The long-anticipated release of Halo 4 and the latest Call of Duty, November is shaping up to be a great month for first-person shooters.

We've decided to look back at the great FPS games of the past, so here are what we think to be the 20 most notable titles from the last 30 years.

During that time, there have been plenty of refreshes and remakes, but we've omitted sequels from the list. You may argue that Quake II is better than Quake I - or even that it's an entirely unrelated game - but it's ground-breaking first instalment that makes our list, for example.

CoD's dominance puts the genre in quite a chokehold, so it may be a while before we see anything take the world of FPS by storm. There was a time, though, when even the likes of Doom were having Mexican standoffs with rival shooters. ®

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