Best Games in the Last Five Years.

[AngryGazelle]

So, what are the best games you've played that were released in 2018 or after.

Mine are:

Doom Eternal Simply for the combat loop gameplay - bloody fantastic.

The Last of Us Part Two One of my all time favourites, actually. The core gameplay is so good, and the level design is probably some of the best in gaming. Graphics are stunning and I liked the story, even if it was a little bloated and didn't quite pull of what it was going for.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Best game I've ever played in terms of exploration. Fantastic story. Beautiful graphics. The controls are wank, and I'm waiting for a 60fps mode before I do a second playthrough, but what a game!

Marvel's Spider-Man 2nd best superhero game, EVER!

Hades Very tough but very rewarding - fantastic characters too.

Frostpunk Absolutely loved this - I miss my PC

Sekiro My Favourite FromSoft game.

Control  I think this is great, I'm adding it to the list for it's uniqueness as well as the fact I have replayed it which is rare, and a sign I've really liked a game.

[bgmnts]

Disco Elysium

[madhair60]

N/A

[AngryGazelle]

N/A

Oh, give us one. I'll tickle your back.

[AngryGazelle]

Disco Elysium

Yeah, I debated putting this on the list. I think I need to do a replay before listing it as an all time great.

[madhair60]

alright. Armored Core VI. maybe. Elden Ring too. and Sekiro if that was five years. all the From stuff.

and all the boomer shooters too.

[oggyraiding]

Resi Village
Judgment & Lost Judgment
SteelRising
Ghost of Tsushima
Control probably the best of the last five years.

[Memorex MP3]

Disco Elysium
A Short Hike
Return of the Obra Dinn
Tetris Effect

2 of which will be over 5 years old in about a month, the other 2 are about 4 years old now.

If I had to pick something more recent it'd probably be Immortality.



Major games I haven't played that I probably should give a solid effort trying even though they aren't my kind of thing: something FromSoftware, that Spider Man, a Forza Horizon, Control, Half Life Alyx

Indies I haven't played that I'm optimistic about: Hades, Chicory

[druss]

Sekiro, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3.

[seepage]

Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children
The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk
Warhammer 40,000 Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters
King Arthur: Knight's Tale
Wasteland 3
Regalia
Marvel: Midnight Sons

[The Crumb]

Outer Wilds + Echoes of the Eye - one of my favourites ever. Brilliant in so many ways

Sekiro - some of the most satisfying combat and best boss fights ever

Persona 5 Royal - perfect lockdown escapism, absolutely bursting with style.

Metro Exodus - love me dour Slavic storytelling. incredibly immersive and tactile. Finishing stretch was amazing

WRC 10 - niche but rallying is great in game form. Love the potential for that intense in the zone feeling. The split screen mode with realistic damage mode enabled is also good old fashioned fun.

Tunic - A fun little adventure that emerges into a brilliant puzzle covering the whole game world

Guilty Gear Strive - Ridiculously good looking, incredibly campy and really fun to play.

[The Guppy]

Too skint to play most things but

Outer Wilds - It's frightening and beautiful and it made me feel dead clever when I sussed things out. Still need to play Echoes of the Eye

Sekiro - It's frightening and beautiful and it made me feel like a right hard cunt

Astro Bot Rescue Mission - Not frightening

Elden Ring - Incredible piece of work. Can't wait for the DLC

Returnal - Yep

EDF 5 - EDF!

Hades - Loved the variety of builds and all the characters

Tetris Rosy Retrospection - Tweaked version of the best version of the best game of all time

[Lemming]

Desperados 3 - yes yes yes yes yes

Slay The Spire - technically a 2019 release (though it was in early access before then), best deckbuilding game ever

Ion Fury - best of the "boomer shooters", easily

Wasteland 3 - it's got a few problems but it's generally an upgrade over WL2

Gears Tactics - really enjoyed this, it's a fresh spin on the XCOM-reboot formula that everyone does these days

Baldur's Gate 3 - probably the best implementation of D&D in a videogame on the whole

Metro Exodus - can't go wrong with Metro

Crash Bandicoot 4 - love it even if the difficulty does get utterly absurd at times

Honourable mentions to Starfield (as usual with Bethesda, the bones of a good game are there but it'll take a few years for modders to build on it), Marvel Midnight Suns (absolutely superb combat, but you have to deal with endless Marvel shit between gameplay), and Hades (really good but I've never played it for more than two hours at a time because I always hit my burnout limit right around then).

[bgmnts]

Ah yes Desperados 3 and Wastelands 3 were very good.

[C_Larence]

Would have said Nier Automata but just looked it up and that was 2017! Can't think of anything else that hasn't been said...the new pokémon was pretty good.

[Kelvin]

On Switch I've loved:

Smash Bros. Ultimate

Metroid Dread

Bowser's Fury

Astral Chain

Luigi Mansion 3

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Splatoon 3

Super Mario 35

Animal Crossing (very much a time and place game admittedly)

Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom


And non-Nintendo games

Monster Hunter Rise

Tmnt Shredders Revenge

Ape Out

Bloodstained Curse of the Moon

Celeste

Hades

Blasphemous

Ori 2

[Kelvin]

Plus a shit ton of remakes and ports that came out on Switch in the last few years.

