20 Best PS2 FPS Games

Finest Hour was the first Call of Duty made for consoles. It is based on the original PC game but tells a side story of its own, with six intertwined stories from American, British and Soviet soldiers in the Second World War. The Soviet campaign opens with Private Aleksandr Sokolov, and the British missions send commandos to sabotage German forces in Tunisia. Michael Giacchino, who had already scored Medal of Honor, wrote the music.

One casting choice stands out: AC/DC singer Brian Johnson voices Sergeant Starkey, one of the British commandos. Critics gave it mixed-to-positive reviews, and it has aged into a comfort game. Players tend to name Call of Duty in the same breath as Medal of Honor and Black when they list the war shooters they grew up with on the PS2.

Call of Duty 3 came out for the PS2 alongside the Xbox 360, and it was a launch title for the PlayStation 3 and the Wii. It is also the only major Call of Duty that never came to PC. The PS2 got the same war as the brand new consoles. Your squad clears out the Forêt d'Écouves, and later a tank crew and Polish soldiers fall back to the top of Hill 262.

Reviews were positive at release. Later looks back were harsher, and critics said it added little to the games before it. Players were never that picky. It still turns up on plenty of players' PS2 must-play lists.

Project Snowblind was Crystal Dynamics' first try at a first-person shooter, and it started life as part of the Deus Ex series, with advice from the original team at Ion Storm. Along the way it became its own game. It is Hong Kong in 2065, and soldier Nathan Frost is rebuilt with nanotechnology after an explosion nearly kills him, then sent against a military regime called the Republic.

The music has a strange history. Composer Troels Brun Folmann joined the studio to do research for a PhD thesis, and the directors asked him for an "epic orchestral score with eastern/ethnic elements". Few shooters can say their score doubled as homework. Players who want a PS2 shooter off the beaten path often recommend it together with Cold Winter.

Rising Sun takes the series to the Pacific. It opens with your hero being blown off his ship and pulled from the water by a PT boat, and things do not calm down from there. One mission has you blowing up the Calumpit Bridge after the demolition truck gets captured. Another sends you to Japanese-occupied Singapore in March 1943 to sneak into a secret Axis summit.

On that mission you team up with Harry Tanaka, a Japanese-American OSS operative, and Major Philip Bromley of the British SOE. It plays like a war movie that keeps changing locations. Players who grew up on the series still name it next to Frontline.

XIII is a cel-shaded shooter based on the Belgian comic by Jean Van Hamme and William Vance, loosely following the first five comics. It looks like a comic in motion. Footsteps show up on screen as written sound effects, and a headshot plays out as a strip of still panels. You learn skills like silent walking and lockpicking as you go, and the arsenal has crossbows next to the shotguns.

A remake came out in 2020 and got bad reviews from critics and players, so the 2003 game is still the one to play. Players call it a good shooter with a quirky style.

Rogue Agent lets you play the bad guy. You are a former MI6 agent hired by Auric Goldfinger to take out his rival, Dr. No, in a criminal world based on Ian Fleming's SPECTRE. It is a first-person shooter played across eight levels, and the cast is a greatest hits of Bond villains. Christopher Lee and Judi Dench both lend their voices.

Critics liked the idea and the multiplayer. They did not like the plain gameplay, the break from the Bond canon or the GoldenEye name, which has nothing to do with the N64 game. That is a fair complaint, and it is still a fun way to spend an evening as a henchman with ambition. Players rank it above Rising Sun.

Red Faction II moves the series from Mars to Earth and puts more weight on action. It is 2080, five years after the first game, and the Earth Defense Force has taken the nanotechnology of Axel Capek, Ultor's old head scientist. Sopot uses it to build the first supersoldiers, and you play Alias, a soldier fighting with the Red Faction resistance against him.

It came out on the PS2 in October 2002, months before any other console. The Geo-Mod engine is back, so explosives still punch holes in walls and floors. Players who loved the first game tend to recommend both.

Deus Ex first came out on Windows, and the PS2 port arrived in 2002 as Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. It mixes first-person shooting with stealth and role-playing, and most missions can be finished in several ways. You play JC Denton, a nano-augmented agent in 2052 whose first job is a terrorist attack on Liberty Island. It does not stay that simple.

Warren Spector directed it, from a design he first called "Troubleshooter". It has been ranked among the best games of all time, and the PS2 version got mixed reactions, though many praised how well it moved the game to a controller. On the PS2, players tend to recommend it alongside Half-Life, as one of the two PC classics worth playing on Sony's console.

Cold Winter opens in a Chinese prison. Andrew Sterling, a former SAS soldier working for MI6, has been caught and jailed, and MI6 has destroyed his files to avoid an international incident. He is rescued the night before his execution. The villain is John Grey, who joined the RAF as a young man and is voiced by Tom Baker, whose secret society wants a nuclear winter so the survivors will fear nuclear war forever.

It runs on the Karma physics engine, so bodies ragdoll and objects react when you hit them. It also has a dismemberment system like the one in Soldier of Fortune. It is a grim, mean little spy game, and players who dig past the big names keep recommending it, often together with Project Snowblind.

This Area 51 is a first-person shooter from Midway, named after and inspired by the 1995 arcade light gun game. You play Ethan Cole, a HAZMAT specialist sent into the base after a viral outbreak locks everyone inside. The virus mutates people, and below the facility there is an ancient alien colony. You fight with human and alien weapons along the way.

The cast is wild for a Midway shooter: David Duchovny, Marilyn Manson and Powers Boothe all lend their voices. The game takes the faked moon landing seriously, which is the right amount of seriously. The old arcade game even makes a brief appearance. Players who want more PS2 shooters after the famous ones get pointed to Area 51 again and again.

