This week marks the 10th anniversary of the launch of the PS4. A console packed full of incredible games such as God of War, Bloodborne, and The Last of Us Part 2, it can prove very hard to pick a single favourite from the library. Well, we decided to try anyway. Below, we asked several IGN members of staff to choose just one game that jumps out at them when they hear the words “PlayStation 4”. Don’t see your favourite mentioned anywhere? Let us know what you’d pick and why in the comments.
There’s no world I enjoyed or got lost in more frequently on the PS4 than Red Dead Redemption 2. The long-awaited Wild West sequel fulfilled all hopes about what Rockstar could do when imprinting their trademark cinematic spectacle onto a new generation of consoles. Packed full of blockbuster moments like the Saint Denis heist or the exhilarating assault on Braithwaite Manor, I had as much fun taking part in these shootouts as I did watch whole afternoons fly by playing dominoes and poker.
This was the famed GTA studio’s only new release on the hardware, but one that proved worth the wait as it delivered on both grand scale and nuanced detail (yes, horse testicles included). For a game released on the PlayStation 4, only a small handful of games can compare to it graphically today. But there’s so much substance to that style, too. Its stunning world is packed full of memorable characters, from funny drunken escapades with Lenny to Dutch Van der Linde cementing himself as one of the greatest, and most menacing, ever video game villains. Plus, It also did what I thought was initially impossible – it made me care more about Arthur Morgan than I ever did about John Marston.
My favorite games are the ones that make you run and ask a friend, “Did you know you can _______?!” Hideo Kojima’s propensity for packing his games with exactly this sort of detail is what got me hooked on the Metal Gear Solid series to begin with, and it’s what made me fall head over heels for The Phantom Pain.
Did you know that in MGS5, you can train your horse to defecate on command, and if cars drive over the manure, they’ll spin out and crash? Or that you can abduct a bear with a weather balloon? You can also disable electronics by spraying them with a water pistol. Oh, and you can find a cassette tape of bathroom sounds, which’ll make guards leave you alone if you play it while hiding in a latrine.
You can make Snake take a shower after missions, but if you don’t, he’ll get so dirty Ocelot dumps a bucket of water on him when he returns to base. You can sled down sand dunes on a cardboard box. You can collect sexy pinups to put on your cardboard box that will distract horny guards. You can have your cardboard box delivered via airdrop, knocking out enemies if it lands directly on their heads. You can paint your helicopter pink and make it play Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” at full blast while showering an enemy camp with rockets. You can tell the game your birth date, and if you visit your base on that day, an army of hardened mercenaries surprise their ruthless leader and make him blow out candles on a cake.
The Phantom Pain is full of wonderfully bizarre little features like this, but it also nails the most basic fundamentals in a way that many games fail to. Simply making Snake move through the world feels good, whether he’s sprinting full-tilt across the battlefield to clock a guard in the face with a Six Million Dollar bionic punch, or seamlessly slithering from an army crawl to a crouch.
Sadly, Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus is appropriately titled, and its missing pieces are especially noticeable in the final acts. As much as I wish it delivered narratively, its emergent gameplay allowed me to create so many stories of my own, and the mayhem I was able to unleash with Snake’s bag of tricks was reminiscent of the joy of playing with action figures in a sandbox as a kid.
At the tail end of the PS4’s life cycle, Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Rez fame decided to reimagine one of the greatest games of all time: Tetris.
Obviously he didn’t change any of the gameplay, why would you when Tetris is literally the perfect game? But instead, he set his sights on the psychological phenomenon known as the Tetris Effect, a kind of fugue state that gamers can enter when entranced by the tetrominoes slotting into place. Combining trippy visuals, a breathtaking soundtrack, and expert usage of VR (though it can be played without it) Tetris becomes the vessel in which developer Enhance delivers a message of — and I’m not kidding — world peace.
In the way The Last of Us defined the previous generation of PlayStation, for me, The Last of Us Part 2 takes the crown for PlayStation 4. Just like its predecessor, Part 2 arrived right at the end of the console’s lifespan and spotlighted the incredible things the soon-to-be-replaced console could still achieve. The Last of Us Part 2 continues the incredible, heartbreaking story of Joel and Ellie trying to survive a zombie-like post-apocalypse, making their way across America using stealth, their wits, and deadly bricks.
