First person shooters are some of the most engrossing, personal, and powerful entertainment experiences you can get. You aren't just watching some character play a part on the screen, you are that character. You're seeing all of the action from their perspective, aiming down the sights of a gun in your hands, then pulling the trigger. It's the closest you can come to being a soldier, or zombie killer, or space marine. We love playing FPS games, which is why we've put together a list of our all-time favorites.

For this list, the games need to be in the upper echelon of shooters in terms of gunplay mechanics - which is why you won't see any BioShocks and Metroid Primes here (even if they do rank as some of the ). Also, we at GamesRadar+ are all about the console side of gaming, so while plenty of PC shooters are outstanding, you won’t find them well represented here. So, with all that in mind, here are the best FPS games we've ever played.

GoldenEye 007 takes its rightful place as the worst of the best; a shooter that can hang with the best of them, but only by a hair. It was the Smash Bros. Melee or Halo of the late '90s, the four-player, college dorm juggernaut that ate away the afternoon faster than an extra large pizza on Friday night. An entire generation of gamers were introduced to the magic of first-person shooting thanks to GoldenEye (on console at least). And yet, the years have not been kind to this game. The advances made in console FPS'ing thanks to Halo, Call of Duty, and others, have exposed GoldenEye as being - frankly - a bicycle riding on square wheels.

While the actual shooting in GoldenEye may feel horribly, painfully antiquated, the sheer size and scope of this first-person shooter remains its strongest suit. GoldenEye is packed with all sorts of different guns, gadgets, secret codes, an extensive single-player campaign, and several multiplayer modes to keep you busy. Anyone who spent time with this game remembers the cutthroat nature of Man with the Golden Gun, or how friggin' unfair Oddjob was (he's still banned to this day). GoldenEye 007 shone bright in its heyday, and certainly helped paved the way for the rest of the entries on this list.

Gruff, comically macho Sam Stone is the definition of a one-man army, given the sheer body count of violent creatures he's put down in his time. The Serious Sam games are all about increasingly grandiose rampages, constantly spawning hundreds of enemies right on top of you to achieve maximum amounts of cartoonishly violent chaos. Luckily, you've got the means to take down whatever supernatural horrors that await in ancient Mesoamerica, from the typical firepower (shotguns, miniguns, and rocket launchers) to the exotic (vintage cannons, laserguns, and flamethrowers).

The Second Encounter is the peak of the series' knack for perfectly orchestrated set pieces, no cut-scenes required. Secrets that end in jumpscares, stampedes of the raptor-skeleton-looking Kleers, and parades of the screaming Beheaded Kamikaze soldiers (which make no physical sense, by the way) are just a few of the unforgettable moments that seem to happen back-to-back-to-back as you progress through the wide-open levels. It's a silly thrillride, full of color and comedy, and evokes the classic era of FPS that prioritizes the simple fun of shooting guns at moving targets over all else.

Borderlands 2 is probably the weakest game on this list when it comes to shooting mechanics, with gun damage that relies more on elemental multipliers and player level than shotgun-to-the-face equals dead. But wandering around Pandora, collecting loot, and using the thousands of guns to make bloody fountains out of bandits is an absolute pleasure. Plenty of shooters confine players to narrow corridors, scripted enemy encounters, and squat and pop shootouts. Not so much with Borderlands. The world is massive and open for you to explore.

The game is as much RPG as it is shooter, with multiple player classes that range from dual machine gun wielding Gunzerkers, to psychic-powered Sirens. Then there are upgradable talent trees, elemental weapons, and quest rewards. Take all of that and slap it into a four player co-op shooter experience with an open world filled with weaponized vehicles, hordes of monsters, and gargantuan bosses, and you've got a shooter that's like no other.

Love the large-scale, vehicle-filled firefights of Battlefield, but wish the scope was a little bit bigger? As in, 'over 1,000 players battling across an entire continent' bigger? Sounds like you need to enlist for the ever-raging sci-fi shootouts of at 1,158 concurrent combatants. That makes for a lot of bullets, lasers, and tank shells flying through the air on planet Auraxis at any given time.

The unique balance of the three available factions is reminiscent of StarCraft's asymmetrical, immaculately balanced warfare: the Terran Republic has rapid-fire weaponry and faster vehicles, New Conglomerate forces hit harder at the cost of speed, and the Vanu Sovereignty prefers hovering all-terrain vehicles and copious laser guns made possible by alien technology. Likewise, the six distinct classes ensure that every player has a specialized role to play in this never-ending fight for allied territory. This FPS is the closest you'll get to having your boots on the ground in a planetary war, and it is glorious.

Global Offensive is a paradoxical multiplatform sequel: it was developed to bring console gamers into the fold of this legendary FPS series that flourishes on PC, but ended up making little impact on the Xbox 360 and PS3, while becoming the de facto choice for the most loyal CS fans and legions of mouse-and-keyboard newcomers alike. It doesn't change much, and it doesn't need to - underneath the graphics' grittier realism, this is still pretty much the same team-based, Terrorists versus Counter-Terrorists shooter that values quick thinking and even quicker reflexes.

But CS:GO dared to introduce a few new elements to the tense, one-life-per-round skirmishes of the original. The CZ75-Auto pistol offers a high-risk, high-reward purchase, molotov cocktails can temporarily deny large swaths of the map, and the single-shot, insta-kill Zeus x27 exists solely to be an expensive taunt. In a series that's known for adhering to a proven formula, these additions have gone over well for the second most-played game on Steam. Oh, and those primo weapon skins - a purely aesthetic perk, rest assured - will delight your inner collector, especially if you're lucky enough to score a rare knife.

The sad truth is that PC and console players have very different experiences with Team Fortress 2. While PC players see regular updates, new game modes, and an overflowing cache of items both useful and , the version released for the Xbox 360 only contains the original, vanilla edition of the game. That means no cart-escorting Payload mode, no additional weapons, no hats. But before you demand the poor thing be put out of its misery, know this: that bare-bones version is still amazingly fun.

That's not hugely surprising when you think about it, since everything that made Team Fortress great at the start is there. Maps are colorful and more complex than they look, letting you charge right into a fast-paced slaughter, or sneak into an enemy stronghold and take them all by surprise. Each class is distinct in ways that are outside the norm for shooters (the camouflaged Spy and up-close-and-personal Pyro in particular) and complement each other perfectly, so it never feels like one outclasses the others. Most importantly, it's easy enough for new players to pick up and have a lot of fun, but deep enough for veterans to keep coming back even updates are a far-flung dream. Compared to that, hats really aren't that big of a deal, no matter how beautiful they are.

Unless you’re a hardcore veteran of the great Quake 3 / Unreal Tournament wars of 1999 and utterly set in your ways, there’s something for everyone in Unreal Tournament 3. Epic Games really diversifies the frantic fragfest with all sorts of spins on deathmatch, territorial combat and flag capture. Oh, and it has hover boards.

