The 25 best PlayStation 5 games

It’s worth noting that the PS5 does have backward compatibility with PlayStation 4 games, so our list of the 22 best PS4 games will also serve you well. Our latest update to this list added Tetris Effect: Connected.

It’s a bold move, on the part of Remedy Entertainment, to actually make a decade-late sequel to a game that defined the studio, but whose ambitions it has arguably outgrown in the years since — particularly in its stunning, architectural action game Control. Might a trip back to Alan Wake’s spooky woods, so obviously haunted by the ghosts of Stephen King and David Lynch, not feel like a step back?

Hardly. What Remedy created by bringing all its experience to bear on its most beloved creation is nothing short of a survival horror masterpiece, as well as a meta mystery about its own creation. Horror author Alan is joined by a co-protagonist, FBI agent Saga Anderson, who’s investigating a case linked to Alan’s disappearance over a decade earlier. Using this dual setup — impressively, you can fluidly switch between Alan’s and Saga’s stories essentially at your discretion — Remedy works outward from the original game’s premise, twisting it into a methodical detective thriller one moment and a reality-bending cosmic horror the next. Alan Wake 2 announces the start of a new generation of blockbuster horror gaming. —Oli Welsh

This strange, spooky puzzle adventure is being compared to the 2012 indie classic Fez — and honestly, there can be no higher praise than that. It’s tough to describe without spoiling it, for this is a game in which the mystery of discovery is paramount, and which disguises many important facets of its true nature until you’re deep into it. It’s one of those games that is best played with notebook to hand, and that could easily turn you into an obsessive conspiracy theorist if you get sucked in.

For now, it’s enough to know that you play as an egg-blob-thing living in a spectral forest inhabited by exquisitely animated, ghostly animals. The game unfolds like a Metroidvania, as you build out its 2D platforming map in non-linear fashion by collecting gear — but it’s even more inscrutable and mysterious than that might suggest, and really operates like a giant puzzle written in a language you have to learn as you go. It’s also gorgeous, drawn in translucent, glowing pixel art that’s at once ephemeral and materially tactile. A seven-year labor of love by developer Billy Basso, it was well worth the wait. —OW

If you’d asked us 10 years ago if a new Armored Core game would make our list of the best PlayStation 5 games, we’d have said we didn’t think a new Armored Core game would even exist by then. But happily, FromSoftware decided to cash in some of the huge cultural and financial status it earned from the phenomenal successes of Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring to revive its old-school mech combat franchise. It’s fitting that it pops up on this list, too, because Armored Core was historically a PlayStation series (the first game was even published by Sony).

What you get in Fires of Rubicon is a ferociously enjoyable, hugely customizable mission-based vehicular combat game with a surprisingly engaging storyline that creeps up on you. It doesn’t really have much in common with the Soulslikes that made FromSoftware’s name — unless you count the fantastically detailed art, finely crafted combat mechanics, and epic boss encounters that will test you to the limit. OK, maybe it does have a few things in common with them after all. —OW

Astro’s Playroom is themed around the idea that you’re running around inside your working PlayStation 5. The first area, Cooling Springs, is filled with waterslides and glaciers, implying that it’s keeping the heat down to a manageable level. This cute theming runs throughout the game, showing off different chunks of the hardware.

As in any great platformer, it’s a treat to just run around the environment in Astro’s Playroom. Astro doesn’t have as wide a range of talents as, say, Mario in Super Mario Odyssey, but he does have a handy jetpack, a fierce spin attack, and the ability to tug on ropes real hard. Each of these activates the new haptics in the DualSense controller, showing off the nuances of the enhanced vibration technology. As just a simple example, if you walk across a glass surface as Astro, you’ll feel the small tippy-taps of each step within the controller. Tugging on a rope to launch an underground enemy into the sky yields a far different experience, with a more intense vibration within the whole of the controller, followed by the ka-thunk of Astro falling back on his robutt.

Without playing it, it’s easy to write off Astro’s Playroom as a silly, ignorable pack-in game, something to fill up your system storage while you wait for the actual games to download. But it turns out that this is one of the best platformers Sony has ever made, matching the charm and fluidity of a Nintendo platformer while also demonstrating the power of this new console. —Russ Frushtick

Even after a very impressive three-year early-access period on PC, it’s still a shock how big a critical and commercial hit Larian Studios’ hardcore Dungeons & Dragons-based role-playing game turned out to be. It’s also surprising how well the Belgian studio has adapted this very computer-centric genre to console; Baldur’s Gate 3 feels perfectly at home on PS5.

