Best Shooter Games on the PS1

The PlayStation was never a shooter machine. There are 4 here worth knowing — Resident Evil 2, Tomb Raider, Dino Crisis among them — and if the genre is what you are after, another console is the better answer.

The PS1 and Shooter Games

The console that made 3D normal and made discs mandatory. Full soundtracks, voice acting and pre-rendered backdrops gave a generation of studios room to invent genres we still play.

This is not one of its strengths. Precision. Early 3D controls, wobbling textures and a camera that nobody had solved yet make a lot of this library harder to return to than the 2D generation before it.

Filtering to shooter means you want the guns to be the answer. It is the right filter when what you liked was the feedback — the sound, the recoil, the way enemies react.

The Shooter Games Worth Playing

  1. 1. Resident Evil 2

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  2. 2. Tomb Raider

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  3. 3. Dino Crisis

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

  4. 4. Time Crisis

    Follow the link for hand-written recommendations if you want more like it.

What Makes a Good Shooter Game

Moment-to-moment feel, and the shortest distance between picking a game up and enjoying it.

Variety. Shooters commit hard to one loop, and the ones that try to be something else usually do the something else badly.

Where This Genre Is Better Served

Saying a console is weak at something is more useful than padding a list. If shooter is what you actually want, these machines are built for it:

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best shooter game on the PS1?

Resident Evil 2 is the usual first answer, and there are 4 in the library we cover.

Was the PS1 good at shooter games?

Not especially. The N64, Genesis, Saturn are better answers for this genre.

What makes a shooter feel good?

How the guns sound and how enemies react to being hit. A shooter with mediocre levels and superb weapon feedback is more fun than the reverse, every time.

Do these need to be played online?

Each pick says. Several of the best shooters ever made are single-player campaigns, and a few of the co-op ones are genuinely worse with bots.

How is this list put together?

From the games this site covers on the PlayStation, matched against hand-mapped gameplay categories rather than a storefront's genre tag. A page only exists where there are at least four, which is why some console and genre combinations have no page at all.

Shooter Games on Other Consoles

More From the PS1

Or browse the whole PlayStation library.