25 Best PS1 Action Games

Tenchu is the first game in its series, and Activision brought it out outside Japan. You play Rikimaru or Ayame of the Azuma ninja clan, taking missions from their employer Lord Gohda in Sengoku-era Japan. It was the first project from a young studio called Acquire, which wanted a game made only from 3D graphics that put stealth ahead of action. The team got its break through an audition Sony Music Entertainment Japan held to find new studios.

The composer blended Japanese music with Chinese and Thai elements. The soundtrack sounds like nothing else on the console. Tenchu sold over one million units worldwide by 2003, and a sequel, Tenchu 2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins, followed in 2000. Creeping up on a guard and finishing him before he turns around is still one of the best feelings on the PS1.

Jackie Chan: Stuntmaster was shown at E3 1999. Radical Entertainment consulted Jackie at every point while making it, to give the game the feeling of a Jackie Chan film. He also provided his own voice. That is a lot of care for a licensed game, and you can feel it in the way he moves.

It is a 3D beat 'em up, and the goal was to make every fight look like a scene from one of his movies. Nobody would call it deep. It is the sort of game you rent for a weekend and finish with a sore thumb and a big grin. It sits this low because fewer players found it in the first place. The ones who did still bring it up with a lot of love.

Tomb Raider III was the first game in the series built mainly for the PlayStation. It runs on an upgraded version of the old engine, with new tricks like coloured lighting and triangular polygons for more detailed levels. Lara starts out on a South Pacific island in Indonesia and ends up chasing a meteorite and the artefacts carved from it.

A big part of the game takes place underwater, and some pools hold piranhas that can kill Lara within seconds. Critics liked it but said it did not change the formula much. They also found it hard and unforgiving, which is putting it kindly. The third Tomb Raider is the one that made people throw controllers. It came back in a remastered collection in 2024.

Ghost in the Shell is a cyberpunk third-person shooter made by Exact and Production I.G. You are a rookie in Public Security Section 9, and you drive a Fuchikoma, a robotic fighting vehicle that can climb walls and ceilings. Masamune Shirow, who wrote the original manga, did the character and mecha designs. The English version even uses the same voice cast as the English dub of the 1995 film.

Critics praised the graphics, the animation and the wall-climbing, though some found the missions repetitive and too easy. Game Informer later listed it among the best manga and anime-based games. The soundtrack, with artists like Takkyu Ishino and Joey Beltram, is a big part of the appeal. Running up the side of a building and shooting down at enemies still feels wild.

Time Crisis started in arcades, and what set it apart from other light-gun shooters was a pedal. Step on it and your character pops out to shoot. Let go and he ducks into cover to reload. The PlayStation port came out in 1997 in a bundle with the GunCon light gun, and it added a pack of new stages set after the main story.

You could also play with a normal controller by moving a cursor around the screen, which is a bit like eating soup with a fork. The arcade gun's recoil did not make it to the PlayStation version. The home version got its own sequel, Time Crisis: Project Titan, in 2001. If you still own a GunCon and a CRT, this is the disc to put in first.

Mega Man X4 was the first game in the X series released on the PlayStation and the Sega Saturn. It is also the first where you can play the whole game as either X or Zero. To get Zero approved as a full hero, the team gave him special moves based on Street Fighter. Keiji Inafune stepped back from drawing the artwork this time to work as producer.

Critics liked that you could pick either hero, and it made the series feel fresh again. The English voice acting is famously bad, and that is all most people say about it before getting back to the game. Under the cutscenes it is a tight 2D action game with some of the best sprites Capcom ever drew.

Syphon Filter 2 starts hours after the first game ends. Gabe Logan and Lian Xing are now enemies of the state, and the public has been told they are terrorists. Creative director John Garvin said he wrote the whole screenplay over a weekend, and then the team spent the next year building exactly what he had written.

Many reviewers said it did not change much from the first game. That was fine with most fans, who wanted more of the same and got it on two discs. It was also the last game in the series that 989 Studios released in North America. Play it right after the first one, because the story picks up mid-sentence.

Fighting Force came from Core Design right after Tomb Raider, and it started life as a pitch to Sega for a fourth Streets of Rage. Core described the early version as a 3D game inspired by that series. You pick one of four fighters and work your way from a police cordon around Dr. Zeng's skyscraper to his island headquarters.

Weapons range from bottles and knives to chairs and guns. Ben "Smasher" Jackson can even lift car engines and throw them. Every fighter has a special move that costs a bit of health. Reviews were mixed, but the game sold well. With two players on the couch it is still a great way to break a lot of furniture.