The sequel expands on the original in almost every way possible, vastly increasing the scope, the cast, and perhaps most memorable for me; the combat. My lasting memory of The Last of Us Part 2 is those inventive and memorable fight sequences. Each encounter provides opportunities for all-out violence or incredible stealth gameplay. Allowing you to do everything from prone crawling your way through an environment while laying traps, to leaping knife attacks from the top of buildings, and firing explosive arrows into your enemies from point-blank range. That mobility and variety is still yet to be topped, as is the revolutionary enemy AI that not only uses its best tactics to take you down, but also has predetermined characters and relationships, allowing NPCs to mourn their fallen friends after they witness you wrapping a pipe with scissors duct taped to it around their buddy’s face.
The Last of Us Part 2 builds on the incredible legacy the first game established, pushing the boundaries of gameplay and cinematic performances in video games and becoming a standard bearer (and reference point) for all story-driven games going forward.
What begins as a blood-ravaged Gothic nightmare descends into cosmic horror the further you dive into From Software’s modern classic, Bloodborne. From had always flirted with disturbing themes and grotesque imagery, and never shied away from the depravity that humans were capable of, but Bloodborne truly sunk down into the depths of nightmares and rose back up as a modern classic.
The consistency between storytelling and gameplay elements is key, with mechanics like Insight, Frenzy, and blood transfusions continually morphing you into the very monsters you fight, and I still haven’t gotten over the moment where I gained enough Insight to realize what was really going on all around me, and how that only made everything more disturbing.
Just like the world they created, Bloodborne becomes more enchanting, horrifying, and wonderful the more you come to understand it, and despite poor frame pacing and technical issues when stacked up against other modern action games, it’s still unrivaled in terms of creating an incredibly evocative setting. It’s just a bloody good time.
The remake of Resident Evil 2 is undoubtedly one of the best reimaginings to come out in the last ten years, as well as one of the best to release in 2019. While you can explain why the other versions are better to play, I will always return to Resident Evil 2's PS4 version. Not only does the controller layout and design of the DualShock 4 feel like a more natural fit for games played in the third perspective, but the controller’s light bar will change colors to signify how much health the player has.
Coming out of just nearly a year before the PS5, Resident Evil 2 showed that the PS4 and PS4 Pro still had some gas left in the tank to produce visually stunning graphics, especially when exploring the more dark and low-light areas of the game, making for a more daunting experience as you make your way out of Raccoon City. While there is plenty of discourse about Resident Evil games being in a third-person perspective, I argue that Resident Evil 2 is the best case study for why the series should keep third-person over tank controls or first-person.
Beauty and brutality are concepts that feel diametrically opposed, but 2018’s radical left-turn for the God of War series saw developer Sony Santa Monica discovering how to fully intertwine them. This journey through the realms of Norse mythology is both intimate and epic in scope; a story of love explored through the bone-crunching swing of an axe. Its central exploration of the relationship between Kratos and his son, Atreus, is painfully honest and arrestingly delivered. But that same emotional depth is found in all corners of its world, from the tragedy of Baldur and Freya to the Huldras’ brotherly feud.
To deliver such a well-defined reflection on the purpose of family and love among the requirements of a ferocious action game is a genuine triumph. That success comes from Kratos’ well-developed relationship with violence; his strength and determination is coupled with his imprisoned rage, and the breaking of that anger’s shackles – be that due to egotistical gods or frustrations with his offspring – means the crunchy combat sits harmoniously alongside God of War’s more cerebral intentions. Combined with breathtaking locations that harbour genuinely smart, winding level design, fun puzzles, and compelling side activities, and you have what is undoubtedly one of Sony’s most important first-party victories.
If the PlayStation 4 is 10 years old, that means mine is 10 years old. This almost certainly explains why it sounds like it’s waiting to be catapulted off the deck of an aircraft carrier.
From rendering Driveclub’s unrivalled rain to tracking Red Dead Redemption II’s transforming testicles, she did lead a busy life. Of course, these days I’ve long since shifted over to split my time across the Xbox Series X and PS5, but the PS4 still has one remaining job in my home – and that is melting faces. No, not with the clearly excessive temperatures now occurring inside it – I’m talking about high voltage, hoochie koo, all nite rock ’n roll.
My PS4 is still home to my perhaps ludicrously-sized Rock Band 4 library, a game that has remained on high rotation every holiday in my home since October 2015. For long-term fans like me, Rock Band 4 is essentially seven games in one – a colossal catalogue of every Rock Band released since November 2007 (with the unfortunate exception of The Beatles).
