The most important shooters of 2024: These upcoming games belong on your action wish list

(Release: between October and December 2024 – Platform: PC)

Release: between October and November 2024 – Platform: unknown)

(Release: 2024 – Platform: PC)

(Release: probably 2024 – Platform: PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S)

When former Battlefield developers join forces to form a new studio and announce two new projects, shooter fans sit up and take notice! Swedish Embark Studios did just that: in addition to the arena shooter The Finals, they unveiled the extraction shooter Arc Raiders in 2021

In the free2play shooter, we have to fight for survival and valuable equipment as raiders on a post-apocalyptic Earth, while hostile machine creatures from space called Arc attack. Arc Raiders mixes PvE, PvP, crafting and survival in an open world with dynamic weather and day/night changes.

Exoborne

Extraction shooters seem to be the next big thing in the genre after the big battle royale trend. With Exoborne, another representative was announced at the Game Awards 2023 – this time against a post-apocalyptic backdrop full of the forces of nature. And with exosuits!

We keep upgrading our high-tech combat suit with the help of captured crafting materials – as long as we stay alive, of course. Because other players are out to get us on the large open-world map, AI opponents from various factions are also targeting us and, in the worst-case scenario, a tornado or lightning storm could also appear. With this twist, Exoborne could literally take the shooter world by storm!

Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2

Ultramarines, sharpen your blessed chainswords, in Space Marine 2 it’s the xenos at your throat – to the glory of the Emperor! Ahem. Sorry. You only understand the station? Well then, in less Warhammer-speak: More than 10 years after the first part, you’re back in action as a heavily armored space warrior against hordes of aliens

And the atmosphere is great (even without previous knowledge of Warhammer): Hundreds of enemies storm towards us at the same time in the huge battles, while artillery thunders in the background. We slaughter our way through spaceship corridors, dense jungles and devastated cities alone or in co-op.

The First Descendant

Thanks to Unreal Engine 5, The First Descendant deserves a place in our list of prospects for its magnificent graphics alone! Together with four friends in co-op, we set off as sci-fi super warriors and complete story missions, side quests and massive boss battles to protect our home world.

The First Descendant focuses on the hunt for fresh loot, which we can use to further improve our hero and adapt or refine our fighting style so that we can master the tough world missions at some point in the endgame. Without teamwork, however, nothing is possible in this mix of Anthem, Warframe and Destiny

Judas

Ken Levine, the creative mind behind Bioshock, is hatching a new story shooter with his studio Ghost Story Games: Judas puts us not in a city underwater or high in the sky, but on board a decaying spaceship.

There, everything seems to have fallen apart at the seams: In utter chaos, our hero encounters grotesque figures, raving robots and out-of-control experiments. As in Bioshock, we upgrade our body with upgrades to use special abilities

Den of Wolves

The makers of Payday are back! Not the ones from Payday 3, but from the first two parts. They are now called 10 Chambers and recently released GTFO, a damn intense co-op shooter

With Den of Wolves the team wants to return to the heist genre – but not in the present day, but in a dark cyberpunk world. Overpowering mega-corporations, hacking and AI therefore play a central role.

We don’t yet know how it will all play out in the end. But one thing is certain: teamwork will be the difference between victory and defeat and (as in Payday) we have the choice between action and stealth in our cyber heists.

Unrecord

It’s the shooter that looks almost too realistic: With its first trailer, Unrecord Unrecord in April 2023 triggers a debate about photorealism and how far games should go with it. With its bodycam perspective and a few tricks in Unreal Engine 5, Unrecord looks uncannily real.

But is that even good? What is certain is that Unrecord experienced a real hype and has since landed on thousands and thousands of Steam wish lists. The story revolves around a police officer who has to solve a complex case – according to the developer, mainly with brains, but as you can see also with force of arms!

Killing Floor 3

Ok, the series may not be quite as well known as Left 4 Dead. But Killing Floor has nevertheless built up a huge and loyal fan base over the years, who, even many years after its release, still throw themselves into the co-op carnage and expertly dismember zombies (called zeds here) in all shapes and sizes

The anticipation for Killing Floor 3 is correspondingly high, and it landed on many Steam wish lists shortly after its announcement. The trailer already hints that the Zeds have been massively upgraded for part 3 and transformed into a kind of undead cyborg army

Helldivers 2

Helldivers 2 comes from the studio behind Magicka and could easily pass for a Starship Troopers shooter! As soldiers of Super Earth (no, not a joke), you land on alien worlds to spread democracy. And of course this works best with a plasma rifle and rocket launcher

With an exaggerated amount of pathos and biting humor, we heat up alien bugs and other goop in co-op, with teamwork being a top priority: If you accidentally place your orbital strike in the wrong place, you’ll quickly incinerate all your comrades

Anger Foot

The developers of Broforce want to open the door to first-person shooters in 2024 with Anger Foot . And by entering the door, we are already looking at exactly the right image: Similar to Hotline Miami, we storm rooms full of enemies at lightning speed and shoot or kick everything and everyone to bits in seconds with our power feet. A powerful beat booms out of the speakers!

The game world and the design of the enemies can probably best be summarized as “cartoon on drugs”. But no matter how crazy it gets, it’s the flow that counts. And it’s already great. Don’t you think? There’s already a (Demo for download) on Steam.

Selaco

It’s hard to believe that Selaco is based on the Doom engine and thus on technology from the 90s. Because the single-player shooter has an amazingly clever enemy AI and dynamically destructible environments and is strikingly reminiscent of good old F.E.A.R. (only with less horror and more sci-fi).

Thanks to voxel technology, furniture, windows and even enemies fly apart spectacularly when fired upon – but the enemies are anything but hollow cannon fodder: they take cover, talk to each other and launch clever flanking attacks! The story of Selaco revolves around an underground bunker where we uncover a conspiracy after the fall of the Earth

That was our preview of the most important shooters of 2024! But of course that’s just the tip of the iceberg: many more shooters will be released over the course of the year. Have we forgotten your favorite candidate or a special insider tip? We’d love to hear your feedback, so feel free to write your personal shooter highlights for 2024 in the comments below