Top 10 shooters of 2024 ranked

Take aim at the year’s best shooting games across PC and console

Cthulhu vs shotgun - who wins? / Byte Barrel

Shooting games continued their dominance in 2024. Big budget releases like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 recaptured the global zeitgeist while indie titles like Anger Foot and Selaco experimented on a smaller but no less exciting scale.

In this list we’re shouting out not just first-person experiences, but third-person ones too. If it launched in 2024 and has guns, then it qualifies for consideration. We draw the line at expansions to existing games (although we did include one, because it’s brilliant).

For more GOTY lists, make sure to check out our top 10 RPGs of 2024 - ranked.

Top 10 shooters of 2024 - ranked

1. Wild Bastards
2. Children of the Sun
3. Anger Foot  
4. Splatoon 3: Side Order
5. Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
6. Mullet Madjack 
7. Forgive Me Father 2
8. Selaco 
9. Helldivers 2
10. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Wild Bastards

Wild Bastards is the sequel to Void Bastards / Blue Manchu

Spiritual successor to 2020’s Void Bastards, Blue Manchu’s cel shaded strategy shooter combines rooting-tooting roguelike combat with in-depth crew management. 

Trading a sci-fi setting for the Wild West, this time you’ll touch down on frontier worlds and deploy your ragtag crew of outlaws. Success in missions rewards you with the means to upgrade them with special perks and bonuses, like cracking whips and booming dynamite. 

Children of the Sun

Make your bullet count in Children of the Sun / René Rother, Devolver

Essentially a puzzle shooter set in bullet time, you control the flight of a single projectile as you aim to take revenge on the sinister cult who wronged you. Every shot counts as you guide your round not only through the heads of enemies, but to the trigger points of traps and other interactive elements.

As levels get increasingly more complex, you’ll curve your bullet around obstacles and speed it up to smash armor, with multiple solutions encouraging creativity and experimentation. 

Anger Foot  

Kick your way to victory / Devolver Digital

The best way to describe Devolver Digital’s arcade shooter is unhinged - and not just because you can run around punting entire doors off their frames.

Your feet are your best weapon as you put the boot to a colorful cast of anthropomorphic enemies. Glass shatters and feathers fly while you violently rid the streets, sewers and high rises of animal gangsters.

Splatoon 3: Side Order

Take on the Spire of Order / Nintendo

Expansions go beyond the remit of this list, but allow us to make an exception for Side Order, the singleplayer addition to Nintendo’s popular 2022 multiplayer shooter. 

A wave-based survival mode, you’ll fight to restore  colour to Inkopolis Square by taking on the Spire of Order. Each floor of this ominous  tower randomizes the challenge and gets progressively harder as you work your way to the top. 

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

For the Emperor! / Saber Interactive

It’s not just shooting you’ll do in Saber Interactive’s third-person action game, but stabbing, slicing, and stomping too. Armed with chainswords, plasma pistols, and chunky power armor, no horde is too great for the might of the Emperor’s most devoted soldiers. 

Set in the 42nd Millennium, you’ll suit up and dive into a crusade to reclaim lost worlds from your enemies, both alone or in co-op. 

Mullet Madjack 

Chugging soda and shooting robots is the name of the game / HAMMER95

This anime-styled boomer shooter is like Cyberpunk 2077 genetically spliced with Duke Nukem. You play Jack Banhammer, a Peace Corps agent tasked with rescuing a VIP influencer from a skyscraper teeming with billionaire robots. 

The premise is simple: you only have ten seconds to navigate each floor. You can, however, extend that time by killing enemies, performing finishing moves, and chugging soda. Upon death, all upgrades reset. That includes akimbo soda, which lets you dual wield weapons, and plot armor, which slows time when your health’s low. 

Forgive Me Father 2

You don't always use firearms in Forgive Me Father 2 / Byte Barrel

Indie shooters were clearly on the ascendency this year, with Byte Barrel’s cosmic horror-enthused release one of the prime picks. 

Here you’ll take on Lovecraftian nasties in efforts to restore your shattered sanity. The hand-drawn art style is distinct, as are the unearthly abilities that see you embrace your rising madness and enter trance-like states to boost your speed, accuracy, and power.

Selaco 

Sparks fly and glass shatters in Selaco / Altered Orbit Studios

If you’ve a soft spot for genre classics, Selaco is for you. Set on the space station Selaco, you’ll fight to safeguard the final refuge of Earth’s last survivors.

Where dramatic shootouts recall FEAR in their destruction, seeing bullets reduce once pristine surroundings to rubble, exploration gives a nod to Half-Life in casting you as a company employee fending off armed invaders on the worst day of their professional life. Surely a promotion is soon to follow. 

Helldivers 2

This is no ordinary bug hunt / Arrowhead Game Studios

Sure, it’s not an FPS, but you can’t deny there’s a whole lot of shooting. In fact, if we’re going purely by bullets-per-second, this would be number one. There’s barely time to breathe as you fend off wave after wave of fiendish alien threats with an assortment of futuristic weaponry.

It’s the ebb and flow of each encounter that elevates Helldivers 2. Running down to your last remaining rounds as the walls close in before managing to call in a devastating airstrike that levels the playing field then extracting to safety is a feeling like no other.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

Russell Adler in full flow / Activision

The biggest shooter of the year by far, but there’s more to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 than a monstrous budget. Comprised of three core modes - campaign, zombies, multiplayer - any one of them is worth the price of admission.

Once you’re done with the rollercoaster ride of singleplayer drawing inspiration from the likes of Mission: Impossible and GoldenEye 007 you’ve got an almost roguelike zombies offering stuffed with secrets. The multiplayer, though, will keep you going all year with its finely balanced maps, responsive gunplay, and well-paced grind.