Rock Band 4 represents pitch-perfect same-screen co-op gaming; it’s a fusion of the only multiplayer that really matters to me with the greatest music in the world. What’s more, it’s a way to share that music with non-musicians, regardless of how terribly they keep time or how shockingly they sing. Rock ’n roll will never die, so here’s hoping my PS4 won’t either.
This was an easy call because this is the PS4 game I still fire up when I need to get away from the toxic waste fire of the world over the last few years. The world - sepia plains, lush forests, and lively towns - is so detailed and alive that it feels like time travel. I’ve finished the game more than once, but I keep a playthrough from around the middle of the game where my Arthur (my stoic, handsome, noble Arthur) just goes hunting or fishing or indulging in some light botany. Who needs VR when games can be this immersive without a headset?
Of course, if it’s your first time playing it won’t be quite as relaxing, you can expect to worry you’re developing early-onset arthritis from keeping the pad in a nervous earth grip as you join the exploits of Dutch’s criminal gang, pulling off heists, avoiding the law, staggering around saloons and generally rootin’ and tootin’ around the old west. You’ve got a lot of sweat, blood, and tears to pay before you can treat Red Dead Redemption 2 like your own personal meditation retreat, but it’s all worth it for a day on the plains.
It’s nearly impossible to end a long-running franchise in a way that will satisfy all of its fans, and yet I haven’t had a single person ever tell me that Uncharted 4 had a bad ending. From start to finish, Uncharted 4 mirrors what came before it: a non-stop action ride filled to the brim with thrilling action sequences and tough moral conundrums about Nate’s adventurous (and sometimes deceptive) lifestyle.
When a series has gone on as long as it had (nearly a decade when Uncharted 4 was released in 2016), it’s almost certain that one of our beloved main characters will meet a tragic end. And yet, Uncharted 4 just…doesn’t do that. Instead, it’s just, “This is the life we had before, and this is the life we have now.” In a world where a lot of video games and movies try to end with a shock, I found it quite bold that Naughty Dog was willing to say goodbye to Nate, Elena, and Sully in such a heartwarming, normal way.
It started with a wager. If Monster Hunter World could hit at least 90 on Metacritic, my college buddies and I would drive to Walmart to buy it that night. Over 450 hours of hunting later, I’m so glad that World hit that score, as it went on to become my favorite game on the PlayStation 4.
Monster Hunter World and its 2019 Iceborne expansion have the most satisfying gameplay loop of any video game I’ve ever played. It’s a simple one: hunt a monster, craft better gear with its parts, and use said gear to hunt stronger monsters. But it’s so well executed in World that I never wanted to put the controller down. There’s always something to chase, whether it’s a more powerful weapon or just a really cool hat you want to wear. Plus, Monster Hunter World’s quality-of-life improvements made the series more approachable than prior entries, while still containing bosses that can (and will) kick your butt.
Some of the best multiplayer moments I’ve ever had happened in Monster Hunter World, and I’ll never forget jumping off the couch in celebration when my hunting party finally felled Fatalis, Iceborne’s brutal final challenge.
The vanilla version of Persona 5 was the motivating factor behind my purchase of a PS4 in 2016 and almost everything I say about Royal can be said about the base game, but Royal gets the nod for adding 20 additional hours of content, tighter combat, and most importantly even more great music (The P5R soundtrack is a staple for any road trip).
The cohesion of style across all aspects of the game is unrivaled and the deeper themes have become increasingly relevant to the real world. P5R deftly tackles personal and societal issues, doubling down on the importance of taking care of your mental health with the introduction of Maruki while still providing commentary on external problems like abuse of power and political corruption. All of this is without mentioning the excellent character writing and the bonds formed with your confidants that end up feeling like real friends. There is even more weight to this when considering P5R released in March 2020, the start of lockdown, and the pandemic.The Persona series is a franchise known for its length, but the highest compliment I can pay it is the 100 hours I spent on P5 were so good that I gladly invested another 120 hours into P5R. It’s the only 100+ hour game I’ve finished twice.
