10 FPS Games That Reward Exploration

1 hour ago 2

Published Apr 28, 2026, 2:38 PM EDT

Daniel has been playing games for entirely too many years, with his Steam library currently numbering nearly 750 games and counting. When he's not working or watching anime, he's either playing or thinking about games, constantly on the lookout for fascinating new gameplay styles and stories to experience. Daniel has previously written lists for TheGamer, as well as guides for GamerJournalist, and he currently covers tech topics on SlashGear.

The archetypal FPS game’s formula is as follows: walk down a straight hallway, hold down the left mouse button, and keep spraying bullets, fire, or plasma until everything in front of you stops moving. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with a straightforward FPS, though, there’s definitely something to be said about one that knows how to incentivize you toward going off the beaten path a bit more.

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Different types of FPS games reward exploration in different ways. More linear boomer shooters, for example, employ labyrinthine levels with money, power-ups, or cute secrets hidden in obscure nooks, while larger-scale, open-world FPS games may tie such rewards to hidden or obtuse questlines that you need to put in some detective work for. Both types are a lot of fun to engage with in their own ways, and if you’ve got a particular hankering for exploratory FPS games, you’d do well to start with these.

10 Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer

Full of Hypnospace Nods

Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer

Slayers X (and I’m not going to write out that typo-filled title every time) is a spin-off of Hypnospace Outlaw, with the premise being that Zane, a teenager during that game’s events, scraped some money together in his adult years to make the FPS of his boyhood dreams. In addition to being a boomer shooter in the same vein as the early greats like Doom and Quake, the game is also peppered with references to Hypnospace and Zane’s own life since its story.

Every level in Slayers X has the usual assortment of secrets to find, usually containing power-ups, ammo, and other handy goodies. Those are good and fun, but the real draw is scoping out every level for scraps of Hypnospace lore and references. You can find a Trennis court in the Cult Die Sac level, a Hypnospace Headband in the mobile home park, and so on.

The game’s most interesting hidden secret involves falling down what would normally be a bottomless pit in a very specific way, revealing a debug hallway full of rude messages from the in-universe programmer directed at Zane.

9 Borderlands 2

There’s Treasure Everywhere

Borderlands 2 is a looter-shooter, which means amassing large quantities of stuff is the central mission statement. You certainly get your fair share of guns, shields, and other assorted doodads just from gunning down bandits and wildlife, but if you don’t mind exploring a little bit, you might just stumble upon something a little better than whatever you get from all that gleeful violence.

Exploring the large maps in Borderlands 2 can reveal various pockets of combatants and collectibles, both of which can directly lead to larger quantities of higher-grade stuff. Hidden enemies, for example, are often of a proportionally higher level to your character, and stronger enemies yield better drops upon defeat. The same goes for larger, rarer chests you may occasionally stumble upon if you diverge from the critical path.

Of course, thanks to its RPG elements, Borderlands 2 also has plenty of side quests you can get into. Many of them are pretty obviously located within major settlements, but some of them can only be found out in the field, such as the legendary tale of Face McShooty. I can say with no intended hyperbole that I would not want to play a version of Borderlands 2 without the possibility of encountering Face McShooty.

8 Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

Heresy Can’t Hide

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

In the Warhammer 40K setting, it’s an Ultra-Marine’s job to thoroughly and brutally dispatch any and all suspected heresy wherever they may be deployed. There is a lot of heresy to be found in Boltgun, so you’re kind of obligated to be as thorough in your searches through the game’s levels as you possibly can. Purging heretics is its own reward, of course, but there are tangible benefits as well.

Boltgun hides most of its secrets in obtuse locations and behind false walls, encouraging you to rampage through any given level and basically rub your face over every flat surface that you can’t see the other side of. It’s a pretty simple task, something you can easily attend to while pumping bullets into the various freaks and monsters you encounter.

Just about every secret area contains some kind of high-level power-up you may not be able to find during normal gameplay. These include instant armor max-outs, special ammo magazines, and even god-mode power-ups like infinite ammo and the always-popular Aura of Doom.

7 The Outer Worlds

In the Name of Science

As an open-world FPS-RPG on a cosmic scale, The Outer Worlds is naturally built around sidequests and exploration. It’s not that hard to just stick to the critical path if you prefer, but taking the time to mosey around the various settlements or explore the many wild paths and caverns will definitely prove to be rewarding in all kinds of ways.

For one thing, talking with every unique-looking NPC you stumble upon will go a long way toward recruiting your crew for the Unreliable. For example, I was just bumming around the city of Edgewater, talking to anyone who looked interesting, and that’s how I stumbled upon Vicar Max. After going to the trouble of completing his sidequest, he ended up joining my party, much to my surprise, and became one of my favorite companions.

Exploration also yields some of the game’s most distinctive weapons, the Science Weapons. These weapons are often hidden in obscure spots in dangerous locales, with only a breadcrumb trail of hints and text logs pointing the way. They’re totally worth pursuing, though, as they’re some of the most powerful, not to mention most amusing, weapons in the game.

6 Mouse: P.I. For Hire

Find the Cheese in the Hole

What is exploration in an FPS game if not a form of detective work? You know which game has a lot of detective work in it? Mouse: P.I. For Hire. As both a boomer shooter and a game heavily inspired by the noir detectives of the 1920s, Mouse: P.I. For Hire is jam-packed with neat junk to uncover, and only some of it smells like cheese!