Unreal Tournament 3 was also one of the first console games to support mods, at least on the PlayStation 3 version. The well-tuned foundation of its first-person combat, bolstered by classic weapons like the Redeemer and the Flak Cannon, meshed perfectly with vibrant sci-fi environments, weird user-created mods and a pulsating soundtrack. The game seemed to expand every time you played, though it never quite took off commercially - in fact, Midway’s marketing is probably what pushed the series into dormancy until 2015.

If it’s possible to be ‘famously’ buried by non-existent marketing, you could say Singularity is chiefly known for how unknown it was upon launch. Developed by the FPS veterans at Raven Software and dumped on an unsuspecting public by Activision, Singularity turned out to be a weird, timey-wimey shooter completely smitten with its own silliness. The game uses a ‘time manipulation’ glove (just go with it) not only as the crux of a weird alternate history plot, but to taunt and torment enemies in bizarre ways. There’s a disturbing thrill in aging an enemy rapidly to the point of no return, or to revert them to a primitive man-beast that can’t tell friend from foe. Even better, a temporary time bubble traps goons and other objects in stasis, letting you suspend precisely aimed bullets mid-air and let them all go at once with a snap. There’s plenty of temporal puzzle solving in Singularity too, but it’s only in combat where the game’s really on the clock.

sounds like it should be a dismal failure, an example of too many strange ingredients combining to make an unpalatable mess. It's equal parts stealth shooter and old-school run-n-gun, moving its fight against WW2-era Nazis into an alternate version of the 1960s where the Third Reich has effectively taken over Europe. Oh, and it also attempts to turn the silent, meat-headed Nazi killer B.J. Blazkowicz into a more human and relatable character. But The New Order doesn't just take all these disparate elements and make them work as a worthy follow-up to a series that spawned a legion of copy-cats - MachineGames has crafted one of the smartest 'mindless' shooters ever made.

Nearly every moment of Wolfenstein: The New Order is malleable, allowing you to tackle its labyrinthine pathways and devilish challenges how you see fit. Levels are open-ended, providing multiple pathways to its objectives, allowing for an equally numerous variety of strategies. Slink through hidden ducts and stealthily shoot enemy soldiers from the shadows with a silenced pistol, then seamlessly go loud with a pair of akimbo AK-47s if you get spotted (or if you just have an itchy trigger finger). Blasting Nazis with an astonishing range of interesting weapons provides its most immediate thrills, but its story is a contemplative investigation of the nature of war and things people are capable of doing to protect the ones they love, and choices you make in the game's opening chapter ripple outward and encourage multiple playthroughs.

First Encounter Assault Recon is an absurd acronym. It sends the wrong message! Even if special forces soldiers with superhuman abilities were actually fighting ghosts, psychics and the walking tanks that protect them, they probably wouldn’t go around calling their business something that implied that they’re constantly terrified. As a name for Monolith Productions’ thriller shooter, though, it’s wonderfully evocative. The studio made a shooter as laudibly simple as it is nervewracking; all you do is blast stuff, but that stuff is going to freak you out good along the way.

F.E.A.R. is clearly a product of its time. The source of all the supernatural phenomena and paramilitary shenanigans you’re fighting against is a little girl with scraggly black hair - a psychic and mad science experiment subject named Alma - straight out of the many Japanese horror movies popular during the early ‘00s. The ability to slow down time for a limited period, the game’s big twist on shooting, was also de rigueur at the time. What elevates F.E.A.R. above its familiar components is an incredible sense of atmosphere and incident. The first level remains one of the all time greats, a perfect roll out of jump scares, weirdness, and big taxing shoot outs that gives you simple weapons and asks you to just use them well. The pace that level sets never lets up the whole time even as F.E.A.R.’s plot gets sillier and sillier.

No game here is better at putting boots to asses than . It's a bull in a china shop; a runaway train that's on fire, strapped with explosives, and barreling through downtown. If you find carnage an art, then Bulletstorm is your Louvre. Creative killing is rewarded in abundance here. Strap a bandit with explosives and kick him into another bandit before detonating them both in a shower of bloody giblets: you get points. Use your beam lasso to toss a guy into an overgrown cactus just for the hell of it: you get points. Steering your sniper bullet around a corner to land the perfect headshot before detonating that bullet to trigger an exploding barrel that obliterates two other enemies: you get so many points.

The best way to approximate Bulletstorm would be to imagine any Mad Max: Fury Road trailer, re-work it into a first-person shooter, and then temper it with a streak of gallows humor that stops it from ever taking itself too seriously. And just like Fury Road, Bulletstorm's action isn't just vapid eye candy, but extremely satisfying gunplay that constantly challenges you to think of new and exciting ways of utilizing the (deadly) toys it gives you. Try it out and see if the heavy KA-THUNK of your quad-barreled shotgun doesn't warm your heart as it melts your opponents into a bloody stew.

Quake 3 is the Olympic gymnast of the FPS genre. Knowing how to aim each beautifully unique weapon is only half the battle, because there's a multitude of mobility options that blast the maps wide open, provided you can master them. Tricky maneuvers like rocket jumping, plasma climbing, and grenade jumping are all stacked atop your basic pace-quickening bunny hop, making it so that a skilled player can fly through any of the artfully laid-out maps at blazing speeds.

Competing in this arena makes absurd demands of your hand-eye coordination; those rail gun headshots aren't going to hit themselves. But at high-level play, it also becomes an intense battle of wits over space control, knowing the precise timing of power-up spawn-ins and deducing where the opponent is based on subtle audio cues. Listening to Shane "rapha" Hendrixson explain all the multilayered thought processes behind his flawless play in this is like going to church for those who can appreciate the finer minutiae of FPS skill.

Most pure shooters rely on a scripted gun-range mentality as a rule. Obedient targets rush into view and everyone merrily mows them down. Far Cry 4, on the other hand, is open world paintball where the focus is on dealing with whatever the hell turns up. Any FPS built on emergent events and improvisation needs a tight gun-handling model and this nails it, letting you pop off crossbow bolts and rockets almost with the power of thought alone, it’s so easy.

You could almost forget it’s not linear, such is the cavalcade of trigger-pumping action as honey badgers burst from bushes or trucks skid off the road spilling guards ready to attack. The behind-the-scenes scripting required to achieve such a smooth flow of action is impressive. However, perhaps its best contribution to the FPS world is that aggressive, rapid-pace stealth: swapping hiding behind corners for sprinting machete runs and stolen gun double take downs.

Battlefield is the king of big scale, multiplayer battles. While COD offers a much personal, more enclosed FPS experience, Battlefield goes big on everything. Maps, vehicles, events, team-play, stats… one of the game’s real strengths is making you feel like you’re a small part of a much larger, ongoing war. And you’re never out-gunned, because there’s always a way to take out a tank, or deal with groups of enemies - you just need to be smart with your squads and their load-outs.

Battlefield 3 specifically hits the sweet spot in terms of shooting mechanics, well-designed maps, and balanced classes/vehicles. It’s no longer the most shiny or comprehensive game, but there’s still a healthy community desperate to shoot you in the face and gather the XP. Sure, Battlefield 4 looks nicer, and has levolution, but it’s not as robust and well-designed as BF3.

