Tactics come first in the Brothers In Arms series, where players are encouraged to study the battlefield for the best positions before gearing up for the fight. With challenging enemy AI that changed positions despite your attempts at flanking and swathes of enemies to discourage any run-n-gun gameplay, we can’t say this was accurate to real warfare but it was certainly challenging during a time when WWII shooters were primarily gung-ho.

Duke Nukem is an asshole, and that’s why this game is remembered more for an idiotic lead character rather than the surprising gameplay subtleties. It’s not as linear as it first appears, and there’s a handful of fun, experimental weapons to toy with. You even get a co-op mode and level creator. It was superseded forever ago, but it still deserves a mention for being more than just a dickhead simulator.

Up until Frontline, Medal of Honor releases on consoles were functional World War II games. But with Frontline MoH finally arrived, and it felt like the PS2 could actually hold its own against the kind of first-person shooters leaving such huge scorch marks on the PC. This was a time when Medal of Honor meant something, and Call of Duty was only a challenger. How things have changed.

Was Perfect Dark a great first-person shooter on the N64, or was it just a decent one that has been elevated because of the Rare brand? It’s not GoldenEye, that’s for sure, but the female protagonist, the auto turrets and Elvis the alien make it stand out. If it took balls to have a female lead in a shooter in 2000, it was downright reckless to throw in a comedy alien sidekick. The addition of a customizable multiplayer mode shows the sort of ambition on display here. Especially telling considering it released in the early days of first-person shooters on console, when many were trying (and failing) to emulate the heavy hitters on PC.

We associate the classic id Software designers – Carmack, Romero, Hall – with Wolfenstein 3D, a widely copied, much-respected and endlessly influential run-and-gun through a distorted view of the Second World War. BJ Blazkowicz is one of the true meat-headed heroes of video gaming, and his legacy is a billion smoking bullet holes, Nazi corpses and a robot Hitler.

Video games rarely get humour right, and games that are mainly about shooting barely even approach it. But No One Lives Forever went kinky boots-first into the world of 1960s spy shows, as Kate Archer protected the world against sinister, corny, maniacal wannabe despots. Developer Monolith was at the top of its game in 2000, blending stealth and action with a fantastic score and great visual gags to create an anti-Bioshock, dripping with pop culture and laughs at the absurdity of an explosive poodle.

With this and R6: Vegas, Ubisoft was on a roll when it came to AI companions. Now we’re in a world of online co-op we’re not sure it’s as relevant, but back in the heady days of 2007 having a computer controlled squad-mate single out an enemy hiding behind a specific car on the map felt like a revelation (as was the neat Cross Com device that had you commanding vehicles and friendly units the explore and hunt enemies).

A game so big it needed an N64 Expansion Pack, Seeds of Evil reminds us that Nintendo’s old console actually had more than one really good FPS. So much of Turok 2 seemed fresh at the time: riding dinosaurs into battle; underwater weapons; upgraded abilities and targeting specific body parts for dismemberment. Why on earth hasn’t this been rebooted?

Co-op, primates, arcade cartridges, gangsters, cowboys and space marines – there’s nothing Free Radical Design was afraid to throw at TimeSplitters. They seemed such innocent times, when going off the rails was saluted instead of following such a constrained view of what an FPS should be. We’ll never be able to go back to the madness, but we’ll always have the memory of invisible flaming monkeys.

Not just the game that spawned DayZ, ARMA 2 is the hardcore shooter experience. Muzzle velocities, simulated ballistics, stadiametric rangefinding and other intimidating concepts are simulated by ARMA 2 around an arsenal of realistically modeled weapons. With multiple expansions and modding, it’s almost impenetrable and not for the faint of heart. Try the free version if you’re brave enough, but don’t expect to be shooting green lasers at jumping enemies.

Few games are able to nail the feeling of scale you get from Planetside 2, a vast battle across Auraxis with thousands of other players online, where teamwork and skill are essential to winning the war. SOE continues to improve the game and its free-to-play model isn’t intrusive or unwelcome. It still looks very pretty during those day and night cycles – jump on it if you haven’t already.

Freedom of choice had the hero playing off two different factions in Invisible War, as well as giving him the ability to approach missions using stealth, ultra-violence and everything in between. Rarely has a game included such variety and experimentation without multiple playthroughs becoming tiring. Deus Ex: Invisible War’s dystopian cyberpunk fantasy left an uncleanable mark on video games’ paranoid vision of the future.

Quake changed everything. Three-dimensional first-person shooting would never be the same. Quake’s pick-ups and puzzles flanked the first real glimpse of the future of action gaming, where the player, armed with thump, was free to attack and kill with speed and aggression. Quake had grenade launchers and quad-damage. It was about destruction, and gaming leapt at it as a result. Shoot stuff. That’s what we’re here for. Quake was the first game to nail the urge.

