Since the genre was first conceived, first-person shooters have pushed the envelope of how video games can create exciting, intense experiences for players. The idea of taking part in your own ridiculous action movie is part of what made the video games industry worth hundreds of billions, and over the years, the FPS genre has given rise to some truly standout games. From multiplayer competitive games to immersive VR experiences, they might all be first-person shooters, but they’re often very different from one another.
Below is a list of the best FPS games you can play right now, from all over the map. While there are classics out there that still hold up, like Doom and Half-Life, we’re focusing on newer games that are easy to find, easy to play, and easy to lose yourself in. These are the shooters you should absolutely play, whether you’re looking for deep stories, interesting mechanics, multiplayer mayhem, or a combination of them all. If you’re interested in more than just first-person games, check out our list of the best shooters overall, which also incorporates third-person shooters and shoot-’em-ups.
Halo: The Master Chief Collection
- Developer: Bungie
- Release Date: November 11, 2014
- Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC
When Bungie first released Halo in 2001, it changed the landscape of console shooters. Traversing huge battlefields on foot or in vehicles, where enemies would fight not only you but one another, Halo really nailed the feeling of fighting through a world that was alive around you. The Master Chief Collection brings all the classic Bungie Halo games together in one package, with both updated and original graphics and their phenomenal, highly influential multiplayer modes, as well.
MCC is one of the games on this list available through Xbox Game Pass.
Team Fortress 2
- Developer: Valve
- Release Date: October 10, 2007
- Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
In a lot of ways, Valve’s class-based team multiplayer shooter remains the gold standard for the genre. With a bunch of clearly delineated roles to play on any given team, Team Fortress 2 is great at making you feel like you’re stepping into a specific job that’s essential to your team’s victory. The nine classes–Soldier, Heavy, Scout, Pyro, Demoman, Medic, Spy, Sniper, and Engineer–also set a precedent that’s still copied and iterated on by other games. Team Fortress 2’s class system is great at making it feel like you’re working together with your teammates, even when you’re going it alone and chasing your own goals, and it’s still as fun and hilarious today as it was when it first came out in 2007. That said, the PC version is the only one that received the many years of updates and changes, so that’s the ideal one to play today. It’s one of the best free games on Steam.
Half-Life: Alyx
- Developer: Valve
- Release Date: March 23, 2020
- Platforms: PC (VR required)
Virtual reality has become a home for highly realistic shooter experiences, with Half-Life: Alyx setting the bar for all of them. With extremely tight controls and physics mechanics, Alyx does a great job of bringing a powerful realism to the genre. It’s also an excellent return to the world of Half-Life, adding to the storied and beloved franchise in new and fascinating ways. Half-Life: Alyx immerses you into its game world with a ridiculous amount of interactivity, and it mixes together action, stealth, and horror through the course of its campaign to provide a bunch of intense, disparate experiences that show just how powerful VR can be.
Alyx was GameSpot’s Game of the Year in 2020, and it’s one of the best VR games you can play right now.
Black Mesa
- Developer: Crowbar Collective
- Release Date: March 6, 2020
- Platforms: PC
Half-Life is a monolithic title on the shooter landscape, helping to establish what video game campaigns could be and setting a precedent that countless other games would follow. Unfortunately, games have come a long way since 1998, and Half-Life doesn’t always keep up with modern expectations. The good news is that we have Black Mesa, a fan-developed remake of Half-Life that modernizes the game and expands on it while keeping everything that made Half-Life awesome, from its gunplay to its excellent level design. Black Mesa is a worthy revitalization of a classic in the genre, and a must-play, whether you’re an old hand at Half-Life or have never played it before.
Counter-Strike 2
- Developer: Valve
- Release Date: August 21, 2012
- Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC
There are two major branches of FPS evolution: games that hew to a more arcade style, and games that are more realistic and intense, opting for guns that are as lethal in the game as they are in real life. Counter-Strike 2 is the poster child of the latter path, featuring battles that are over in moments, with one or two shots bringing down any player. With death so close at hand, caution, teamwork, tactics, and skill become paramount to victory, creating a tougher, more intense FPS experience than most games provide. Counter-Strike 2 has been a mainstay of the genre for more than a decade, and it’s just as good now as it was in 2012.
