What can be said about Bioshock that hasn’t already been said? The city of Rapture is one of the most complete and well-thought-out gaming worlds of all time and was brimming with some of the most intriguing madmen that gaming had ever saw. The metro tunnels will forever be burned into my memory, and the moments of both natural and supper natural terror that peppered the campaign were a welcome addition in a genre has been stagnating. The game was great, but had a few glaring technical issues, most of which were wiped out with Metro: Last Light, a stirring tale of redemption and an entire world that served as an allegory for both mankind’s ability to destroy, but also to persevere and rebuild. Metro: 2033 showed us that the drab-from-the-start post-apocalyptic wastelands could have far more character to them than we previously thought. The puzzles sprinkled throughout the campaign also harkened back to a day where shooters were made up of mare than pretty shooting galleries. However, fighting aliens aboard their mother ship as a Cherokee Indian while navigating through portals and walking on ceilings helped this game stand apart from the rest of the shooter crowd. I’m not so much talking about the shooting aspect – that was pretty straightforward. Prey was an early example of the mountain of innovation that this generation brought to the table.

No co-op-specific campaigns were considered for this list.

Given that this generation was also all about genre-bending, games with any amount of shooting were put on the list, so expect to see games from different genres.

Both third and first person perspectives were considered.

Here are the ground rules that determined titles that I put on this list: In commemoration of the games that stuck to tradition and made some great shooter campaigns, here are 25 that really stuck out this generation. It has just been cast into the shadow of the monolith that is the online world. This reversed line of thought hasn’t disappeared, by any means. The online portions of a game were looked at almost as bonus content to a fleshed-out story mode. Before this age of The Matrix, however, things were quite the other way around. Looking back, I think that this generation of gaming will be defined by social networks, hash tags, downloadable content, and sweeping multiplayer suites.

Best 3rd person shooters ps3