induced vertigo? You’re in a tank, in a wireframe world, fighting other tanks. That’s it. But it&r...

Before Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, the world only knew of one man who could mow down Nazis in a maze of corridors — then Blake showed up with a laser gun and a mission to ri...

Alien Trilogy is a first-person shooter video game released in 1996 for various platforms, including the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS. Developed by Probe Entertainment and ...

Imagine Doom got abducted by aliens, experimented on, and sent back to Earth with a case of amnesia. That’s Alien Cabal (1997). It’s a weird mix of FPS action and X-Fil...

Stellar 7 takes the tank-combat formula and launches it into science fiction, giving you a futuristic armored vehicle and a whole galaxy of unpleasant things to shoot. Inspired by ...

If you ever wanted to pilot a hovering tank while yelling at a computer screen, Nova 9 has you covered. A sequel to Stellar 7, it puts you in the cockpit against Gir Draxon’s...