Perhaps thanks to the popularization of D&D via actual-play series, the whole world seems primed and ready for a game like this — and Larian overdelivers in spectacular fashion. Baldur’s Gate 3 is as close to tabletop role-playing as you can get in video games, delivering strong storytelling, indelible characters, incredible flexibility and player agency, and the requisite side order of messiness, happy chaos, and barely disguised horniness. All this, and the PS5 version offers split-screen co-op, too. It’s simply one of the best role-playing games of all time. —OW

Making this list is quite the turnaround for a game that started out with an ignominious delisting from the PlayStation Store due to the poor performance of the PS4 version. But a Herculean effort from developer CD Projekt Red turned Cyberpunk 2077 into a definitive modern first-person shooter-RPG. First, the native PS5 version radically improved with tech and visual upgrades; then, 2023’s Phantom Liberty expansion ushered in sweeping gameplay updates as well as a compelling new storyline.

All this sealed what should have been the cast-iron appeal of the original game: a 1980s-inflected cyberpunk fantasia that mixes the best of Deus Ex and Grand Theft Auto, Blade Runner and The Matrix. Cyberpunk 2077 is maybe not quite as cool as it thinks it is, but that can be part of its charm, and the makers of The Witcher games haven’t lost their talent for deft characterization, engrossing side-stories, and a kind of cynical romanticism. Plus, you get to be Keanu Reeves’ best friend — who could resist? —OW

By the time I went through my final run of Deathloop, I thought I would’ve walked away from the game feeling like a superpowered, time-bending assassin. Instead, the game made me feel like a masterful speedrunner.

That’s because there’s only one way to succeed in this time-looping game: To win, I must memorize the routines of all my assassination targets throughout four unique times of the day. Not only that, I have to set up specific scenarios so I can put them all at the right place at the right time to get eliminated. Mastering everything I needed to know took around 20 hours of living the same day over and over again. The payoff for all that hard work had me at the edge of my seat.

The endgame scenario for Deathloop requires me to take out each of my targets in a single run. It felt like setting up dominos that would then smoothly fall down in the most stylish way possible. The excitement of executing a well-made plan armed with knowledge — and a powerful arsenal of weapons and superpowers — made the hours of investigation and prep work feel worthwhile.

Deathloop still has a handful of mysteries left for me to unravel, and I can’t wait to uncover all of Blackreef’s secrets. —Jeff Ramos

Death Stranding: Director’s Cut is the definitive way to play one of the strangest games of the past few years. Where 2019’s Death Stranding welcomed a dedicated audience — and a good chunk of players that quickly bounced off — Director’s Cut makes Hideo Kojima’s independent debut more accessible without sacrificing its unique identity.

Death Stranding: Director’s Cut still asks Sam Porter Bridges to walk across a condensed version of the United States, precariously stacking packages on his back. But this time, Sam has more tools in the initial leg of his cross-country journey. Instead of spending the first 15 hours walking around with a rope as your only weapon, you can quickly get a gun that stuns enemies with lightning. And instead of winging it in your first combat scenario with a new piece of gear, the re-release of Death Stranding offers a substantial firing range for you to test your loadout.

But for all of its fancy new toys, Death Stranding is still a game about doing the grunt work necessary to connect with others. Its script can be metaphorically clumsy, but it never stumbles in expressing those metaphors through the gameplay itself.

Nobody has ever accused Hideo Kojima of subtlety, but it’s Death Stranding: Director’s Cut’s smallest changes that make it so much easier to recommend. —Ryan Gilliam

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A grungy detective story about politics, alcoholism, and failure seems like fodder for a visual novel, walking simulator, or maybe horror game. But in fact, Disco Elysium, by Estonian art collective ZA/UM, is a role-playing game. And a very, very good one. On this list, only Baldur’s Gate 3 can compete with it in terms of the dizzying freedom it offers the player in how they make choices, define their character, and respond to situations.

Although Disco Elysium was deeply influenced by tabletop RPGs, don’t expect much turn-based combat. Do expect a deep and fascinating system for skills and leveling — in this game, ideas like feminism are stat buffs — and do expect to build and explore your detective character’s psychology and worldview through tortured, sometimes amusingly overwritten internal dialogues with different aspects of his own psyche. The backdrop is a noir-ish murder-mystery in a dilapidated town that’s part 1970s, part steampunk. Disco Elysium is utterly idiosyncratic; there’s nothing else like it, and probably never will be. —OW

There are a lot of epic fantasy RPGs on this list already — including deep, dense masterpieces such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Elden Ring — so why would we need another? To be honest, you really need to play Capcom’s unique take on the ubiquitous genre to answer that question for yourself.

