Gift yourself, or a loved one, with the best games in PlayStation 4’s catalog.
Bloodborne, the successor to FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls games, steps away from the sword and sorcery that defined those titles and instead delves into the macabre, alien, and grotesque, with aesthetic and story parallels to H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard’s fiction.
The enhanced evasion, health-regain system, and abundant healing items make Bloodborne a very different beast than its predecessors. Plus, Bloodborne’s Gothic and horror inspirations create fantastic world lore.
Do you hate demons? Are you inclined to rip and tear unholy abominations into piles of bloody goop? Well, you and the Doomslayer have a lot in common. Join him on his journey to purge Mars of its infernal denizens once and for all in this frantic first-person shooter.
Forget what you’ve learned about cover-based shooting, linear maps, and regenerating health: Doom offers labyrinthine maps and white-knuckle action that hearkens back to the glory days of shooters. It’s one of the best games on the platform.
There are few anime properties that are as perfectly suited to become fighting games as the Dragon Ball series. Spanning multiple series, movies, and generations of characters, Akira Toriyama’s manga-turned-anime-turned-game series is all about humans, aliens, and androids hurling fireballs and punching each other in the face.
Dragon Ball FighterZ, the series’ latest video game adaptation, ditches the Xenoverse games’ arena-brawling model in favor of 3 vs. 3 tag-team fighting. The gameplay shift is just one of the many reasons Dragon Ball FighterZ is being held aloft as one of 2018’s notable titles. Its beautiful design, intense combat, and accessible control scheme add up to a game that anyone can jump into for Super Saiyan thrills.
The God of War franchise is Sony’s premier action-adventure series, one that has delivered over-the-top action, a free-form combo system, and inspiring fantasy settings for multiple console generations. The series was never particularly technical in terms of combat, but the games offered enough abilities for players to fool around with without being too overwhelming or demanding.
The new God of War entry reboots the series. It streamlines the combat and controls, while also radically expanding the scope of the game world. God of War doesn’t reinvent the action genre, but its polished gameplay borrows elements from popular action-RPGs to create something unique, yet pleasantly familiar.
Peter Parker, since his debut in the 1960s, has endured as one of the most beloved characters in pop culture history. After all, who can’t relate to a down-on-his-luck kid who rises above his circumstances to become a hero?
Marvel’s Spider-Man, a PlayStation 4 exclusive title, captures the essence of the web-slinging hero. It boasts an engaging story, new spins on a familiar cast of characters, and a fun combat system that sees Pete punching, flipping, and webbing in a open-world version of New York City.
What exactly is the source of the phantom pain that permeates this game’s multilayered, but incomplete narrative? Snake’s lost forearm? Mother Base’s destruction? Creator Hideo Kojima’s separation from the franchise that he transformed into a AAA display of excellent game design and ingenuity? Regardless of how you view Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’s open-world stealth, army-building, and compelling mysteries, it all adds up to an absorbing experience that will be spoken about for years to come.
Graphical fidelity has come a long way, especially when looking at some of the visual powerhouses on this list. But sometimes it’s nice to sit back and enjoy some of the more artistic games the PS4 has to offer, and the gorgeous Odin Sphere Leifthrasir is definitely one of those games.
Leifthrasir is a remake of Odin Sphere, an apocalyptic action-RPG that gained a cult following on PlayStation 2. It contains numerous fresh features, including stages, offensive skills, evasion techniques, and enemy AI. That said, the new game carries its predecessor’s wonderful, painting-like visuals.
Last generation, Rockstar Games struck cowboy gold with Red Dead Redemption, an Old West, open-world action game. So, it was inevitable that the developer would produce a sequel, and what a sequel it is!
Red Dead 2 expands many of its predecessor’s gameplay mechanics, including gunplay, hand-to-hand combat, and Honor System. New features let you dual-wield pistols, hunt for sustenance, and swim across bodies of water. If you ever wanted to live the life of a cowboy, Red Dead Redemption 2 is as good as it gets.
The haunting Resident Evil 7: Biohazard evokes the harrowing frights and methodical gameplay of the first game in the long-running franchise, rather than the series’ more action-oriented sequels. The result is a survival-horror game that’s both fresh and nostalgic.
Resident Evil 7 could use a greater diversity of enemies and weapons, and the lack of additional game modes is disappointing. But on the whole, Resident Evil 7 is a survival-horror game that dials back the action in exchange for white-knuckle thrills, and is all the better for it.
Yakuza 0—the prequel story that shows how series protagonist Kazuma Kiryu rose through the ranks to become the big boss of a Japanese crime syndicate—is more than just knuckles, guns, illegal rackets, and vendettas. At the heart of the gangsterism is empathy and honor, be it between bro and bro, an orphan and his surrogate father, or well-dressed hoodlums and the desperate strangers they meet.
Yet, Yakuza 0 is also an action-packed beat-’em-up game title that sees you wrecking goons and bosses in a small open-world environment. As you progress through levels, you select new moves and weapons for the two playable characters to customize the violence as you see fit.
