Perhaps more than any other genre, a compilation of the best shooters tells the story of the medium and what users expected from it in the early days. It has since morphed into a phenomenon that eSports athletes dedicate their lives to and fill entire arenas, but it was also there to ask uncomfortable questions about what we see in the news. Meanwhile, the library is so rich that it can even parody itself – with great success.

This makes it difficult to select only 15. That’s why the editors set the rule to include only one representative of each series – otherwise you would read the names “Quake” and “Half-Life” here very often.

15 Halo: Combat Evolved

14th Call of Duty: Modern Warfare

What sights “Call of Duty” (CoD) has shown its users, what spectacles and explosions it has demonstrated. By now you’ve probably smoothly forgotten how many helicopter crashes you’ve witnessed. “CoD” introduced all these stereotypes in its first foray into the present. Before that, it was more or less a walk-on “Saving Private Ryan” with a bit more screaming.

“Modern Warfare” showed players a disturbing analogy to the current events of the day. A Middle Eastern setting, missions like “Shock and Awe,” killing people and leveling buildings through the thermal imaging camera of an AC-130 – it was nerve-wracking, uncomfortable, and highly impactful. Also, the moment of “All Ghillied Up” – “You take the one on the right” – is an absolute hoot.

13th Metro Exodus

12 Overwatch

11 Rainbow Six: Siege

10 Dusk

The very first thing “Dusk” does to you is throw you into a dark room full of chainsaw-wielding men with bags over their heads. You’re handed a scythe and wordlessly expected to get to work. There’s never a moment where it gives up its character as an atmospheric 90s shooter. There is no moment in which it explains what is going on in its world in the name of all the deities, and why you are being attacked by bulls harnessed to wooden carts. There is also no moment that interrupts your enjoyment of the nightmarish atmosphere to point out nearby collectibles or control towers that unlock new objectives.

No, the purity of intent and execution makes “Dusk” the best new old game. The movement speed is that of a buttered whippet, the weapons conjure their projectiles from the bowels of “Quake,” and the enemies walk a perfect line between period parody and genuine discomfort. It’s a great achievement.

9. perfect dark

In the ’90s, Rare was on a roll. First came “GoldenEye,” a shooter so legendary that people gladly put up with its dull controls on the N64 pad. Then, for the same console, the British studio refined its super-spy shooter formula with “Perfect Dark.” A game that went one better in every way: the gadgets were now even more satisfying, the environments demanded crouched sneaking between laser grids, the enemies … well, the enemies were still pretty hapless, if truth be told, but taking them down with a laptop pistol or a Calisto NTG was exciting on a mental level. Storylines ranged from shady enterprises to alien autopsies, and even the training area was a work of art, with an amazingly detailed Carrington Institute to explore that had mastered environmental history before that was a buzzword.

8th Unreal Tournament

Epic Games, the obvious heir to the gaming industry and all of its inventory, started out with “Unreal”, a game where you looked at some graphics while you were beating up on the evil aliens. It wasn’t a revolution, but the graphics came across as pretty impressive. The next step, however, was far more forward-thinking – a release that focused directly on the emerging online shooter scene. “Doom” was the first game to link users together, “Quake” took deathmatch further, but “Unreal Tournament” (UT) was the first game where deathmatch was the game. No linear campaign, hardly any story, just a series of competitions for survival and, if everything goes according to plan and the flak cannon fires properly, for supremacy.

“UT” was and probably always will be the pinnacle of “Unreal”. With the sniper rifle that makes your mouth water and a perfectly tuned speed in combat, no matter what mode or map the gamer is spinning in.

7. Titanfall 2

“Effect and Cause,” one of the most famous missions, is proof of that. Has there ever been a better on-screen prompt than “Press X to time travel”? It’s doubtful. Even aside from the brilliant campaign, “Titanfall 2” defies conventional wisdom for an online shooter. Balance or not, everyone gets a mech the size of a house and everyone can run across any surface. Somehow it works, it feels balanced, despite the fact that the game community can pull off some of the most reckless moves ever seen in a multiplayer video game.

6 Team Fortress 2

The interplay between the nine different roles is not only perfectly matched in terms of gameplay, but also really funny. It’s not exactly hilarious to watch a “Battlefield” sniper or a “Siege” operator at work, but there’s something about the size differences and behavior of the “TF2” cast that makes their encounter still funny after all this time.

5th Quake

“Doom” showed the world what a shooter was, but “Quake” showed it what it could be. More than just fiendishly constructed levels with traps, ambushes and delicious opportunities to crush groups of knights and ogres with grenade launchers – it’s a piece of atmosphere. Each episode even now seems to transport the gamer to a different place. To a place whose components make no sense – who ever heard of medieval knights in space? – but which seems all the more real and transportable.

Take another look today with all your experience from the shooters of the past two decades, and you’ll be reminded of how clever level design can be at its best moments. id Software plays with you, jokes with you, and terrorizes you at every turn – and at a level that no one else has ever achieved.

4. Wolfenstein II: New Colossus

3rd Half-Life

Before Valve tried their hand at FPS, here’s how they told a story in that genre: Show a muscle-bound man on the box, write a short bio in the game manual, something like “Brian Gunn is a former cop who has unfinished business with his new alien masters,” and start shooting. There simply wasn’t yet a visual or mechanical language to create scripted cinematic moments, nor did the developers of the time establish an everyday world and its rules before introducing the extraordinary.

That’s why the train ride at the beginning of Half-Life was so compelling, and why the NPC scientists set the experiment that went wrong in a context that was as heartbreaking as it was disturbing. That’s why every subsequent puzzle and linear, scripted sequence captivated players. Before Gordon’s fateful stint in the test chamber, games weren’t structured that way.

2 Doom

The reason you’re rolling your eyes right now is because everyone already knows exactly, at the molecular level, how well “Doom” is. You can hear the song in your head at the very mention of it, and in your mind’s eye you’re already laughing at E1M1.

1. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

It’s been 21 years since “Counter-Strike” first appeared as a mod for “Half-Life” and found its audience. But longevity aside, it’s truly remarkable how little the game has changed since then. The sun bounces off reflective surfaces and spreads complex shadows over Dust II in “CS: GO” out, but it’s still Dust II. You can decorate your AK47 with a skin that costs as much as a decent used car, but it still feels like the AK47 you used to defend Aztec in “1.6”. It’s just a killer premise that hasn’t been exhausted yet.

The economy of each turn adds another facet to an already tactical game. Not only do you plant a bomb or free hostages, but you think two rounds ahead, knowing that if you win both rounds, the other team will be forced to use the gun. And the over all time is exchanged a unique set of announcements with an efficiency that would impress an air traffic controller. Despite all this strategy, at the same time it is still the best shooter in terms of raw skill requirements there is. A perfect marriage of mechanics and brain power.