17 Best GameCube Action Games

Freedom Fighters was developed by IO Interactive and published by EA Games. It is set in an alternate history in which the Soviet Union has invaded and occupied New York City. You play Chris Stone, one of two plumbing brothers, and he ends up building a resistance out of ordinary New Yorkers. The big idea is your squad. You can give your recruits simple orders such as "follow", "attack" and "defend". On the console versions the squad comes along into multiplayer, which is all about securing flags and bunkers.

According to Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot, "The only real problem with Freedom Fighters is that there simply isn't enough of it." Players agree it is a very fun shooter that too few people talk about. A game about a plumber fighting the Red Army in Manhattan has no business being this good.

Second Sight stars John Vattic, an American parapsychology researcher who wakes up in a medical facility in Virginia with no memory of his past. All he knows is that he has powerful psychic abilities, and he uses them to get out. The story cuts between that escape and flashbacks to the mission that put him there, and the flashbacks can change what happens in the present. It is a clever trick, and the game commits to it.

It sold one million copies worldwide. It was also nominated for "Originality" and "Best Game on GameCube" at the 2nd British Academy Games Awards, which is good company for a game most people missed. Players who had it back then remember enjoying it. It is a stealth game with psychic powers, and on a quiet night that is plenty.

Dark Alliance is set in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of Dungeons & Dragons. It was the first video game to use the 3rd Edition rules in real time, and the first Baldur's Gate game released on consoles. You fight from the sewers and crypts under the city all the way to a dwarf mining village in the Sunset Mountains, where drow elves are making life miserable. The shops sell better weapons and armor as you go, each one more expensive than the last.

It was well received on all four platforms, and the PlayStation 2 version won Console Role-Playing Game of the Year from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Players recommend it as a co-op game, two heroes hacking through dungeons side by side. The sequel only came out on non-Nintendo consoles, so this is the one Cube owners got.

Alien Hominid started life as a Flash game by Newgrounds founder Tom Fulp and animator Dan Paladin. They made it a run and gun game inspired by Metal Slug and Contra, and it went up on Newgrounds in August 2002. The feedback was good enough to get publishers talking, and the expanded console version came to the PlayStation 2 and GameCube in November 2004. Yes, a browser game made it to a Nintendo console, and it looked right at home.

Critics praised its old-school gameplay and its tough difficulty. It also won the Audience Award at the Independent Games Festival. Players call it fun and fast, the kind of game you can finish in an afternoon and then start again. The little alien later showed up in The Behemoth's second game, Castle Crashers.

P.N.03 was directed by Shinji Mikami, and it is another of the Capcom Five. Mikami was unhappy with the first prototype and reworked the project into a third-person shooting game. He wanted to call it Jaguar, after the cat-like agility of its heroine Vanessa. Her movements were animated freehand, without motion capture, and the team gave her rhythmic motions so she looks like she is dancing through every fight. Each mission scores you on the rooms you explored and the enemies you destroyed.

It received mixed reviews and failed commercially, and several critics found it repetitive. Players who love it admit it gets little love, and they call it underrated anyway. Edge magazine stood by it in a 2009 retrospective review. Give it an evening and you will see why.

Viewtiful Joe 2 was developed by Team Viewtiful at Capcom's Clover Studio, produced by Atsushi Inaba and directed by Masaaki Yamada. Hideki Kamiya, who directed the first game, was already signed on to direct Ōkami. He still wrote the sequel's story, because he wanted to make sure it followed on from the first one. This time Joe and Silvia fight their way through a prehistoric film first, and the boss there is a Tyrannosaurus rex soldier called Big John.

Like the original, it sold modestly but got a lot of praise for its stylish graphics and gameplay. Metacritic lists its two versions at 86 and 85 out of 100. Asked about adding more, its makers answered, "there simply aren't enough buttons on the controller." It is more Viewtiful Joe, and more Viewtiful Joe is a good thing.

Killer7 was written and directed by Goichi Suda and produced by Hiroyuki Kobayashi. You do not walk freely in it. You hold a button to move along set paths, then switch to a first-person view and scan the room for enemies called Heaven Smiles. Hit a Smile's critical point and it dies instantly. Shooting critical points also earns you more thick blood, which works like experience points.

It first got mixed reviews because of its unusual controls and its complex noir plot, while the soundtrack and visual style won praise. Today it has a cult following, which led to re-releases of Suda's older games and the successful launch of No More Heroes. Players who recommend it call it weird and unique, and they mean that as a compliment.

Rogue Leader was a launch title for the GameCube in North America on November 18, 2001. Factor 5 began it as a tech demo for Space World, a Nintendo-hosted trade show, as soon as the early prototype hardware arrived. Factor 5 did the bulk of the work this time, with LucasArts as co-developer. Between missions you get movie clips lifted directly from the Star Wars films, and Denis Lawson, who played Wedge Antilles, recorded new lines for it.

Critics praised its graphics and sound, though they criticised the lack of multiplayer. The team pushed the draw distance out as far as possible, and it shows. As one player put it, "It still looks good, even today." Get gold medals everywhere and the game unlocks Ace Mode, which is where it gets truly mean.

Crystal Chronicles was the first Final Fantasy game on a Nintendo home console since Final Fantasy VI in 1994. Square, hurt by the failure of the film The Spirits Within, formed the Game Designers Studio as a shell company so it could make Nintendo games without touching its Sony work. The team wanted an accessible game built around multiplayer, and it even removed experience levels to keep everyone on a level field. Kumi Tanioka wrote the music with medieval and Renaissance instruments.

