8 Best Nintendo 3DS FPS Games

Blast Ball is a mode from Metroid Prime: Federation Force, and it came out on its own first, as a free download on the Nintendo eShop on July 21, 2016. It is three-on-three soccer for mechs. You shoot the ball into the other team's net, a bit like Rocket League with arm cannons, from the same first-person view as Federation Force.

The free version had a limited online period, and its online support ended on December 31 the same year. The mode lives on inside the full Federation Force, which kept its online play, and progress from the free download carried over. Friends without a copy of Federation Force could join through Download Play, which made it an easy game to start in a room full of 3DS owners.

Moon Chronicles is Renegade Kid's episodic remake of Moon, its 2009 DS shooter. Workers at a lunar dig site have found a sealed hatch leading beneath the Moon's surface, and you play Kane, the soldier who goes down to see what is behind it. Episode 1 cost $8.99 on the eShop on May 15, 2014, in North America only. Episodes 2 to 4 followed as add-ons.

The original Moon ran on an updated version of the engine from Dementium, at 60 frames per second. The team considered a jump button and dropped it to keep the game about shooting. Most of the fighting happens in narrow corridors. Players point FPS fans to it first when they list 3DS shooters, and some file it under horror.

Face Raiders came preloaded on every 3DS, so for a lot of owners it was the first shooter they played on it. HAL Laboratory made it alongside the other built-in software. You take a picture of a face, and the game turns it into the enemies you shoot. You aim by turning around the room with the console, using the gyroscope, while the camera puts the fight in your living room. People walking behind you become more faces to shoot.

It began as a tech demo with blocks instead of faces. At the end of development, HAL added the option to point the 3DS at someone else's face and make it an enemy. Players remember it as a short game and a lot of fun, and as the best way to show off a new 3DS. Your little brother's face never looked so threatening.

Sub Wars is the follow-up to Steel Diver, a 3DS launch game. Nintendo revealed it in a Nintendo Direct on February 13, 2014, and released it right after the show. It was Nintendo's first free-to-play game. Sub Wars is a first-person game, and the free version has the online multiplayer and two single-player levels, while paying unlocks more features and missions.

It works with the Circle Pad Pro and uses the touch screen for many inputs. Nintendo halted online play on September 4, 2023, so the multiplayer that made it worth downloading is gone today. Players who got into it name it among their favourite 3DS downloads and call it a fun shooting game. If you already have it, the single-player missions are what is left.

Dementium started as a pitch for a Silent Hill game on the Nintendo DS. Konami turned it down, so Renegade Kid made an original game instead when Gamecock agreed to publish it, and it became the studio's first. The whole game is in first-person view. You play William Redmoor, and at the start you have only a nightstick and a flashlight to defend yourself.

The DS original came out on October 31, 2007. After Renegade Kid got the rights back, it made the 3DS remaster to fix problems with the original release, and it came out in North America on December 3, 2015. Critics gave it mixed reviews. Players who love Silent Hill point straight to it anyway and call it a solid, spooky game.

Federation Force is the first Metroid game where you play a Marine of the Galactic Federation, so you are not Samus this time. Next Level Games, the studio behind Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, made it, and Kensuke Tanabe produced it, as he had all the earlier Metroid Prime games. It plays like Metroid Prime Hunters, with the focus on shooting, but the players work together as one unit on missions. It supports the Circle Pad Pro and gyro aiming.

It came out during the series' 30th anniversary, after six years with no new Metroid since Other M, and fans did not want the comeback to be a spin-off. It was a commercial failure. Players are still split on it. Some call it a slog, and others say it is great with a friend and one of their favourite 3DS games.

The Mercenaries 3D turns the Mercenaries mode of Resident Evil 4 and 5 into a game of its own, on maps from those two games. TOSE developed it for Capcom, and it came out in North America on June 28, 2011. Albert Wesker, HUNK and six other series regulars are playable. You can aim from a first-person view or over the shoulder. It also came with a short demo of Revelations.

Its save data cannot be reset, and that caused enough of a fuss that Capcom said a similar feature would probably not show up in future games. Players love it in short bursts, the Resident Evil you play in a waiting room. More players pick it than any game below it, nearly twice as many as the next one.

Revelations is set shortly after Resident Evil 4. Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield chase a bioterrorist group that plans to infect the Earth's oceans with a virus. Most of it takes place on the Queen Zenobia, an abandoned cruise ship, picked for its claustrophobic corridors and its isolation in the middle of the ocean. You play from a third-person view that switches to first-person or over the shoulder when you aim. Raid Mode adds an action mode for one or two players.

It was the first game outside Japan to support the Circle Pad Pro, and critics praised its spooky setting. Players put it next to the Zeldas and Fire Emblem in their 3DS picks, and one praised its "top notch atmospheric feel". More players recommend it than every other game on this list put together.