The 2000s — or the noughties, if you're British — were a pivotal era for first-person shooters (and some third-person shooters, too). The decade prior had genre-defining games such as Doom, Quake, and Half-Life that all introduced mechanics still seen today. While many games after the turn of the millennium tried to do something similar, there were also plenty that seemed impressive at the time… but absolutely do not hold up today, for one reason or another.

Here are seven shooters from the 2000s that have, unfortunately, aged like milk, listed in chronological order of release date.

1 Call of Duty (2003)

Call of Duty is the biggest, most successful, and most consistent FPS series of all time, having released yearly entries ever since 2005. However, while the series' first entry, Call of Duty, was great at the time and offered healthy competition to the established Medal of Honor series, looking back, it's not quite the game it once was.

Part of that is to be expected. 23 years on, is anyone surprised future Call of Duty games did it better? However, you only have to look two years on to find an example: Call of Duty 2 was superior in every single way. Even to this day, it’s considered one of the best entries in the series, especially the multiplayer mode. If you fancy cherry-picking some older Call of Duty games to play in 2026 to understand what the series is all about, you can safely start with the second.

2 BlackSite: Area 51 (2007)

Did you know that legendary game designer Harvey Smith, of Dishonored and Prey fame, was the executive creative director on a 2007 FPS where the player has to mow down hordes of aliens? It's called BlackSite: Area 51. While it introduced some interesting concepts, such as the ability to command your two AI squadmates, the contextual button presses didn't always work.

Looking back, it also has absolutely woeful enemy AI, and in a year that also saw Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Halo 3, and Half-Life 2: Episode Two, it's baffling that BlackSite: Area 51 got any attention whatsoever. For some reason, there was also a film in the works from Paramount Pictures, although it appears to be long dead now, with no updates since 2009.

3 Haze (2008)

Haze was one of PlayStation's attempts to create a competitor for Xbox's Halo. It had the looks: a soldier with a striking yellow helmet and a crack in the metal where his eye is adorned the cover, but despite the pre-release hype, it didn't quite deliver. Which, given developer Free Radical Design's history with the TimeSplitters series, was a surprise.

The problem with Haze wasn't that it was terrible, but as we've seen with games such as No Man's Sky, Fallout 76, and Cyberpunk 2077, there was simply no way it could live up to such sky-high expectations. Halo 3 was superior in every way, but even on the PS3, it had to contend with Call of Duty, Battlefield, Rainbow Six, Medal of Honor, Crysis… the list goes on. Haze was the sort of game you thought kicked ass when you were a kid, but as you got older, you realized just how subpar it is.

4 Fallout 3 (2008)

Alright, hear me out on this one: Fallout 3 is a phenomenal video game. It was my first Fallout game, and the reason why the series is now one of my all-time favorites. However, despite its fantastic quest design and engrossing world, it is not a good shooter. Playing Fallout 3 without using VATS (the auto-targeting system that bypasses needing to manually shoot enemies) is akin to torture.

For a game so focused on ranged combat, you can't even aim down the sights of your weapon. That functionality wasn't introduced until Fallout New Vegas, two years later. However, Fallout 4 amended this, to the point where that game is considered more of an open-world shooter than a true RPG. Bethesda has confirmed that remakes of both Fallout 3 and New Vegas are in the works, and if they only fix one thing, please, god, please let it be the shooting mechanics.

5 007: Quantum of Solace (2008)

There have been numerous James Bond (or 007) games over the years, with the most iconic definitely being 1997's GoldenEye 007, which countless millennials consider to be one of the most nostalgic multiplayer shooters. 007 First Light is the most recent, and was a return to form for the legendary British spy. However, in the 29-year interim, there were plenty of other Bond games, most of which could have featured on this list.

We've opted for 2008's Quantum of Solace as the one that aged most like milk. This is a Treyarch-developed game, aka the same studio behind approximately half of the Call of Duty series. In fact, Quantum of Solace released just a week and a half before Call of Duty: World at War, but the two games were met with vastly different receptions. Perhaps the Bond game's biggest crime is its heavy focus on weapons-based combat, when Bond himself is more geared towards gadgets, puzzle solving, and melee fights.

6 Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising (2009)

I remember being so excited to play Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising back in the day. After spending a few years playing Call of Duty to death, I couldn't wait to dive into a more realistic, hardcore shooter. Surely my experience topping the leaderboard over and over again on Modern Warfare would translate, right?

I was, of course, very wrong. But Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising wasn't just a bad game because of that. Unfortunately, it was incredibly slow-paced and very tactical, and while that was unique and novel back in the day, an experience like that is much more common and done far better today in games such as ARMA 3 and Insurgency: Sandstorm. It was an ambitious game, but isn't worth your time in 2026.

7 Duke Nukem Forever (2011)

Finally, we have a game that is just pushing the boundaries a little given its release date, but since it spent a whopping 14 years in development, I think it's fair to include it here. Duke Nukem Forever is another example of a game that was incredibly disappointing upon release despite all of its pre-launch hype. After all, that's what 14 years in development hell will do to a game.

Duke Nukem Forever had some memorable moments, but they were let down by tasteless jokes, linear levels that detracted from the light-hearted nature of the game, and far too many platforming sequences. The shooting was perfectly serviceable, but it was an underwhelming way for the duke to go out, after three much stronger main series entries before it.