You might think, as old as Perfect Dark is, it's long past due to retire from best shooter lists like this one. Released in 2000 when developers were turning out 3D games like proud primary schoolers at their first science fair, the adventures of Joanna Dark have aged in ways that would push other games out of consideration. But by a stroke of good fortune, and thanks to design choices that look smarter with every passing year, much of what made Perfect Dark great back then is still near-perfect now.

There's its eclectic arsenal of weaponry, including everything from a basic pistol, to an x-ray sniper rifle, to a rocket launcher that you can control via first person view, cackling as your friends scatter to avoid the inevitable. Even the sound of the guns and the way they reload is satisfying, alongside the actual shooting, which is smooth enough for dedicated players to master or newcomers to get the hang of quickly. Plus, with the option for four-person multiplayer and dozens of challenges to overcome, there's even more to do after the campaign than during it. This girl is in her golden years, and she's still got it.

Titanfall may not have a single-player campaign, but honestly, it doesn't need it. Not only is this shooter able to provide those big, explosive moments you'd get from a single-player Call of Duty campaign in a multiplayer setting, it's able to provide them by weaving them organically into the core gameplay. Besides, a proper story would just get in the way of its immediate, moment-to-moment action.

Titanfall is a game in constant motion, whether you're boosting up onto a billboard and wall-running into a bombed-out building or you're picking off AI-controlled NPCs to whittle your Titan's respawn timer down a few more seconds. And once that timer hits zero, down comes your giant mech, which you can either pilot yourself or use as your personal robot bodyguard. There are few greater thrills than hopping onto the back of an enemy Titan, shooting it to pieces, launching yourself into the air, landing on another Titan, blowing that one up, then launching onto the roof of a building, all without breaking your stride. Most games wish they could be half this exciting - this kind of stuff happens in Titanfall all the time.

Metro: 2033 felt more like a promise than a fully realized game when it first came out in 2010. Its post-nuclear war world, where humanity survives underground, felt forbidding and harsh, but almost comforting at the same time. Was it violent, poisonous and overrun with killer mutants and sociopathic idealists trying to control the Moscow underground’s precious resources? Sure it was, but it also never felt apocalyptic; life in Metro went on after the bombs fell, people just wore gas masks a lot more often.

As full as its world is, though, the original Metro was miserable to play. Limp gunplay soured vivid ideas like having to manage bullets that are both ammunition and currency as well as the delicious tension of having to constantly search for mask filters on the irradiated surface. , the package that paired 4A Games’ second chapter Last Light with a vastly improved version of 2033, delivers on the original promise in full. Not only does lead character Artyom’s journey finally feel complete with both games under one roof, the action is as fully realized as the world itself.

Few things in life are better than splattering digital zombie brains all over the walls of post-apocalyptic alleyways. And that's why Left 4 Dead 2 is so great. You get to decapitate and explode hostile, risen corpses to your heart's content. And, sure there are plenty of games that let you gun down hordes of undead with everything from a shotgun to a katana sword, but Left 4 Dead 2 is easily one of the best at what it does.

There aren't any complicated stories to keep up with or kill to death ratios to worry about. It's just you and your co-op friends trying not to get eaten alive by player-controlled super zombies and common undead as you move from one safe house to the next. You get the shooting mechanics of Half-Life 2, classic zombie slaying weapons that feel oh so satisfying in your hands, and hundreds of running corpses to shoot. If you somehow get tired of blasting zombies to bits, you can join the other side and hunt the humans as the opposing super zombie team. Left 4 Dead 2 has it all, and absolutely deserves a place as one of the best shooters of all time.

Say no more than ‘Super Shotgun’ to summarize the best of what Doom brought to the demon dissection table. The indispensable weapon lets you barrel through hell with, well, twice as many barrels as you’re used to, amping up Doom’s classic monster-mash to a bloody crescendo.

While its predecessor is the dominant cultural touchstone, Doom 2 shows far more ambition in its level design and its nightmarish menagerie, even drafting old bosses from Doom to fill in as regular enemies. It also abandons the strict episodic structure in its move from Phobos to Earth, letting you keep your arsenal for the duration of the game. And at the end of this hell-jaunt, in a secret room, you’ll find the remains of hell’s true architect: John Romero’s severed head on a stick. It makes the trip worth it, every time.

Chances are, you’re one of the many people who played and enjoyed the original Resistance (because it was a PS3 launch game), got burned badly by Resistance 2 (because it’s ass), and didn’t even bother with Resistance 3. Big mistake. It was one of the best story-driven shooters of the last console generation.

There are definite shades of Half-Life and Metro in Resistance 3, which tells the tragic story of Nathan Hale’s eerie, cross-American journey, where he attempts to save humanity from the seemingly unstoppable Chimera. There are so many stand out moments in the narrative, and the emotion Hale goes through - as he turns his back on his family for the sake of humanity - really gets under your skin. Oh, and the weapons (because they’re made by the creative minds at Insomniac) are both unique and utterly brilliant. Come on, Sony. Stop pissing about with Killzone and give us more Resistance.

In terms of pure shooter feel, has few equals. The gunplay in Bungie’s opus is a delightfully refined, deceptively subtle evolution of the action we know and love from the Halo series, buffed with elemental abilities and a dizzying array of weapon/armour perks. It just feels so great to play; to be in that world, hosing enemies. What’s truly commendable too, is that the shooting works perfectly in both PvE and PvP - few games truly achieve excellence at both.

And because the shooting is so smooth, so endlessly entertaining, it’s easier to forgive some of the game’s perceived flaws. Sure, Crucible still isn’t the finished article, and it’s occasionally unbalanced and glitchy, but every match is taught and brutally contested. No, the plot isn’t explained very well, but who cares when the shooting is this good? And the best part is that Destiny improves with every update, so this already-first-class FPS just keeps getting better.

is the game that defined modern FPS games. After Modern Warfare came out, many shooters tried to capture some of its new FPS magic, whether it was adding progression systems to multiplayer, or rollercoaster-ride action sequences to story modes. The game has one of the most memorable and satisfying single player campaigns in any shooter, genre-changing multiplayer, and an innovative co-op mode, each being just about enough content to justify as its own game but packaged together to make a gargantuan shooter that you could conceivably never stop playing.

Even with the yearly sequels, the series has yet to top the disturbing, yet ultimately unforgettable events of Modern Warfare’s story. After all, it's not every game that you get to experience your own death in the wake of a nuclear blast, or camouflage yourself in tall grass as enemy troops walk right over you. The multiplayer is still home to players looking for a pure CoD experience, where killstreaks only come in three varieties and gunplay skill reigns supreme. No Call of Duty game has changed the genre as much since Modern Warfare, and it doesn't look like it will be topped any time soon.