Destiny 2
- Developer: Bungie
- Release Date: September 6, 2017
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC
While it’s had its ups and downs over the years, Destiny 2 has always enjoyed excellent underlying mechanics, allowing it to take the ball from Bungie’s Halo games and run with it. Destiny 2 has great gunplay, sure, but it’s the way the game combines platforming and special abilities, alongside some all-timer team activities like raids, that really makes it stand out. Its live-game elements have been honed over years and continue to set pace for a lot of the genre, but even if it’s not your “forever game,” there are a lot of excellent moments and missions in Destiny 2 that no other shooter comes close to delivering.
Call Of Duty: Warzone
- Developer: Raven Software, Infinity Ward
- Release Date: March 10, 2020
- Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC
As the battle royale trend swept through the shooter genre, the Call of Duty series sprinted to catch up, and the eventual result was Warzone. The free-to-play mode mixes a bunch of the best elements of the mega-popular franchise with the underlying battle royale formula, giving you a combination of Call of Duty’s fast-paced and varied combat and the lengthy, careful, strategy-driven battles that mark BR. Warzone has also integrated a bunch of cool innovations, including the Gulag–where you can fight for a chance to respawn–loadout drops that let you get your own custom weapons on the battlefield, and systems like bounties and weapon purchases that have expanded on BR gameplay and branched out to other games in the subgenre. Warzone is an excellent change of pace from normal Call of Duty multiplayer and a worthy addition to battle royale at large, creating a unique experience among a lot of similar games.
Titanfall 2
- Developer: Respawn Entertainment
- Release Date: October 28, 2016
- Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC
With a phenomenal single-player campaign, super-fluid movement controls, and a brilliant gameplay gimmick, Titanfall 2 is a standout shooter experience. The underlying idea is that you play a Pilot–a human character who’s extremely agile–with the ability to leap to extreme heights, run along walls, and otherwise parkour across the battlefield. As a Pilot, you can also drive a huge bipedal mech called a Titan, which you can summon from orbit and use to fight other mechs (or to squash unlucky Pilots who are still on foot). Titanfall 2 uses those mechanics and killer storytelling to create one of the best campaigns in the shooter genre, while also offering a dynamic multiplayer mode that continually swaps between fast-paced, intense parkour battles and big, stomping mech action. Fluid movement, great gunplay, and an excellent story make Titanfall 2 a modern classic.
Doom Eternal
- Developer: id Software
- Release Date: March 20, 2020
- Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC
The revitalization of Doom in 2016 put a modern spin on a lot of the elements that made the original Doom games so fun to play and so impactful on the shooter landscape. Its follow-up, Doom Eternal, honed that formula to a razor-sharp point you then use to disembowel some demons. An intense, super-satisfying combat loop has you blasting enemies and then ripping them apart or chainsawing them, with each specific way of killing enemies turning them into pinatas of stuff you need, like health, ammo, and armor. Coupled with big, often-vertical arenas, every battle in Doom Eternal is an exercise in quick thinking, fast movements, and keeping track of all your resources to keep yourself alive against overwhelming odds. It’s a near-perfect melding of everything good about old-school Doom with new-school ideas.
Wolfenstein: The New Order
- Developer: MachineGames
- Release Date: March 20, 2016
- Platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PC
Developer MachineGames made its debut with a sort-of-reboot of id Software’s first-person shooter classic, and much like the revamp of Doom, it successfully melds a classic feel with more modern sensibilities. Wolfenstein: The New Order updates the original first-person shooter with ridiculous action and some phenomenal shooting mechanics, relying on elements like speed, dual-wielding, and overpowering your enemies. Even better, though, is the way Wolfenstein builds out an alternate history, tells a fascinating story, humanizes one of video games’ oldest protagonists, and gives you plenty of opportunities to blast Nazis.
