2. Portal - Valve; 2007

Turrets? Check. Boss battle? Check. Gun? Check. Simple shooter? No checking way. This list is filled with great games, but Portal is special. The simple notion of a gun that shoots doors was enough to transform a shooter into a puzzle game, and at the same time show gamers that for all of the neat twists we’ve seen in the shooter genre, there are still plenty of surprises in store.

Portal combined intriguing level design, incomparable writing and dialog and a sparse atmosphere to create a game so good that you won’t want to play another shooter ever again, knowing full well that it won't likely measure up.

1. Thief: The Dark Project - Eidos; 1998

How do you call a game a shooter if it can be completed without ever shooting anyone? Thief took the shooter genre and used it tell the tale of Garrett, a man on a mission to loot every house, castle and estate in Thief’s stylish, medieval city. And it was marvelous.

Thief was all about being a good…thief, namely getting in, getting loot and getting out without ever being caught. With an arsenal of trick arrows that would make Green Arrow proud, you doused torches, made diversions and ducked from shadow to shadow, confiscating baubles along the way. It was such a revolutionary idea that it forced designers to look at new ways to approach the entire genre.

Eventually Garrett finds himself drawn into a plan to resurrect a pagan god and had to do a more than just steal for himself, but even then the mission structure was such that if the player wanted to live by Garrett’s creed of being a thief, not a murderer, they could do so. Moody, tense, with amazing missions and fantastic level designs, not to mention some of the best voice work ever done in a video game, Thief proved that sometimes the best kind of shooter is one where you never shoot at all.

And so let it be written, or something. The GameShark Top Ten Non-Shooter Shooters. Agree? Disagree? Want to make a case for another game? Let us know !