Console wars are for man-babies and Twitter soccer avatars. The actual brands themselves don’t even engage (publicly). Still, there is no doubt that Sony won the last generation, as the PS4 greatly outsold the Xbox One, thanks at least in part to Sony’s onslaught of hot exclusives. Snoop Dogg would have dropped them all.
The PS5 has been around for months now, even if it feels like but a whisper on the gamer wind. No, that’s not a flavor of G Fuel, but it should be. This feels like a good time to commemorate the best exclusives to ever grace the PS4, and say goodbye to the last generation, and say hello to paying $70 for new titles. The future’s so bright, I can hardly even foresee my impending lack of fiscal responsibility.
Sucker Punch’s open-world-samurai-stealth-crafting-climbing-distraction simulator with light RPG elements immerses players in an aggressively saturated rendition of feudal Japan that constantly slaps them in the face with particle effects, but in a good way.
It borrows many tired tropes from the genre and slaps a brand new coat of paint on them. It’ll have you excited to find your 37th fox and to witness your 15th viewing of protagonist Jin’s juicy booty. You’ll squeal with murderous glee after every successful standoff. Heads did roll.
“Ghost of Tsushima” doesn’t have a ton of new ideas, but it makes navigating between those ideas immensely pleasurable. Having the wind guide your path instead of incessant waypoints and other obnoxious UI elements makes an already beautiful open world feel so much more robust. I hope big games like this continue to design with a minimal, unobstructive HUD in mind. The world would be a better place.
I don’t generally like J-RPG’s, nor do I tend to enjoy anime, so it’s a testament to this game’s ambition and design that I liked it as much as I did. That is, for the first 70 hours or so. After that, I felt like I had seen how the sausage was made. The subsequent 60-something hours weren’t quite as joyous. They were still fun, but I can only hear the words “For real?” so many times.
Combining the mundanity of a high schooler’s life with dungeon crawling, turn-based combat and anime insanity shouldn’t work for me, but it really does. Just when you start to get sick of one, then it’s time for the other.
The various personas you’ll accrue throughout your journey are fascinating portrayals of creatures from different mythologies, such as a giant penis monster. Classic. The many romance options you’ll encounter can make you feel like a wholesome high school sweetheart or complete human garbage depending on your choices. I opted to dumpster dive myself.
“Persona 5 Royal” is at its best when it’s making you question your sanity. Why have I just turned into a mouse? Why did we just get absorbed into a cat butthole? Don’t worry about it.
Taking the tone of the previous entry and beating it repeatedly with a golf club (sorry, it felt obligatory), I could talk about this damn game for hours. Whether you loved it or hated it, it lives rent free in your head, no question.
I had some issues with the pacing of the story, as well as the gameplay systems and how they coincide with the tempo of your journey. There were too many sections of this game that just felt flat out boring. It’s a sequel that’s twice as long as its predecessor, but it is not twice the game.
Still, it’s undoubtedly one of the most noteworthy releases in the entire industry in recent years, and any piece of art that makes people feel as strongly as it does deserves to be mentioned. I sort of wish we could have just stayed in the beginning, having a snowball fight with ya girl Dina and some kids. It was all downhill from there, really.
I have to stop myself here, or else I’ll enter a writing fugue and wake up on the other side with 5,000 words about how it’s simultaneously the greatest game of all time, but also not fun at all and I never want to touch it again.
At this point you might be wondering whether or not this list is ranked, and it is, but it’s also very much not. What does it even mean to say that a game that throws buttons at you like it’s DDCRR (Dance Dance Civil Rights Revolution) is better than the untouchable masterpiece that is “The Last of Us Part II?”
I’m a giant sucker for choice-based games like this. Nothing immerses me in a story and connects me with the characters more than dialogue options and branching paths, even if the dialogue is stilted nonsense. This game has so much to say that probably shouldn’t be said, and I love it with a sense of irony that would make Tommy Wiseau exclaim “I did not hit her. I did not!”
Two of the three playable characters, Kara and Connor, are among the most endearing in recent memory, and the third is Jesse Williams from “Grey’s Anatomy.” Nothing against his performance, though. There’s only so much he could do with an android leading an uprising in a video game that could end in a musical number that’s immediately followed by a mass execution.
Silliness aside, I don’t know that there’s ever been a game in the genre that did cause and effect better, and the performance capture and environmental graphics are among the best we’ve ever seen.
Guerilla Games’ open-world-post-apocalypse-dinosaur-bow-empowerment-stealth-climbing-crafting-distraction simulator with RPG elements occupies a similar plane as “Ghost of Tsushima.” It also borrows heavily from other games, but tweaks things just enough to keep things interesting. While GoT separates itself by sprinkling your eyeballs with Wonka Fun Dip powder, HZD presents a mysterious world inhabited by some of the coolest enemies ever in a game, the machines.