This may seem like a bit of a cheat since is an anthology of previous Halo games, but here are the key reasons why it deserves its own recognition. First, each game has been updated in some noticeable way, whether that's a simple update to the frames per second as is the case with Halo 4, or if it's a complete re-tooling with a new engine, cut-scenes and content as is the case with Halo 2 Anniversary. In other words, despite the word ‘collection’ being right there in the title, this isn't a simple rehash. The Master Chief Collection offers experiences you simply can't get anywhere else. And yes, they are all that good. Whether it's the immediately-comfortable feel of Halo: Combat Evolved, the dual-wielding and bigger-than-life action of Halo 2, the masterful sandbox design of Halo 3 or the storytelling expertise of Halo 4, each individual game in The Master Chief Collection deserves its accolades.

Second, in a move that we hope more developers take note of, 343 Industries combined multiplayer matchmaking across all titles to offer a singular experience. True, The Master Chief Collection suffered at launch (and some time post-launch) with matchmaking bugs galore, but with the technical hurdles now behind us, it's easier to appreciate the wealth of content available to players. Just as importantly, 343 didn't try to force its hand in terms of unifying the online experience. Want to play with original Halo rules? Go for it. Blood Gulch has been re-released about a bajillion times, but you can choose your favorite version. Choice is the defining attribute here, and that's worth some serious kudos.

You’ve probably heard a lot about how Half-Life 2 is the most groundbreaking, most important, most genre-changing FPS ever made. You’ve probably heard endless championing of its prowess in the areas of interactive narrative, precision pacing, awe-inspiring set-pieces, and deliriously inventive interaction. You’re probably sick of hearing it. But there are two important points about the now 11 year-old rhetoric of unreserved Half-Life praise. Firstly, it’s all entirely true and accurate. Secondly, none of it really gets at just how damn fun Half-Life 2 is.

It’s easy to talk about a game like this by listing concrete innovations and bullet-pointed achievements, but the fact is, you won’t be thinking about any of that when you’re whirling between the buildings of one of H-L2’s, small, open settlements, gunning down two Combine troops in a row before spinning around and launching a pinball of plasma springing around the wall to nail an unseen third. Not as you catch the fourth one’s grenade with the Gravity Gun and hurl it back into his face half a second later. Not as you look up, spot a gunship and a Strider coming over the horizon, and immediately pull out your rocket-launcher, deciding which will suffer your laser-guided fury first. Yes, Half-Life 2 is a cerebral genius, but when it comes to fighting, it’s a Swiss Army Knife strapped to a pinwheel.

Wait, what? A semi-obscure, two-generations old cartoon shooter beating out the likes of Half-Life 2 and Halo? Yes. Because while it never quite made the iconic status of its genre's brightest stars, the GoldenEye team's best game is flat-out the most creative, imaginative, lovingly-crafted, and just outright fun FPS ever made. Not only that, but in its format, structure, and content offering, it's a game so far ahead of its time that we're still waiting for someone to catch up.

Its loose, time-travelling plot is the gateway to a pantheon of utterly unique, immaculately conceptualised levels, each with a feel, flow, and design as special as its setting and look. And although consistently hilarious in its film-pastiching conceits, it's a game packed with immense depth and precise intent, an intricate structure of differing approaches, strategies, and immediate, gratifying fun. But then there's the seemingly endless array of blisteringly fast, entertaining, and kinetic multiplayer options. And the similarly vast, ludicrously creative challenge modes, that push the tight but accessible shooting and madly eclectic weapon-set to their limits, and beg for a second, online-enabled life. And good Lord, those unlockable characters. Monkeys vs. Gingerbread Men in a chaingun battle to the death? Hell yes. Hell yes indeed.

First person shooters are some of the most engrossing, personal, and powerful entertainment experiences you can get. You aren't just watching some character play a part on the screen, you are that character. You're seeing all of the action from their perspective, aiming down the sights of a gun in your hands, then pulling the trigger. It's the closest you can come to being a soldier, or zombie killer, or space marine. We love playing FPS games, which is why we've put together a list of our all-time favorites.

For this list, the games need to be in the upper echelon of shooters in terms of gunplay mechanics - which is why you won't see any BioShocks and Metroid Primes here (even if they do rank as some of the ). Also, we at GamesRadar+ are all about the console side of gaming, so while plenty of PC shooters are outstanding, you won’t find them well represented here. So, with all that in mind, here are the best FPS games we've ever played.

GoldenEye 007 takes its rightful place as the worst of the best; a shooter that can hang with the best of them, but only by a hair. It was the Smash Bros. Melee or Halo of the late '90s, the four-player, college dorm juggernaut that ate away the afternoon faster than you could chow down on an extra large pizza on Friday night. An entire generation of gamers were introduced to the magic of first-person shooting thanks to GoldenEye (on console at least). And yet, the years have not been kind to this game. The advances made in console FPS'ing thanks to Halo, Call of Duty, and others, have exposed GoldenEye as being - frankly - a bicycle riding on square wheels.

While the actual shooting in GoldenEye may feel horribly, painfully antiquated, the sheer size and scope of this first-person shooter remains its strongest suit. GoldenEye is packed with all sorts of different guns, gadgets, secret codes, an extensive single-player campaign, and several multiplayer modes to keep you busy. Anyone who spent time with this game remembers the cutthroat nature of Man with the Golden Gun, or how friggin' unfair Oddjob was (he's still banned to this day). GoldenEye 007 shone bright in its heyday, and certainly helped paved the way for the rest of the entries on this list.

Gruff, comically macho Sam Stone is the definition of a one-man army, given the sheer body count of violent creatures he's put down in his time. The Serious Sam games are all about increasingly grandiose rampages, constantly spawning hundreds of enemies right on top of you to achieve maximum amounts of cartoonishly violent chaos. Luckily, you've got the means to take down whatever supernatural horrors that await in ancient Mesoamerica, from the typical firepower (shotguns, miniguns, and rocket launchers) to the exotic (vintage cannons, laserguns, and flamethrowers).

The Second Encounter is the peak of the series' knack for perfectly orchestrated set pieces, no cut-scenes required. Secrets that end in jumpscares, stampedes of the raptor-skeleton-looking Kleers, and parades of the screaming Beheaded Kamikaze soldiers (which make no physical sense, by the way) are just a few of the unforgettable moments that seem to happen back-to-back-to-back as you progress through the wide-open levels. It's a silly thrillride, full of color and comedy, and evokes the classic era of FPS that prioritizes the simple fun of shooting guns at moving targets over all else.

Borderlands 2 is probably the weakest game on this list when it comes to shooting mechanics, with gun damage that relies more on elemental multipliers and player level than shotgun-to-the-face equals dead. But wandering around Pandora, collecting loot, and using the thousands of guns to make bloody fountains out of bandits is an absolute pleasure. Plenty of shooters confine players to narrow corridors, scripted enemy encounters, and squat and pop shootouts. Not so much with Borderlands. The world is massive and open for you to explore.

The game is as much RPG as it is shooter, with multiple player classes that range from dual machine gun wielding Gunzerkers, to psychic-powered Sirens. Then there are upgradable talent trees, elemental weapons, and quest rewards. Take all of that and slap it into a four player co-op shooter experience with an open world filled with weaponized vehicles, hordes of monsters, and gargantuan bosses, and you've got a shooter that's like no other.