Superhot
- Developer: Superhot Team
- Release Date: February 25, 2016
- Platforms: Xbox One, PS4, Switch, PC, Quest
The rise of super-popular first-person shooters over the years has made the genre one of the most ubiquitous in games, with a lot of games providing very similar experiences as a result. Superhot makes shooting into a puzzle with a simple but fascinating gimmick: Time nearly freezes when you stop physically moving. That gives you the opportunity to figure out the best way to navigate highly lethal battles with enemies, strategizing the perfect way to take them all down before their bullets and blows catch up to you. Superhot engages your shooter brain in a completely different way, and that makes it an essential experience. There’s also a VR version that makes the whole experience even more immersive.
Valorant
- Developer: Riot Games
- Release Date: June 2, 2020
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC
With hero shooters like Overwatch, the competitive shooter genre took on a new dimension, expanding on the idea of classes to create a new brand of customization for players and play styles. What Valorant brings to shooters is another evolutionary branch by combining two others: hero shooters and tactical shooters. Valorant is Counter-Strike with Overwatch characters, creating a highly strategic competitive experience that requires a lot of skill and intelligent play. The reward is a shooter experience that stands apart from most of the rest of the genre, offering something that’s familiar but different from just about every other competitive shooter out there.
Ultrakill
- Developer: Arsi “Hakita” Patala
- Release Date: September 3, 2020 (early access)
- Platforms: PC
Super fast and ultra-violent, Ultrakill is a perfect example of the “boomer shooter”–a modern shooter built in the style of early FPS classics like Doom, Quake, and Unreal Tournament. It’s all about speedy movement and twitch reactions, smashing through enemy after enemy in a world built from crunchy graphics and heart-pumping music. Ultrakill is about speedily and skillfully wrecking house, running and leaping all over the place as you pump everything in sight full of lead, with the game keeping track of all your cool accomplishments and rattling off points as a reward. Ultrakill is a heightened reimagining of shooters of the past, focusing on intensity more than anything else.
Neon White
- Developer: Angel Matrix
- Release Date: June 16, 2022
- Platforms: PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Neon White is a shooter, a puzzle platformer, and a visual novel all woven together. Your goal is to clear levels as fast as you can, which is as much about running and leaping as it is about landing your shots. Using specific weapons and abilities is essential, because the fastest times come from hitting enemies in the right order and with the right weapons. Figuring out how to master a level is a huge part of the experience, as is uncovering the strange story underpinning it all, in which you play a dead sinner freed from Hell by authoritarian angels to clean up a bunch of demons who are annoying the residents of Heaven. Neon White is incredibly good at combining clever level design with intense speed, and blasting your way through its stages is always exciting.
Far Cry 4
- Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
- Release Date: November 18, 2014
- Platforms: Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation , PC
When Far Cry 3 hit the gaming landscape in 2012, it more or less solidified Ubisoft’s brand of open-world game design, while also setting the template for the Far Cry franchise after two games that were very different, both from Far Cry 3 and from each other. With Far Cry 4, Ubisoft perfects the good parts of Far Cry 3, while jettisoning most of the bad ones–including its overwrought story. Far Cry 4 has all the classic Ubisoft elements that have you fighting across a huge landscape, capturing territory for a resistance group as you square off against a charismatic and interesting villain, and it does so while telling a compelling narrative of a nation trying to determine its own future as it fights to cast off a dictator. All the best parts of Far Cry are represented, from a huge amount of freedom in exploration, to tons of enemies to take down stealthily or with guns blazing, to side quests that require you to hunt animals and seek out better equipment to advance. Far Cry 4 is the best of the series, dialing in what’s great about its approach and the Ubisoft formula overall.
Battlefield 6
- Developer: Battlefield Studios
- Release Date: October 10, 2025
- Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Battlefield 6 isn’t the most forward-thinking of the Battlefield series–in fact, it’s expressly a “return to roots” take on the storied franchise, invoking older games like Battlefield 3 in its mission–but sometimes, focusing on what you’re good at is exactly the right approach. Battlefield 6 leans hard into the series mainstays, bringing back character classes and pushing elements like map destruction in a more tactical direction. With huge, well-built maps, a ton of vehicles, and a few new modes to revitalize the underlying formula, Battlefield 6 is an excellent return to form that taps into what players have liked about the series since its inception.
