The idea behind our 'most overlooked' lists is simple: if you were to find one in a bargain bin, or pop the ones you like the sound of into your Steam wishlist ahead of a sale, then you'd be able to quickly and cheaply build a collection of little forgotten classics and curios that are still fun to play today. Our list of the best shooters ever has our tip-top recommendations if you love pointing and firing guns in videogames, but the genre is deep and full of surprises. Here's a bunch that are worth investigating.
Receiver
An atypical first-person shooter that makes every kill feel hard-won, thanks to its insanely detailed gun simulation. You don’t just point and shoot in this randomly generated cyberpunk world: you have to manually insert/remove each clip, cock the hammer, toggle the safety, and inspect the chamber, along with everything else Call of Duty man never has to bother with. While its simulation is limited to pistols—and its enemies limited to flying drones and turrets—Receiver’s laser focus and eye for detail means that it has some of the most interesting guns in PC gaming.
Link: official site
Minerva’s Den
If you’ve played Bioshock 2 already but missed out on the DLC then you have much to look forward to. Minerva’s Den is a fascinating self-enclosed saga that takes place concurrent to the events of Bioshock 2 and centres on new character Subject Sigma’s encounter with The Thinker, a powerful supercomputer manipulating electronic systems in Rapture. This expansion makes the undersea utopia feel deeper than ever, with fresh horrors in the Lancer Big Daddy and fiery Brute Splicers, and new weapons in the vortex-summoning Gravity Well Plasmid and Ion Laser.
Bioshock 2 itself was overshadowed by the reputation of the first game, but it is the better shooter. The stake gun adds extra power to your arsenal, and the set pieces that see you setting up traps to fend off Splicers give you excellent opportunity to exercise those improved guns in well worked horde-mode scenarios. Also, you can drill dudes in the face.
Link: official site
Project: Snowblind
Snowblind started life as a multiplayer-heavy Deus Ex sequel, but was later retooled after the release of Invisible War. However, you can see the RPG classic’s fingerprints all over it, from the heavily augmented player character, to the abundance of security cameras and zappable sci-fi robots. Many of the levels allow for multiple approaches—albeit to nowhere near the same degree as the average Deus Ex environment. It might be a poor man’s Deus Ex, but Snowblind is a fun, freeform shooter that benefits greatly from elements inherited that seminal game. It imagines a Deus Ex squarely focused on action (also: multiplayer), and that’s not such a bad thing now that we’ve seen the rosy future of the series.
Link: Steam page
Spec Ops: The Line
A canny retelling of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness set in a sandstorm-ravaged Dubai. It starts with all the trappings of a gung-ho action game, but begins to unravel as Delta Squad moves deeper into hell. Spec Ops’ memorable set pieces challenge the morality of the player and the sanity of your squad, especially in controversial moments such as the much talked-of flaming mortar strike sequence. In truth more nuanced scenarios await beyond that point. The Line has blockbuster chops—players hop on chopper turrets to mow down hordes of foes, malls collapse under spectacular sand avalanches—but The Line does more to explore the consequences of this brutality than your typical shooter.
Link: official site
Rainbow Six: Vegas
Like Spec Ops: The Line, Ubisoft’s 2006 squad shooter takes place in an iconic city under siege, but here the story beats and mission briefings follow a more straightforward trajectory: kill all terrorists. The fluid first-to-third-person cover system is still one of the tightest ever made, and there's enormous tactical potential to Vegas' glamorous levels, such as the game's lush recreation of Fremont Street, the Hoover Dam and the opulent casinos of the Vegas strip. Oh, and the wave-based Terrorist Hunt is great fun with a friend.
Link: official site
The Club
If you spliced the DNA of a shooter with a racing game, the result would be The Club, a game just as much about shooting people in stylish ways as completing stages as quickly as possible. Entirely linear, the point is that you repeat and perfect runs to ascend the leaderboard. Headshots, destruction of scenery, and constant forward momentum are your keys to success. The Club features nothing in the way of set-pieces, it’s as stripped-back as shooters come, a pure, paired-down experience that’s kind of like a hip-hop inflected take on those gun range time trials from Call of Duty.
Link: Steam page
Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad
The shocking scale and violence of the Battle of Stalingrad provides a sombre backdrop to 2011 multiplayer shooter Red Orchestra 2. What endures about Tripwire Interactive’s title is its unwavering realism: ammo counts must be checked manually, bullets drop over distance, and a first-person cover system requires players to rest their weapons on sandbags and windowsills for stabilization. Drawn-out tank combat is also spot-on, with interiors and exteriors remarkably detailed. It’s not exactly action-packed, but it captures the realities of WWII combat better than most. Bullets rarely feel this deadly. The excellent follow up Rising Storm made it into our best shooters list, but it's still worth revisiting the grim urban maps of RO2.
Link: official site
The Darkness 2
This sequel to Starbreeze’s 2007 surprise hit (never released on PC sadly) veers closer to its comic book roots with a bold art style and a variety of hyper-violent kills. Two years after the first game, Jackie Estacado has risen to the top of a Mafia crime family thanks to his inherited demonic abilities, but now people want those powers for themselves. Luckily for you, your demon pal comes with wise-cracking Darkling imps that saw people to death and you can quad-wield firearms and tendrils. There’s a predatory thrill to snuffing out all the lights so you can pick off screaming gangsters from the shadows.
Link: official site
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
This arcade cowboy shooter sequel tossed the previous games’ leads in favour of a single enigmatic protagonist called Silas Greaves. An unreliable narrator, he revises his story as he recounts it to men in a bar, which results in abrupt changes to the game environment. Routes open up and encounters alter depending on what Greaves chooses to remember. While unlockable skills such as bullet time do little to add depth, Gunslinger is just as long as it needs to be, and stands today as a fun genre piece with a killer twist ending.
