We love shooter games. While it might sometimes make us feel a little guilty, there’s nothing quite like unloading a magazine to wash away the stress of a day’s work. The PlayStation 5 has been out for a while now, and it’s got its fair share of them to pick from now.
This list narrows things down to the best of the best, so that you can pick up your next shooter for the PS5 in confidence that you’ll be getting a really great game to sink into, whether it’s a multiplayer affair or a single-player romp.
Our other PS5 game buyer’s guides
• Best games overall• Best role-playing games (RPGs)• Best racing games• Best indie games
What are the best shooters for PS5?
DeathloopResident Evil VillageReturnalRatchet & Clank: Rift ApartSniper Elite 5Call of Duty WarzoneRainbow Six SiegeDoom EternalMetro ExodusMetal: Hellsinger
Deathloop
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Deathloop is a marvellous puzzle wrapped up in a great shooter – from the minds at Arkane comes a new trip entirely. You wake up in a time-loop, stuck on an island full of murderous psychopaths that you need to fight your way off.
Of course, it’s much less simple than that and you’ll find yourself zipping around the island figuring out clues to which of your key targets will end up where throughout the day, so that you can piece together a plan to actually escape. There’s nothing else quite like this out there.
Deathloop review: A mesmerising wrinkle in time
Resident Evil Village
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A game that fully commits to its increasingly deranged tone as things go along, Village just gets wilder and wilder. At times you’ll be without weapons as you creep away from sights to horrific to name, but other sequences are just about as action-packed as the series has ever been.
Exploring a rural village and its surrounding castle, swamp, factory and more offers up a great variety of locations in which to get genuinely frightened, but it’s a solid consolation that you’ll have a fairly expansive and increasingly powerful array of weapons to help you out along the way.
Resident Evil Village review: A gory crescendo
Returnal
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From a developer that just keeps ascending, Returnal isn’t a game that welcomes dilettantes – you’re going to have to stick with it if you want to learn its systems and make it through a tough run to see the ending.
Another time-loop game, this time you’re tasked with navigating a hostile alien world while piecing together your missing memory to figure out what’s going on. As you do so you’ll collect weapons and buffs to help you out, but also face down a series of extremely challenging bosses without much of a safety net.
Returnal review: An incredible PS5 blast from almost nowhere
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
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We’re stretching the definition of a shooter here, but you will spend a LOT of your time in Rift Apart shooting weapons, even if some of them are closer to gardening tools than they are to guns. This gorgeous action-platformer has a huge array of fun armaments to try out.
It sees Ratchet and his robotic buddy accidentally open a multi-dimensional portal rift that brings a whole bunch of baddies with it, and the planet-swapping action looks just beautiful on the PS5 with instant load-times helping to build some truly amazing set-piece moments.
Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart review: Peak PlayStation 5
Sniper Elite 5
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The latest Sniper Elite game is the biggest and best entry in the series yet, taking you to expansive levels that have multiple sections to work through stealthily or loudly, depending on your preference and objectives. The sniping is as satisfying as ever, too – that is to say, it’s still the best in any game.
The story is another bit of fluff and the game could look fancier, but it’s a brilliant sandbox that now features PvP multiplayer for you to test your skills in, so we think it’s one that people will find more rewarding than they might expect.
Sniper Elite 5 review: Another sure-fire hit
Call of Duty: Warzone
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Warzone is completely free to play, totally compelling and can be enormously frustrating – because it’s so addictive. We’ve sunk hundreds of hours into its battle royale offering, which is the most rewarding balance of risk and reward in the genre, in our opinion.
It’s best played with a squad of friends, but, even on your own, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a game that offers more tension than Warzone when it comes down to a final circle scenario and you know that your next move could win you the match or see you come up agonisingly short.
Call of Duty Warzone Pacific tips and tricks: Essential hints to dominate the COD battle royale
Rainbow Six Siege
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If you fancy a more slow-paced and thorough approach to a multiplayer shooter, then the tight maps and team tactics of Siege are just as good as ever on the PS5, except now crisper and in higher resolution than before thanks to a full next-gen version.
It takes a little while to learn the ropes and get used to its gunplay, but there’s a reason Siege still has a huge community and new updates coming years after its release – it’s a finely-tuned success of a shooter.
Rainbow Six Siege review: Thoroughly infectious strategy shooter
Doom Eternal
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The first modern Doom game was a superb return for a franchise that had been dormant for too long, and Doom Eternal expanded on it in a spectacular fashion more recently, with new weapons and a host of mechanics to get to grips with.
A next-gen patch means that you can play it at smoother frame rates and higher resolutions, perfect for what is actually a really pretty game (or, at least, a high-fidelity one). You’ll be slicing and shooting your way through a horde of demons in no time.
Doom Eternal review: Gory, gory, hallelujah
Metro Exodus
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Metro Exodus is a really excellent shooter that’s much improved by its move onto next-gen hardware, looking even better and running more reliably for a smoother experience as you play it through. You’ll go on a journey to more diverse locations than the series has ever managed before.
Along the way, you’ll still get your fair share of creepy combat encounters, but huge open hub areas also let you explore at your own pace and root out supplies methodically to help your trainload of friends escape to a new fate.
Metro Exodus review: All aboard the superb single-player shooter
Metal: Hellsinger
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It’s always nice to play a shooter that feels pretty much completely different from anything else on the market – that’s Metal: Hellsinger, which is a rhythm shooter. Shooting in time to the soundtrack’s beat is essential, upping your score and bonus.
It looks great, has a rip-roaring soundtrack and doesn’t take too long to beat for the first time, all of which we love. It’s definitely worth checking out if you want a shooter that feels properly fresh.