This was the biggie – the Omaha Beach landings on D-Day, rescuing POWs in France and storming German bases in the Algiers, all set pieces clearly influenced by Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. It was also the only MoH to benefit from expansion packs that kept the game alive with more historical conflict from the Battle of the Bulge to Monte Cassino and the fall of Berlin. Epic.

Another game that dared to experiment with the first-person formula with mixed results, Mirror’s Edge is as much about traversing the environment as it is about planting a headshot. It’s hit and miss. When the parkour flows it feels exhilarating, but when it comes to an abrupt stop it’s a slap back down to the reality of an average, clunky FPS. It’s worth persevering because these games are so uncommon, and it’s an interesting ride despite being fundamentally flawed.

“Can it run Crysis?” Crytek made this shooter so technically demanding it remained the mission of PC gamers to be able to run it at meaningful settings for years. The alien mountain stuff kind of fucked the entire thing up halfway through, but there’s no denying Crysis still looks the part in 2014: it released in 2007. The game itself’s middling in places, but at its best it’s a sensational collision of evolved shooter mechanics (remember all the fuss made of the suit?), outpost clearance and extreme technology. You should have played it.

The deformed, post-apocalyptic child of a Russian novel, Metro 2033 has to be the weirdest shooter on this list. Packing glowing balls, ghosts in tunnels, pneumatic weapons and an ending so bizarre you’d swear you’d booked a trip to happy town with Captain Mental, the first Metro was flawed but never boring. There is nothing else like this game.

It’s a simple premise but one that works well; add creepy Japanese horror influences to a first-person shooter and overclock the gore, with plenty of bullet-time thrown in for good measure. The fact that the horror sequences were well-placed means there are scares amongst the gunplay, and slowing down time makes headshots and one-hit kills a mini-game to master. Later sequels didn’t really expand on what the original F.E.A.R. offered, but this game is still so much more than the novelty it appears.

Why didn’t anybody buy this? It was stupid, crude, violent and dumbass in all the good ways. But more than that, its skillshot approach to gunplay – rewarding players for the more unusual, violent and complicated deaths – added tension and encouraged gung-ho, ballsy tomfoolery. Throw in an electric whip and a kick harder than a mule and you’ll laugh your way from beginning to end.

Ubisoft went all-out for immersion with Far Cry 2, a valiant mission which resulted in one of the most borked, fascinating and ultimately unforgettable first-person shooters ever made. Set in a footnote African war in a plot not dissimilar to A Fistful of Dollars, Far Cry 2 forces you to play two factions off against each other in a bid to capture the man flooding the theatre with weapons. Some terrible NPC respawning marred an otherwise spectacular game, but there’s no question Far Cry 2 was hugely influential.

When you strip it back it’s one of the best corridor shooters you’ll ever play. Doom 3’s simple, enclosed approach to horror and combat is single-minded and incredibly efficient for it. You will turn a corner and jump out of your skin before pumping bullet after bullet into a moaning, screaming enemy. Repeat until the gates of Hell (on Mars) have been closed and you’ve exhausted all the petrol in your chainsaw.

Where do you start with the Rainbow Six series? Vegas is possibly the best because it manages to maintain a tactical approach to combat with a small fireteam, where flashbangs and quick takedowns are snappy and to the point. You won’t find drawn out bullet-slogs across barren warehouses here. Vegas is about clearing a room and rescuing hostages with maximum efficiency and minimum blood loss. You are not a lone wolf: you are one unit in a well-oiled machine.

An unrelenting alien slaughterfest, Serious Sam games are pure fun. With 80s action flick sensibilities, time travel and a ridiculous arsenal of weapons, it was like stepping into the shoes of Ash Williams, only without all the drama packed in your suitcase. Serious Sam games are in no way serious, and in a world of po-faced shooters that’s something to be celebrated.

A reboot of Wolfenstein 3D, RtCW contained one of the craziest single-player story-based campaigns ever, based on the occult dabblings of Nazis during World War 2. Built around stopping the SS Paranormal Division from resurrecting an undead Saxon warrior named Heinrich I, the game is packed full of enemy soldier fodder, devout ladies of the occult dressed as borderline dominatrixes, occult ceremonies, super soldiers, zombie knights, to the accompaniment of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Für Elise.

When review screens of this went out, people in Pat’s office couldn’t believe it was real. It was true that Unreal Tournament, or UT99 as it became more widely known, pushed some beautiful visuals, but elements such as the Shock Rifle and anti-grav levels gave FPS players something differentiated enough from Quake III to ensure success. Unreal Tournament is currently being remade by fans for a fresh release. How many shooters have a solid enough following to get a 2014 reboot from 1999?