Hunting the robot dinosaurs with your bow and arsenal of traps is just so much fun. I’ll never forget the first time I shot a cannon off of a Thunderjaw, then picked it up and turned it on its master, or the time I rode a Tallneck through a camp of bandits, dropping headshot after headshot on them because they are, in fact, very stupid.
Get ready to swashbuckle your way through incredible set pieces, making quips and looking handsome as you mercilessly slaughter hundreds of people. That’s Uncharted, baby!
Naughty Dog’s other, less controversial franchise brings the adventure and excitement of the “Indiana Jones” movies to the PlayStation, and throws in plenty of murder for good measure. You need to have combat, right?
Their unparalleled quality of story-telling and commitment to motion and facial capture means that this is still the most cinematic game you could possibly experience, even five years after its initial release. It is without question the game that I would recommend most easily to someone that’s new to video games. While it’s not quite my favorite exclusive, I simply can’t imagine not liking this game.
Moving from a game for everybody to a game for nobody, “Nioh 2” is the second entry in Team Ninja’s nut-busting Souls-like series. It beat my ass over and over again, and all I could do is thank it for not leaving bruises. I’m not sure what it says about me that I can’t talk about this game without getting vaguely sexual about it.
Where this particular souls-like sets itself apart is in the depth of its combat. There are many different weapons types, along with magic and ninjutsu abilities, each of which have their own skill trees. Progressing through these types of games is already immensely satisfying, but “Nioh 2” has you constantly trying new things and levelling everything. It also taps into the chemical properties of gambling addiction, as rainbow loot shoots out at the player at every opportunity, so that’s fun.
While the level design isn’t quite up to the incredible standards set by FromSoftware and thus this series may never quite ascend to those lofty heights, the combat is simply much deeper than anything “Dark Souls” has to offer. The ball’s in your court, “Elden Ring.” If that is your real name.
The fourth (but also first) entry in the series is a big fat mic drop, an undeniable indicator that video games are just better than anything else. It’s a better movie than most movies. The continuous camera shot may seem like a novelty when you first hear about it, but it makes such a huge difference. We never leave the characters. If the movie “Birdman” won the Oscar for best picture, what does “God of War” get? There’s not even a single disembodied talking head in “Birdman.”
The Leviathan axe is one of the best weapons in gaming. Throwing and recalling it never gets old. The boss fight against “The Stranger” is incredibly iconic. If you’ve ever played the game yourself, there’s a %100 chance that you’ve said “BOY” in the deepest voice your throat could muster. The only reason this game isn’t higher is because it was never etched on my eyelids quite like the next two.
You have to respect such an unrepentant video game. Insomniac didn’t worry about making things realistic. All they cared about was making things fun. Although I must admit, Arthur Morgan pomade is a colossal missed opportunity for merchandising. I should work for Rockstar.
Let’s talk about web swinging. Everyone and their dead uncle knew that they had to get web swinging right, and they absolutely did. Zipping through the New York skyline is so cathartic that I could swing from the chandelier of life for hours, and I did. The combat is also so frenetic and fun that it made rounding up the same goon squad ad nauseum feel like a treat, not the tedious labor that it actually was.
The story, while not exactly ground-breaking, was still an evocative and reverential reimagining of some of the most overtread characters in superhero media. We knew where things were headed with Dr. Octavius, but that didn’t make his final clash with Peter any less emotional (spoiler alert, I guess).
If “God of War” is an industrial mic drop and “Nioh 2” is a dominatrix, “Bloodborne” is the sleep paralysis demon at the end of your bed. It could do whatever it wants to you, but all it does it tickle your little toesies. It’s horrifying yet intriguing. It feels kind of nice.
Putting this game at the top of the list is sort of the equivalent of giving yourself a high five. It’s the easy hipster choice that says “Look at me, I finished Bloodborne. I’m a real gamer boy.” I don’t care. It’s my top choice without question, and one of my favorite games of all time, period. My demon ordained it so.
No other game can quite match the atmosphere of Yharnam. Everything looks like it smells like blood, sweat and beans on toast. The Victorian-era gothic horror permeates every crevice of the environment, and every enemy looks so insidiously at home in a world plunged into bloody disorder. That is, until the true nature of “Bloodborne” begins to reveal itself. Once the veil is lifted, it ascends from mere greatness to something truly magical. Plus, if you get the true ending, you turn into a little blobby squid. Cute!
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