What are the best games on the PlayStation 5? From Baldur’s Gate 3 to Spider-Man 2, here are our favorites. (Last updated: May 16, 2024)
What are the best games on PlayStation 5? Now that supply issues are over, Sony’s latest console is flying off shelves, while its library of games rapidly fills up. New and old PS5 owners will be wondering what to play, so here’s our living list of the best video games available on the platform, to be updated as more games come out.
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 Animal Well.Alan Wake 2
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 WelshAnimal Well
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. —OWArmored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon
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. —OWAssassin’s Creed Valhalla
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is securely a role-playing game with a stealth influence, instead of the other way around. It allows the player to enact both large-scale battles and quick assassinations while hidden within a crowd. The Vikings, too, introduce their own expression of stealth in their raids, where narrow longships sneak up to encampments to attack without warning. Eivor has an assassin’s blade, a gift given to her from Sigurd. Hers, though, is not hidden — she wears it atop her cloak, because she wants her foes to see their fates in her weapon.
Valhalla’s most intriguing story is one about faith, honor, and family, but it’s buried inside this massive, massive world stuffed with combat and side quests. That balance is not always ideal, but I’m glad, at least, that it forces me to spend more time seeking out interesting things in the game’s world. —Nicole CarpenterAstro’s Playroom
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 FrushtickBaldur’s Gate 3
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. —OWCyberpunk 2077
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? —OWDeathloop
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.