It isn’t easy to be successful as a genre all by yourself, but Left 4 Dead somehow managed it. Valve’s co-op shooter nailed the basics of friend-play and created a game so inherently fun it was impossible for it to fail. Valve staffers manning the pre-release showings of Left 4 Dead had to show people how to hide in a cupboard to survive the hoard. Left 4 Dead was new. It was irrefutably surpassed by Left 4 Dead 2, but the original is a nail-hard classic shooter.

The second Borderlands was a force, a honed RPG-shooter that captured many players for many months. The wastelands-sci-fi cross offered here has never been bettered, and God only knows how awesome the third full game can possibly be. Based on Borderlands 2, the answer is “very”. Essential stuff.

What started life at Valve as a military shooter based on a Half-Life mod eventually emerged as the cartoon classic half the planet plays today. Team Fortress 2 is one of the greatest free games ever made, a hopelessly addictive, endless deep take on the team ideal which never fails to surprise. And it’s free, for God’s sake.

Other than Borderlands 2, Brother in Arms: Road to Hill 30 is one of the best games created by Gearbox Software. Between the historical accuracies and the ridiculous detail imbued within the era’s locations, the game’s cutscenes forced the player back to reality with sobering quotes uttered by main character Sgt. Matt Baker during the conflict. While technically an FPS, Gearbox deviated from the typical run-and-gun gameplay by putting the player in command of 1-3 man teams for many parts of the game, mixing it up with tactics and realistic aiming. Gearbox accomplished a level of authenticity to be applauded.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s an odd game, a difficult fusion of shooter and role-playing set in the radioactive wasteland left by the Chernobyl disaster. Completely unforgiving and relentless frightening, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. carved itself a place in the annals of shooter fame with challenge and technical finesse. It’s buggy as shit and virtually impossible to play when the lights go out, but if you ever moan you’ll always get people saying the fault is yours. Try it. Horror shooting at its best.

The first chunk of Escape from Butcher Bay isn’t about shooting at all, but more surviving in a prison by avoiding conflict. You win by fashioning a shiv and sticking it in someone’s neck while the guards aren’t looking. When the guns do eventually come out it doesn’t make space jail any less brutal, but it’s such a relief to finally pull the trigger up close. Who would have thought that something associated with Vin Diesel would be one of the best single-player, story-led shooters available?

It turns out wall-running and double jumps – you know, like in a platforming game – can change multiplayer shooters considerably. It’s not the messiah, but Titanfall still feels unique enough with two very different types of gameplay (the stomping mayhem of piloting a mech across the map and the weasel-quick shooting as an on-foot pilot). The first game has laid a fantastic foundation for a future franchise.

DICE struck gold with the second Bad Company game. Not only did we finally get a military story with a sense of humour, but this spectacularly idiotic shooter became one of the first games not to over-promise on destruction: it actually worked. When Bad Company 2’s elements pull together towards the end of the game the result is beautiful chaos. One of the best.

Quake II was influential to a frightening degree. Carmack and friends introduced crouching, slowed down character movement and brought in the railgun, creating a golden classic and a game many shooter fans remember through glasses so rose-tinted they sprout thorns. Long, brutal and unrelenting, Quake II ran with the successes of the first game, but was merciless in cutting out the dead wood: Quake’s axe, nailgun, super nailgun and thunderbolt all found themselves on the cutting-room floor. It was so good.

Everybody has played Doom. Whether it was the violence or the perspective or the exploration that got you hooked, it’s easy to look back now and realise this was never a novelty game. It’s been ported to every format from PC to mobile and for very good reason. It still stands up as the epitome of first-person shooting. Wolfenstein 3D may have kickstarted the genre, but Doom distilled and refined it to the model that still influences new games to this day.

Battlefield is only ever about multiplayer. Truly a giant of online warfare, it’s not kind to the newcomer, but it’s worth persevering as nothing is quite like the to-and-fro of combat created by DICE and its four tight classes. The maps alone feel genuinely epic in scale, but adding 64 players and vehicles takes it to a place that Call of Duty can’t touch.

The first-person shooter’s first-person shooter. You play Counter-Strike to win, not for fun. What started out as a Half-Life mod has spawned a handful of great sequels and got the creators a job at Valve. This is the mod by which all other mods are measured. You might not play it for raw enjoyment, but you need to play it to understand the basics of how a competitive FPS works. It’s not a game; it’s an education.

The open-world nature of Far Cry was finally perfected here, where liberating an outpost can be approached either by stealth, full-frontal assault or down-right mayhem involving wild animals, hang gliding, exploding arrows and fields of fire. There’s a nonsense story going on, but this is as ‘free’ as we’ve ever felt in a single-player FPS and it only makes us want Far Cry 4 more.

Portal has been one of only a handful of games in first-person that have played with the space beyond filling it full of holes. Experimenting with your teleportation gun moves the player and objects into previously inaccessible locations, where puzzles and frustration are broken by real lightbulb “aha!” moments. Add a dark storyline and great voice acting and you’re in for one of the most memorable games in generations.