It sold over one million copies worldwide. Players agree it is at its best with a group of friends, each holding a Game Boy Advance. Getting all those handhelds and link cables into one room was the real final boss. The 2020 remaster switched to online-only multiplayer, and many reviewers faulted it for that.

Dark Legacy came to the PlayStation 2 in 2001, and the GameCube version followed in 2002. The story is classic fantasy: Garm, an evil mage, releases a demon called Skorne, who scatters the Runestones across the Eight Realms. You pick a hero and fight through each realm, choosing between a slow, strong attack and a quick, weaker one. The enemies keep coming until you smash their generator. It also adds a large number of secret characters, and some are only reachable with cheat codes.

The console versions received mixed reviews. Players say it is a game for friends, and some have spent hundreds of hours on it that way. Alone it is a grind. With a full couch shouting about who grabbed the food, it is something else entirely.

Metal Arms was the only game Swingin' Ape Studios ever released. The studio was founded in July 2000 by developers who had left Midway Home Entertainment, right after they finished the water-based arcade racer Hydro Thunder. Vivendi Universal Games published it on November 18, 2003, in North America for the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. In its story, Corrosive builds an army of soldiers called Milbots and uses them to enslave the Droids of Iron Star.

It came back on the Xbox 360 through Xbox Originals in 2008, but the studio never got a second game out. That is a shame, because players call this one underrated. It is a third-person shooter starring a robot, and it plays like the team had a lot more ideas than budget.

Phantasy Star Online began on the Dreamcast, where it was the first successful online RPG for game consoles. Sega chairman Isao Okawa believed online play was the future and had Sonic Team make it, and he personally paid for free internet access bundled with Japanese Dreamcasts. After Sega left the console business in 2001, it was ported to GameCube and Xbox as Episode I & II, with new characters and environments. Its music changes with the action, and when an enemy appears the game plays music tied to that enemy.

It won the Japan Game Award for Game of the Year, and it influenced the Monster Hunter series. Some players even imported a controller from Japan for it. Players who still play it point you to the Plus version, an enhanced release that came to the GameCube later.

Ikaruga is Treasure's spiritual sequel to Radiant Silvergun, and it first came out in Japanese arcades in December 2001. Director Hiroshi Iuchi started it in his off-hours while Treasure was busy making Sin and Punishment. The twist is polarity, an idea taken from Treasure's Silhouette Mirage. Your ship switches between white and black, and when it is white it absorbs white bullets and stores their power for a special attack.

Reception in the arcades was mixed. A Dreamcast port in Japan built a cult following among import gamers, and the GameCube release brought it to the West in 2003 with positive reviews. Some critics did complain about the difficulty, which is a bit like complaining that the ocean is wet. Today critics count it among the best games ever made, especially in the shoot 'em up genre.

Assault is the fourth Star Fox game. It is set a year after Star Fox Adventures, and it sends Fox McCloud and his crew after the Aparoids, a cybernetic insectoid race. Arwing missions play like the first two games. Ground battles are the new part, where Fox picks up first aid kits for himself and rings to repair the vehicle he is using. The soundtrack mixes orchestral arrangements of Star Fox 64 music with new tracks.

Playtesting showed the dual-stick controls were hard on new players, so the team also built a scheme with just one stick. Multiplayer starts small, and you unlock more characters and maps as you play. Nintendo of America even came up with the subtitle. Players agree it is a lot of fun.

The Twin Snakes is the original Metal Gear Solid rebuilt for the GameCube. It adds new cutscenes written and directed by Ryuhei Kitamura, and it borrows gameplay from the sequel, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. That means you can now fire from a first-person view, which changes a lot of old fights. The original cast re-recorded their voices, except for the Cyborg Ninja, who went from Greg Eagles to Rob Paulsen.

It came out in North America on March 9, 2004. Japan got it on March 11 alongside an exclusive Premium Package, and even there it used the English voices with subtitles. It is the Metal Gear Solid that plays best, and the one fans of the 1998 game argue about most.

Viewtiful Joe was part of the Capcom Five, directed by Hideki Kamiya and produced by Atsushi Inaba. Its working title was "Red Hot Man", until the name was changed because of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The team started with six people on a twelve-month deadline. Joe's VFX Powers copy camera tricks from films. Slow puts the world in slow motion, so your hits land harder and dodging gets easier, and you use the same powers to solve puzzles.

Critics loved its visual style and gameplay, and it was one of three "Game Innovation Spotlights" at the 4th Annual Game Developers Choice Awards. It was a minor commercial success, and the sequels followed. Capcom dissolved Clover Studio in March 2007, right after Ōkami and God Hand. It still looks like nothing else on the console.

Resident Evil 4 took a long road. Development began for the PlayStation 2 in 1999, and the first version, directed by Hideki Kamiya, strayed so far from the series that it became Devil May Cry instead. Other versions were thrown out until Shinji Mikami took over as director. The finished game puts the camera behind Leon and zooms over his shoulder when you aim, and every gun has a laser sight in place of a crosshair. A Merchant turns up to sell weapons and upgrades.

It won multiple Game of the Year awards. It sold 15.2 million copies across many formats by March 2025, and a remake followed in 2023. Many players still call it the best game on the system. Players recommend it more than any other GameCube action game, more than twice as often as the game at #2.