Love the large-scale, vehicle-filled firefights of Battlefield, but wish the scope was a little bit bigger? As in, 'over 1,000 players battling across an entire continent' bigger? Sounds like you need to enlist for the ever-raging sci-fi shootouts of at 1,158 concurrent combatants. That makes for a lot of bullets, lasers, and tank shells flying through the air on planet Auraxis at any given time.

The unique balance of the three available factions is reminiscent of StarCraft's asymmetrical, immaculately balanced warfare: the Terran Republic has rapid-fire weaponry and faster vehicles, New Conglomerate forces hit harder at the cost of speed, and the Vanu Sovereignty prefers hovering all-terrain vehicles and copious laser guns made possible by alien technology. Likewise, the six distinct classes ensure that every player has a specialized role to play in this never-ending fight for allied territory. This FPS is the closest you'll get to having your boots on the ground in a planetary war, and it is glorious.

Global Offensive is a paradoxical multiplatform sequel: it was developed to bring console gamers into the fold of this legendary FPS series that flourishes on PC, but ended up making little impact on the Xbox 360 and PS3, while becoming the de facto choice for the most loyal CS fans and legions of mouse-and-keyboard newcomers alike. It doesn't change much, and it doesn't need to - underneath the graphics' grittier realism, this is still pretty much the same team-based, Terrorists versus Counter-Terrorists shooter that values quick thinking and even quicker reflexes.

But CS:GO dared to introduce a few new elements to the tense, one-life-per-round skirmishes of the original. The CZ75-Auto pistol offers a high-risk, high-reward purchase, molotov cocktails can temporarily deny large swaths of the map, and the single-shot, insta-kill Zeus x27 exists solely to be an expensive taunt. In a series that's known for adhering to a proven formula, these additions have gone over well for the second most-played game on Steam. Oh, and those primo weapon skins - a purely aesthetic perk, rest assured - will delight your inner collector, especially if you're lucky enough to score a rare knife.

The sad truth is that PC and console players have very different experiences with Team Fortress 2. While PC players see regular updates, new game modes, and an overflowing cache of items both useful and , the version released for the Xbox 360 only contains the original, vanilla edition of the game. That means no cart-escorting Payload mode, no additional weapons, no hats. But before you demand the poor thing be put out of its misery, know this: that bare-bones version is still amazingly fun.

That's not hugely surprising when you think about it, since everything that made Team Fortress great at the start is there. Maps are colorful and more complex than they look, letting you charge right into a fast-paced slaughter, or sneak into an enemy stronghold and take them all by surprise. Each class is distinct in ways that are outside the norm for shooters (the camouflaged Spy and up-close-and-personal Pyro in particular) and complement each other perfectly, so it never feels like one outclasses the others. Most importantly, it's easy enough for new players to pick up and have a lot of fun, but deep enough for veterans to keep coming back even updates are a far-flung dream. Compared to that, hats really aren't that big of a deal, no matter how beautiful they are.

Unless you’re a hardcore veteran of the great Quake 3 / Unreal Tournament wars of 1999 and utterly set in your ways, there’s something for everyone in Unreal Tournament 3. Epic Games really diversifies the frantic fragfest with all sorts of spins on deathmatch, territorial combat and flag capture. Oh, and it has hover boards.

Unreal Tournament 3 was also one of the first console games to support mods, at least on the PlayStation 3 version. The well-tuned foundation of its first-person combat, bolstered by classic weapons like the Redeemer and the Flak Cannon, meshed perfectly with vibrant sci-fi environments, weird user-created mods and a pulsating soundtrack. The game seemed to expand every time you played, though it never quite took off commercially - in fact, Midway’s marketing is probably what pushed the series into dormancy until 2015.

If it’s possible to be ‘famously’ buried by non-existent marketing, you could say Singularity is chiefly known for how unknown it was upon launch. Developed by the FPS veterans at Raven Software and dumped on an unsuspecting public by Activision, Singularity turned out to be a weird, timey-wimey shooter completely smitten with its own silliness. The game uses a ‘time manipulation’ glove (just go with it) not only as the crux of a weird alternate history plot, but to taunt and torment enemies in bizarre ways. There’s a disturbing thrill in aging an enemy rapidly to the point of no return, or to revert them to a primitive man-beast that can’t tell friend from foe. Even better, a temporary time bubble traps goons and other objects in stasis, letting you suspend precisely aimed bullets mid-air and let them all go at once with a snap. There’s plenty of temporal puzzle solving in Singularity too, but it’s only in combat where the game’s really on the clock.

sounds like it should be a dismal failure, an example of too many strange ingredients combining to make an unpalatable mess. It's equal parts stealth shooter and old-school run-n-gun, moving its fight against WW2-era Nazis into an alternate version of the 1960s where the Third Reich has effectively taken over Europe. Oh, and it also attempts to turn the silent, meat-headed Nazi killer B.J. Blazkowicz into a more human and relatable character. But The New Order doesn't just take all these disparate elements and make them work as a worthy follow-up to a series that spawned a legion of copy-cats - MachineGames has crafted one of the smartest 'mindless' shooters ever made.

Nearly every moment of Wolfenstein: The New Order is malleable, allowing you to tackle its labyrinthine pathways and devilish challenges how you see fit. Levels are open-ended, providing multiple pathways to its objectives, allowing for an equally numerous variety of strategies. Slink through hidden ducts and stealthily shoot enemy soldiers from the shadows with a silenced pistol, then seamlessly go loud with a pair of akimbo AK-47s if you get spotted (or if you just have an itchy trigger finger). Blasting Nazis with an astonishing range of interesting weapons provides its most immediate thrills, but its story is a contemplative investigation of the nature of war and things people are capable of doing to protect the ones they love, and choices you make in the game's opening chapter ripple outward and encourage multiple playthroughs.

First Encounter Assault Recon is an absurd acronym. It sends the wrong message! Even if special forces soldiers with superhuman abilities were actually fighting ghosts, psychics and the walking tanks that protect them, they probably wouldn’t go around calling their business something that implied that they’re constantly terrified. As a name for Monolith Productions’ thriller shooter, though, it’s wonderfully evocative. The studio made a shooter as laudibly simple as it is nervewracking; all you do is blast stuff, but that stuff is going to freak you out good along the way.

F.E.A.R. is clearly a product of its time. The source of all the supernatural phenomena and paramilitary shenanigans you’re fighting against is a little girl with scraggly black hair - a psychic and mad science experiment subject named Alma - straight out of the many Japanese horror movies popular during the early ‘00s. The ability to slow down time for a limited period, the game’s big twist on shooting, was also de rigueur at the time. What elevates F.E.A.R. above its familiar components is an incredible sense of atmosphere and incident. The first level remains one of the all time greats, a perfect roll out of jump scares, weirdness, and big taxing shoot outs that gives you simple weapons and asks you to just use them well. The pace that level sets never lets up the whole time even as F.E.A.R.’s plot gets sillier and sillier.

