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 until later this year.
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 April 22 added Pragmata.
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.
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. —Oli Welsh
Read Austin Manchester’s full review of Pragmata.
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.
Animal 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. —OW
Read Russ Frushtick’s full review of Animal Well.
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.
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.
Blue Prince
This indie game about exploring the rooms of an ever-shifting mansion, and the strange family history behind it, is an extraordinary combination of walking simulator, puzzle game, roguelike, and even a kind of deck-builder. Every time you try a door, you pick the next room from three blueprints that are dealt to you at random.
Blue Prince is unlike anything else, and it can take a while to wrap your head around it and realize that trying to solve it like a logic puzzle isn’t the optimal way to play. Instead, you need to collect new rooms and figure out their individual and interlocking mysteries before trying to solve the whole thing. It’s a bewitching game of chance, mystery, and copious note-taking that extends well past initial completion, and a true original. —OW
Read Jay Castello’s full review of Blue Prince.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
A certain vintage of PlayStation fan might find themselves nostalgic for the Final Fantasy 13 era, when Square Enix’s role-playing series had embraced lush modern visuals to go with its epic storylines, but still used old-school turn-based battle systems. Well, so were the ex-Ubisoft staff at Sandfall Interactive, so they set about making exactly that type of game — only with added Frenchness.
The result is a bewitching and deeply rewarding RPG that won’t waste your time (unlike some Final Fantasy games, arguably). It’s also impressively handsome for a game made by a small-to-mid-sized team. Clair Obscur’s simultaneously silly and sincere soul resides in its excellent combat system, endearing characters, imaginative art, and moving storyline. A true original. —OW
Read Isaiah Colbert’s full review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
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
Read Bianca Ryckert’s full review of Cyberpunk 2077.
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