A tactical shooter is a sub-genre of first- and third-person shooters, associated with using strategy, planning, and tactics in gameplay, as well as the realistic simulations of ballistics, firearm mechanics, physics, stamina, and low time to kill. Dating back to strategy games from the late 1980s, the genre first rose to prominence in the late 1990s with the releases of several well-received tactical shooters. The popularity of the genre saw a decline in the late 2000s as fast-paced "arcade"-like action shooters rose to prominence, it has seen a revitalization since the mid-2010s with the successful releases of several modern tactical shooters.
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed and published by LucasArts for Windows. It is the sequel to 1995's Star Wars: Dark Forces, and the second installment in the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series. The story, set in the fictional Star Wars expanded universe one year after the film Return of the Jedi, follows returning protagonist Kyle Katarn, a mercenary working for the New Republic, who discovers his connection to the Force and "The Valley of the Jedi", an ancient source of power. With his father having been murdered years prior by the Dark Jedi Jerec and his followers over the Valley's location, Katarn embarks on a quest to confront his father's killers and find the Valley before they do.
Project-X is a horizontally scrolling shooter for the Amiga released in 1992. It was developed and published by Team17. The game resembles Konami's side-scrolling shooter games such as Gradius, Salamander and Parodius. It was ported to MS-DOS.
Paradroid is a Commodore 64 computer game written by Andrew Braybrook and published by Hewson Consultants in 1985. It is a shoot 'em up with puzzle elements and was critically praised at release. The objective is to clear a fleet of spaceships of hostile robots by destroying them or taking them over via a mini-game. It was later remade as Paradroid 90 for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST home computers and as Paradroid 2000 for the Acorn Archimedes. There exist several fan-made remakes for modern PCs. In 2004 the Commodore 64 version was re-released as a built-in game on the C64 Direct-to-TV, and in 2008 for the Wii Virtual Console in Europe.
Star Wars: Republic Commando is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released for the Xbox and Microsoft Windows in March 2005. Set in the Star Wars Legends expanded universe, the game revolves around Delta Squad, a special ops unit within the Galactic Republic's Clone Army consisting of four genetically-enhanced clone troopers, referred to as "Clone Commandos." Throughout the single-player campaign, players assume the role of the squad's leader, RC-1138 ("Boss"), and complete various missions during the Clone Wars. Players can also indirectly control the actions of their squadmates RC-1262 ("Scorch"), RC-1140 ("Fixer"), and RC-1207 ("Sev") by issuing different commands, which allow for certain situations to be approached in multiple ways.
Metal Arms: Glitch in the System is a third-person shooter action-adventure video game, developed by American team Swingin' Ape Studios, published by Vivendi Universal Games and their subsidiary Sierra Entertainment and released in 2003. The game follows a robot named Glitch as he joins forces with the Droids in their fight against General Corrosive and his Milbots.
Captive is a science fiction role-playing video game released by Mindscape in 1990. In the style of Dungeon Master, it uses pseudo-3D realtime graphics from a first-person perspective. It was released for Amiga, Atari ST, and, in 1992, MS-DOS.
Rasterscan is a video game published in 1987 by Mastertronic for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and MSX. It was written by Binary Design based in Parsonage Gardens, Manchester with the C64 version programmed by Phillip Allsopp.
Star Wars Episode I: Obi-Wan's Adventures is a video game that chronicles the events of the film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace from the character Obi-Wan Kenobi's perspective. It is the result of an agreement made in 2000 between the two video game publishers LucasArts and THQ. The agreement allows THQ to turn LucasArts licenses into games for the hand held console Game Boy Color, the first being Obi-Wan's Adventures. THQ published the game and HotGen developed it. It was released on December 6, 2000.
Star Wars: DroidWorks is a 1998 edutainment computer game and the premiere title from LucasArts subsidiary Lucas Learning. It uses the same engine as LucasArts' previous title Star Wars: Jedi Knight. The creators aimed to create a game that would be both appealing and nonviolent. The game's original release date was moved up by months, which resulted in the development team cutting some planned game features.
Machine Hunter is a top-down shooter game developed by Eurocom Entertainment Software, published by MGM Interactive and distributed in Europe by Eidos Interactive. It was developed and released simultaneously in 1997 for Windows 95 and PlayStation console. It has been described as a clone of the 1995 game Loaded, in that it uses an overhead perspective, extensive lighting effects, and over-the-top bloodshed.
Quazatron is an action game developed by Graftgold, and released in 1986 by Hewson Consultants. It was designed by Steve Turner for the ZX Spectrum.
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
Zombie Gunship is a first-person shooter mobile game with a 3D thermal imaging display, where the player is a gunner who fires at zombies from a heavily armed AC-130 ground attack aircraft circling various user-selected maps. The mobile game was developed by Limbic Software and released July 21, 2011 for Apple’s iOS, September 19, 2013 for Android on the Google Play Store, and October 8, 2013 on Amazon.
Droid Assault is a top-down scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Puppy Games and released on May 2, 2008 for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
World War Z is a first-person shooter zombie apocalypse mobile game it was developed by Phosphor Games and published by Paramount Digital Entertainment. The game was released on May 30, 2013, prior to release of the feature movie of the same name, which was directed by Marc Forster and starred Brad Pitt.
War Robots is a mobile app game developed and published by the game developer Pixonic. It is a third-person shooter with real-time PvP battles in Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) mode. Players operate BattleTech-like robots on a live battlefield. It was first released on iOS in 2014 and was released to Android the following year.
ChromaGun is a first-person shooter puzzle video game developed by Pixel Maniacs, an independent game studio from Germany.
AirAttack 2 is a 2015 action arcade and shoot 'em up video game developed by Art In Games for iOS, Android and OSX. It is a sequel to the 2010 game AirAttack.
Knighthood is a free-to-play, turn-based strategy game developed by Midoki and currently published by Miniclip, previously Phoenix Games and King, in which the player controls a warrior, fighting through levels to gain armour, weapons and other RPG style loot. Knighthood was globally released on February 26, 2020 and is still currently being updated, and has over 5 million downloads on Google Play as of 2023.
