Top FPS, TPS, and more games

Whether you’re aiming down the barrel in first person or aiming from over the shoulder, shooters have endured as one of the most popular genres in gaming. Part of their wide appeal is the numerous ways the core mechanic of shooting can be tweaked and transformed into various styles. By the time we reached the PS5 generation, the level of creativity and variety in shooters had hit an all-time high.

Because shooters are so popular, many developers gravitate toward using them to appeal to as many people as possible. For gamers, this presents two problems when trying to decide which PS5 shooter to play next. The first is that there are too many poor-quality games on the shelves, but the second is that there are also too many good ones. We all have only so much time and money to spend, so I’ve gone back through all the notable shooters on the PS5 to curate a definitive list of titles that are at least worth a shot.

Metro Exodus

Make every shot count

The first two Metro titles established the dark, depressing, and desperate world of the novels they were based on. Exodus, despite following those two, is perhaps the best entry point into the series. While the early games had great ideas, they weren’t the most enjoyable to play and were mostly confined to similarly looking metro tunnels. Metro Exodus maintains that sense of your small band of survivors barely clinging to life in a world rife with monsters, radiation, and other people as desperate as you are but opens the gameplay up to bigger hubs for exploration.

This is a game that will pull you in and make you weigh every decision you make. Every bullet and material is precious in Metro, so when you have no choice but to fight, ensure you don’t miss.

The Last of Us: Part II Remastered

An exploration of hate and love

Naughty Dog has proven time and time again that it is the king of merging gameplay and storytelling. Few other games can so adeptly present their themes to the player through the mechanics themselves, yet The Last of Us Part II Remastered makes it seem effortless. You will not only follow the story of Ellie after a traumatic event pushes her to the limits of her humanity but also feel that conflict in every brutal encounter.

This sequel keeps every fight as tense as the first but offers you far more options to sneak by and terrorize your opponents. The remaster also adds a brand-new survival mode to really let you master the combat system in various conditions and with unique restrictions.

Dead Space

Out-of-this-world horror

EA

Dead Space felt like a game that didn’t need a remake. The 2008 original held up just fine even in the early 2020s, but then we got our hands on this remake and completely changed our tune. This is a prime example of what a faithful remake should be — keeping the core spirit and legacy of the original intact while making small but appreciated changes.

You’ll be filling the shoes of engineer Isaac Clarke on a rescue mission onboard the planet-cracking ship, the USG Ishimura. When you discover the ship has been overrun with space zombies called Necromorphs, you need to improvise with your engineering tools to dismember them while frantically trying to repair the ship and find a way to escape.

Resident Evil 4 Remake

Zombies horror with a side of cheese

Where Dead Space plays the horror straight, the Resident Evil 4 Remake is more of a horror B-movie. It doesn’t take long to understand the tone this game is aiming for, with Leon delivering cheesy quips between headshots and the plot twists becoming wilder at every turn. It perfectly rides the line between eye-rolling and genuinely hilarious but never sacrifices anything for fun.

Mechanically, the Resident Evil 4 Remake is one of the most addicting games to play on the PS5, bar none. Everything from the shooting, parrying, and suplexing (that’s right, you can suplex zombies) to inventory management and upgrading is satisfying. This game rewards you for playing it again and again, which you would want to do anyway just to experience that sweet combat a little longer.

Helldivers 2

Intense co-op mayhem

Arrowhead Games

Super Earth needs you and your friends to spread freedom, peace, and democracy through force. Essentially Starship Troopers in video game form, Helldivers 2 immerses you in missions against giant bugs and robots with a couple of friends to complete objectives and attempt to turn the tides in a galactic war to which every player contributes.

What makes this game such a blast is the myriad ways things can either go wrong or right in a mission. Friendly fire is on, so calling in an airstrike or lobbing a grenade at the wrong time can lead to hilarious outcomes. Because the game doesn’t take itself too seriously, it’s much easier to laugh off mistakes than to get mad about them.

Returnal

If at first you don’t succeed…

Developer Housemarque famously announced that arcade-style games were dead, only to prove the opposite with Returnal. No, you’re not playing from a top-down or isometric perspective, but all the other elements of those intense arcade bullet-hell games have made the jump to the third-person perspective. That might sound like a recipe for disaster, but the fine movement and smart UI readability turn this brutally tough game into an addictive masterpiece.

This is a rogue-like adventure, so you should be prepared to try and fail many times before completing a run. Returnal does an excellent job of mixing things up with room layouts, enemy placements, challenges, different weapons, and more on each attempt, keeping each one feeling unique and compelling.

Armored Core 6 Fires of Rubicon

A mecha fan’s dream

FromSoftware has built a reputation for itself after a trilogy of Dark Souls games, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring as developers who make hard games. While there’s more to unpack there, it has put a bit of a damper on just how different Armored Core 6 is from the studio’s usual output. This isn’t a Souls game with mechs, but a true mech simulator in the best sense of the word.

I’m not going to lie and say the game isn’t hard — bosses will crush you if you don’t pay attention and learn their patterns, but you have so many more options and other types of gameplay to fill in the experience here. Being able to fully customize your own mech with various weapons, bodies, legs, and custom paint jobs feels like playing with your toys

Fortnite

Everyone’s here

Everyone knows about Fortnite by now, but if you’re one of the three people left out there who haven’t given it a shot, there’s no excuse now to fire it up on your PS5. It’s free, for one thing, but it’s also just a rock-solid game from top to bottom. Whether you’re into all the crossovers and cameo skins, the core loop of dropping, looting, shooting, and (hopefully) winning is polished to a sheen.

Fortnite hasn’t thrived as one of the most popular games of all time by resting on its laurels. Constant updates with new weapons, locations, skins, quests, and events give you a reason to come back week after week. It even has quite a generous battle pass, but if you really need that Goku skin, you may end up having to shell out a couple of bucks.

Far Cry 6

The world is your playground

If there’s one developer that has found an open-world formula that works and stuck to it, it’s Ubisoft. If you’ve played the last four Far Cry games, then sure, you probably are sick of the routine of clearing bases, climbing towers, crafting, and all that. However, if you love that kind of checklist-style of game or haven’t played one in a while, this latest entry is the best of the bunch.

Set on a tropical island that in some ways calls back to Far Cry 3, 6 puts you in the shoes of a freedom fighter in a country with a ruthless dictator. The island is left open for you to reclaim in whatever way you want, with tons of options for different weapons, vehicles, skills, and even animal companions.

Doom Eternal

Rip and tear until it’s done

We love a great narrative in games that can capture our imaginations and deeply invest us in the plight and tribulations of its characters. That said, sometimes you just want to blow a demon’s head off or slice it in half with a chainsaw. Doom Eternal is the ultimate power fantasy crammed into a game running at a buttery smooth 60 FPS on your PS5.

How could Doom Eternal expand on the reboot from 2016 when many considered that to be a perfect modernization of the classic franchise? By fine-tuning the combat flow to make you feel like you’re performing an elegant dance as you dismantle the demonic forces. The flow of restoring health, armor, and ammo with various moves and tools always keeps you flipping strategies but never backing off the offensive. This is the perfect game to boot up to let off a little steam.