First-Person Shooters That Make You Seasick

Ranked by how fast you need to stare at a fixed point on the wall.

Entries
10
Category
Games
Updated
  1. An old CRT television split into four quadrants of blurry gray corridors, four gray controllers on the carpet in front of it.

    10. GoldenEye 007

    Rare / Nintendo · 1997

    Eight million copies, four players, each staring at a quarter of a TV at a frame rate EGM called choppy and sluggish. Your sense of balance never stood a chance. Neither did whoever picked Oddjob.

  2. A rocket launcher and a pair of springs on a brown stone platform, scorch marks spiraling upward on the wall.

    09. Quake

    id Software · 1996

    Players discovered that bunny hopping and strafe-jumping made you faster and rocket jumping made you airborne, so the entire community spent a decade moving like a pinball. The design document did not ask for that. The design document lost.

  3. A neon-lit cyberpunk wall with a katana lodged in it, a grappling line stretching into the dark.

    08. Ghostrunner

    One More Level / 505 Games · 2020

    A cyberpunk sprint of dashing, wall-running, grappling and sliding where you and every enemy die in one hit. Every death is a reset, and you will reset hundreds of times. It is mostly a sword game, but the floor spins just as hard.

  4. A steel rail looping through clouds between floating buildings, a hook-shaped skyhook dangling from it.

    07. BioShock Infinite

    Irrational Games / 2K · 2013

    A floating steampunk city crossed by Sky-Line rails you ride at speed with a hook, hopping between tracks and firing one-handed. It sold over 11 million copies. A rollercoaster where you also have to aim is not a feature anyone asked for at Six Flags.

  5. A wall covered in long skid marks of boot prints running horizontally across it, a jet pack lying on the ground below.

    06. Titanfall 2

    Respawn Entertainment / EA · 2016

    Chained wall-runs, slides and double jumps, plus Effect and Cause, a level where you flip between past and present mid-jump. Reviewers loved it; EA released it between Battlefield 1 and a Call of Duty. Wall-running is easier than surviving that release window.

  6. A double-barreled shotgun with a chain hook attached, lying on a red-lit metal floor beside a set of monkey bars.

    05. Doom Eternal

    id Software / Bethesda · 2020

    Double jumps, air dashes in any direction, monkey bars, and a shotgun with a grappling hook that flings you at demons. The game requires you to never stop moving. Your lunch makes a different request.

  7. A rooftop at sunset in a ruined city, a rope line strung between buildings, an empty water tower below.

    04. Dying Light

    Techland · 2015

    Parkour across a zombie city with the parkour pioneer David Belle consulting. Some playtesters got motion sickness, so Techland reworked animations and the HUD. It went on to sell 20 million copies. The zombies, notably, do not get sick.

  8. A hallway where gravity has flipped, furniture bolted to the ceiling and a glowing circular portal opening in the wall.

    03. Prey

    Human Head Studios / 3D Realms · 2006

    Walk up walls, across ceilings and through portals while gravity flips by the room. Development started in 1995 and took over a decade, which is about how long it takes your inner ear to forgive it. A million copies sold in two months anyway.

  9. Bright white rooftops under a blue sky, a red crane and red pipes marking a path across them, a single small dot hovering in midair.

    02. Mirror's Edge

    DICE / EA · 2008

    First-person parkour across white rooftops, with hundreds of animations so you feel every vault and roll. DICE added a small dot in the center of the screen specifically to ease simulation sickness. The dot is the most important character in the game.

  10. A small spacecraft tumbling through a twisting underground mine tunnel lit by orange lava, the tunnel spiraling in every direction.

    01. Descent

    Parallax Software / Interplay · 1995

    A shooter with six degrees of freedom: you fly a ship through twisting mine tunnels where up, down and sideways are all suggestions. It won awards for innovation, and reviewers kept noting it could disorient players and bring on motion sickness. Innovation has a cost.

Honorable mentions

  • A VR headset resting on a chair beside a dotted arc of light on the floor showing a teleport landing spot.

    Half-Life: Alyx

    Valve · 2020

    A shooter in VR, where motion sickness is a real hazard, built around teleport movement and level design that slows you down on purpose so your stomach can keep up. Metacritic 93. Somebody at Valve finally did the reading.

Dishonorable mentions

  • An old oil lantern on a stone castle floor, the corridor behind it warped and swimming as if seen through water.

    Amnesia: The Dark Descent

    Frictional Games · 2010

    Not a shooter at all, which is the problem: you cannot fight anything, and when your sanity drops the screen warps and distorts on purpose. Hide in a closet while the room wobbles. It makes you sick deliberately and calls it horror. It is.

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