Popularity doesn't guarantee quality, but it is usually a good indicator. If an FPS game pulls in hundreds of thousands of players, they probably see something worth experiencing. On the flip side, lesser-known releases can be fantastic, even if they don't surpass the 500 concurrent players mark. While I'm not suggesting you drop $30 on that random shooter with 17 votes on Steam, plenty of overlooked FPS games deserve your attention and have already proven their worth to a small group of players.

"Underrated" is a vague term that covers a lot of criteria, but here it refers to games that are obscure, hard to find, or underplayed. Their quality far outshines their exposure, and they tend to hit the mark with those who finally play them. These are those FPS masterpieces that make you think, "Why did I wait so long to play this?"

Around the mid-2010s, AAA FPS games stopped coming out, except for established franchises like Call of Duty and Doom. As always, indie devs stepped up and launched the genre into a new golden age defined by arena combat, quick movement, gore, and experimentation. Obviously, Dusk, Trepang2, and Ultrakill were never going to pull Battlefield 6 numbers, but they cemented themselves as modern cornerstones of the shooter market.

Despite being as brilliant as those three games, Turbo Overkill never quite transcended its "indie darling" label, becoming a gem beloved by die-hard FPS fans but not particularly known by anyone else. I kind of get it; boomer shooter burnout had started by late 2023, and the game's title can cause people to believe it's just copying Ultrakill ​​​​​​.

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