Grand Theft Auto 2 came out for the PlayStation in October 1999. It was made by DMA Design in Dundee and takes place in Anywhere City, at a time the game never pins down. You earn points for crimes and for jobs from the city's gangs, and the gang loyalty system decides who will still give you work.

The soundtrack was a highlight. Each area has five radio stations, picked from eleven in total. Critics were less kind about the graphics and the controls, and some felt it did not move the series forward enough. It was still a moderate commercial success. It is a lot of fun in short bursts.

Team Buddies begins with a disco in a tent, which is a strong start for any game. A flying thing blocks out the sun and drops crates full of weapons, and the Buddies split into teams by colour. You build new team members by stacking crates on top of each other, and then send them off to attack or defend.

It was the last game from Psygnosis' Camden Town studio before it moved to Sony, and Midway released it in North America. The North American version cut the swearing to get an E rating. The European version gave each team colour its own nationality, with the blue team as stereotypical English. It is silly and loud, and it is best with friends.

Silent Bomber is a top-down shoot 'em up with a twist: instead of shooting enemies, you blow them up with bombs. You play Jutah Fate, a genetically engineered soldier, and you can only set a few bombs at a time before you have to set them off. Catch several enemies in one blast and you earn more points.

It was made by CyberConnect, the studio that later became CyberConnect2, and it was their second and last game under that name. Hardly anybody heard of it at the time. One player who found it years later "couldn't believe how little I had heard about it growing up." It is fast and smart, and it is the best hidden pick on this list.

Fear Effect follows three mercenaries hunting for Wee Ming Lam, the missing daughter of a powerful Triad leader in Hong Kong. The job turns supernatural fast. Its characters are textured to look cel-shaded, and it was one of the first games to try that look. The backgrounds are streaming full-motion video instead of still pictures, which is why the game takes up four discs.

Critics loved the cinematic presentation and the look, and they complained about the difficulty. IGN gave it its Adventure award in Editors' Choice for 2000. A prequel, Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix, followed a year later. It looks like an anime and plays like a game that does not want you to win, so save often.

Die Hard Trilogy has three games on one disc, one for each of the first three Die Hard films. Each one plays in a different style. It was made by Probe Entertainment in the UK. The Die Hard with a Vengeance part was built first as a game of its own, until Fox Interactive asked for something closer to the films and Probe made the other two.

Probe was working on Alien Trilogy at the same time, which explains a lot about their year. Getting three action games for the price of one made it an easy sell. Players still list it next to the big names when they pick their favourite PS1 discs. A sequel, Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas, kept the three styles.

Armored Core is the first game in the Armored Core series, a third-person mech action game. Sony Computer Entertainment released it outside Japan. The robots were designed by Shoji Kawamori, a famous mecha designer, and building your own mech out of parts was one of the few ideas set from the start.

The levels are wide open, and enemies can come at you from any direction. Critics were impressed by how deep the customising goes and by the multiplayer. They were less impressed by the story, which is thin. Players agree the whole series is excellent, and this is where it starts. If you like tinkering with a build for an hour before a mission, this one is for you.

Mega Man Legends was the first game in the Legends series and only the second big 3D Mega Man. It came out in Japan in 1997 and in North America in 1998. Mega Man is a Digger now, exploring ruins in search of treasure, with the Mother Lode as the big prize. Roll can craft new weapons for you from parts you find.

Critics liked how well the jump from 2D to 3D worked. The Nintendo 64 version, renamed Mega Man 64 in North America, was criticised for adding nothing. The PlayStation one is the version to play. It was followed by the prequel The Misadventures of Tron Bonne and the sequel Mega Man Legends 2.

Grand Theft Auto came out on the PlayStation in December 1997. It began as Race 'n' Chase, a game where you played a police officer chasing criminals. That version was considered dull, so the team switched you over to the criminal side. DMA Design wanted players to have the freedom to play however they liked.

Each level has a target score, and you get five lives to reach it. Your score is also your money, so every paint job pushes the goal further away. Critics knocked the graphics and the controls but praised the freedom, and it is now recognised as one of the greatest games of all time. Every Grand Theft Auto since starts here.

Future Cop: LAPD started life as a game in the Strike series. In Crime War, the story mode, you spend a day in the life of an LAPD X1-Alpha pilot. You begin in a futuristic Griffith Park and unlock places like Venice Beach and LAX as you go.

The other mode is Precinct Assault, with five areas and ten difficulty settings when you play alone. The story missions range from lunatics arming an observatory with weapons to a supercomputer gone wrong. It is a shooter with a lot more going on than it first lets on, and it rewards a second player.