This is a game that’s slow to reveal itself, and initially a little confusing and even janky. But eventually you realize it’s not a technical game like those others I mentioned, but a constantly surprising fantasy adventure simulator that unfolds in real time. With its genuinely wild world, unpredictable monsters, and even more unpredictable Pawn NPCs that fight alongside you, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is guaranteed to generate gaming stories you’ll never forget. —OW

The intricate, demanding action-RPG format FromSoftware started with Demon’s Souls gets blown out into an epic open-world adventure in Elden Ring, and miraculously loses nothing in the transition. What it gains is sheer scale, breadth to go with the traditional Soulslike depth, as well as a sense of freedom and discovery that the warrens of the Dark Souls games could never provide. But it’s still as mysterious and sorrowful as fans of From’s string of dark fantasy masterpieces have come to expect.

You have to be up for a challenge: Elden Ring is still not an easy game, although like its predecessors its difficulty has been overstated. This is, as ever, a game in which patience, restraint, and planning will take you just as far if not further than razor-sharp reactions, even in some of the most testing boss encounters in gaming history. But the openness of Elden Ring’s world, and the sheer flexibility of its class designs, make it From’s most inviting game to date, without sacrificing any of its imposing stature. A modern classic. —OW

Final Fantasy 14 is the only massively multiplayer role-playing game to truly emerge from World of Warcraft’s shadow, and to rival Blizzard’s game for popularity, in 20 years. It almost never happened. On its original launch in 2010, it was a disastrous failure, but Square Enix doubled down and enlisted producer Naoki Yoshida to relaunch it in a completely revamped version in 2013. Moving from PlayStation 3 to PS4 and now PS5 over that time, it has steadily built in reputation and popularity, and it can now be considered one of the all-time titans of the genre. Gaming has rarely seen a comeback story like it.

The reasons for its success aren’t complicated, but they must have been near-impossible to pull off. It’s a beautiful world, with strong storylines and appealing characters, deeply grounded in Final Fantasy lore and fan service. It’s a solid MMORPG with great flexibility and individuality in the character classes, and fun PvE dungeons and raids. It puts players first, even implementing a “story mode” that allows players to solo climactic multiplayer content. And — the trickiest feat of all — it plays beautifully on console, something no other MMORPG (save perhaps its predecessor, Final Fantasy 11) has managed. —OW

Santa Monica Studio’s grandstanding cinematic beat-’em-up is the latest perfection of a certain kind of high-gloss, low-brain-cell entertainment Sony has always done so well. That’s not to say it’s not clever — there’s a very good, well-balanced action game in here, which interlocks neatly with some understated but satisfying RPG-lite character advancement. There’s also a smart script that assembles a lovable family of weirdos around our gruff, god-killing hero, Kratos, as it explores the soapier side of Norse mythology. And it’s topped off with the absolutely inspired casting of Richard Schiff (The West Wing’s Toby) as an irritable, grousing Odin.

It’s just that it all goes down so easy — intentionally so. This isn’t Baldur’s Gate 3 or Elden Ring; it’s a largely on-rails spectacle full of delightfully brainless button-mashing, surprisingly touching acting, and a steady drumbeat of Big Moments to keep you alert. It also looks incredible, considering it was a cross-generational release with PlayStation 4. Just an extremely solid blockbuster. —OW

Somehow, over 25 years in, a PlayStation console just doesn’t feel complete until it has its Gran Turismo game. That happened for PS5 in 2022 when it got GT7, which, despite some initial missteps around the grindiness of the economy and some overpriced microtransactions, is actually one of the most roundly satisfying, accessible, and just plain fun games in the series’ history.

Joyfully, instead of chasing trends, Polyphony Digital leans into Gran Turismo’s unique and slightly stuffy character to make a game that’s endearing in the way that it overflows with a nerdy love of cars and racing. The driving simulation is excellent and the photorealistic visuals are peerless, of course — but what reels you in is the charming single-player Café mode that takes you on a guided tour of the game’s thoughtfully selected garage, complete with sweetly enthusiastic talking heads.

In a genre that often focuses on customization and box-ticking features, Gran Turismo 7 feels wonderfully authored and personal in all its myriad activities, from licence tests to mission challenges or the Scapes photo mode. It also has, in GT Sport, a superb online racing suite that’s both accessible and fair. Gran Turismo is still the thinking person’s racing series. —OW

If you only get one indie game for your PS5, make it Supergiant Games’ definitive dungeon crawl set in the world of Greek myth. Hades swept every game of the year award in 2020 — a rare feat for a small independent production — before it had even landed on PlayStation and Xbox platforms. It’s not hard to understand why. It’s a game of immense depth but also huge charm, that’s as sophisticated in its funny, gossipy storytelling as it is in its razor-sharp combat and roguelike-inspired structure.

