5 best Xbox 360 era multiplayer shooters

The Xbox 360 is considered, in some circles, to be the peak of multiplayer shooters. While nostalgia for simpler days, or days when battle passes weren't around, is fueling some of that sentiment, the Xbox 360 was home to some iconic multiplayer shooters. The best multiplayer shooters of 2025 look and feel quite different compared to the multiplayer games that were popular on the Xbox 360, nearly two decades ago. It was also an era where most single-player games that were shooters had strange multiplayer modes, something that modern games like Doom: The Dark Ages should have had.

The criteria for this list are simply shooters that thrived on the Xbox 360. Not all of them are exclusive, and in one case, some were more popular on PC. For the sake of variety, I've narrowed it down to a single game per franchise, so if your favorite Call of Duty isn't the one I picked, it's not a slight on the game.

5 Gotham City Impostors

The best Batman game to not feature Batman

The now shutdown Gotham City Impostors feels like the type of game that just doesn't get made anymore. Credited to Monolith Productions, Gotham City Impostors is an arena-style first-person shooter set in the DC universe. While Batman and the Joker aren't actually playable, you instead run around as super fans of either justice or chaos, mowing down anyone who opposes you. It was a fairly competent shooter back when it was released on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. In addition to standard guns and knives, there were also glider wings, roller skates, and wacky explosives, like a jack-in-the-box and a PVC rocket launcher.

While not the most impressive game in a few different regards, it was a smaller title with less content. It did have tons of earnable rewards, including cosmetics, something you'll struggle to find in modern multiplayer games. That said, it was a ton of fun back in the day, and it represents just how different the multiplayer landscape was back during the Xbox 360 era.

4 Left 4 Dead 2

A PC classic in 2025, but it was huge on Xbox 360 too

Left 4 Dead 2 is obviously a PC classic, still thriving on Steam in the year 2025. Made by Valve and released shortly after the original, it's a PC main stay of cooperative and competitive multiplayer, but it had a huge fan base on Xbox 360 back when it originally released in 2009. It originally was controversial, due to releasing so soon after the first game, with fans upset that it wasn't DLC, but instead another full-priced game. That controversy evaporated overnight once it was released, thanks to improved gameplay, a full set of new campaigns, and an improved AI Director. The AI Director was Valve's secret sauce in the Left 4 Dead series, which changed the amount of resources spawning and the number of zombies depending on you and your crew's performance. The fast-paced and hectic missions, with limited safe zones and no time to breathe, is the pinnacle of the zombie co-op shooter genre, and hasn't been topped since it was originally released in 2009.

3 Gears of War 2

Gnashers only

The Gears of War series was huge during the Xbox 360 era, with three mainline entries in the series and a spin-off all released on the console. As for which entry out of the original three is the best, everyone has a personal preference. Mine is Gears of War 2, which has a nice combination of improvements to the gameplay over the original, like chainsaw duels and using downed foes as shields. It also includes the first integration of Horde Mode, one of the earliest wave-based survival modes in a shooter and certainly the game that caused the mode to appear in other games, like Mass Effect 3. Gears of War 3 adds base-building elements to Horde Mode, not necessarily ruining the mode, but changing the feel of it.

The multiplayer is incredibly tense and fast-paced, and anyone familiar with it knows that it's all about the Gnasher shotgun and bouncing from cover-to-cover to avoid getting hit. If you have an Xbox Series X|S, Gears of War 2, and the rest of the franchise are backwards compatible and still playable.

2 Halo 3

Finish the Fight

Halo 3 is one of the most definitive multiplayer shooters on the Xbox 360. While Halo Reach could arguably take this spot, Halo 3 was released shortly after the launch of the Xbox 360, and if its predecessor, Halo 2, revolutionized matchmaking on consoles, Halo 3 made console multiplayer mainstream, releasing just a month before Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare launched the genre into orbit. It had ranks for different playlists, overall progression, and a number of unlockable cosmetics, including the iconic Hayabusa armor from Ninja Gaiden.

The gunplay was a drastic improvement over Halo 2; The multiplayer matches were perfectly tuned in terms of competitiveness and modes, and Bungie constantly changed the playlists to include limited-time modes, and fan-favorite creations from Forge mode, like the massively popular Grifball. Tack on a slew of iconic multiplayer maps, and a fantastic campaign, and Halo 3 remains an iconic game to this day. You can even still play Halo 3 in a fashion pretty similar to its original release via Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

1 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty 4 walked so MW2 could run

Perhaps controversially, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 takes the top spot over Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The original Modern Warfare shaped what Call of Duty still is today, with the leveling progress, loadouts, perks, and killstreaks. That game rightly deserves credit for shaping multiplayer shooters for at least a decade, if not still in 2025, but Modern Warfare 2 improves upon it in nearly every way. It has iconic maps, like Highrise, Terminal, and Favela, alongside iconic guns, player cards, and the infamous noob tube. It predates paid weapons and skins, instead selling several map packs post launch.

The feel and speed of Modern Warfare 2 felt like a perfect balance for the series, with future entries going too far when it comes to movement, like the Black Ops series later adding jet packs and wall-running. It was a ton of fun to play back in the day, and while Call of Duty remains incredibly popular today, Modern Warfare 2 and the Xbox 360 era remain the peak of goodwill for the series. Plus, it's still playable via backwards compatibility on Xbox Series X|S and on Steam.

An iconic platform for multiplayer shooters

While it's easy to be nostalgic about the past, and incredibly pessimistic about the battle passes and microtransaction-filled shooters of 2025, much of what made these Xbox 360 games iconic comes from a pure quality standpoint. These were tight, well-made shooters that offered meaningful progression and unlocks through gameplay. Those aspects are still present in modern shooters like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, but a lack of content to purchase meant that the progression at least felt more meaningful.