Can moralistic attempts to improve society ignore the people actually in need of the most help? Can your good will be co-opted by evil people for their own aims? Can you find someone’s missing pet crawfish, and help an elderly woman cross the street with solely a bite of spicy kimchi? Yakuza: Like A Dragon, the first turn-based mainline entry into the Like A Dragon series, is no less serious in the issues it tackles for being so comedic and made even funnier by questioning the fringes of modern social morality while also offering a go-kart driving mini-game and another about trying not to fall asleep in a movie theatre.
Though most of the game is spent in an RPG battle system that’s solidly entertaining and varied through the variety of character classes, it’s everything else on offer that makes this utterly unmissable. Been playing too much Blackjack? Go win some weird toys in a claw machine. Stayed up until 4am grinding out the business management simulation? Go to bed in actual real life. It’s perfect for an odd brain like mine that needs variety in order to stay interested.
I was lucky enough to have visited Bungie’s office ahead of the release of Destiny to find out about its big new game, its first in a post-Halo world. In the studio’s in-house theater room, with the lights dimmed, now-former Bungie composer Marty O'Donnell asked the assembled press to listen to snippets of Destiny’s music. We did, and imagined the game Destiny would be. As I flew back to England having not seen any Destiny gameplay during the visit, I imagined a game Destiny could never hope to live up to.
Destiny ended up disappointing, its campaign a complete mess ("I don't even have time to explain why I don't have time to explain”), but with something truly special buried deep within. Despite its many problems, I played Destiny for hundreds of hours, even creating a clan for raiding. Vault of Glass remains one of the greatest encounters in video game history, and when our group finally downed Atheon we collectively cried out in pure joy. It’s easy to bash Destiny, and for many good reasons, but even when it was broken it was memorable. Yes, we pulled the ethernet cable out of the PS4 to cheese Crota. Yes, we spent hours on end farming engrams in Destiny’s first loot cave. And yes, we searched online each week to find out ‘where is Xur?’, praying the enigmatic vendor would finally sell exotic rocket launcher Gjallarhorn.
Destiny’s flawed greatness influenced a generation of games, and we’re still seeing that influence now, a decade later, as so many publishers try and fail to emulate the glory days of Destiny’s looter shooter live service. Those days are long gone, but they will never be forgotten.
What’s your favourite PS4 game? Vote in our poll below. Not see your pick? Let us know in the comments!
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Simon Cardy - Red Dead Redemption 2
There’s no world I enjoyed or got lost in more frequently on the PS4 than Red Dead Redemption 2. The long-awaited Wild West sequel fulfilled all hopes about what Rockstar could do when imprinting their trademark cinematic spectacle onto a new generation of consoles. Packed full of blockbuster moments like the Saint Denis heist or the exhilarating assault on Braithwaite Manor, I had as much fun taking part in these shootouts as I did watch whole afternoons fly by playing dominoes and poker.
This was the famed GTA studio’s only new release on the hardware, but one that proved worth the wait as it delivered on both grand scale and nuanced detail (yes, horse testicles included). For a game released on the PlayStation 4, only a small handful of games can compare to it graphically today. But there’s so much substance to that style, too. Its stunning world is packed full of memorable characters, from funny drunken escapades with Lenny to Dutch Van der Linde cementing himself as one of the greatest, and most menacing, ever video game villains. Plus, It also did what I thought was initially impossible – it made me care more about Arthur Morgan than I ever did about John Marston.
Max Scoville - Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes & The Phantom Pain
My favorite games are the ones that make you run and ask a friend, “Did you know you can _______?!” Hideo Kojima’s propensity for packing his games with exactly this sort of detail is what got me hooked on the Metal Gear Solid series to begin with, and it’s what made me fall head over heels for The Phantom Pain.
Did you know that in MGS5, you can train your horse to defecate on command, and if cars drive over the manure, they’ll spin out and crash? Or that you can abduct a bear with a weather balloon? You can also disable electronics by spraying them with a water pistol. Oh, and you can find a cassette tape of bathroom sounds, which’ll make guards leave you alone if you play it while hiding in a latrine.
You can make Snake take a shower after missions, but if you don’t, he’ll get so dirty Ocelot dumps a bucket of water on him when he returns to base. You can sled down sand dunes on a cardboard box. You can collect sexy pinups to put on your cardboard box that will distract horny guards. You can have your cardboard box delivered via airdrop, knocking out enemies if it lands directly on their heads. You can paint your helicopter pink and make it play Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” at full blast while showering an enemy camp with rockets. You can tell the game your birth date, and if you visit your base on that day, an army of hardened mercenaries surprise their ruthless leader and make him blow out candles on a cake.
