The most popular first-person shooter games

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

Return to Castle Wolfenstein revives the classic Wolfenstein name with a modern first-person shooter built around secret laboratories, Nazi experiments, supernatural forces, and an...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

Before Doom, there was Catacomb Abyss, where you throw fireballs down corridors at zombies who all apparently graduated from the same school of slow shuffling. It's a first-person ...

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...

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...

Bram Stoker's Dracula (the game) is based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (the movie) based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula (the book). Confused yet? Good. This 1993 action-platforme...

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 ...

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...

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...

The Ultimate Doom expands the classic demon-blasting formula with an additional episode and plenty more reasons to wonder why opening that suspicious door seemed like a good idea. ...

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...

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...

Far Cry arrived in 2004 looking like a postcard from paradise and playing like a survival exam you didn’t study for. Set on sun-drenched tropical islands, it lures you in wit...

The Terminator: Future Shock takes the Terminator universe into first-person 3D and does considerably more than simply provide another excuse to shoot robots. Set in a devastated f...

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...

Released in 1997, Extreme Assault is a bold and ambitious hybrid that blends flight simulation with ground combat in a futuristic setting. You pilot advanced military hardware acro...

Tank controls + polar bears + Cold War vibes = Arctic Fox. In this early vehicular combat sim, you're piloting a futuristic snow tank across an icy wasteland to stop some aliens or...

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...