Deathloop
- Developer: Arkane Lyon
- Release Date: September 14, 2021
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC
Deathloop comes from Arkane Lyon, the same studio that created the Dishonored series, and you can feel how the latter informs the former despite their differences. Deathloop is a shooter in the vein of immersive sims, where you have a ton of freedom (and some spiffy special powers, just like in Dishonored) to commit some murders. On a strange island full of endlessly partying inhabitants, you’re actually working through a time loop. Your ultimate goal is to kill several key targets scattered around the island in a single day in order to escape the loop, but until then, you’re using the repetition of a single day to learn everything you can about your enemies so you can finally take them down. Throwing a wrench into this is the fact that there’s another time looper who’s trying to stop you, introducing some (optional) multiplayer mayhem as other players will sometimes invade your game as the hunter and try to take you down. Deathloop is a phenomenal exercise in what modern immersive sims and shooters can be, giving you all sorts of guns and powers to use to figure out the perfect way to eliminate your enemies.
Metro Redux / Metro Exodus
- Developer: 4A Games
- Release Date: August 26, 2014 / February 15, 2019
- Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Switch
The Metro series captured the attention of players all over the world, and not just because of its intense post-apocalyptic setting and the shooter elements, like jamming guns, scarce ammo, and dark tunnels, that go with it. The Metro games are also known for engaging stories, based on a series of novels by the same name, in which survivors of a nuclear apocalypse in Moscow eke out a living in the train tunnels beneath the city. That setting allows Metro to combine elements of action, stealth, and survival-horror, sending you through a dark, strange world that’s inhabited by deadly mutants and deadlier factions. The formula has only been improved by developer 4A Games over the life of the franchise, with Metro Exodus taking players to the surface and adding locations that use an open-world-style approach.
Killing Floor 2
- Developer: Tripwire Interactive
- Release Date: May 14, 2009 / November 18, 2016
- Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC
There are hordes of zombies to shoot in Killing Floor 2, so you need to team up with some friends and do the shooting. That’s a pretty significant simplification of what the co-op wave-based games offer, though. With a host of different weapons and perks at your disposal each run, Killing Floor 2 brings a roguelike sensibility to their intense, spooky action. You start by picking perks, which basically function as classes, taking on specific roles on your team, and working together is essential for survival. Killing Floor 2 offers the same exciting wave-based action that you might get from something like Call of Duty’s Zombies mode, while packing in all sorts of clever ideas, as well as a ton of developer support that brings interesting changes, holiday events, and more.
Metroid Prime Remastered
- Developer: Retro Studios
- Release Date: February 9, 2023
- Platforms: Switch
When it released in 2002, Metroid Prime set a new bar for both the Metroid series and sci-fi shooters in general, prizing exploration, discovery, and knowledge as highly as twitch reflexes and action. The game uses the traditional Metroid formula of exploring a huge map, discovering upgrades for your character, and using those upgrades to unlock new pathways through areas you’ve previously traversed, but amps it up with first-person platforming and some of the series’ deepest storytelling. More than anything, Metroid Prime fully delivers the feeling of exploring an alien world as you scan everything you can see to find out about the planet’s ecology and the villains who have come to despoil it. Remastered is one of the best games on Nintendo Switch.
Ghostrunner / Ghostrunner 2
- Developer: One More Level, Slipgate Ironworks
- Release Date: October 27, 2020 / October 26, 2023
- Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, Switch
There’s something about games that can combine the precision of shooters with high-speed movement–a whole lot of the games on this list manage to combine those two elements to create an excellent amount of intensity. The Ghostrunner games are all about speed and precision, requiring you to move around levels as a cyberpunk ninja, using a bunch of parkour abilities to avoid getting shot so that you can get in close and slice apart your enemies with a sword. Moving as fast as you can is the main focus of Ghostrunner, and along with the ability to slow time and deflect bullets, going fast allows you to clear rooms like a deadly blur. Each arena in the Ghostrunner games is part puzzle and part speedrun, requiring you to assess your surroundings as fast as you can so you can use them to kill without being killed.