No game here is better at putting boots to asses than . It's a bull in a china shop; a runaway train that's on fire, strapped with explosives, and barreling through downtown. If you find carnage an art, then Bulletstorm is your Louvre. Creative killing is rewarded in abundance here. Strap a bandit with explosives and kick him into another bandit before detonating them both in a shower of bloody giblets: you get points. Use your beam lasso to toss a guy into an overgrown cactus just for the hell of it: you get points. Steering your sniper bullet around a corner to land the perfect headshot before detonating that bullet to trigger an exploding barrel that obliterates two other enemies: you get so many points.

The best way to approximate Bulletstorm would be to imagine any Mad Max: Fury Road trailer, re-work it into a first-person shooter, and then temper it with a streak of gallows humor that stops it from ever taking itself too seriously. And just like Fury Road, Bulletstorm's action isn't just vapid eye candy, but extremely satisfying gunplay that constantly challenges you to think of new and exciting ways of utilizing the (deadly) toys it gives you. Try it out and see if the heavy KA-THUNK of your quad-barreled shotgun doesn't warm your heart as it melts your opponents into a bloody stew.

Quake 3 is the Olympic gymnast of the FPS genre. Knowing how to aim each beautifully unique weapon is only half the battle, because there's a multitude of mobility options that blast the maps wide open, provided you can master them. Tricky maneuvers like rocket jumping, plasma climbing, and grenade jumping are all stacked atop your basic pace-quickening bunny hop, making it so that a skilled player can fly through any of the artfully laid-out maps at blazing speeds.

Competing in this arena makes absurd demands of your hand-eye coordination; those rail gun headshots aren't going to hit themselves. But at high-level play, it also becomes an intense battle of wits over space control, knowing the precise timing of power-up spawn-ins and deducing where the opponent is based on subtle audio cues. Listening to Shane "rapha" Hendrixson explain all the multilayered thought processes behind his flawless play in this is like going to church for those who can appreciate the finer minutiae of FPS skill.

Most pure shooters rely on a scripted gun-range mentality as a rule. Obedient targets rush into view and everyone merrily mows them down. Far Cry 4, on the other hand, is open world paintball where the focus is on dealing with whatever the hell turns up. Any FPS built on emergent events and improvisation needs a tight gun-handling model and this nails it, letting you pop off crossbow bolts and rockets almost with the power of thought alone, it’s so easy.

You could almost forget it’s not linear, such is the cavalcade of trigger-pumping action as honey badgers burst from bushes or trucks skid off the road spilling guards ready to attack. The behind-the-scenes scripting required to achieve such a smooth flow of action is impressive. However, perhaps its best contribution to the FPS world is that aggressive, rapid-pace stealth: swapping hiding behind corners for sprinting machete runs and stolen gun double take downs.

Battlefield is the king of big scale, multiplayer battles. While COD offers a much personal, more enclosed FPS experience, Battlefield goes big on everything. Maps, vehicles, events, team-play, stats… one of the game’s real strengths is making you feel like you’re a small part of a much larger, ongoing war. And you’re never out-gunned, because there’s always a way to take out a tank, or deal with groups of enemies - you just need to be smart with your squads and their load-outs.

Battlefield 3 specifically hits the sweet spot in terms of shooting mechanics, well-designed maps, and balanced classes/vehicles. It’s no longer the most shiny or comprehensive game, but there’s still a healthy community desperate to shoot you in the face and gather the XP. Sure, Battlefield 4 looks nicer, and has levolution, but it’s not as robust and well-designed as BF3.

You might think, as old as Perfect Dark is, it's long past due to retire from best shooter lists like this one. Released in 2000 when developers were turning out 3D games like proud primary schoolers at their first science fair, the adventures of Joanna Dark have aged in ways that would push other games out of consideration. But by a stroke of good fortune, and thanks to design choices that look smarter with every passing year, much of what made Perfect Dark great back then is still near-perfect now.

There's its eclectic arsenal of weaponry, including everything from a basic pistol, to an x-ray sniper rifle, to a rocket launcher that you can control via first person view, cackling as your friends scatter to avoid the inevitable. Even the sound of the guns and the way they reload is satisfying, alongside the actual shooting, which is smooth enough for dedicated players to master or newcomers to get the hang of quickly. Plus, with the option for four-person multiplayer and dozens of challenges to overcome, there's even more to do after the campaign than during it. This girl is in her golden years, and she's still got it.

Titanfall may not have a single-player campaign, but honestly, it doesn't need it. Not only is this shooter able to provide those big, explosive moments you'd get from a single-player Call of Duty campaign in a multiplayer setting, it's able to provide them by weaving them organically into the core gameplay. Besides, a proper story would just get in the way of its immediate, moment-to-moment action.

Titanfall is a game in constant motion, whether you're boosting up onto a billboard and wall-running into a bombed-out building or you're picking off AI-controlled NPCs to whittle your Titan's respawn timer down a few more seconds. And once that timer hits zero, down comes your giant mech, which you can either pilot yourself or use as your personal robot bodyguard. There are few greater thrills than hopping onto the back of an enemy Titan, shooting it to pieces, launching yourself into the air, landing on another Titan, blowing that one up, then launching onto the roof of a building, all without breaking your stride. Most games wish they could be half this exciting - this kind of stuff happens in Titanfall all the time.

Metro: 2033 felt more like a promise than a fully realized game when it first came out in 2010. Its post-nuclear war world, where humanity survives underground, felt forbidding and harsh, but almost comforting at the same time. Was it violent, poisonous and overrun with killer mutants and sociopathic idealists trying to control the Moscow underground’s precious resources? Sure it was, but it also never felt apocalyptic; life in Metro went on after the bombs fell, people just wore gas masks a lot more often.

As full as its world is, though, the original Metro was miserable to play. Limp gunplay soured vivid ideas like having to manage bullets that are both ammunition and currency as well as the delicious tension of having to constantly search for mask filters on the irradiated surface. , the package that paired 4A Games’ second chapter Last Light with a vastly improved version of 2033, delivers on the original promise in full. Not only does lead character Artyom’s journey finally feel complete with both games under one roof, the action is as fully realized as the world itself.

Few things in life are better than splattering digital zombie brains all over the walls of post-apocalyptic alleyways. And that's why Left 4 Dead 2 is so great. You get to decapitate and explode hostile, risen corpses to your heart's content. And, sure there are plenty of games that let you gun down hordes of undead with everything from a shotgun to a katana sword, but Left 4 Dead 2 is easily one of the best at what it does.

There aren't any complicated stories to keep up with or kill to death ratios to worry about. It's just you and your co-op friends trying not to get eaten alive by player-controlled super zombies and common undead as you move from one safe house to the next. You get the shooting mechanics of Half-Life 2, classic zombie slaying weapons that feel oh so satisfying in your hands, and hundreds of running corpses to shoot. If you somehow get tired of blasting zombies to bits, you can join the other side and hunt the humans as the opposing super zombie team. Left 4 Dead 2 has it all, and absolutely deserves a place as one of the best shooters of all time.