Mouse: P.I. For Hire’s levels each hide a litany of secret rooms, nooks, cubbies, and cramped vents, each of which contain a healthy serving of cash, ammo, useful materials like blueprints, and fun collectibles like baseball cards and comic strips. These also serve as a clever way to encourage you to get creative with the game’s evolving movement systems. You can’t backtrack to levels you’ve already completed, unfortunately, but that just reinforces the fact that you can find anything and everything on your first playthrough, which is its own kind of fun.

The game also has a small handful of side jobs you can pick up, usually from the various schmucks hanging around near your office, which can also yield useful items upon completion. Honestly, though, completing the side jobs is its own reward given the funny quips you get from Jack and his friends before, during, and after doing them.

5 BioShock

Rapture’s Got Many Dark Corners

My favorite part of BioShock is its lore and setting, with the underwater city of Rapture remaining one of my most favorite video game locales of all time. Part of what makes the original game so compelling is the gradual pace at which you uncover information about the city, aided through its exploration.

As you nose around Rapture, you’ll stumble upon a large quantity of audio logs from the city’s citizenry, with times ranging from before to after Rapture’s total societal collapse. Some of these logs tell a story in their placement, such as the log of Dr. Suchong getting brutally murdered by a Big Daddy being found about twenty feet from his drill-impaled corpse. It’s a cool way for the city itself to clue you into the bigger picture.

If you’re not a fan of audio logs, and not everyone is, carefully exploring the city also yields plenty of practical benefits, from new Gene Tonics to helpful gadgets like the weapon-upgrading Power to the People Machines. Whether you’re in it for the story, the gameplay, or both, BioShock is packed with exploratory incentives.

4 Fallout: New Vegas

Surprisingly Packed for a Literal Desert

Massive, radiation-soaked landscapes are the bread and butter of the Fallout series, but those landscapes wouldn’t be particularly interesting if they didn’t have any stuff in them. Luckily, most modern Fallout games, including Fallout: New Vegas, are jam-packed with stuff, and pretty cool stuff at that. All you have to do is find it all. It’s like a treasure hunt! A treasure hunt where you can get shot, or eaten, or irradiated!

In the same vein as The Outer Worlds, some of the major exploratory incentives in Fallout: New Vegas include unique weaponry and chances to meet your companions. Some of my most steadfast instruments of pain in the game were unique weapons that I either found by chance or deliberately sought out, with a favorite being the aerial bombardment brought about by Euclid’s C-Finder. Of course, you can only use Euclid’s C-Finder if you complete the quest at Helios One, which just encourages further exploration and experimentation.

Even putting aside the tangible perks, simply uncovering new locales in New Vegas rewards you with experience. If you ever want a break from fighting, you can just wander around some unexplored land for a while, and you’ll still get a net benefit from it.

3 Metroid Prime Remastered

It’s Kind of the Point of the Game

When it comes to genres of games that prioritize exploration, the Metroidvania genre remains chieftain of the pack. It naturally follows, then, that an FPS game that is also a Metroidvania would be the most exploratory exploration that ever explored. If you want a Metroidvania shooter, the obvious candidate is Metroid Prime Remastered.

The original Metroid Prime, and its remaster by extension, were the first time Samus’s exploits took on a first-person perspective, bringing her usual arm cannon and movement abilities into 3D. Even with the different perspective and 3D map, though, it remains just as much of an exploratory game as its source series, encouraging you to thoroughly explore each map, solving little puzzles and breaking away walls and obstructions to uncover useful items.

Many of these items are plot-required, such as Samus’s various weapon and gear power-ups, but many more, like missile and health tanks, are only there for the express purpose of being found by the dedicated. You’ll certainly be glad you had them when you fight the game’s bosses.

2 Cyberpunk 2077

Night City’s a Big Place

The entire reason everyone comes to Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 is that, despite it being an ostensibly awful city, it’s also a place where an industrious, open-minded individual can do and find pretty much anything. If you’re going to endure the hardships of living in Night City, it is absolutely your prerogative to toss the place on a daily basis for whatever random junk interests you.

Cyberpunk 2077’s map may not be as physically large as some open-world FPS games, but it’s extremely densely-packed, full of alleyways and little businesses where you can find weapons, armor, and lots of cool items and cybernetic upgrades. I would go as far as to say that staying on the critical path, in this game, would not get you adequate equipment for completing the story. You really need to branch out and explore if you want to get a viable build off the ground.

Even putting that aside, Night City is just full of interesting shenanigans to get up to. If I hadn’t bothered to poke around the neighborhood for jollies, I’d have never met Brendan, the talking, self-aware vending machine! There’s a guy worth going out of your way to meet with.

1 Doom (2016)

Doom Did it Best

The original Doom, being the shooter for boomers upon which most boomer shooters are based, naturally dabbled in its fair share of secrets. Most of these took the form of false walls hiding rooms with extra power-ups or early weapon acquisitions. As a send-up to that game, the 2016 Doom reboot has a similar emphasis on secrets, while also pumping the gas on the concept a bit.

Doom 2016’s secrets can be broadly sorted into two categories: practical collectibles and easter eggs. In the former case, every level has a handful of useful items scattered around, usually found by exploring little nooks and passageways off the critical path. These can include things like Argent Cells and Praetor Tokens, which can be used to upgrade your suit and weapons.

Easter eggs, meanwhile, include little figurines shaped like the Slayer and his many foes, as well as entire hidden rooms made up in the style of the original game’s sprite-based graphics. While not nearly as practical, these are fun to find for their own sake. The figurines are particularly cute, as the Slayer will usually have a little interaction with them, like giving his own figurine an adorable fist bump.