Hunt: Showdown 1896
- Developer: Crytek
- Release Date: August 27, 2019
- Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC
Extraction shooters come in a lot of brands, but what makes Hunt: Showdown 1896 stand out from the field is its oppressive occult vibe and turn-of-the-century setting. You team up with friends to hunt down monsters tearing their way out of Hell and hiding out in dank bayous filled with zombies. The goal is to hunt down and eliminate a powerful monster and escape the area with its bounty–but you’re not the only people trying to do so. Firing your bolt-action rifle and other old-timey weapons always runs the risk of exposing yourself to other players, who are as willing to kill you as the supernatural horrors lurking in the swamps. The combination of Hellbound creatures and deadly other players makes every run of Hunt: Showdown memorable, bringing a real horror vibe to the extraction-shooter formula.
Echo Point Nova
- Developer: Greylock Studio
- Release Date: September 24, 2024 (early access)
- Platforms: PC
A lot of developers have discovered that going really fast while shooting guys is a winning combination. Echo Point Nova starts with this peanut butter-and-chocolate combination, then expands on the idea by literally expanding on the space you get to traverse. Armed with a bunch of guns, a grappling hook, and a hoverboard that lets you speed around landscapes, zip up walls, and fly through the air, you’ll take on combat challenges across a huge number of floating islands in a huge open-world battle space. Making your way around the high-flying world of Echo Point Nova is just as much fun blowing up mercenaries and mechs along the way, and the combination makes for a shooter experience that is, in a word, joyous. Still images don’t really do Echo Point Nova justice–check out the trailer instead.
I Am Your Beast
- Developer: Strange Scaffold
- Release Date: September 10, 2024
- Platforms: PC
With I Am Your Beast, Strange Scaffold takes the super-quick time trial approach to shooters and elevates it just a bit. Each level is a fast-paced sandbox where you need to find a way to complete an objective–which is often just killing everybody in your way–with a bunch of creative ways to do that. You can headshot everyone with a pistol, or empty your gun and then heave it at guys before following up with a quick stomp to finish them off, or shoot down a beehive and let nature handle it for you. Hey, there’s a bear trap, why not chuck it at a guy’s head? Cool, a rocket launcher, time to leap off this tree and send a shell into those explosive barrels and take down a whole group of guys before you hit the ground. Sprinting, parkouring, and shooting are all I Am Your Beast knows and all it wants to know, and it hits those elements so well that mastering each level is a blast. The minimalist story and writing are great, too, providing a few hilarious and empathic moments to keep pulling you along into each new challenge.
Doom: The Dark Ages
- Developer: id Software
- Release Date: May 15, 2025
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PC
The third in id Software’s reboot series that began with the release of Doom in 2016, Doom: The Dark Ages once again redefines what it means to be a Doom game. Doom (2016) was about speed and raw aggression, and Doom Eternal added a more strategic requirement. Doom: The Dark Ages takes the foundation of both and iterates again, mixing their fast pace with a new shield. Almost counterintuitively, having this defensive option actually allows you to be more aggressive. Instead of running from enemies or circling to find opportune targets and recover resources, you can now charge straight through enemy attacks or even parry them back. The rebooted Doom games already pushed the shooter genre forward in interesting new ways by melding old-school feel and modern mechanics; The Dark Ages adds a new twist that refreshes it all again, in fascinating ways.
PowerWash Simulator
- Developer: FuturLab
- Release Date: July 14, 2022
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, iOS
And now for something completely different: PowerWash Simulator might not be what you immediately think of when you think of first-person shooters, but it technically meets the definition–except your weapon is a powerful hose and what you’re massacring is dirt. It also offers something a little more low-key than your usual shooter fare, making it a great change of pace from competitive games and heart-pounding spectacle. PowerWash is exactly what it sounds like: you’re a guy who cleans stuff using a powerwasher, choosing from different nozzles and attachments to get the job done effectively and efficiently. Wandering around different environments, zapping all the dirt you can see, is both fun and extremely chill, providing the mechanical satisfaction that comes with shooters but in a more relaxing atmosphere.
Cyberpunk 2077
- Developer: CD Projekt RED
- Release date: 10 December, 2020
- Platform: PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2
Chances are you’re already fairly familiar with Cyberpunk 2077, but for the uninitiated, it’s an excellent blend of RPG gameplay and FPS action that lets you live it up in a futuristic dreamworld. Depending on how you play, the sprawling metropolis of Night City–where towering corporations, cybernetic enhancements, and ruthless gangs shape everyday life–