8 Best PS Vita FPS Games

Paranautical Activity is a first-person shooter that uses procedural dungeon generation and permadeath, so every run has a new layout and every death sends you back to the start. Its levels are built from rooms like the dungeons of The Binding of Isaac, with shops and treasure rooms between the fights, and each level ends in a boss battle you must beat before moving on.

Its road to the Vita was a mess. Valve pulled the game from Steam after one of its developers posted a threat he later said was not meant seriously, and the rights went to a new developer, Digerati, which then brought out a Vita version. It is last on this list, but if you want a shooter that fits a short bus ride, it is a good one to know about.

Duke Nukem 3D first came out on PC in 1996, and along with Doom and Quake it helped make first-person shooters popular. The Megaton Edition reached the PS Vita and PS3 in January 2015, ported by Abstraction Games and published by Devolver Digital, with cross-buy between the two. It packs in the Atomic Edition, which adds a fourth episode, plus the add-on Duke It Out in D.C.

The levels are still the reason to play. One episode runs through a sushi bar and a movie set, another has a supermarket and a Disneyland parody called Babe Land, and on the Moon you can use a Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey as a teleport. Duke himself has not aged gracefully, but he was never trying to. The PlayStation version was later pulled from the North American store, so check before you go looking.

GalGun: Double Peace is a Japanese bishojo shooting game and the sequel to GalGun, which never came out in English. You play Hodai Kudoki, who is struck with an arrow that makes every girl want him, and if he does not find his fated girl by the end of the day, he will never be able to find love again. It plays as a rail shooter: the game walks you through school and you do the aiming.

It is exactly as silly as it sounds. It came out in Japan on PS4 and Vita in August 2015, and Inti Creates brought it to Europe and North America in 2016 because players outside Japan had praised the first game. Reviewers of that first game were surprised how well the dating game and the shooter worked together, and the heroines of Double Peace went on to get their own spin-off series, Gal Guardians, in 2023.

Stranger's Wrath began as an Xbox game in 2005. You are Stranger, a bounty hunter catching Outlaws to raise money for a mysterious operation, in a corner of Oddworld with a Wild West setting. It switches views as you play: third person to get around and brawl, first person to shoot.

The crossbow is the star. It fires live ammunition, small creatures with different effects, so Stunks work as gas grenades and Boombats as rockets. Just Add Water made the HD version, and the Vita got it on December 18, 2012 in North America. Players keep recommending it next to the Vita's own big games, which says a lot about a port of a game that was already seven years old.

Burning Skies was made for the Vita and its two sticks, with a new hero and a story by William C. Dietz, who had already written two Resistance novels. On August 14, 1951, the Chimera invade the East Coast of the United States, and you are Tom Riley, a New York fireman who only wants to find and rescue his family. The touchscreen handles the second function of your weapons.

Critics were not kind. Destructoid said the game "settled on being the new worst Vita game to date". Players are split on it: some call it average or worse, others enjoyed it anyway. On a handheld this short of shooters, average still gets played, and Riley's hunt for his family is a better story than the reviews let on.

Black Ops Declassified was made only for the Vita, with an original story in the Black Ops universe and a campaign of Special Ops missions. It came out in North America on November 13, 2012, the same day as Black Ops II, and follows Alex Mason and Frank Woods on operations from Saigon to Berlin. The missions are short and built around objectives, and you can replay them to improve your performance.

It got negative reviews, with criticism of its enemy AI and its glitches, and one critic said the single-player campaign was less than an hour long. Players mostly warn others away from it, though a few say the multiplayer is not that bad. Its spot this high says more about how few shooters the Vita got than about the game.

Borderlands 2 came out on home consoles and PC in 2012, and Gearbox partnered with Iron Galaxy Studios to bring it to the Vita in May 2014. You play a vault hunter out for revenge on Handsome Jack, the CEO of the Hyperion Corporation, and the script is seven times longer than the first game's. Cross-save lets PS3 players carry their progress over to the Vita.

The port gives you the entire game plus extra content, which is a lot for a handheld. Reviewers knocked its graphics and its frame rate, and online co-op drops from four players to two. Players still put it right up with the top pick, rough edges and all, because nothing else on the Vita gives you this many guns to chase.

Killzone: Mercenary was the first Killzone not made by Guerrilla Games. Their sister studio, Guerrilla Cambridge, built it on a modified version of the Killzone 3 engine. You are Arran Danner, a mercenary hired by the ISA, and for the first time in a Killzone campaign you also fight alongside the Helghast. Employers pay you for every contract you finish, and you choose your own tactics and loadout.

It uses the Vita's touchscreen and rear touch panel, and IGN called it "the best portable shooter ever made". Critics praised the controls and the visuals and grumbled about the story and the short campaign. Players back it nearly four times as often as Borderlands 2, and when someone asks for the best Vita shooter, the usual answer is simply Killzone.