Once upon a time, to own a games console was to have access to a very specific set of titles.
There were games that appeared there, and nowhere else. Today, when the videogame industry makes more money than movies and music, keeping games in particular silos doesn’t make commercial sense, and titles that once would have been exclusive to one platform are now spread across consoles, mobile and PC to increase the number of people who can play them.
There are exclusive titles out there, but they’re much rarer than they used to be. When compiling a list of the best PlayStation 5 games, therefore, it’s necessary to look outside the dwindling group of games you can play nowhere else and in the world of multi-platform titles.
The gaming landscape in the age of PS5 is one of enormously expensive productions that can take many years to make and involve teams of hundreds of people potentially working in multiple countries. They can be expensive to buy too, though it can be argued that the price per hour of entertainment you receive remains low. Frequent sales of top-end titles, plus the burgeoning indie game market that can see games sold for just a few pounds, means it’s completely possible to play most of the excellent games available for the system, even if not at the time of their launch.
PlayStation gaming is a broad church, and not everybody is going to have the same tastes, which means lists will not necessarily appeal to absolutely everybody. This is one of gaming’s strengths, however, and the diversity you’ll find when you compare the console storage of two different players speaks to the way playing games has become something everyone can enjoy.
Here are some of the best games you can play on PlayStation 5 right now.
Best PS5 games at a glance:
- Best for fantasy role-playing: Elden Ring - £37.95, Amazon
- Best for sci-fi thrills: Horizon Forbidden West - £38.72, Amazon
- Best for living the superhero dream: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 - £60, Argos
- Best for father/son relationship building: God of War Ragnarok - £60, John Lewis
- Best for top quality writing: The Last of Us Parts One and Two Remastered - £15/£45, Amazon
- Best for online multiplayer blasting: Helldivers 2 - £30, Amazon
- Best for an old-school Dungeons & Dragons adventure: Baldur’s Gate 3 - £58, Playstation
- Best for playing over and over and over: Hades - £25.30, Amazon
Find out more below
Elden Ring
Best for: fantasy role-playing
With its expansion pack Shadow of the Erdtree now available, Elden Ring is a sprawling action RPG from the studio behind the Dark Souls games, with worldbuilding provided by Game of Thrones’ George R R Martin. The game revolves around your emergence into the Lands Between as a Tarnished, then exploring and becoming more powerful until you can challenge the gods of the world itself.
It’s a hard game, as all FromSoftware titles tend to be, but it’s never unfair, and the open-world structure gives you plenty of opportunity to regroup after a failure, become stronger, and try again.
Buy now £37.95, Playstation
Horizon Forbidden West
Best for: sci-fi thrills
Robot dinosaurs. That’s all you really need to know about the Horizon games, which are PlayStation console exclusives (with the first game also available on PC). As Aloy, who lives in a post-apocalyptic society in a world where the aforementioned machine monsters roam freely, you’ll explore, solve mysteries, forge alliances and battle against both the enormous cybernetic creations and human opponents too. If you’ve got a PS VR2 headset, Horizon Call of the Mountain is well worth a look too.
Buy now £38.72, Amazon
Marvel's Spider-Man 2
Best for: living the superhero dream
The first Marvel Spider-Man game on PS4 (and as all PS4 games can be played on PS5, it’s on the newer console too) was a huge success, so when it came to updating Peter Parker and Miles Morales’ adventures it was possible to use the increased processing power of the latest PlayStation to ramp up the complexity of the city and the crunching impact of the combat.
It’s also one of the few games to make use of some PlayStation 5-specific features, such as the speaker in the controller and the console’s 3D audio capabilities.
Buy now £59.99, Argos
God of War Ragnarok
Best for: father/son relationship building
Kratos, once a Greek god and a part of PlayStation history since 2005, has somehow ended up in ancient Scandinavia with a son, but prophecy and mythical creatures won’t leave him alone. In this game he confronts the end of the world, or at least the Viking version of it, having already killed the son of Odin in the previous PS4 title. It’s a blockbuster action game with plenty of bloody fights and enormous monsters, but also exploration, puzzle solving, and some fatherly advice for a young man’s journey into adulthood.
Buy now £60.02, John Lewis
The Last of Us Parts One and Two Remastered
Best for: top-quality writing
Two games really, but the story of Ellie and Joel and their journey through a mournful, ruined world populated by fungus-infected zombies and angry survivors of a civilisation-ending pandemic is one story. Adapted by HBO for its streaming service, The Last of Us is a great story that features some of the best writing in video games, and if you can take the violence and horror at its heart is a tale that will stay with you once experienced.
Buy now £45.00, Amazon
Helldivers 2
Best for: online multiplayer blasting
Think Starship Troopers, and you won’t be far off. Helldivers 2 casts you and your friends as a team of largely expendable space soldiers fighting in a future war against both giant bugs and unstoppable robots. You’re just as likely to be blown up by your own side as the bad guys, but the fight to export ‘managed democracy’ to the galaxy sometimes requires sacrifices. It’s a third-person shooter with some suitably explosive weapons, and its pastiche of ludicrous violence is as acutely observed as it is fun to play in a group.
Buy now £29.99, Amazon
Baldur’s Gate 3
Best for: an old-school Dungeons & Dragons adventure
This is an absolutely enormous fantasy RPG based on the Dungeons & Dragons rules, though it hides most of the dice-rolling from you. It is as much about characters and interactions as it is about hitting things with big swords, and it’s possible to not only recruit some of the more interesting people you come across to your party, but to romance them too. BG3 is long and involved, but never gets boring, and an upcoming update to add support for mods should mean you never run out of adventures.
Buy now £58.00, Playstation
Hades
Best for: playing over and over and over
In Hades, you’re trying to escape from the Ancient Greek version of the underworld. Every time you fail, and you will fail again and again, you’re sent back to the start for another go. Along the way, you’ll meet mythological figures who help you with items, powers and advice, and you can upgrade your abilities. What this all means is that Hades is a colourful brawler in which you unleash literal hell on all manner of satyrs, harpies, gorgons and sea monsters, and in which death isn’t a problem, as you always get to try again. It’s a whole lot of fun, and there's a sequel just around the corner too.
Buy now £25.30, Amazon
Verdict
There are a lot of games available for the PlayStation 5, but some stand head and shoulders above the others. One of these is Elden Ring, the action RPG that took the gaming world by storm on its release in 2022 and still commands the attention of hundreds of thousands thanks to a timely expansion pack.
It’s a game that deserves to be in the collection of all discerning players, but if it’s not to your tastes there's a whole world of games available that don’t involve poking things with sharp bits of metal, and the PlayStation game library is well enough stocked that you will find something you enjoy.