The Phantom Pain is full of wonderfully bizarre little features like this, but it also nails the most basic fundamentals in a way that many games fail to. Simply making Snake move through the world feels good, whether he’s sprinting full-tilt across the battlefield to clock a guard in the face with a Six Million Dollar bionic punch, or seamlessly slithering from an army crawl to a crouch.
Sadly, Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus is appropriately titled, and its missing pieces are especially noticeable in the final acts. As much as I wish it delivered narratively, its emergent gameplay allowed me to create so many stories of my own, and the mayhem I was able to unleash with Snake’s bag of tricks was reminiscent of the joy of playing with action figures in a sandbox as a kid.
Matt Kim - Tetris Effect
At the tail end of the PS4’s life cycle, Tetsuya Mizuguchi of Rez fame decided to reimagine one of the greatest games of all time: Tetris.
Obviously he didn’t change any of the gameplay, why would you when Tetris is literally the perfect game? But instead, he set his sights on the psychological phenomenon known as the Tetris Effect, a kind of fugue state that gamers can enter when entranced by the tetrominoes slotting into place. Combining trippy visuals, a breathtaking soundtrack, and expert usage of VR (though it can be played without it) Tetris becomes the vessel in which developer Enhance delivers a message of — and I’m not kidding — world peace.
Dale Driver - The Last of Us Part 2
In the way The Last of Us defined the previous generation of PlayStation, for me, The Last of Us Part 2 takes the crown for PlayStation 4. Just like its predecessor, Part 2 arrived right at the end of the console’s lifespan and spotlighted the incredible things the soon-to-be-replaced console could still achieve. The Last of Us Part 2 continues the incredible, heartbreaking story of Joel and Ellie trying to survive a zombie-like post-apocalypse, making their way across America using stealth, their wits, and deadly bricks.
The sequel expands on the original in almost every way possible, vastly increasing the scope, the cast, and perhaps most memorable for me; the combat. My lasting memory of The Last of Us Part 2 is those inventive and memorable fight sequences. Each encounter provides opportunities for all-out violence or incredible stealth gameplay. Allowing you to do everything from prone crawling your way through an environment while laying traps, to leaping knife attacks from the top of buildings, and firing explosive arrows into your enemies from point-blank range. That mobility and variety is still yet to be topped, as is the revolutionary enemy AI that not only uses its best tactics to take you down, but also has predetermined characters and relationships, allowing NPCs to mourn their fallen friends after they witness you wrapping a pipe with scissors duct taped to it around their buddy’s face.
The Last of Us Part 2 builds on the incredible legacy the first game established, pushing the boundaries of gameplay and cinematic performances in video games and becoming a standard bearer (and reference point) for all story-driven games going forward.
Ronny Barrier - Bloodborne
What begins as a blood-ravaged Gothic nightmare descends into cosmic horror the further you dive into From Software’s modern classic, Bloodborne. From had always flirted with disturbing themes and grotesque imagery, and never shied away from the depravity that humans were capable of, but Bloodborne truly sunk down into the depths of nightmares and rose back up as a modern classic.
The consistency between storytelling and gameplay elements is key, with mechanics like Insight, Frenzy, and blood transfusions continually morphing you into the very monsters you fight, and I still haven’t gotten over the moment where I gained enough Insight to realize what was really going on all around me, and how that only made everything more disturbing.
Just like the world they created, Bloodborne becomes more enchanting, horrifying, and wonderful the more you come to understand it, and despite poor frame pacing and technical issues when stacked up against other modern action games, it’s still unrivaled in terms of creating an incredibly evocative setting. It’s just a bloody good time.
Taylor Lyles - Resident Evil 2
The remake of Resident Evil 2 is undoubtedly one of the best reimaginings to come out in the last ten years, as well as one of the best to release in 2019. While you can explain why the other versions are better to play, I will always return to Resident Evil 2's PS4 version. Not only does the controller layout and design of the DualShock 4 feel like a more natural fit for games played in the third perspective, but the controller’s light bar will change colors to signify how much health the player has.
Coming out of just nearly a year before the PS5, Resident Evil 2 showed that the PS4 and PS4 Pro still had some gas left in the tank to produce visually stunning graphics, especially when exploring the more dark and low-light areas of the game, making for a more daunting experience as you make your way out of Raccoon City. While there is plenty of discourse about Resident Evil games being in a third-person perspective, I argue that Resident Evil 2 is the best case study for why the series should keep third-person over tank controls or first-person.
