What are the best games on PlayStation 5? Hard as it is to believe, the PS5 is — by Sony's own admission — already well past the halfway point of its life-cycle. (It's even time to start thinking about PS6.) It's fair to say that PS5 hasn't been deluged with classics, and the rate of must-play new releases is slower than it has been on previous PlayStations. What's sure to be the console's defining game, Grand Theft Auto 6, isn't even out yet.
Even so, the PS5's library has grown to the extent that there's a lot to sort through, and new and old PS5 owners will be wondering what to play. So here’s our living list of the best video games we’ve played on the platform — influenced by the personal tastes of the Polygon team — to be updated as more games come out.
Our latest update to this list on Oct. 21 added Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.
How we pick the best games on PS5
The Polygon staff plays a lot of video games, and everything in this list comes personally recommended by at least one of us. We determined what should be on our list of the best PlayStation 5 games by looking at the quality of each title, but also with an eye for breadth and variety — so you should find something on the list you’ll enjoy, no matter what genres of game you like, how much time you have, or what vibe you are after.
1 Star Wars: Galactic Racer
If you're craving a return to the days of Wipeout, when a PlayStation racing game was as likely to involve antigravity sci-fi craft rocketing around at hundreds of miles per hour as realistic cars, then Galactic Racer is the game for you. It also happens to be one of the most innovative racing games in a long time, a much-needed shake-up for a stale genre. It introduces a roguelite structure and build-crafting into both single-player and even multiplayer modes, while keeping it all totally coherent with a very Star Wars fantasy of racing dangerous, rickety hot rods. As a treat, there's a healthy dose of Burnout in there, too. —Oli Welsh
Read Oli Welsh's full review of Star Wars: Galactic Racer.
2 Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve
Here's another classic PlayStation flavor resurrected in an unexpectedly glorious way. As the latest in Bandai Namco's long-running dogfighting air combat series, Ace Combat 8 sounds like a niche known quantity. Try it, however, and you'll be pleasantly surprised again and again: by the sophistication of the controls, the variety of the level design, the meaty length of the campaign, the amazing fidelity of the visuals, and the depth and seriousness of its operatic wartime storyline. —OW
Read Giovanni Colantonio's full review of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.
3 Star Wars Zero Company
The PS5 generation has been a bit short on really great tactics games, but that's all changed with this superb squad strategy game from Bit Reactor, set during Star Wars' Clone Wars era. Many on the team worked on Firaxis' XCOM reboot games, and you can sure tell — this is fine-honed game design full of precision, personality, puzzle-like ingenuity, and just the right amount of unpredictability. Zero Company also makes brilliant use of its setting, compellingly painting a grunt's-eye-view of the collapse of the Republic, and assembling a squad of characters you'll really care about. Especially when you lose them forever in the default permadeath setting. —OW
Read Elijah Gonzalez's full review of Star Wars Zero Company.
4 007 First Light
It's been a long time since there was an official James Bond game, and a much longer time — almost 30 years, in fact — since there was a really great one. 007 First Light might not attain the legendary status of GoldenEye 007, but it's a very slick and entertaining blockbuster action game that's a lot smarter than it needed to be. The key is an inspired choice of developer in IO Interactive, of Hitman fame. IO's love of open-ended "social stealth" gameplay sneaks its way in between the set-pieces and rounds out a thoroughly satisfying adventure with a unique perspective on a young Bond. —OW
Read Ford James' full review of 007 First Light.
5 Marathon
It's defiantly not for everyone, but when the planets align, Bungie's take on the extraction shooter genre can be a totally electrifying multiplayer experience. Its asymmetric PvPvE gameplay can be hard to get your head around, never mind brutally unforgiving, but for intensity and drama it can hardly be matched, and Bungie is to be commended for including interesting solo as well as group roles. On top of this, you have intriguingly deep sci-fi world-building, Bungie's world-class gamefeel — 25 years on from Halo, there are still no more satisfying guns to shoot in gaming — and absolutely stunning art direction, realising one a compellingly chilling future. —OW
Read Corey Plante's impressions of Marathon.
6 Hades 2
You can accuse this sequel to Supergiant Games' smash hit roguelike action game of overcomplicating the pure brilliance of the first Hades, and we did. But really this is quibbling with something that's very close to perfection. The combat is still crisp and thrilling, the randomized boons are still exquisitely balanced, the see-saw between progression and setback on each run is still perfectly judged, and the languid, sexy bickering of Supergiant's take on the pantheon of Greek mythology is still gloriously characterful and thirsty. Simply the best that indie gaming has to offer. —OW
Read Ari Notis' full review of Hades 2.
7 Pragmata
Capcom has completed a swift one-two punch in early 2026 by following Resident Evil Requiem with an unexpected gem of a sci-fi action game. Like all of Capcom's best work, Pragmata is both a slick, modern blockbuster and steeped in deep, old-school video game vibes. It's a cinematically ambitious game about fatherhood and the AI threat. But also you're a dude in a spacesuit shooting robots on a moon base, eking out your resources and testing your reflexes between save points.
This is a time-honored template (albeit one that makes for a pleasant gear-change in the here and now). Capcom mixes it up with Diana, your childlike android companion, who disrupts both the storytelling and the gameplay in interesting ways. She sweetly draws the best out of the protagonist, Hugh, while potentially fooling both Hugh and the player that she's any different from the AI army they combat. And her hacking ability, which plays out as a grid-based minigame, is Pragmata's chief gameplay innovation; it blends surprisingly compelling quickfire puzzles into the third-person shooting to brilliant effect — so much so that, when you earn the ability to bypass it, you'll probably choose not to. Pragmata plays solidly, looks sharp, and most importantly, feels fresh. It's a class act. —OW
Read Austin Manchester's full review of Pragmata.
8 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. —OW
Read Toussaint Egan’s full review of Alan Wake 2.
9 Astro Bot
One of the most exciting gaming stories of 2024 has been the elevation of Team Asobi, makers of a series of charming tech demos, to the top flight of Sony’s in-house developers with Astro Bot. Expanding on the free pack-in game Astro’s Playroom, intended as a demo for the capabilities of the DualSense controller, Astro Bot is a dazzling, full-fledged, tour de force platform game capable of standing toe-to-toe with some of Nintendo’s greatest — and it’s surely the best platformer Sony has ever released.
Astro Bot is many things at once. It’s a stunning technical showcase, from the sheen of its ray-traced surfaces to the tippy-tap of the adorable Astro’s footfalls rendered in the DualSense’s haptics and speaker. It’s a nonstop riot of invention that keeps throwing new ideas, gizmos, slapstick interactions, hilarious bosses, and tortuous challenges at you. And — with its hundreds of collectible bots dressed up as PlayStation game characters — it’s a wholehearted, even moving celebration of PlayStation history in the brand’s 30th anniversary year that takes particular care to honor the many wild creations of Japan Studio, the now sadly defunct in-house developer Team Asobi used to call home. It’s poignant to reflect that the time of such creative PlayStation games as Ico, LocoRoco, and PaRappa the Rapper is passed. But it’s joyful to realize that Astro and Team Asobi are here to keep that spirit alive into the future. —OW
Read Oli Welsh’s full review of Astro Bot.
10 Baldur’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. —OW
Read Gita Jackson’s full review of Baldur’s Gate 3.