Say no more than ‘Super Shotgun’ to summarize the best of what Doom brought to the demon dissection table. The indispensable weapon lets you barrel through hell with, well, twice as many barrels as you’re used to, amping up Doom’s classic monster-mash to a bloody crescendo.

While its predecessor is the dominant cultural touchstone, Doom 2 shows far more ambition in its level design and its nightmarish menagerie, even drafting old bosses from Doom to fill in as regular enemies. It also abandons the strict episodic structure in its move from Phobos to Earth, letting you keep your arsenal for the duration of the game. And at the end of this hell-jaunt, in a secret room, you’ll find the remains of hell’s true architect: John Romero’s severed head on a stick. It makes the trip worth it, every time.

Chances are, you’re one of the many people who played and enjoyed the original Resistance (because it was a PS3 launch game), got burned badly by Resistance 2 (because it’s ass), and didn’t even bother with Resistance 3. Big mistake. It was one of the best story-driven shooters of the last console generation.

There are definite shades of Half-Life and Metro in Resistance 3, which tells the tragic story of Joseph Capelli’s eerie, cross-American journey, where he attempts to save humanity from the seemingly unstoppable Chimera. There are so many stand out moments in the narrative, and the emotion Capelli goes through - as he turns his back on his family for the sake of humanity - really gets under your skin. Oh, and the weapons (because they’re made by the creative minds at Insomniac) are both unique and utterly brilliant. Come on, Sony. Stop pissing about with Killzone and give us more Resistance.

In terms of pure shooter feel, has few equals. The gunplay in Bungie’s opus is a delightfully refined, deceptively subtle evolution of the action we know and love from the Halo series, buffed with elemental abilities and a dizzying array of weapon/armour perks. It just feels so great to play; to be in that world, hosing enemies. What’s truly commendable too, is that the shooting works perfectly in both PvE and PvP - few games truly achieve excellence at both.

And because the shooting is so smooth, so endlessly entertaining, it’s easier to forgive some of the game’s perceived flaws. Sure, Crucible still isn’t the finished article, and it’s occasionally unbalanced and glitchy, but every match is taught and brutally contested. No, the plot isn’t explained very well, but who cares when the shooting is this good? And the best part is that Destiny improves with every update, so this already-first-class FPS just keeps getting better.

is the game that defined modern FPS games. After Modern Warfare came out, many shooters tried to capture some of its new FPS magic, whether it was adding progression systems to multiplayer, or rollercoaster-ride action sequences to story modes. The game has one of the most memorable and satisfying single player campaigns in any shooter, genre-changing multiplayer, and an innovative co-op mode, each being just about enough content to justify as its own game but packaged together to make a gargantuan shooter that you could conceivably never stop playing.

Even with the yearly sequels, the series has yet to top the disturbing, yet ultimately unforgettable events of Modern Warfare’s story. After all, it's not every game that you get to experience your own death in the wake of a nuclear blast, or camouflage yourself in tall grass as enemy troops walk right over you. The multiplayer is still home to players looking for a pure CoD experience, where killstreaks only come in three varieties and gunplay skill reigns supreme. No Call of Duty game has changed the genre as much since Modern Warfare, and it doesn't look like it will be topped any time soon.

This may seem like a bit of a cheat since is an anthology of previous Halo games, but here are the key reasons why it deserves its own recognition. First, each game has been updated in some noticeable way, whether that's a simple update to the frames per second as is the case with Halo 4, or if it's a complete re-tooling with a new engine, cut-scenes and content as is the case with Halo 2 Anniversary. In other words, despite the word ‘collection’ being right there in the title, this isn't a simple rehash. The Master Chief Collection offers experiences you simply can't get anywhere else. And yes, they are all that good. Whether it's the immediately-comfortable feel of Halo: Combat Evolved, the dual-wielding and bigger-than-life action of Halo 2, the masterful sandbox design of Halo 3 or the storytelling expertise of Halo 4, each individual game in The Master Chief Collection deserves its accolades.

Second, in a move that we hope more developers take note of, 343 Industries combined multiplayer matchmaking across all titles to offer a singular experience. True, The Master Chief Collection suffered at launch (and some time post-launch) with matchmaking bugs galore, but with the technical hurdles now behind us, it's easier to appreciate the wealth of content available to players. Just as importantly, 343 didn't try to force its hand in terms of unifying the online experience. Want to play with original Halo rules? Go for it. Blood Gulch has been re-released about a bajillion times, but you can choose your favorite version. Choice is the defining attribute here, and that's worth some serious kudos.

You’ve probably heard a lot about how Half-Life 2 is the most groundbreaking, most important, most genre-changing FPS ever made. You’ve probably heard endless championing of its prowess in the areas of interactive narrative, precision pacing, awe-inspiring set-pieces, and deliriously inventive interaction. You’re probably sick of hearing it. But there are two important points about the now 11 year-old rhetoric of unreserved Half-Life praise. Firstly, it’s all entirely true and accurate. Secondly, none of it really gets at just how damn fun Half-Life 2 is.

It’s easy to talk about a game like this by listing concrete innovations and bullet-pointed achievements, but the fact is, you won’t be thinking about any of that when you’re whirling between the buildings of one of H-L2’s, small, open settlements, gunning down two Combine troops in a row before spinning around and launching a pinball of plasma springing around the wall to nail an unseen third. Not as you catch the fourth one’s grenade with the Gravity Gun and hurl it back into his face half a second later. Not as you look up, spot a gunship and a Strider coming over the horizon, and immediately pull out your rocket-launcher, deciding which will suffer your laser-guided fury first. Yes, Half-Life 2 is a cerebral genius, but when it comes to fighting, it’s a Swiss Army Knife strapped to a pinwheel.

Wait, what? A semi-obscure, two-generations old cartoon shooter beating out the likes of Half-Life 2 and Halo? Yes. Because while it never quite made the iconic status of its genre's brightest stars, the GoldenEye team's best game is flat-out the most creative, imaginative, lovingly-crafted, and just outright fun FPS ever made. Not only that, but in its format, structure, and content offering, it's a game so far ahead of its time that we're still waiting for someone to catch up.

Its loose, time-travelling plot is the gateway to a pantheon of utterly unique, immaculately conceptualised levels, each with a feel, flow, and design as special as its setting and look. And although consistently hilarious in its film-pastiching conceits, it's a game packed with immense depth and precise intent, an intricate structure of differing approaches, strategies, and immediate, gratifying fun. But then there's the seemingly endless array of blisteringly fast, entertaining, and kinetic multiplayer options. And the similarly vast, ludicrously creative challenge modes, that push the tight but accessible shooting and madly eclectic weapon-set to their limits, and beg for a second, online-enabled life. And good Lord, those unlockable characters. Monkeys vs. Gingerbread Men in a chaingun battle to the death? Hell yes. Hell yes indeed.

Early access is a fascinating grey area in gaming consumerism, where developers can charge money for unfinished-but-playable products with no clear indication of when - or if - they'll ever be completed. Valve, ever the risk-taking experimenter, launched the Steam Early Access program back in March 2013, letting customers buy into alpha builds so they could give developers direct feedback, kickstart the beginnings of a community, and bring needed bug fixes to light.