Matt Purslow - God of War
Beauty and brutality are concepts that feel diametrically opposed, but 2018’s radical left-turn for the God of War series saw developer Sony Santa Monica discovering how to fully intertwine them. This journey through the realms of Norse mythology is both intimate and epic in scope; a story of love explored through the bone-crunching swing of an axe. Its central exploration of the relationship between Kratos and his son, Atreus, is painfully honest and arrestingly delivered. But that same emotional depth is found in all corners of its world, from the tragedy of Baldur and Freya to the Huldras’ brotherly feud.
To deliver such a well-defined reflection on the purpose of family and love among the requirements of a ferocious action game is a genuine triumph. That success comes from Kratos’ well-developed relationship with violence; his strength and determination is coupled with his imprisoned rage, and the breaking of that anger’s shackles – be that due to egotistical gods or frustrations with his offspring – means the crunchy combat sits harmoniously alongside God of War’s more cerebral intentions. Combined with breathtaking locations that harbour genuinely smart, winding level design, fun puzzles, and compelling side activities, and you have what is undoubtedly one of Sony’s most important first-party victories.
Luke Reilly - Rock Band 4
If the PlayStation 4 is 10 years old, that means mine is 10 years old. This almost certainly explains why it sounds like it’s waiting to be catapulted off the deck of an aircraft carrier.
From rendering Driveclub’s unrivalled rain to tracking Red Dead Redemption II’s transforming testicles, she did lead a busy life. Of course, these days I’ve long since shifted over to split my time across the Xbox Series X and PS5, but the PS4 still has one remaining job in my home – and that is melting faces. No, not with the clearly excessive temperatures now occurring inside it – I’m talking about high voltage, hoochie koo, all nite rock ’n roll.
My PS4 is still home to my perhaps ludicrously-sized Rock Band 4 library, a game that has remained on high rotation every holiday in my home since October 2015. For long-term fans like me, Rock Band 4 is essentially seven games in one – a colossal catalogue of every Rock Band released since November 2007 (with the unfortunate exception of The Beatles).
Rock Band 4 represents pitch-perfect same-screen co-op gaming; it’s a fusion of the only multiplayer that really matters to me with the greatest music in the world. What’s more, it’s a way to share that music with non-musicians, regardless of how terribly they keep time or how shockingly they sing. Rock ’n roll will never die, so here’s hoping my PS4 won’t either.
Rachel Weber - Red Dead Redemption 2
This was an easy call because this is the PS4 game I still fire up when I need to get away from the toxic waste fire of the world over the last few years. The world - sepia plains, lush forests, and lively towns - is so detailed and alive that it feels like time travel. I’ve finished the game more than once, but I keep a playthrough from around the middle of the game where my Arthur (my stoic, handsome, noble Arthur) just goes hunting or fishing or indulging in some light botany. Who needs VR when games can be this immersive without a headset?
Of course, if it’s your first time playing it won’t be quite as relaxing, you can expect to worry you’re developing early-onset arthritis from keeping the pad in a nervous earth grip as you join the exploits of Dutch’s criminal gang, pulling off heists, avoiding the law, staggering around saloons and generally rootin’ and tootin’ around the old west. You’ve got a lot of sweat, blood, and tears to pay before you can treat Red Dead Redemption 2 like your own personal meditation retreat, but it’s all worth it for a day on the plains.
Mark Medina - Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
It’s nearly impossible to end a long-running franchise in a way that will satisfy all of its fans, and yet I haven’t had a single person ever tell me that Uncharted 4 had a bad ending. From start to finish, Uncharted 4 mirrors what came before it: a non-stop action ride filled to the brim with thrilling action sequences and tough moral conundrums about Nate’s adventurous (and sometimes deceptive) lifestyle.
When a series has gone on as long as it had (nearly a decade when Uncharted 4 was released in 2016), it’s almost certain that one of our beloved main characters will meet a tragic end. And yet, Uncharted 4 just…doesn’t do that. Instead, it’s just, “This is the life we had before, and this is the life we have now.” In a world where a lot of video games and movies try to end with a shock, I found it quite bold that Naughty Dog was willing to say goodbye to Nate, Elena, and Sully in such a heartwarming, normal way.
