Let's Rank - Top 10 First Person Shooters of All Time
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| While DOOM popularized the genre in 1993, the lesser-known "Wolfenstein 3D" was the true pioneer. |
First-person shooters are gaming's most played genre, played by millions across the world at a time. With the release of DOOM on MS-DOS computers in 1993, the young, ingenious team at id Software revolutionized a gaming landscape that was once dominated by 2D side-scrollers, with an influx of 'DOOM clones,' the most notable being 3D Realms' Duke Nukem 3D. The first-person shooter formula has hardly changed since then, save for the more cinematic gameplay found in modern video games. Given first-person shooters have been extremely monopolized by the 'massively online' phenomenon as of late, our ranking will focus on the single-player video games that left an impact on us. We believe online experiences are much harder to rank, with experiences varying far too much due to their haphazard nature.
The HUDs are minimalistic, granting players audio and visual cues for them to gain awareness of their surroundings. The game's emphasis on a linear story allowed for a greater emphasis on its storytelling, visual environment, as well as gameplay elements, such as ammo and resource management. Graphics were unparalleled at the time, only rivaled by 2007's "Crysis," and still hold up to this day, with its extensive attention to detail and lighting. A remaster using the updated 4A Engine was made in 2014, with improved lighting, animations, particle effects, as well as dynamic weather effects.
As the "Doom Marine" explores the depths of the Mars Research Facility, unexplained voices, paranoia, and insanity cause anxious rumors to spread among the unsettled employees of the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), questioning their involvement in a grander, more sinister scheme, unbeknownst to them. Dr. Betruger's teleportation experiments are revealed to be a facade, with the Delta Labs head scientist working hand-in-hand with the forces of Hell to subjugate humanity. A missing scientist is seen sending a final message to the UAC back on Earth. In "Half-Life" fashion - albeit less humoristic - the situation quickly escalates, with its personnel turned into soulless zombies and the forces of Hell escaping through a teleportation portal. It's up to our marine to "escape" (keyword) the hellish invasion of the Mars Research Facility through the excavation point.
Doom 3 combines the sheer brutality of the DOOM franchise and adds it to the survival horror genre, creating a unique "hunt-or-be-hunted" atmosphere throughout. Powerful weapons are not enough to conquer the feeling of vulnerability and fear tension - new to this entry - the game steers players through emotions never experienced before, worthy of Hell. The game was praised for its graphics and pioneering "bump mapping" for simulating bumps and wrinkles using flat textures, and the dynamic lighting that sets the mood for its gloomy environment with its realistic light falloff. The game later inspired the successful F.E.A.R. video game, released only a year after.
The Omaha beach landing was memorable in this run-and-gun shooter, as well as the feeling of infiltrating Nazi-occupied villages and bases, featuring frantic encounters and ingenious level design keeping you on the edge of your seat the whole playthrough. The soundtrack was composed by the notorious Michael Giacchino, winner of multiple awards - Oscar, an Emmy, and three Grammys - and known for his works composing the score of "Lost," "The Incredibles," and the recent "Spider-Man" movies. The graphics pushed id Tech 3 to its limit while keeping the gritty charm reminiscent of "Quake 3." The multiplayer was notable for its "freeze tag" and "base building" modes, which encouraged team play and made for some memorable clan wars in our Q3 days.
Following its release, all of the 22 original team members from the team that had worked on "Medal of Honor: Allied Assault" left "2015, Inc." to found "Infinity Ward," beginning what would become the start of the popular Call of Duty franchise.
Ukrainian game developer GSC Game World shook the world in March 2007 with the release of its role-playing survival horror game "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.". The game inspired Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro 2033 games after its developer left GSC to found 4A Games. Both games became some of the most atmospheric survival horror following their release.
The player assumes the role of the "Marked One," a "stalker" on a mission to kill the infamous "Strelok" in the surroundings of a fictional Chernobyl Exclusion Zone; deformed mutants, quantum anomalies, bandits, radiation, and rivaling armed forces threaten the incautious "stalkers," scavengers of the "Zone."
Jedi Knight abandoned sprite-based graphics for both 3D graphics and surround sound through its newer Sith game engine, replacing the Jedi game engine used in Star Wars: Dark Forces. Contrary to popular belief, the Sith Engine was built from the ground up and wasn't a modified version of the Quake engine, making it one of the first first-person shooters with the implementation of hardware acceleration using Direct3D.
The game has momentum in its movement, making lightsaber fights far more enjoyable and in-depth, especially using its multiplayer mode that allowed up to eight people to compete with one another on a local area network and up to thirty-two people online. This "momentum" became a signature of the series, translated to its successors: "Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Outcast" and "Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy."
"Jedi Knight" games remain some of the best lightsaber systems in video games, thanks to their fast-paced acrobatics, tight controls, and movement momentum. The game fully embraced the essence of being a Jedi for the first time in video game history. Could it be that LucasArts had been drawing power from the Valley of the Souls?
How many times have we mentioned it during this list - indirectly so?
In the year 2025, the military contractor "ATC" has developed an experimental unit of telepathically controlled clone supersoldiers known as the Replicas. Paxton Fettel, Psychic Commander of the Replica Forces, goes rogue and takes command of the Replica prototypes, seizing control of the ATC headquarters in Fairport, Washington, and killing all occupants. The player assumes the role of "Point Man," a member of the F.E.A.R. special force unit, after which he encounters terrifying visions of Alma and encounters with the Replicas supersoldiers.
The game put mid-2000s shooters to shame with its LithTech Jupiter EX engine, featuring bump mapping and Havok physics, a rare sight in 2005 video games. Despite impressive visuals, the game shined in its aggressive, adaptive AI that made the "Replicas" some of the most methodical, cold-calculated enemies in video game history.
Doom... again? Well... this one was a given, and despite its massive contribution to the gaming landscape as a whole, we evaluate DOOM both in retrospect and prognostication. DOOM certainly passes the test, being the most enjoyable pick-and-play first-person shooter ever conceived, with an unrivaled number of ports.
In its innovation, 1993's DOOM is unrivalled, singlehandedly reinventing the first-person shooter and mastering it for years to come, coining the "Deathmatch" genre that revolutionized online play, and its "wad" ("Where's All the Data?") package files giving in to countless "mods," which later defined the early 2000s online gaming scenes. Doom was initially published as closed source, but later as open-source in 1997 as part of the Doom Source License. Doom remains a shooter made for the people, by the people.
Despite its age, the original DOOM and its clones are now revered by a scene of "boomer shooter" enthusiasts and a sentimental longing for frenetic action, speed, and no-bullshit playability. DOOM has aged so well that its notoriety as being one of the best First-Person Shooters of All Time is hard to expostulate
Trouble at Black Mesa, or just another workday for scientist Gordon Freeman? The game starts on a monorail, and the player navigates through what seems like a Simpsons-esque Research Facility in a state of disrepair. The scientists are worried about non-working microwaves; they themselves are conducting risky quantum experimentations, which eventually go haywire, causing the cataclysmic Resonance Cascade. Gordon Freeman must navigate through this hazardous factory, with an almost comedic slapstick visual environment telling the story of an experiment gone exponentially wrong, quickly escalating into an alien invasion, and caricaturally brutish intervention by the United States Armed Forces.
Haunted by sightings of the mysterious "G-Man," Freeman must travel to Xen via a portal prepared by the science team to neutralize the Nihilanth, the supreme leader of the Xen forces. The game's main antagonist, the Nihilanth, hides a tragic secret and subtly hints at what is later revealed in its somewhat more grounded sequel, "Half-Life 2," nicely foreshadowed by Valve!
