Top 10 FPS Pc games 2013

1. Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2

The original game was a right old mess and yet defied critics, QA testers and any sense of worldly justice with some two-million plus sales. Its sequel promises to rectify the mistakes, ditch its more gung-ho shooter sections and return to authentically stealthy sniping action. The CryEngine 3 makes it all look rather spiffy, and will hopefully curtail the number of instances when the player tumbles through the floor into infinity.
"A dumb shooter that feels like a rubbish stealth section dragged out across the length of an entire game." Turns out Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 wasn't much cop after all.



2. Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock was set in an underwater objectivist utopia gone awry and its successor is not so much a sequel as a funhouse mirror; transporting the action to an alternate universe, another time - 1912 - and yet another failed experiment in utopianism. This time set in a flying city called Columbia, Bioshock’s art deco gives way to neo-classical sobriety - built as a testament to American exceptionalism, but now shredded by vying factions. You play as Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton agent, dispatched to Columbia to retrieve a girl with incredible powers - who then remains your near-constant companion, establishing the emotional heart to the game and expanding your tactical options when faced with a horde of crazed Columbian citizens.

3. Crysis 3

The first Crysis sent the player sneaking, dashing and leaping through extremely open, dense, jungle settings, while the second trapped you in a gorgeously drawn but lamentably trammelled New York - necessarily restricted so the game could fit onto those dinky little consoles. In its third supersoldiers-vs-aliens outing, Crytek attempts to meld the two, unleashing you in a New York some years after its reclamation by nature. Its certainly a showcase for the tech beneath, and Crysis has always offered an interesting array of combat options with the protagonist’s nanosuit allowing you to switch between super strength, speed and stealth. 


4. Day Z Standalone

Our mod of the year in 2012 is getting a proper standalone release in 2013. You play a survivor on a huge open island populated by countless zombies and dozens of other players. Food, ammo and medical supplies are scarce, and the people you meet are as likely to kill you for supplies as help you. The mod was wonderfully tense, but unstable servers could mean hours of frustration for those trying to log on. If the standalone release can spruce up the interface and add a much-needed bout of polish, this could be sensational.




5. Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm

Developed as a collaboration between Tripwire Interactive and the Red Orchestra 2 modding community, Rising Storm is a total conversion that moves the action from Stalingrad to the Pacific theatre. Previous games have had slightly shaky singleplayer campaigns, but proved their worth online, with single-shot death, shellshock and clumsy weaponry conjuring a tremendous sense of oppression and panic.





6. Dead Island: Riptide

Riptide follows on directly from the events of the original game - an openworld shooter RPG set in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse on a tropical island. Though seemingly rescued at the end of the last game, a tsunami sets the survivors back at square one, and so begins again the process of collecting resources and aiding fellow non-zoms in distress. Hopefully building upon their existing work will allow the dev to focus on squashing some of the game-wrecking bugs players encountered first time round.




7. Metro: Last Light

Publisher THQ’s money troubles may have done a great service to Metro: Last Light - its constant discounts and Steam firesales have meant that the game’s excellent predecessor, subterranean supernatural shooter Metro 2033, has ended up in many more hands than it might have otherwise and whet appetites for the sequel. Set in the labyrinthine tunnels beneath Moscow - which connect its nuclear-shielded subway system with cold-war-era military bunkers and underground rivers - Metro told a linear tale of survival following a man-made apocalypse.



8. Arma 3

There’s over 320 square kilometres of military sandbox in this latest instalment in the super-realistic military shooter series, now relocating the conflict to a near-future mediterranean. Alas, two of the principal developers of the game were arrested for spying while on holiday in Greece - on the very island on which the game’s environment is based. Production has slowed while Bohemia Interactive petitions the Greek authorities to see sense.





9. Warface

One of the most exuberantly silly names for a shooter it might be, but its doing serious business: Warface already has millions of players in Russia, with the free-to-play multiplayer shooter coming to Western shores as soon as they’ve settled on a regionally-appropriate business model and infrastructure. Though it looks like grimly realistic shooter fare, this is actually a giddily fast-paced team-shooter with outlandish perks and buffs





10. Shootmania Storm

Supporting the Trackmania-style framework of creative tools and online tournaments, Shootmania is a sort of pro-player shooter sandbox, allowing you to build levels, tweak game variables to your satisfaction, organise competitive matches and livestream it all from within the game itself. Being so malleable means it lacks a potent aesthetic of its own, however.