Shooters, of all varieties from third-person to first-person, are predominately the genre of choice for today’s blooming gamer. It can be dismaying to those that despise gun-focused games, but again, at least there is variety. Splatoon, for example, is a far different game tone and style compared to Call of Duty.
There is room to grow. Unfortunately, some of those opportunities went by the wayside. These ten shooters hail from various consoles from both the past and present. While they may be lost to time and cannot be played, one can always take solace in the pursuit of knowledge. As always, assets and others can be found on Unseen64.
10 Darkwatch 2
The original game launched in 2005 with the studio, High Moon, getting to work on their next sequel for the PS3 and Xbox 360. Some concept art exists and the game was apparently shown at GDC 2006, but no video has been seen of it.
For whatever reason, Darkwatch 2 was canceled and High Moon's next game would instead be Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy in 2008.
9 Dead Unity
It’s hard to really articulate just how popular Resident Evil was in its heyday, and its existence, in turn, elevated the survival horror genre into the mainstream. That is to say, there were a lot of copycats out there, with Dead Unity being an example of a game that never came out.
It was being developed by Aramat Productions and would have been published by THQ on the PS1. Instead of zombies, it appears, from the extremely tiny screenshots, that players would have fought technical enemies instead.
8 Naughty Dog's Sci-Fi Shooter
When Naughty Dog was planning its debut game for the PS3, before Uncharted, the studio had two pitches. One was a sequel to Jak and Daxter while the other was an original, untitled, action shooter sci-fi game that would have centered around a mysterious hole that adventurers would explore.
Only art assets exist of the game via the art book, Naughty Dog’s 30th Anniversary.
7 Hurikàn
Dead Unity was not the only canceled idea that would have revolved around shooting enemy robots. Hurikàn was an EA game that didn’t make it past the art phase either.
Some details about the title are known, such as researchers being trapped on an island and having to face robots and other experiments that have gone haywire. Apparently weather might have also been a force to tango with hence the name Hurikàn, or Hurricane.
6 Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots
Compared to many other canceled shooters, there is actually a lot of coverage of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6: Patriots out there. It was well documented, or that is to say, Ubisoft was showcasing it a lot at trade shows.
Like previous entries, Patriots would have been a blend between first and third-person, squad-based shooting mechanics. It was planned for a 2013 PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 release before getting delayed and then canceled. In 2014, Ubisoft revealed Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege at E3, which presumably took Patriots’ place.
5 TimeSplitters 4
Free Radical Design actually had two games canceled after the fallout of 2008’s shooter flop, Haze: TimeSplitters 4 and Star Wars: Battlefront III. Haze’s failure was one of the things that caused the company to be ultimately absorbed by Crytek, who rebranded the studio as Crytek UK.
Based on sample art, it seemed like this sequel would have ventured into medieval and western settings along with more modern shooter sections. In 2018, THQ Nordic bought the TimeSplitters IP, but nothing has come of it yet. Will this version of TimeSplitters 4 be made? Probably not, but the future at least seems hopeful for the series as a whole.
4 Silent Hill Climax
Silent Hills, or P.T., is the most famous example of a canceled game in the series. There was another, codenamed "Climax," which was being developed by the USA division of Climax.
They developed Silent Hill: Origins on PSP, a prequel that starred a truck driver named Travis Grady. In the PS3 tech demo the studio made for its game pitch, Travis can be seen going through an underground facility of some sort.
3 WET 2: Double Feature
Wet was a grindhouse-styled shooter developed by Behaviour Interactive and published by Bethesda for the PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2009. Besides the game prominently starring Eliza Dushku as the protagonist, it didn’t make much of a splash with reviews or sales.
That said, in 2010 Behaviour Interactive did announce a sequel, although it was canned shortly after without much more than a pitch video and some ket art existing.
2 Contra Spirits 64
Besides starting in arcades, Contra was most prominently known as a Nintendo series. Therefore, a game was naturally planned for the N64 known as Contra Spirits 64.
No screenshots or gameplay exists of the game and it quietly went into obscurity after its potential 1997 date passed. The game that came after that was C: The Contra Adventure for the PS1.
1 Six Days In Fallujah
Six Days in Fallujah was a Konami game about the real-life conflict in Iraq. While many assets – including art, screenshots, and gameplay videos – have made it out there, Konami decided to cancel the project because it was receiving negative reactions.
While the game itself did not seem bad, it was just too controversial as this planned 2010 title was only six years removed from the 2004 incident.