Urban Chaos is the first game from Rocksteady Studios, and the only one they made that is not based on DC Comics. You play Nick Mason of T-Zero, a new anti-terrorist team sent into a city that gangs have taken over. Your best friend is a riot shield. It soaks up any number of bullets, but you cannot shoot while you hold it up.

Firefighters and medics help you along, and you earn medals for headshots and for arresting enemies with a taser instead of killing them. Arrest a gang leader at the end of a level and the police learn the gang's next move, which unlocks more missions. It came out in June 2006 in North America. Players still bring it up when someone asks for a PS2 shooter they missed.

Frontline came out in North America on the PS2 on May 29, 2002, and on the GameCube and Xbox in November. It was EA Los Angeles' first Medal of Honor and the first in the series made without Steven Spielberg. You play Lieutenant Patterson, fighting across Europe into Nazi Germany, and the opening D-Day landing is one of the most famous levels on the console.

That level almost did not exist. It was added late in production, after the Allied Assault mission got such a good response. The team could only have about 8 to 12 AI soldiers on screen, so they found tricks to make the battle feel much bigger. Michael Giacchino wrote the score. For a lot of players it is the PlayStation Medal of Honor, and the one they name first.

Future Perfect is the third TimeSplitters, from Free Radical Design and published by EA Games. You play Sergeant Cortez, a time-traveling marine from the 25th century. The story is much sillier than a war shooter's and much better for it. At one point you get sent back a few minutes in time so you can team up with yourself against the villain.

The time loops are a running joke, and the robot R-110 survives one of them because, in the new timeline, he was never destroyed. Challenges and Arcade Leagues hand out awards, and the multiplayer is as busy as ever. Players who love it tend to put it right next to TimeSplitters 2, and they still recommend it by name.

Darkwatch is a vampire Western with steampunk guns. You play Jericho Cross, an outlaw who gets turned into a vampire and drafted into the Darkwatch, a secret society that hunts monsters in the American West. It came from High Moon Studios and was published by Capcom in the United States. There are horse-riding sections where you get unlimited ammo with the Redeemer, and they feel great.

Jennifer Hale and Rose McGowan voice the two women Jericho deals with. The co-op mode puts both players in the boots of plain Darkwatch Regulators, while the cutscenes still show Jericho, so the story stops making sense the moment a friend joins. A sequel was cancelled in 2007. Players who played it as kids still swear by it.

Red Faction was the first game on the Geo-Mod engine, which lets you destroy walls and floors in real time instead of only where the designers allow it. You fight on Mars, in the middle of a plague and a rebellion. The box promises 5 controllable vehicles and 15 weapons, and blowing a new tunnel through a mine wall still feels like cheating.

It did not reinvent the shooter, but the destruction and the rebel story made it feel like a step forward. Volition made it, and it came out in mid-2001. Players still name the first one on its own, no explanation needed, and more of them pick it than its sequel.

Killzone is the first game in the series and the first one Guerrilla made with Sony. It is the 24th century, and you play Jan Templar, an officer defending his home planet Vekta from the Helghast. You can control any of four soldiers, each with strengths and weaknesses of their own. Online, up to 16 players could fight across eight maps and six modes.

Sony's hype was huge, and the reception was mixed. Critics praised the visuals and the music but criticised the AI and the technical issues. One player called it "slow and difficult, but I found it quite enjoyable", which is about right. Players tend to recommend it in the same breath as Black.

Big Red One is a side story to Call of Duty 2, made by Treyarch for consoles. It follows the U.S. Army's 1st Infantry Division, from North Africa through Sicily and Omaha Beach to the Siegfried Line. Each chapter is framed with period footage, and Mark Hamill does the narration. He appeared in The Big Red One, the Sam Fuller film about the same division.

Several actors from Band of Brothers voice your squad, which tells you how seriously it takes itself. There is a multiplayer mode alongside the campaign. Players still list it among their favourite PS2 games, and it is the Call of Duty they pick most on the console.

Black was built around destruction. It was heavily promoted for its explosions and its sound, and you play Jack Kellar, a CIA black ops soldier telling his story to an interrogator. You can only carry two weapons at a time, so picking what to hold matters. Beat it on a difficulty above Easy and you unlock silver weapons with infinite bullets.

Critics loved the gameplay and the sound design, and complained that it was short and had no multiplayer. Criterion wanted a sequel, but creative differences with EA ended the plans, and some of the team later made Bodycount at Codemasters. Players call it a must-have.

TimeSplitters was an exclusive launch title for the PS2, and it came from the team behind GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark. The games are often called their spiritual successors. The heart of it is Arcade: up to four players and ten computer bots, alone or in teams, across six multiplayer modes.

It also has a level editor, where you build maps from pre-made tiles and set the lighting on each one. That was a lot to ask of a launch game, and it delivered. A fourth game was in the works until Free Radical closed in 2023. Players happily recommend any of the three, and this first one ranks right behind the top spot.

TimeSplitters 2 picks up the story in 2401, with humanity at war against the TimeSplitters. The aliens scatter time crystals across human history, and every level drops you into a different era to grab one and jump back through a time portal. The team pulled ideas from film genres from horror to science fiction, and each level plays like its own little movie.

The multiplayer is where it lives. You can change the weapons and the score to win, and even the music, and there are nearly 60 awards for what you did in a match. Critics praised the multiplayer and the graphics, and knocked the story and the lack of online play. Plenty of players answer the question with its name and nothing else, and players recommend it more than any other PS2 shooter.