8 FPS Remakes That Improved Everything From The Original Games

These days in the gaming industry, it's fairly common to see remasters and remakes of beloved past titles being released for modern platforms due to how well remasters and remakes sell to gamers young and old.

However, most modern remasters and remakes are of third-person games like 2023's Resident Evil 4, Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, with first-person-shooter games seldom getting remade.

Despite this disparity, there are still several FPS remakes out there that virtually improve upon everything from their original source material, as seen with enhanced graphics, new gameplay elements, and new side activities.

8 The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay

A Subtle but Worthy Remake

Vin Diesel may be best known for playing Dominic Toretto and Groot in the Fast & Furious and Marvel Cinematic Universe franchises today, but in the early 2000s he was arguably best known for his role as Riddick in Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick franchise.

This franchise's success eventually led to the development of the 2004 prequel tie-in FPS stealth game The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, which quickly became an Xbox exclusive hit thanks to its robust stealth mechanics, detailed characters and environments, and story.

Butcher Bay's success led to the development of both a 2009 sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, and a remake of Butcher Bay for seventh console generation platforms, featuring enhanced graphics and refined gameplay to better align with Dark Athena.

7 Day of Defeat: Source

Valve's Signature WWII Game

Many of Valve's most famous games and series started out as fan-made mods of Half-Life, and this can be seen with 1999's World War II-themed multiplayer FPS Day of Defeat, which, after being acquired by Valve in 2003, was officially remade into Day of Defeat: Source in 2005.

Built using Half-Life 2's signature Source game engine, Day of Defeat: Source is set in several European countries in 1944, with players being able to play as United States Army or Nazi Germany troops among six specialized classes such as Rifleman, Sniper, and Support.

Compared to the original DoD, Day of Defeat: Source received numerous improvements, including but not limited to being the first Source game to feature high dynamic range rendering, real-time physics, a dynamic audio system, enhanced graphics, and upgraded class systems ensuring each class is designed for a specific style of play.

6 Counter-Strike: Source

Valve's First Great Remake

Roughly one year before Day of Defeat: Source launched, Valve released their first proper remake in late 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source, a Source engine built remake of the original 2000 Counter-Strike mod of Half-life.

Counter-Strike: Source retains the core gameplay loop of its predecessors, with it pitting teams of terrorists and counter-terrorists against each other in close-quarter maps, but it was greatly improved upon with the introduction of enhanced graphics, real-time physics including ragdoll physics for players' corpses, and more.

While Counter-Strike: Source wasn't well received in the competitive scene, it did go on to regularly receive beneficial updates all the way through to 2025 and became the framework for many beloved mods that are still played today, like Zombie Escape.

5 The House of the Dead: Remake

Reviving a Horror Arcade Classic

For gamers old enough to have lived in the 1990s or those lucky enough to live near active arcades today, they probably played Sega's iconic horror light gun shooter arcade cabinet The House of the Dead.

Originally released in 1997, The House of the Dead is technically an on-rails shooter with players embodying AMS Agents Thomas Rogan and G as they fight waves of undead and demonic creatures, rescue civilians, and find hidden items throughout mad scientist Dr. Curien's mansion.

In 2022, The House of the Dead was completely remade by MegaPixel Studio and Forever Entertainment for PC and home consoles, featuring a new competitive co-op mode, a horde mode, a photomode, a weapon armory to unlock weapons, and a gallery to look at new enemy models while still retaining the original's story and on-rails gameplay.

4 GoldenEye 007

Daniel Craig's Reinterpretation of a N64 Classic

For anyone who grew up with the Nintendo 64, they likely have fond memories of playing 1997's GoldenEye 007, which was one of the first console-based FPS games to prove that FPS titles can be just as fun to play on consoles as on PC and in 2010, Nintendo chose to remake the game for the Nintendo Wii.

2010's GoldenEye 007 isn't a simple one-to-one remake of the N64, as it's more of a reimagining of the original campaign with Daniel Craig's version of James Bond, complete with Craig reprising his role for the game alongside Judi Dench as M and Rory Kinnear as Bill Tanner and an updated post-Cold War setting.

The Wii's 007 still retains four-player split-screen multiplayer, but it also features eight-player online PvP multiplayer, becoming one of the best FPS games on the consoles alongside the likes of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Dead Space: Extraction, with the latter game also being co-developed by 007's developer Eurocom.

3 System Shock

Reactivating SHODAN's Influence

Before Dead Space, before BioShock, there was LookingGlass Technologies' revolutionary FPS action-adventure horror game System Shock, which paved the way for games to become increasingly immersive, complex, and thought-provoking, leading to Nightdive Studios to remake the influential game for modern platforms in 2023.

2023's System Shock largely retains the same cyberpunk narrative as its 1994 predecessor, with the game still following a hacker in 2072 as they're forced to stop the rampant AI SHODAN on Citadel Station from destroying humanity, but this time the story is a lot easier to digest thanks to being less text-based, having Terri Brosius reprise her role as SHODAN, and having the hacker be more personified.

The System Shock remake's improvements can easily be seen by its visuals and gameplay, with Citadel Station being redesigned to still be maze-like but feel more like a lived-in space station, the game featuring a new inventory system similar to System Shock 2, and enhanced enemy encounters and gunplay.

2 Halo: Campaign Evolved

Expanding Master Chief's Debut Adventure

1997's GoldenEye 007 helped pave the way for console-based FPS titles to get more recognition, but I would argue that the game that defined modern console and PC FPS gameplay and storytelling was 2001's Halo: Combat Evolved, which recently had its campaign remade as Halo: Campaign Evolved.

Unlike 2011's Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, which was just a graphical remaster of CE's campaign, Halo: Campaign Evolved completely rebuilt CE's campaign using Unreal Engine 5 and elements from Halo: Reach, Halo 3, and Halo Infinite, making it the most visually impressive Halo game yet.

Aside from graphics, Campaign Evolved also saw the addition of over 40 collectible Skulls, four-player online co-op, space combat, new text-based terminals, new weapons like the Needle Rifle, had some levels be completely reinvented as seen with The Library and The Maw, and three new prequel missions focusing on Master Chief and Sgt. Johnson.

1 Black Mesa

A Fan-Made Love Letter to Half-Life

Both 2023's System Shock and Halo: Campaign Evolved were great FPS remakes, but in terms of an FPS remake that completely improves upon everything from its original source, there's no better FPS remake than Black Mesa, a 2020 remake of Half-Life.

Originally conceived as fan mods before being commercially approved by Valve, Black Mesa is a true, proper Source engine remake of Valve's definitive FPS game, utilizing the engine's improved rendering, physics, and graphical fidelity to depict Gordon Freeman's first harrowing adventure in a way never before seen.

Black Mesa increases Half-Life's NPC encounters, making the titular research facility feel all the more immersive, while it completely reinvents the concluding Xen levels to make them feel less like floating rocks and instead a proper alien world filled with plant and animal life.