Logan Plant - Monster Hunter World: Iceborne
It started with a wager. If Monster Hunter World could hit at least 90 on Metacritic, my college buddies and I would drive to Walmart to buy it that night. Over 450 hours of hunting later, I’m so glad that World hit that score, as it went on to become my favorite game on the PlayStation 4.
Monster Hunter World and its 2019 Iceborne expansion have the most satisfying gameplay loop of any video game I’ve ever played. It’s a simple one: hunt a monster, craft better gear with its parts, and use said gear to hunt stronger monsters. But it’s so well executed in World that I never wanted to put the controller down. There’s always something to chase, whether it’s a more powerful weapon or just a really cool hat you want to wear. Plus, Monster Hunter World’s quality-of-life improvements made the series more approachable than prior entries, while still containing bosses that can (and will) kick your butt.
Some of the best multiplayer moments I’ve ever had happened in Monster Hunter World, and I’ll never forget jumping off the couch in celebration when my hunting party finally felled Fatalis, Iceborne’s brutal final challenge.
Eric Zalewski - Persona 5 Royal
The vanilla version of Persona 5 was the motivating factor behind my purchase of a PS4 in 2016 and almost everything I say about Royal can be said about the base game, but Royal gets the nod for adding 20 additional hours of content, tighter combat, and most importantly even more great music (The P5R soundtrack is a staple for any road trip).
The cohesion of style across all aspects of the game is unrivaled and the deeper themes have become increasingly relevant to the real world. P5R deftly tackles personal and societal issues, doubling down on the importance of taking care of your mental health with the introduction of Maruki while still providing commentary on external problems like abuse of power and political corruption. All of this is without mentioning the excellent character writing and the bonds formed with your confidants that end up feeling like real friends. There is even more weight to this when considering P5R released in March 2020, the start of lockdown, and the pandemic.The Persona series is a franchise known for its length, but the highest compliment I can pay it is the 100 hours I spent on P5 were so good that I gladly invested another 120 hours into P5R. It’s the only 100+ hour game I’ve finished twice.
Mat Jones - Yakuza: Like A Dragon
Can moralistic attempts to improve society ignore the people actually in need of the most help? Can your good will be co-opted by evil people for their own aims? Can you find someone’s missing pet crawfish, and help an elderly woman cross the street with solely a bite of spicy kimchi? Yakuza: Like A Dragon, the first turn-based mainline entry into the Like A Dragon series, is no less serious in the issues it tackles for being so comedic and made even funnier by questioning the fringes of modern social morality while also offering a go-kart driving mini-game and another about trying not to fall asleep in a movie theatre.
Though most of the game is spent in an RPG battle system that’s solidly entertaining and varied through the variety of character classes, it’s everything else on offer that makes this utterly unmissable. Been playing too much Blackjack? Go win some weird toys in a claw machine. Stayed up until 4am grinding out the business management simulation? Go to bed in actual real life. It’s perfect for an odd brain like mine that needs variety in order to stay interested.
Wesley Yin-Poole - Destiny
I was lucky enough to have visited Bungie’s office ahead of the release of Destiny to find out about its big new game, its first in a post-Halo world. In the studio’s in-house theater room, with the lights dimmed, now-former Bungie composer Marty O'Donnell asked the assembled press to listen to snippets of Destiny’s music. We did, and imagined the game Destiny would be. As I flew back to England having not seen any Destiny gameplay during the visit, I imagined a game Destiny could never hope to live up to.
Destiny ended up disappointing, its campaign a complete mess ("I don't even have time to explain why I don't have time to explain”), but with something truly special buried deep within. Despite its many problems, I played Destiny for hundreds of hours, even creating a clan for raiding. Vault of Glass remains one of the greatest encounters in video game history, and when our group finally downed Atheon we collectively cried out in pure joy. It’s easy to bash Destiny, and for many good reasons, but even when it was broken it was memorable. Yes, we pulled the ethernet cable out of the PS4 to cheese Crota. Yes, we spent hours on end farming engrams in Destiny’s first loot cave. And yes, we searched online each week to find out ‘where is Xur?’, praying the enigmatic vendor would finally sell exotic rocket launcher Gjallarhorn.
Destiny’s flawed greatness influenced a generation of games, and we’re still seeing that influence now, a decade later, as so many publishers try and fail to emulate the glory days of Destiny’s looter shooter live service. Those days are long gone, but they will never be forgotten.
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