Left 4 Dead 2 caused rivers of tears when it released a year after Left 4 Dead, with many angered at Valve’s apparent dropping of the original despite assurances it’d be supported forever. Everyone stopped moaning when they realised the sequel was significantly better, adding melee weapons, new characters, cross-over missions and more. We still play this game. If you can’t have fun with Left 4 Dead 2, there’s something wrong with you.

Valve’s groundbreaking alien FPS is packed with enough memorable moments to forever reserve its place in the top ten. The monorail ride intro. The falling lift. Xen. The failed reactor. The giant fans. Those sound effects. Combat against soldiers sent to cover up the pivotal accident, cowering against their radio chatter, sub-guns and grenade launchers. Never has a shooter felt so tight and desperate. An absolute classic.

Bioshock may toy with the concepts of choice, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty action it’s about taking apart a lumbering mechanical beast with traps and every last bullet you can scrape together. Drugging you character with increasingly lethal Plasmids, that include sending deadly bees and cyclones at enemies, is a great addition to the tight gunplay. Don’t let the lofty pretensions of Bioshock fool you: this is very much a first-person shooter, just one with a fantastic setting, beautiful style and unique weaponry.

There will be endless debate about which is the best Call of Duty game, but when it comes to multiplayer at least, Black Ops 2 is almost certainly top of the list. A true billion dollar game, it’s also noticeable for being microtransactioned to within an inch of its life and has set a precedent for selling emblems, skins and other little luxuries across multiple console games.

Halo 2 was the first-gen Xbox’s biggest-selling game, and the shooter that defined online multiplayer on the Xbox platform as a major gaming trend. Remember “I love bees?” Halo 2. New vehicles, new weapons, new maps, new Master Chief and unparalleled success meant Halo 2 gave Microsoft the franchise it needed to keep the Xbox vision alive. Everyone loved Halo. The campaign was criticised for its length, but Halo 2 had single-player, co-op, multiplay and visuals powerful enough to keep the millions who bought it playing forever. Halo 2 didn’t so much blaze a trail as keep rolling along a broad, fiery path, but it was a genuinely important game in Xbox’s history.

It seems a long time since the original Call of Duty released and received instant praise from the PC community. The marketing line that “nobody fights alone” was remarkably prophetic considering the online phenomenon the game has become, and throwing in a campaign that touched on three different conflicts is something we still miss to this day. A true game-changer.

The best movie tie-in game of all time, GoldenEye was released during Rare’s glory years, before Microsoft turned it into a Kinect studio. The four-player splitscreen deathmatch is gameplay of legend. GoldenEye 007 was a pioneer and paved the way for future console shooters by deviating from the popular on-rails style and incorporating a free-roam element with varied maps. It was a fantastic shooter.

There’s no doubt there are good Call of Duty games before the release of Modern Warfare, but this is the tipping point where the franchise over-cranked into blockbuster territory for single player and the multiplayer became a household name. Underneath all that bombast and showmanship stands a grand shooter experience. This is no fluke. Modern Warfare remains the benchmark by which all others are measured.

Come on, now. You loved this. You can blather on with your “it’s just Halo” rubbish until you’re green. You played it to death just like everyone else. Microsoft changed “FPS doesn’t work on console” to 10/10 in Edge and shut everyone the fuck up with its next-gen tale of high science-fiction and power-armoured space opera. Halo is one of the most successful shooter franchises ever made, and rightly so. The Warthog; the MA5B; the AI; escaping the Pillar of Autumn. The co-op alone stuck it smack in the middle of indispensable territory, and future Halo multiplayer would go on to define a generation. Halo: Combat Evolved features on the playlist of any shooter fan.

Quake III pitched off against Unreal Tournament when arena shooters were en vogue, and Carmack’s team turned out a furious, timeless take on the concept of space combat. Id’s final installment in the Quake series featured map design so perfect it hurt your brain and a weapon set forged in the fires of genius. Quake III was the King of Twitch, a stripped down racing car of a shooter guaranteed to leave you with hypertension and carpal tunnel syndrome. A platinum beast. It’s still played competitively today, which is no small feat considering it released in 1999.

Few games will ever claim to carry the weight of Half-Life 2. The weirdy alien shooter stretched all the boundaries of physics and storytelling when it released in 2004, and became a precursor to Half-Life 3, the most famous game never made.

You can love it or hate it, but Gordon’s second adventure changed the world. You’ll never forget your first dabble with the gravity gun – “Holy shit! Did you see that head come off?” – or a renewed feeling of confidence as you’re joined by D0g.

Maybe we’ll get to find out how it all ends one day but until then it’s still number one. Half-Life 2 is the first-person shooter everyone knows and so many would kill to emulate.