11 Best Nintendo DS FPS Games

C.O.R.E. comes from NoWay Studio, a Polish developer, and it reached Europe in March 2009 and North America that August. The setup is pure B-movie. In A.D. 2028 a massive meteor slams into California's Mojave Desert, a top-secret underground facility goes up on the site, and twenty years later all communications with the lab abruptly cease. You are Jason Crane, sent down to find out why.

It plays more like a PC shooter than most DS games, with jumping, full 360 degree movement and alternate fire on some of its eight weapons, from a pistol up to a rocket launcher. Reviews were generally negative. The few players who back it nearly always name Moon in the same breath, which is not bad company for a game this obscure.

The DS Call of Duty 4 is its own game, built for the handheld by n-Space and released on November 5, 2007. You aim with the touch screen, which also handles reloading and little jobs like hacking terminals and disarming bombs. Instead of the console story, you play several anonymous soldiers from the British S.A.S. or the American forces, on missions that run alongside the main war without changing how it ends.

Critics liked it more than you might expect, but missed online play: local wireless for up to four players was all you got. Players remember it as the roughest of the DS Call of Duty games, and they say the team got better with every one that followed. The ranking agrees, since every later Call of Duty on the system sits above it.

Touch the Dead, called Dead 'n' Furious in Europe, is a rail shooter from Dream On Studio. The game walks you through, and you point the stylus at oncoming zombies on the bottom screen to shoot them. To reload, you drag a clip icon across the touch screen into the magazine. The buttons only switch weapons, and both sides of the console do the same job, so left-handed players are covered.

Reviews tore into its blocky graphics and repetitive sound, then praised how well it uses the touch screen anyway. GamePro called it "laughably bad at points" and still found a camp charm worth sticking around for. Players file it with arcade blasters like Metal Slug 7 and Contra 4 rather than with the serious shooters here.

This GoldenEye is a modern reimagining of the 1995 film and a remake of the 1997 Nintendo 64 game, with Daniel Craig as Bond and a script by Bruce Feirstein, the screenwriter for the original movie. It came out in November 2010 alongside another Bond game, Blood Stone. You can sneak up on enemies or start a full firefight, and the old set pieces are all here, from the dam to a tank chase through St. Petersburg.

The DS version comes from n-Space, the studio behind the DS Call of Duty games, and critics scored it well below the Wii version. Players call it solid, and its fans rate it above the Call of Duty games, mostly for the stealth. Anyone who grew up on the Nintendo 64 game will know the dam the second it loads.

Dementium II is the sequel to Dementium: The Ward, and it fixes nearly everything critics complained about the first time. You can jump and crouch now, hold the flashlight and a gun at the same time, use save points and carry health items to use whenever you like. Best of all, enemies no longer respawn every time you walk back through a room, which had left players short on ammo.

This time the reviews were generally favorable, a step up from the first game's mixed ones, while a PC remaster made without Renegade Kid in 2013 got negative ones. Players who have tried both often like the sequel more, so it is a little odd to find it five places below the first Dementium. The original simply had a three year head start.

World at War came out on the DS in November 2008, alongside the console versions, and it is a clear step up from n-Space's first try. Sprinting and crouching feel more responsive, and the iron sights are proper 3D models now, all running at 30 frames per second. It also added console-style achievements and star-shaped collectibles hidden in each mission.

Online play for up to four players made it in, though with no way to talk to anyone, and there is no Zombies mode; that only reached the DS with Black Ops. GameSpot said it could "deliver the true Call of Duty experience", a big claim for a handheld. Players agree it is far more fun than you would expect, even if nobody pretends it beats the console game.

Defiance is the last Call of Duty released on the DS, built by n-Space and set in about the same world as Modern Warfare 3. It keeps the series' iron sights and vehicle missions, and the bottom screen gained a neat trick: you can draw your knife without first walking into melee range. It was also the last Call of Duty rated T for Teen, which is roughly how old most of the people playing it were.

Online play was the big draw, but it stopped working when Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection shut down in May 2014. Local multiplayer still works, as long as you have a friend nearby. Plenty of players call this the best Call of Duty on the DS, and the online matches are what they remember most fondly.

Moon is Renegade Kid's follow-up to Dementium, built on an updated version of the same engine and running at 60 frames per second. You are Major Kane of the Extra Terrestrial Encounter Organization, sent to the Earth's moon in the mid-21st century after contact with a lunar outpost is lost. Its last report mentioned a hatch of alien origin found during a routine excavation.

There is no multiplayer at all, just a single-player campaign with a remote drone that stuns enemies and knocks out the shields blocking your way. Critics gave it average reviews, praising the graphics and the frame rate while wishing for more variety. Players call it underrated, and it is the one they hand to anyone who wants a proper shooter on the DS.

n-Space made a separate Black Ops for the DS, out in November 2010 next to the console versions, and it packs in more than any other shooter here. Online play for six players brought the series' Perks system to the handheld. You can drag a new gun into an empty slot to carry it without dropping the one in your hands. On the Recruit and Regular difficulties, an auto lock-on helps anyone still fighting the stylus.

The real draw is Zombies, and this is the first and only DS Call of Duty to have it. Players love the mode and warn you about it in the same breath, because one hit kills you. It gets named more than twice as often as Modern Warfare 3, the most of any Call of Duty on the system, and Zombies is a big part of why.

Dementium: The Ward started life as a pitch for a Silent Hill game on the DS. Konami turned it down, so Renegade Kid, a new studio of Iguana Entertainment veterans, made its own horror game instead, and Gamecock released it in North America on October 31, 2007. Of course it came out on Halloween. You wake up as William, alone in a derelict hospital frozen in time, with only a nightstick and a flashlight against the surgical experiments in the halls.

IGN gave it awards for Best First-Person Shooter and Best Graphics Technology, but reviews were mixed overall. Critics hit its short length and its save system, along with enemies that respawn whenever you double back. Players still call it impressive for the DS, the flashlight especially. The engine Renegade Kid built for it went straight into Moon.

Metroid Prime Hunters came from Nintendo Software Technology, because Retro Studios, the team behind the earlier Prime games, was already busy with another game. Its team of thirty was bigger than most DS teams. It is set between Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, with Samus chasing a mysterious message to the Alimbic Cluster and running into six rival bounty hunters, each with a unique weapon and alternative form.

It has more shooter in it than any Prime before, with aiming done by dragging the stylus across the touch screen and online matches with voice chat in 2006. Before the full game, a demo called First Hunt came packed in with the DS at launch. It sold over 410,000 copies in its first month in North America, and critics praised the gameplay and graphics but not the controls. Players still talk most about the multiplayer.