Link: official site
Binary Domain
In Tokyo, 2080, global warming has caused widespread flooding, and governments have responded by using robots to help build new cities on top of the old ones. Trouble is these robots are rebelling, so so as a member of a Rust Crew it’s your job to violently decommission them like a John Woo-inspired Blade Runner. Few videogame foes are as satisfying to shoot as these metal men, who collapse and shatter into hundreds of pieces. Also notable is the battle chatter from your multinational squad of mercenaries who react to how you treat them: catch them with friendly fire or give them an unrealistic order and they’ll respond negatively.
Link: Steam page
Bloody Good Time
Wander film sets and kill as inventively as possible in this eight-person online murder-thon as you compete to win the role of a lifetime on a madcap slasher movie. Commit harmless comic violence against silver screen archetypes: set electric traps for surfer bros, pump Playboy bunnies full of poison, crossbow clowns in the head, flush nerds down the toilet, throttle a hippy while he eats to make him choke—whatever your method, Bloody Good Time shows competitive multiplayer can be so much more than simply shooting each other.
Link: Steam page
Heavy Bullets
The bullets are so heavy in this distinctive dayglo shooter that you can only carry six of them on your quest to navigate procedurally generated rooms and reset a security mainframe. Rather than restrict you, though, this fills fights against giant clawed spiders and poison-spitting serpents with tension as you aim to make each shot count, then race to reclaim your ammo. Hostiles drop cash which you use to buy items such as mines, rockets, homing bombs, and if you’re so inclined, high heel shoes. It’s like Doom in a ghost train.
Link: official site
Prey (2006)
You’ll have to forgive the crass depiction of Native American culture and the dated grey environments supplied by a modified Doom 3 engine but—as a curio—Prey is worth pursuing. Gravity tracks let you guide Tommy (and his spirit-hawk, sigh) up walls and onto ceilings during firefights. Prey did (albeit stationary) portals a year before Portal, and they're used to set up bizarre scenarios—at one point a gateway shrinks you down to the size of a mouse to battle enemies on a planet the size of a football. Strange fleshy alien weapons add further novelty, making this an excellent pickup if you find it lingering in a bargain bin. It’s surprisingly hard to get hold of, so you might have to go hunting on Amazon for a physical copy.
The 2017 Prey is also worth playing, of course.
Block N’ Load
Construct and destroy in this creative class-based shooter where two teams of five attempt to blow up each other’s generator. Protect your own by spending the pre-game build phase covering it in poison traps, bounce pads, landmines, glue blocks, and turrets. Then advance into enemy territory with smart use of speed pads, mortars, health blocks, and Shawshank-style tunneling. Stages are built from cubes, and each one can be destroyed to either help or hinder you. Imaginative play from the opposition forces you to improvise: if they demolish an important bridge, leap the the gap with a bounce pad and take revenge. There's a free demo on Steam if you fancy trying it.
Link: official site
Chronicles of Riddick and Assault on Dark Athena
Based on the eternally shadowy adventures of Vin Diesel’s mumbling space criminal, these gripping first-person stealth games are among the finest movie spinoffs ever made. Butcher Bay sees our hero attempt to escape a maximum security prison while Dark Athena involves another escape, this time from the titular pirate vessel. Light on firearms, Riddick resorts to predatory methods: cut the lights and strike from the shadows with improvised shivs and bloody-knuckled gorilla mitts. Both games are gritty, brutal, and feature superb voice acting.
Link: GOG
Star Wars: Republic Commando
We often experience Star Wars from the perspective of indestructible Jedi. Republic Commando puts you inside the more vulnerable helmet of an elite Stormtrooper squad commander as, just prior to the events of Episode 3, he travels the galaxy eliminating droid, Wookiee, and Geonosian-shaped threats. No mindless shooter, this is about making use of your team’s bespoke talents (demolitions, burning things) and ordering them about like a space-based SWAT team. It made a universe which features evil telekinetic men and laser-firing robots feel as perilous as it should.
Link: Steam page
Metro 2033 and Last Light
Okay, these aren’t overlooked exactly. They're widely praised and seem to have done well. BUT they missed out on our list of the best shooters ever, but are still perfectly excellent games featuring some of the most detailed and atmospheric environments in the genre. The remastered version of 2033 brings it up to the sequel's sumptuous visual standards. Play them both back-to-back for a serious dose of post-apocalyptic sorrow, and be sure to pause and absorb the attention to detail in the series' painstakingly constructed underground towns. The cobbled-together pneumatic, scavenged weapons are great too.
Link: official site
Tribes: Ascend
The community dwindled when Hi Rez moved on to more profitable ventures, but Tribes: Ascend is still a top-drawer competitive shooter that remembers how brilliant capture the flag and jetpack skiing used to be. It's harder to get a game than it once was, but it's free to download, and is an exceptionally smooth, fast and well balanced shooter.
Link: official site
Battlefield: Bad Company 2
A loud and beautiful entry in the Battlefield series. What it lost in jets Bad Company gained in smart, focused map design and a surprisingly worthwhile singleplayer campaign. 2010 was the summer of Rush, a lopsided mode in which the defending team falls back from one set of objectives to the next. We lost dozens of hours to the meat grinder, consumed by the excitement of countless, desperate last-minute defences. Battlefield 3 would later add suppression mechanics and a graphical gloss that often obscures the action. It's refreshing to return to the clarity of Bad Company 2.
Link: official site
