This year has been wild for shooters, with bullets ricocheting all over the place and in different ways. So let’s give you a guide to Insider Gaming’s 2024 best shooter of the year, across FPS and TPS games.
Choosing the best shooter of 2024 boils down to several key aspects: Gunplay, Story, Sound Design, and how much we rage when we play it—maybe not the last one. It’s easy to whip up a few levels or maps, stick some enemies in it, and declare it a shooter, but at the core of the genre is so much more than this.
A shooter needs to hit all the senses: It should look good, and feel good, and the intense sound of whirring bullets should instill uneasiness due to realism and authenticity. Every game I’m about to discuss for Insider Gaming’s best shooter of 2024 award hits this in droves, but only one can be king of the hill.
Best Shooter of 2024 Winner — Call of Duty Black Ops 6
Black Ops 6 does what few CoD titles have done in recent years—innovates. Once you’ve dived (literally) into omnidirectional movement, it’s impossible to go back. Your Operator glides around with a buttery smoothness I’ve craved for so long and you quickly wonder where it’s been all this time.
The campaign is juicy and jaunty and features one of the most intense and exciting story missions in years. Zombies is back and better than ever, with a bundle of Wonder Weapons, Easter Eggs, and everything you could want from the undead merry-go-round of round-based Zombies. Finally, the multiplayer brings back the classic Prestige System we love so much, makes the Mastery Camo grind the simplest and most accessible it’s ever been, and outside of the usual bugs, it looks to be a great year ahead.
The sheer mention of a new Call of Duty title is enough to give many players the ick. However, Black Ops 6 shouldn’t as it’s a fantastic entry, and I would argue it rejuvenates the long-running first-person shooter series for the first time in a long time. CoD has been in the doldrums for several years now with the lackluster (and recycled) Modern Warfare 3 feeling low-effort, Modern Warfare 2 feeling like a solid entry, and nothing more, and a dependable but forgettable Vanguard.
Black Ops 6 is the best iteration since Black Ops Cold War—also made by Treyarch and Raven Software—and I stand by this. It’s not a perfect Call of Duty, and very few are, but it’s the complete package we’re looking for in a shooter, and Black Ops 6 deserves the best shooter of 2024 recognition.
Best Shooters of 2024 Nominations
We feel Black Ops 6 rightfully took the top spot. However, it might pique your interest to know who else we had up our sleeves for the best shooter of 2024 category. Everything is subjective at the end of the day, so let’s see if your favorite shooter was among our honorable mentions.
XDefiant
Ubisoft’s XDefiant started the year as one of the most hyped titles of 2024—dubbed the “Call of Duty killer.” It does a lot of what FPS fans are asking for: Gets rid of SBMM, actively listens to and acts on player feedback, tracks XP properly, and tries to avoid bugs. Fast forward to the end of the year, and suddenly years of development are up in smoke as Ubisoft announces XDefiant is shutting down.
Let’s take nothing away from XDefiant though. I loved my time with it, and it possesses some of the snappiest and most engaging shooting mechanics from a newcomer in years. However, it still doesn’t feel like a massive step away from CoD, and its hero abilities and microtransactions were too much for many in the community—possibly contributing to the FPS title’s quick downfall.
Stalker 2 Heart of Chornobyl
Stalker 2 Heart of Chornobyl is one of two single-player-focused nominations in this category. We head into the Zone to uncover the mystery behind anomalies, and artifacts, and do our best to survive. Ukraine’s radiation-plagued world is a magnificent, mysterious, and mortifying world, unfortunately, marred by questions about its quality.
If you read almost any Stalker 2 Heart of Chornobyl review, one theme is prevalent throughout—technical issues and bugs. Stalker 2 seems to be in a better state post-launch compared to its hampered debut; nevertheless, we need to stamp out giving games free passes with the allure of fixing them later. That being said, Stalker 2 is the perfect example of how shooters can be original, why single-player titles are needed, and not everything needs to be online multiplayer with live-service elements.
Helldivers 2
The biggest surprise hit of 2024 easily goes to Arrowhead Game Studios and Helldivers 2. A live-service shooter not immediately sentenced to purgatory like some of its other contemporaries around the same time—you were thinking Suicide Squad, I said it. You’re tasked with saving and protecting Super Earth using an array of weapons and fun Strategems that can either scurry a turret to your location or drop a devastating bomb and kill everyone.
Helldivers 2 was a huge success selling 12 million units in 12 weeks, but its reputation was soured somewhat by the PlayStation Account controversy. This isn’t why we didn’t give the win to Helldivers 2 though; it gets a ton of credit for its world-building and marketing, and rightly so. But the gameplay itself can get repetitive—even with friends—and the thrill of annihilating Automatons feels like it has an expiry date. Still, plenty to build on here for Helldivers 3, and it’s great to see a new multiplayer game smash it.
Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2
My goodness, I miss single-player-driven shooters. Like Stalker 2, the main emphasis for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is its story, dramatic events, riveting visuals, and epic battles. As an almighty Space Marine with unreal strength and combat abilities, you tussle with Tyranids throughout a several-hour-long campaign. This is one sticking point for Space Marine 2—its campaign length—but it has plenty of replayability, and I understand the comparison to Black Ops 6’s story length.
Space Marine 2 compares favorably to the over-the-shoulder third-person-shooter style of fan favorites like Gears of War. It’s somewhat of a niche by today’s standards, and I’m keen to see more of this. Overall, a minor lack of originality and a less-than-stellar multiplayer component edge Warhammer’s newest shooter out of the top spot.
There you have it, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is Insider Gaming’s best shooter of 2024. Do you disagree with us, and if so why? Strike up a conversation in the comments below!
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