This uncertain space in the game market isn't going away anytime soon; just look at the runaway success of the recent 'sandbox survival with dinosaurs' Early Access game ARK: Survival Evolved, or Microsoft's E3 2015 announcement of the puts it, "You should be aware that some teams will be unable to 'finish' their game."

The quick pitch: DayZ was one of the first breakout hits in the 'open-world survival' genre, dropping your unarmed avatar into a world full of brain-munching zombies and players ready to backstab one another to survive.
You could buy it as far back as: December 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Things aren't looking too good at the moment. When it first hit Early Access, DayZ was all the rage: fans of the original Arma 2 mod were excited to try this standalone version, and innumerable livestreams and Let's Plays exposed thousands to a pioneer of the 'zombie survival' genre. But two years later, a lot of those customers are feeling betrayed, given that the game's still in alpha and riddled with bugs. It may end up limping to the finish line - and now it has to compete with almost identical Early Access games like 7 Days to Die and H1Z1.

The quick pitch: A canonical sequel to the indie oddity (deep breath) AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!, you zoom through a void weaving around shapes generated by your MP3 library.
You could buy it as far back as: June 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Unlikely. The terribly acronymed 123KIDTBLAUB has had a tumultuous existence, first 'launching' on April 1, 2011 as part of the Portal 2 ARG, then inexplicably transitioning onto the Steam Early Access platform in mid-2013. Given that the game hasn't been updated since July 2013, it's all but assured that it's been unceremoniously abandoned, especially given that it's no longer for sale.

The quick pitch: Live out your dreams of being the warden of a maximum security prison, doing everything in your power to prevent breakouts, riots, and general tomfoolery.
You could buy it as far back as: March 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Assured, but it'll probably be a while. Prison Architect actually tried out the Early Access format before Steam did, offering a buy-in alpha build on its site as early as September 2012. Things have been improving steadily since then, with a new build every month and plenty of ways to put your inmates through hell (or try to rehabilitate them, but where's the fun in that?).

The quick pitch: You're a buck-naked guy in the wilderness. What comes next is up to you - but whatever you want to accomplish, it's going to involve loads of crafting, resource gathering, and quite probably being held up at spear-point by a tribe of experienced players.
You could buy it as far back as: December 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? High. Rust's community is still thriving, and the developers provide a steady stream of weekly updates and constant communication. Recently, one such update introduced variable penis sizes for your randomly generated male avatar. This has created, as PC Gamer calls it, a .

The quick pitch: Not to be confused with Aliens: Colonial Marines, this tactical, squad-based FPS has you playing a near-future soldier wearing a helmet with a seriously spiffy heads-up display.
You could buy it as far back as: July 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Uncertain. Updates from the development team have started to pick up speed as of this year, but the progress is slow going. After two years, the single-player/co-op campaign still only has a scant two levels, and there isn’t much to distinguish its bare-bones multiplayer from all the other near-future shooters out there.

The quick pitch: Explore a procedurally generated chunk of the universe in your colorful astronaut outfit, gathering minerals from passing asteroids and building space stations piece by piece.
You could buy it as far back as: October 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Good. Constant updates keep the game fresh for its dedicated playerbase, including new modes like Survival and the PvP-enabled multiplayer. If you've ever wanted to play a version of Minecraft with realistic graphics and an outer space setting, this is it.

The quick pitch: A frenzied top-down shooter that evokes 16-bit classics like Zombies Ate My Neighbors and Smash TV, created by the inventive minds at Vlambeer. As a member of a ragtag group of apocalypse survivors - cutesy mutants, mostly - you have to blast your way through white-knuckle shootouts across the wasteland to claim your seat on the Nuclear Throne.
You could buy it as far back as: October 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Definite; the question is when. Nuclear Throne might be a case of trying to polish a piece of art ad infinitum - it's already got tons more features and inventive weapons than most indie games, and it's imminently playable to boot. Vlambeer says it'll "be in Early Access until it is done", but at least you get new updates every weekend to tide you over 'til its nebulous release date.

The quick pitch: A gorgeous pixelated take on classic DD, Dungeon Dashers sees you slashing swords and casting spells through monster-filled caverns and fortresses, one turn-based tile move at a time.
You could buy it as far back as: October 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Improbable, though there's reason to hold on to hope. Early buyers were miffed that the game had such great potential, but hadn't heard a peep or played an update from the developer since September 2014. That's because he was devoting his attention on Crossy Road, a side project that unexpectedly became a hit on mobile. In a commendable gesture, the money from that success will go into rebuilding Dungeon Dashers in unity, giving this RPG another chance at life.

The quick pitch: Bohemia Interactive is best known for its military simulation series Arma, but this curio lets you be the first astronaut to explore the barren surface of Mars.
You could buy it as far back as: August 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Could be any day now. After two years of alpha development, Take On Mars should transition into beta sometime this July (the game was originally projected for a June 2015 release date, but Early Access buyers can't be choosers). From there, it's only a matter of time until it's officially launched, much to the delight of gamers who can appreciate the serene, almost unnerving tranquility of trekking solo through a red desert.

The quick pitch: You're the husky, abstractly rendered survivor of a shipwreck, trying to fend for yourself on a 2D tropical island via exploration and crafting. It's a spiritual successor to indie game jam gem Under the Garden, from the same developer.
You could buy it as far back as: April 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Zero - but that's only in reference to the original version. The project was in dire straits when it was revealed earlier this year that from Steam, due to depleted funding and the departure of the game's lone programmer. But earlier this past April, the developer has claimed that he'll restart the whole project, working solo this time around. Kudos to him for trying to see the game through.

The quick pitch: One of the earlier games to employ the 'survive and establish a fort in this sandbox desert apocalypse' structure, and easily among the most ambitious. Its RPG elements are more prominent than its contemporaries, and the intriguing weapon and costume designs give it a Mad Max vibe, minus the cars. Also, there are cannibals, conical hats, and samurai swords.
You could buy it as far back as: March 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? Decent, but don't hold your breath waiting for a final build. Kenshi is a labor of love, with one developer that it's been nine years since the project started. But the new alpha versions continue to steadily roll out, so the game's bound to be finished at some point.

The quick pitch: Try your hand at rocket science by building a space-voyager from scratch, with some inevitable crash-and-burn failures along the way. Thankfully, you're cheered on by the adorable Kerbals (which, come to think of it, are not unlike mint-colored Minions).
You could buy it as far back as: March 2013

What's the likelihood of it escaping Early Access alive? It already has! Of Steam Early Access' class of 2013, Kerbal is undoubtedly the valedictorian, graduating in April 2015 to universal acclaim from players and critics. It's the exemplar of an Early Access game done right: it launched with a unique concept that got players interested, kept them hooked with constant updates, and ultimately delivered the product that was promised and anticipated from the beginning. Two years can feel like a long time, but Kerbal Space Program made the wait painless with continuous iteration atop a perfectly playable foundation.