So you’re asking yourself: What are the best PlayStation 5 (PS5) games out right now? There are a few possible reasons you’ve arrived here. Either you’ve just bought a PS5, you’ve owned one for a while but rarely find the time to fully explore its vast library, or you wanted to judge our picks and tell us precisely why we’re wrong. All valid.
There are, of course, many lists like this one elsewhere on the internet. Some of them even have the naivete to suggest different games other than the ones on the list below. The biggest difference? We’re correct.
That, and the fact we’ve chosen to focus on titles that are either only available on PlayStation, or whose heritage is rooted firmly in Sony territory. As much as we love Alan Wake 2 (and we really, really do), it’s a multi-platform game with no particular historical ties to PlayStation. In order to experience the most potent, triple-distilled PS5-ness available, you need this list.
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1) Gran Turismo 7
Get an appointment at the optician, and they’ll say you need glasses. Visit the barber, and you’ll walk out with a haircut. Consult Top Gear about PS5 games, and would you believe it, Gran Turismo comes up.
It’s not just that this is a driving game, though. It’s ‘the’ driving game. Even against stern competition from the authentic racing sim side of the spectrum, Forza Horizons, and Crew Motorfests, Polyphony Digital’s encyclopedia of racing renders itself essential. Its vehicles have a sense of weight and inertia that no other handling model nails so well through a DualSense pad’s haptic controls. They glint and gleam in the light. The roster of them is exquisitely curated, and, in all sorts of clever little ways, GT7 makes you feel like you really own them.
We shouldn’t take for granted that the studio found a way to reinvigorate that classic PS1 formula. The one that goes: Buy a cheap used Japanese car, do loads of races for prize money, spend money on more cars, and turbo kits. Lest we forget GT Sport’s stripped-down online racing in 2017. It’s kind of miraculous that GT7 holds all that PvP competition within it, and the time-honored single-player career structure. Oh, and PSVR support. And PS5 Pro improvements. And tons of post-launch content. And...
2) Final Fantasy 7 Remake & Rebirth
Nintendo had Mario. Sega had Sonic. Sony never really had one mascot, instead letting a revolving cast of ’90s icons define its PlayStation hardware. Chief among them was Cloud Strife. His hair jutted out at angles that even David Beckham would have thought twice about. His sword was far too big for any practical use. And yet, by virtue of Square Enix’s masterful RPG design in Final Fantasy 7, iconic he is.
It’s a big deal, then, that the studio’s been remaking FF7 as an impossibly grand trilogy for PS5. And it’s a bigger deal that they’ve turned out so well, folding in all the best bits of modern triple-A like cinematic presentation and real-time combat while keeping hold of its ’90s Final Fantasy-ness. Now voice acted where there was once only text, and with fights playing out in firework displays of bombast and Chocobo feathers, it’s the essential longform experience on PS5. And boy, longform is what it is, spanning two currently released games and one still to come.
3) Resident Evil 4 Remake
It’s not that we’re obsessed with remakes of classic games or protagonists with the haircuts of a Manchester United midfielder. It’s just that the Resident Evil 4 remake provides the definitive survival horror experience on Sony hardware.
And don’t worry, it’s not the old-school brand of survival horror that was all shifting statues about and chewing herbs. No, Leon’s heart-troubling jaunt across Spain was always a more paced, action-focused fare and in a remake form that holds just as true. It helps that it looks spectacular now, of course, but even if the graphics hadn’t been touched since 2005, we’d still be scared of the burlap sack-wearing Chainsaw Man.
There is something approaching downtime along the way. Puzzles, exposition, and some very strange character development that only the Resi series can get away with. And those twists and turns are just as expertly crafted, building the unbearable atmosphere until the next pad-soaking crescendo.
4) Helldivers 2
If this list has been single-player heavy so far, that’s only because we have a limited appetite for watching a stranger Carlton-dance over our digital corpse in what’s really supposed to be leisure time. Notice we say ‘limited.’ Not ‘no.’
This ushers Helldivers 2 onto the stage, PS5’s premier online experience. Crucially, it’s co-op rather than strictly PvP, so there’s no gloating and emoting to deal with from enemy players, but that’s not even the best bit. Its endearing Starship Troopers flavor of sci-fi is married wonderfully to objective-based third-person team combat, and a persistent world element that gives some weight to the outcome of your fight. It might just be one scrap among many on hundreds of servers across the world, but it does impact the universal fight against the Terminid, Automaton, and Illuminate factions.
Being co-op doesn’t mean it’s all holding hands and singing, though. Friendly fire is on, for starters, so you can and will eviscerate each other with ill-timed Stratagem abilities and stray shots. And nothing breeds competition like wanting to be the unsung hero of the squad, diligently getting all the kills and acing the objectives, does it?
5) Astro Bot
You’re permitted to be slightly surprised that a series originally intended as a tech demo to show off the DualSense controller’s cool haptic features has evolved into one of the PS5’s essential experiences. On the other hand, anyone who actually played Astro’s Playroom when the console first launched knew how outrageously overqualified it was for that job.
And then Team Asobi went and released Astro Bot in 2024, a platformer so adventurous and brimming with novelty and ingenuity that it reignites the long-calcified neural pathways of pleasure in your brain that were first laid by Mario 64. Here’s a game that reassures you it’s okay to enjoy colors again, and to enjoy simple interactions done flawlessly well—like pulling and pushing bits of the level around to construct a path forward.
Over the course of its 90 (ninety!) levels, you gradually become a master of every move, chaining together jumps and spin attacks on autopilot. At one with the constantly vibrating pad whose haptic features Asobo exploits so well.
A genuine multi-sensory treat, and a perfect countermeasure against those plodding, empty, characterless open-world games clogging up your game library.
NOTE: This story first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
