17 Best GameCube FPS Games

Nightfire came from Eurocom, who developed the console versions, while Gearbox Software made the Windows game. It uses the likeness of Pierce Brosnan, although the character is voiced by Maxwell Caulfield, so Bond looks right and sounds a little off. The story sends Bond to Japan to extract a man called Mayhew from his estate, and Drake's men attack the building before the small talk is over. The home console versions received positive reviews, with the multiplayer singled out for praise.

Players who grew up with these games still recommend the two EA Bond shooters together, and Nightfire is the one with the better reviews. It is a 2002 Bond game through and through, gadgets included. The split-screen mode is what kept it in the console long after the story was done.

Agent Under Fire began development as a PlayStation 2 and PC game based on the 1999 film The World Is Not Enough, then became its own story. It was released for PlayStation 2 in November 2001, followed by the other versions in March 2002, the GameCube one included. It runs on the id Tech 3 engine, better known as Quake III Arena, and EA Canada, coming off Need for Speed, built its driving levels. Use the level or a gadget to get past a problem and you earn a "Bond Moment" for your end-of-level score.

The guns are real firearms with made-up names, the same trick GoldenEye 007 used. Reviews were "mixed or average". The game has characters from the films but not the actors' likenesses, so John Cleese reprising his role as R in a commercial for it was as close as it got.

European Assault came out on the GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox on June 6, 2005. You play Lieutenant William Holt, an operative in the Office of Strategic Services, and the war takes him to France, North Africa, the Soviet Union and Belgium. The opening mission is a fictional version of the raid on St. Nazaire, where no Americans took part in the original. Later you go to a Belgian farm to rescue Manon, the main character of Medal of Honor: Underground.

It plays like the earlier games, with the weapons and interface made more player-friendly, and it has an offline split-screen multiplayer mode. The game received generally positive reviews. There are no checkpoints, which one reviewer called "part of this game's challenge". If you finish Frontline and want more of the same war, this is the next one to pick up.

Red Faction II is the sequel to Red Faction, and it trades Mars for a new setting on Earth. It also changed the direction of the first game with a greater emphasis on action. The year is 2080, five years after the first game, and the Earth Defense Force has claimed the nanotechnology developed by Axel Capek, the old head scientist of the Ultor Corporation. A man named Sopot uses it to build up his army, creating the first supersoldiers.

The story follows Alias, and it is not a happy one. At one point he returns to base to find the Red Faction resistance members there brutally slaughtered. That mean streak suits a loud early 2000s shooter, and on a console that never had many of them, Red Faction II earns its spot.

Jedi Outcast reached the GameCube through Vicarious Visions, who ported it from the PC. It is a sequel to Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, and you play Kyle Katarn again, a mercenary working for the New Republic who has cut his connection to the Force. It runs on id Software's Quake III Arena engine. The shooting is prominent only during the first few missions. After the first two, Kyle regains his Force abilities and the lightsaber takes over.

You can choose first or third person for each weapon, the lightsaber included, so it is an FPS whenever you want it to be. The game received universal acclaim, with its story and lightsaber combat praised most. Star Wars fans still recommend it on the GameCube. The gunplay fades early, which is why it ranks low here, but no other GameCube game has lightsaber fights this good.

Frontline reached the GameCube and Xbox on November 7, 2002, a few months after the PlayStation 2 version. It was the first Medal of Honor game by EA Los Angeles and the first in the series without the involvement of Steven Spielberg. You play Patterson, fighting across Europe into Nazi Germany. The famous D-Day landing level, "Your Finest Hour", was not originally planned and was added late in production.

The developers could only have around 8 to 12 AI soldiers on screen, so they found tricks to make the battle feel much bigger, and it works. The music is by Michael Giacchino, and it still sounds like a war film. Players who want a war shooter on the GameCube still point to Medal of Honor.

Rising Sun takes the series to the war against Japan. You play Joe, who is blown off his ship and rescued by a PT boat carrying Gunny and two privates. The campaign goes from a bridge at Calumpit that has to be blown, to Japanese-occupied Singapore in March 1943 to infiltrate a secret Axis summit, to temples in Burma where the Japanese are smelting gold.

On the way Joe works with Harry Tanaka, a Japanese-American OSS operative, and Major Philip Bromley, a British SOE operative. The story has a personal thread too. Donnie stays inside a tank when it is overrun by Japanese soldiers and is presumed dead, and that hangs over the rest of the war. It ranks one place above Frontline here.

Vendetta takes place after the first three Die Hard films, and you play John McClane against Piet Gruber, the son of Hans Gruber. It began as an original game called Muzzle Velocity, about an LAPD SWAT officer named Jack. It then went through another film licence before switching to Die Hard, with a Nintendo 64 version called Die Hard 64. By early 2000 it was still unfinished, and it ended up on the GameCube, with PS2 and Xbox versions released only in Europe in 2003.

Turn on Hero Time and Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" plays, which is a very Die Hard joke. It also mixes puzzle-like elements into the shooting. The game received mixed reviews, and players who loved it as kids still admit it is uneven. At the end McClane punches a film developer who offers him a starring role.

XIII is a cel-shaded first-person shooter based on the Belgian comic by Jean Van Hamme and William Vance, loosely based on the first five comics. In the comic, the only clues to the hero's past are a tattoo of the Roman numerals "XIII" on his collarbone and a photo of himself with a woman. Footsteps and shots show up as comic text on screen, and headshots play out as a series of still images.