Spider-Man is an action-adventure game made by Neversoft. You swing through the city on webs, fight crooks, and sneak past the ones you would rather not fight. The story is a conspiracy with Doctor Octopus and Venom in the middle of it. It is built as a run of levels, more beat 'em up than open city.

It was popular enough that Treyarch ported it to the Dreamcast, and a sequel, Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro, came out in 2001. The camera fights you sometimes. The web-swinging makes up for it. For a lot of players this was the first game that made them feel like Spider-Man.

Tomb Raider II came out for Windows and the PlayStation, and it was made in six to nine months right after the first game took off. The short schedule was hard on the team, and original team member Toby Gard left over creative differences. Composer Nathan McCree stayed. This time Lara fights a lot more people, with a harpoon gun and an M16 rifle added to her kit.

Her trip takes her as far as the Barkhang Monastery in Tibet, chasing a dagger that a cult leader called Bartoli wants for himself. Critics praised the bigger gameplay and the smoother graphics. It is the Tomb Raider players name most often after the first.

MediEvil started in 1995 in Cambridge under the working title Dead Man Dan. You play Sir Daniel Fortesque, a skeleton knight brought back by accident to stop the sorcerer Zarok. When you run out of weapons, Dan can rip off his own arm and hit things with it. Each level hides a Chalice of Souls that fills up as you beat enemies.

The plan was an arcade-style shooter for other systems until Sony bought the studio. Critics liked the Halloween look and disliked the controls and the camera. One of its creators, Sorrell, called the humour a "happy accident". It was remade for the PSP in 2005 and again for the PS4 in 2019, so Dan has had more lives than most skeletons.

Syphon Filter is a third-person stealth shooter made by Eidetic for the PlayStation. Agents Gabe Logan and Lian Xing are sent to catch a German terrorist. The idea was a new "super-spy" genre that mixed stealth, action and puzzles. The game was almost cancelled several times because the team was so new to making games.

It was a hit with critics anyway, and they singled out the gameplay and the story. GameFan's three reviewers gave it 97, 92 and 94. The lock-on aiming takes a minute to learn, and then it clicks. Players still put it near the top when they talk about the best PS1 shooters. Two sequels followed in 2000 and 2001, and Gabe later got two more games on the PSP.

Soul Reaver is the sequel to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. Kain rules Nosgoth, and when his lieutenant Raziel grows wings before him, Kain casts him down out of jealousy. Centuries later Raziel comes back as a ghostly, broken vampire. You hunt down his brothers and devour their souls to take their powers.

It sold 1.5 million copies worldwide by 2001. Critics praised the gothic story and the graphics, though some found the fighting repetitive and the ending a letdown. Legal trouble with Silicon Knights and other delays pushed planned material into later games, which explains that ending. Under Amy Hennig's direction, the music changes with what you are doing. A remaster came out on December 10, 2024.

Tomb Raider is a 3D action game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive. You guide Lara Croft, a British archaeologist, through tombs and ruins in search of ancient treasures. On the way she fights dangerous animals and stranger creatures, and you solve puzzles to open the way forward.

It was a critical hit and hugely influential, and it turned into a whole franchise of sequels and other media. Players back it as the best place to start with Lara. The sequels added more guns, but the first one is the purest tomb raid of the lot.

Symphony of the Night was directed and produced by Toru Hagihara, with Koji Igarashi as assistant director. You play Alucard, using weapons, magic and relics to explore a castle full of hidden rooms. It mixes platform action with role-playing. Just when you think you have finished, the Inverted Castle shows up: the whole map again, upside down, with new bosses.

It sold poorly at first and grew into a sleeper hit by word of mouth, selling over 700,000 units in the United States and Japan. Critics now call it one of the best games ever made, voice acting aside. Players recommend it about twice as often as the game in third place. If you only ever play one 2D game from this console, make it this one.

Metal Gear Solid was directed, produced and written by Hideo Kojima, and it follows the MSX2 game Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. It was first developed for the 3DO in 1995 before moving to the PlayStation. You guide Solid Snake through the game's areas without being seen, because getting spotted brings armed guards running. Artist Yoji Shinkawa based Snake's look on Jean-Claude Van Damme and Christopher Walken.

The cutscenes use the in-game graphics, and voice acting runs all the way through. The team even had the Huntington Beach SWAT team show them vehicles, weapons and explosives. Critics gave it unanimous acclaim, and it helped popularize the stealth genre. Players recommend it nearly twice as often as anything else here, and plenty of them say nothing comes close.