Hades casts the player as Zagreus, the rebellious son of Hades, lord of the Underworld, who’s making repeated attempts to escape his father’s realm. Every run takes you a little further through a randomized labyrinth of deadly rooms, using random boons and weapons bestowed upon Zagreus by the indulgent gods of Olympus. Hades is never the same, but you’re always mastering it, and discovering more about its sharply written gallery of gods; also, the mythical setting, where death is a trifle and immortality is a bore, is a perfect fit for the Groundhog Day action of a roguelike. Simply put, a masterpiece. —OW

What if Starship Troopers was a co-operative, third-person shooter instead of a satirical sci-fi movie? It would be awesome, that’s what. Arrowhead Game Studios’ sleeper hit is a very simple formula, and that’s why it works so well. Most of its best ideas were already worked out in its 2015 predecessor; what this sequel does is to transplant those ideas from a top-down, isometric blaster into a full-fledged, fully 3D bug-battling warzone.

The response from players to this instantly appealing concept was so immediate that Arrowhead’s servers were completely overwhelmed at launch. Once the dust has settled, what’s revealed is just a perfect, no-frills online game for enjoying with a squad of pals: tactical, lethal, surprising, often tense or funny, and garnished with some juicily unsubtle satire. There’s even a massively multiplayer element whereby the whole player-base works together to unlock new challenges. This is what live-service games should be like. —OW

There’s never been anything else quite like IO’s Hitman games, whose genre could be described as “stealth murder comedy by way of improv theater.” Though they have all the trappings of cool video game ultraviolence, they’re up to something much more sly and subversive, with each level a giant, fascinating social machine to poke around before you throw a murderous spanner into it.

And there’s never been a better Hitman release than the wonderful World of Assassination, a kind of best-of compilation of the most recent trilogy of Hitman games. Along with all those dazzling levels, you get a broad and highly entertaining suite of game modes, including player-created contracts, time-limited elusive targets, and the challenging escalations. The infinite murder simulator of the roguelike-inspired Freelancer mode is the cherry on top. In a very real sense, it’s the only Hitman game you will ever need. —OW

The Yakuza games, now known by the translation of their original Japanese title Like a Dragon, are an acquired taste, but a taste that has now been acquired by millions. There’s perhaps never been a better time to get involved: Infinite Wealth is the most ambitious, surreal, emotional, hilarious, and just plain huge game in the series yet — once it gets going.

You’ll need to get through hours of backstory and exposition first, filling you in on the events of (at least) 7 games in this soapy series. Once you do, though, an astonishing playground opens up for Ichiban, Kiryu, and friends in Hawaii (the series’ first detour from Japan), with deep, silly turn-based combat, hours of drama, and dozens of diversions and minigames, including surprisingly full-fledged knock-offs of Pokémon, Animal Crossing, and Crazy Taxi. An endearingly barmy hymn to excess that keeps on giving. —OW

Here’s a real oddity: a strange, sometimes exasperating, often completely enthralling mix of driving simulator, roguelike, and scavenge-and-craft survival game. In Pacific Drive, you explore an irradiated wilderness in the Pacific Northwest, where some gigantic science experiment went wrong decades previously. In the Zone, reality and the laws of physics are coming apart. Fortunately you have the ultimate vehicle for exploring this landscape: an old station wagon.

This rickety old car makes for an unlikely, but brilliant, video game protagonist: Although you often get out and explore on foot, the station wagon is the heart of Pacific Drive, a sort of mobile base or suit of armor on wheels that you will constantly need to patch up, fix, and upgrade. It’s a real character, and by the end you’ll be more attached to it than any other car in video games. —OW

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is that next-gen title that awes you the entire way through. It looks stunning, the controller plays a big role in the gameplay, and the amount of bolts and particles on screen at any given time can be jaw-dropping.

But as expensive as Rift Apart looks, it’s also just a great Ratchet & Clank game. Rift Apart takes classic Ratchet & Clank ideas and modernizes them. The series’ famous wacky weapons have unique alternate fire modes, activated by how hard you pull down the trigger. And the typical collect-a-thon aspects get a refresh thanks to the exciting Rift system and a detailed map.