Under the art it is a full FPS, with stealth and action, more than fifteen weapons, and skills you learn along the way like lockpicking. A remake was released in 2020. Players keep slipping the original into their lists of GameCube games worth owning. Nothing else on the console looks like it.

Evolution is a prequel to Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, developed by Acclaim Studios Austin. It came out for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube in 2002. You play Tal'Set, a warrior caught in a brutal war in the Lost Land, fighting the Sleg and over 32 types of dinosaurs. It is primarily a first-person shooter, but some levels put you on a winged Quetzalcoatlus, partly played as a rail shooter. The GameCube and Xbox got four player split screen, while the PS2 got two.

Turok: Evolution received mixed reviews. Players remember it far more kindly, as an underrated one they played endlessly. One fan, remembering its guns, summed it up: "I have yet to see a weapon as cool in any video game before or since."

Rogue Agent puts you on the villains' side. You are an ex-MI6 agent recruited by Auric Goldfinger to assassinate his rival Dr. No. He gets the name GoldenEye after he loses his eye and receives a gold-colored cybernetic replacement. Despite the name, the game has no relation to the 1995 film or the 1997 video game. Bond villains are all over it, from Oddjob to Xenia Onatopp, and Christopher Lee and Judi Dench both voice characters modeled after them.

It is played across eight levels. Critics praised the premise and the multiplayer mode but criticised the misleading use of the GoldenEye name. Players who gave it a chance say it is more fun than its reputation, the multiplayer above all. Treat it as its own game and it is a good one.

Future Perfect is the third game in the TimeSplitters series, developed by Free Radical Design and published by EA Games. You play Sergeant Cortez, a time-traveling marine from the 25th century. The story has fun with time travel: Anya sends Cortez back a few minutes so he can double-team the scientist Crow with a second Cortez. Missions and league challenges hand out awards, new characters and medals.

Players tend to recommend it as a pair with TimeSplitters 2, and they are right to. It keeps the fast shooting and the silly characters of the second game and adds a story that knows it is ridiculous. If TimeSplitters 2 grabs you, this is the obvious next game.

Big Red One is a side-story of Call of Duty 2, which was released on PC and Xbox 360. Treyarch made it for consoles. You play Roland Roger, a soldier in the American 1st Infantry Division, through the North Africa campaign, the invasion of Sicily, the landing on Omaha Beach and across the Siegfried Line into Germany. Between chapters, Mark Hamill narrates period footage like a World War II documentary, and he appeared in the Sam Fuller film The Big Red One.

A number of actors from Band of Brothers voice the squad. It has a single-player story mode and a multiplayer mode. The squad feels like real people, which was not a given in a 2005 war game, and it is the most cinematic shooter on the GameCube.

Geist began as a prototype by n-Space, who approached Nintendo to publish it. It became the second GameCube game published by Nintendo to get an M rating, after Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem. You play John Raimi, whose spirit is ripped from his body by the Volks Corporation, and as a ghost you possess people and even objects to get through the compound.

It was first shown at E3 2003 and then delayed for two years. During that time its genre changed from first-person shooter to first-person action-adventure, though there is still plenty of shooting once you are inside a guard. Critics praised its unique concepts and story but not its sluggish controls. Players still recommend it as one of the coolest odd games on the console.

TimeSplitters 2 starts in 2401, with humanity at war against the TimeSplitters, a sadistic alien race. They scatter crystals across moments in human history through a time portal, and you chase them. The levels borrow from horror and science fiction films, and when you finish one a medal is awarded based on your points.

Multiplayer is where it lives. You can change the weapons, the points needed to win, the time limit and even the music, and there are nearly 60 awards handed out after a match. Only LAN networks are supported, so there is no online play. Critics praised its multiplayer gameplay and graphics and criticised its story. Ask players for a GameCube shooter and TimeSplitters 2 is usually the first name back.

Echoes is the sixth main Metroid game, released in North America, Europe and Australia in late 2004. Samus is sent to rescue Galactic Federation Marines from a ship near Aether, a planet torn into light and dark versions of itself. Her evil doppelgänger, Dark Samus, shows up for the first time. After the success of Metroid Prime, Nintendo asked Retro Studios to produce a sequel, and development was more difficult than the team had expected.

The single-player mode was acclaimed for its atmosphere and music, though its steep difficulty and the multiplayer took criticism. Game Informer called the boss fights "unforgiving", and some reviewers found the hunt for the Sky Temple keys a chore. Retro reduced the difficulty when it adapted Echoes for Metroid Prime: Trilogy. Players who loved the first game keep naming this one right next to it.

Metroid Prime is the fifth main Metroid game, and the first to use 3D graphics and a first-person perspective. It came out in North America in November 2002, along with Metroid Fusion on the Game Boy Advance, and brought the series back after an eight-year hiatus following Super Metroid. Retro in Austin, Texas made it with Nintendo staff including Shigeru Miyamoto and Kensuke Tanabe. Samus chases Ridley to Tallon IV, former home of the ancient Chozo race.

Nintendo called it a "first-person adventure" rather than a first-person shooter, because exploration comes first. It belongs here anyway, since nothing on the GameCube aims better. It sold more than 2.8 million copies, the best-selling Metroid game until Metroid Dread, and is regarded as one of the greatest video games. Players recommend it more than any other game on this list.