First-person shooters are a genre I have mixed feelings on. On one hand, I really have never found myself drawn to them as a single-player experience. Sure, I’ve enjoyed some old school single player FPS games, but they don’t really stand among my favorites of their eras compared to other genres. On the other hand, I’ve spent countless hours playing online shooters with friends and these times form some of my fondest video game memories. So, I’m much more apt to get drawn into a first person game which has shooting but isn’t the main draw, say Deathloop or Dishonored, for instance, but I will get totally lost in a good online FPS. Make sense? No? Good. Here we go…

Criteria

Not really a whole lot to think about here; just my favorite FPS experiences. I will say I’m not claiming these to be the best in the genre, but simply the ones I had the best time with when I actively played them. I am also sticking to what I consider “pure” FPS games. That is, something like a first person RPG would not be considered here, nor would a first person stealth game. The games did not have to feature online or local multiplayer, but those experiences are certainly factored into the rankings.

The List

Honorable Mentions:

Apex Legends, Doom, GoldenEye, Medal of Honor Frontline, Perfect Dark, Wolfenstein 3D

5. Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Did I put this at number five almost entirely so I could brag about getting a Tactical Nuke? Perhaps. For the uninitiated, the game allows you to equip three specials each online match and they are tied to kill streaks. A special tied to a three kill streak, for instance, might send in a turret to use, ten might be a brief flyover and bombing from friendly jets. A tactical nuke instantly ends the game in your favor when it is deployed, but it is tied to a kill streak of 25. It was dumb enough for me to consider equipping it, but somehow, it worked. Matches are to 50 kills, so the round was almost over when I hit the button, but I had only seen a small handful of these deployed in my hundreds of hours playing this game, so to be the person to deploy one was the peak of my online shooter career.

4. Battlefield 4 (Xbox 360/One, PS3/4, PC)

Battlefield 4 introduced me to the world of modern, at the time, team-focused online shooters. Coming off of CoD, Battlefield was a completely different experience as I spent almost all of my time in game modes that weren’t deathmatch. The game featured a whopping 64 player games and I spent a couple of years playing Commander, Conquer, Domination, and probably some others I’m forgetting. The game’s inclusion of massive vehicles including tanks, jets, and attach boats allowed the online matches to capture a sense of scale and cinematic moments that I feel most of these shooters have been chasing ever since.

3. Star Wars Battlefront (Xbox One, PS4)

This is a little bit redundant with Battlefield as there are many similarities between the online game modes, but Battlefront has lightsabers so I still included it on my list. The highlight here was getting to play as a Hero or Villain and absolutely tear through the peon foot soldiers on the other team. I’ve not played another game which captures the pure dominance of being Darth Vader like this game. Spawn as him and you can take out rebel soldiers with ease. The game included quite a variety of heroes and villains, and even though the game moved into third person for this mode, I’m still including it on my list. Not sorry.

2. Overwatch (Xbox One, PS4, PC)

Take some of the slickest FPS controls and movement that has ever been released, and add in a pure team-based game where you aren’t even shown your kills or deaths after a match, and you get Overwatch. I realize this was basically a copy of Team Fortress, but I never played that game so here we are. The true revelation of Overwatch was that it offered something for everybody. You could be a really good Overwatch player even if your quick-twitch shooting skills were nothing special. The variety across the dozens of characters ensured that there was a place for everyone. Grab Reinhardt to shield your team, or Mercy to heal everyone. Soldier 76 was basically the default character from every other shooter. Each character had a full list of custom actions and the game required you to learn them all to understand how to counter enemies and play off of your teammates to win. 

The game modes were simple, but effective in requiring team synergy. The game went into some curious directions, but the first two or three years after launch were among my favorite video game memories.

1. Halo (Xbox)

We all had Xboxes in college and we all had Halo. However, for the first few months the only thing we used our Halo discs for was to play the Fuzion Frenzy demo it included. One day, a guy down the hall started playing Halo so a few of us joined. Fast-forward a few months and we have taken over the dorm hall with eight people in one room, LAN cables running across the hall into a different room with either other people. I still remember our go-to matches. CTP on Blood Gultch or Sidewinder. Snipers and pistols on Boarding Action. Shotguns only, no shields on Chrion. I remember one team being so incredibly confused at how quickly the other scored a flag the first time someone used the gate trick on Sidewinder. I also remember entering a local tournament across the street from campus and getting soundly destroyed by a pair of twelve year old’s. 

More broadly speaking, Halo laid the groundwork for the modern online shooter. The gameplay was simply better than anything that had come before it and pairing that with memorable maps and serviceable game modes made an unforgettable experience. Yes, my memories and this game’s placement on this list are mostly tied to where and when I played this game, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t groundbreaking at the time.