But the latest Ratchet also tells a story that changes its world forever, adding Rivet and Kit as another powerful duo in its ever-expanding cast of characters. If you’ve spent years playing Ratchet games, Rift Apart likely won’t surprise you outside of its visuals. But if you’ve missed the series, or haven’t played them in years, Rift Apart is a great reminder of why the Lombax and his robot pal have stuck around for 19 years. —Ryan Gilliam

Capcom’s 2005 classic Resident Evil 4 is pretty much unimpeachable. It’s one of the all-time great horror games, with perfect pacing that breaks up full-bore action with creeping dread, controls and camera that induce tension whilst keeping the game fluid and instinctive to play, and a classically Resident Evil tone that’s pitched somewhere between dead serious and mildly camp.

There’s also no arguing with its 2023 remake, which lavishly overhauls the gory, gritty visuals whilst updating the game just enough to feel contemporary and slick, but not so much that it loses its essential character. Back in 2005, this game was a high-stakes reinvention for the Resident Evil series. Now, it’s the standard by which these games are judged — and still a hard-charging joy to play. —OW

Returnal was the first PS5 game, outside of the free Astro’s Playroom, that really took advantage of what the new DualSense controller could do. To test the limits of the controller’s feedback, Housemarque took its refined arcade shooter craft and planted it in a third-person roguelite. The result is a game that demands precision — precision that your fancy new controller helps afford with its haptic triggers and immersive rumble.

Returnal’s controller feedback is, outside of some stunning visuals, its most iconic feature. And because of some of the game’s downfalls, like its uneven repetition and imbalanced Parasite system, it’s perhaps doomed to be remembered mainly as a great showcase game for the PlayStation 5. But Returnal is still a game every PlayStation 5 owner should pick up and play, if only to feel every bit of that $500 rumble in your fingers. —Ryan Gilliam

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The word for Spider-Man 2 is confidence: This is an astonishingly slick, enjoyable, and just very together superhero adventure that even has the ambition to take some big storytelling risks as it puts its own spin on Spider-Man lore. It pays off in perhaps the most accessible and glossily entertaining PS5 game to date.

At its core, this is an iteration on — and combination of — what worked in the first Spider-Man and Miles Morales, getting great mileage from bringing the two heroes together. You have the same peerless web-swinging traversal system and fluid combat combined with a more bustling city and a much more upbeat and socially conscious (and less cop-centric) attitude. As it’s a PS5 exclusive this time, there are impressive new tech flourishes too, like the lightning-quick fast travel and the ray-traced reflections on all those glass skyscrapers.

But what really makes Spider-Man 2 come out swinging is Insomniac’s greater confidence as a storyteller, taking on perhaps the ultimate Spider-Man storyline — the advent of the symbiotes and Venom — and twisting it into an even more potent form, staging some unforgettable set-pieces along the way. —OW

There’s so much to love about Capcom’s textbook revival of its fighting game champion: the deep, rewarding combat system, the plethora of ways to play, the series-best lineup of old and new characters, and the gloriously extravagant, pugnacious, and characterful design and animation that brings it all to vivid life. It’s absolutely a new high water mark in fighting games — but the best part of it is that it’s also a revolution in accessibility for the genre.

Street Fighter 6 introduces a number of important innovations aimed at opening up this sometimes intimidating competitive gaming space. There’s the World Tour campaign that patiently teaches you the fundamentals as you level up a custom fighter. And there are also new control schemes — the streamlined Modern setup and the assisted button-mashing Dynamic mode — designed to welcome players of every skill and experience level into the fray. As much of a blast as a casual party game as it is in ranked online play, Street Fighter 6 is the first fighting game in a very, very long time that can claim to be for everyone. —Oli Welsh

Tetris Effect is the greatest puzzle game of all time — perhaps the greatest game of all time, period — as reimagined by Sega’s former trance-master-in-chief Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the author of such minimalist trips as Rez and Lumines. On paper, Tetris Effect is very close to the latter, a puzzle game that yokes the block-matching action to a metronomic techno beat. In spirit, though, it’s more like the former: an almost spiritual, transcendental audiovisual experience that sweeps the player into a higher state of mind.

It’s daring to make such a dazzling, enveloping experience out of such a visually simple game. But then again, if Mizuguchi’s aim is to induce a flow state in the player, he could scarcely choose a better vehicle than Tetris. Alexey Pajitnov’s design is so simple and satisfying that it operates on an almost subconscious level, and almost 40 years on, its global familiarity has become a virtue that dovetails nicely with Mizguchi’s themes of universality and hope. A stunning, transporting reinterpretation of an all-time classic. —Oli Welsh