[C_Larence]

Oh yeah Nier Automata only came out on switch last year, my vote stands

[Mister Six]

Disco Elysium: Absolutely astounding writing, and the innovative gameplay mechanic has finally convinced me after decades of false starts that a proper detective game can actually be a thing. Fantastic characters, an absurd number of different things to discover with different builds, laugh-out-loud funny while also being achingly melancholic. One of those games that you want more, more, more of while also recognising that its uniqueness is part of the charm.

Psychonauts 2: The opposite of Disco Elysium in just about every way: a bouncy, colourful, largely positive world full of likeable characters and fleshed out with quality platforming and exploration in some of the most lushly crafted environments I've ever seen (even if they aren't as varied in gameplay as the first one). Loses a couple of points for tying the start of the story into some separate VR prequel I never played (and couldn't if I wanted to) and for requiring people to play the naff PS2 port of the first game to get the most out of it. Still wonderful, though.

Control: Maybe the best looking game on the base PS4, certainly one of the most fun and intriguingly written. I was maybe an hour or two into the game before I even knew what was happening, and it was a while longer before I was told what the protagonist actually wanted. Masterfully teases questions to keep drawing the player into its weird, eerie world, but commits to answering all the key ones while leaving a few teases for sequels. Plus, the combat feels so good, lobbing a sofa at some freaky monster's face before flying off into the air to rain down terror from your magical - possibly living - machine gun. Definitely play with the DLC though.

Lost Judgment: I've mainlined all the PS4 RGG games over the past couple of years, and I thought Yakuza 0 and Yakuza: Like A Dragon were the peak, but no: Lost Judgment is so good it deserves a tier of its own. All the good stuff from Judgment and the Yakuza games - fluid martial-arts combat, hilarious side stories, a really compelling main storyline and characters, great minigames - but better than ever before, with all the most tedious aspects of Judgment's investigation procedures removed or minimised. The Kaito Files DLC is brilliant too.

Luigi's Mansion 3: Not too challenging, but highly absorbing game that's full of delightful surprises and humour. And it looks stunning, especially for a Switch game.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Yakuza: Like A Dragon: This is where the Yakuza (now "Like A Dragon") franchise transitioned from beat 'em up action to JRPG combat, and it's surprisingly successful. The writing is great as ever, all the new characters are wonderful and the story is properly emotional in places. Sadly, the combat is a little too simplistic and repetitive - which it looks like the sequel, Infinite Wealth, out this January, will fix.

Void Bastards: Cheap 'n' cheerful procedural roguelite FPS with a decent sense of humour and a really addictive gameplay loop. A little too short and simple to stand with the big boys up there, but highly recommended.

Also, shout outs to two 2017 games - Prey, the best game of the past decade or so, and Nier: Automata, the experience of playing which will probably stay with me my whole life even if the game itself is a little creaky.

[bgmnts]

Oh yeah Psychonauts 2! A proper video game, that.

Some decent titles the past few years fair play.

[Rev+]

Disco Elysium
A Short Hike
Return of the Obra Dinn
Tetris Effect

2 of which will be over 5 years old in about a month, the other 2 are about 4 years old now.

If I had to pick something more recent it'd probably be Immortality.

Spookily the same, although I've not played 'A Short Hike'. I'd swap that one out for 'The Sexy Brutale', if there wasn't a nagging feeling that I'll be really miserable if I look up the year that one came out.

Resi Village is the best game I've played in the last few years. 80 Days is better than Disco Elysium.  From have never released a good game, they're all for nu-metal wankers. Everyone's a Wally deserves a remake.

[bgmnts]

Spookily the same, although I've not played 'A Short Hike'. I'd swap that one out for 'The Sexy Brutale', if there wasn't a nagging feeling that I'll be really miserable if I look up the year that one came out.

Would have been in my list too but, sorry...

[Pink Gregory]

+1 for Tunic; very much a case of the best parts of other games wrapped up in appealing design, but the obscurity of the true ending puzzle and the slow realisation of what the game truly is was an experience that I can't really say I've had elsewhere.  Didn't even finish it but it captured me completely.

[Old Nehamkin]

I liked Death Stranding a hell of a lot but I have also played barely any other new games made in the last 5 years so what the heck do I know.

If Nintendo had put out a proper Mario game in this time frame then I would probably say that. But they haven't so here we are.

[kidney]

Factorio: Already perfected the factory/logistic genre and getting a huge expansion next year.
Cruelty Squad: It might look like a shitpost but it's a brilliantly weird and very replayable stealth sandbox FPS nightmare with great level design and loads of secrets. I have over 70 hours played in it which is incredible for a £15 single-player indie shooter.
Disco Elysium: Everyone else has already said how remarkable this is (Mister Six's comment especially captures how I feel).

[jimboslice]

Slay the Spire is comfortably in my top 10 video games of all time, even though it could have been released 20 years ago. It's just beautifully balanced and incredibly replayable. I'm always on the hunt for similar games but nothing has matched it. Monster Train perhaps the closest, Inscryption the most "interesting" (Runs out of steam a bit though).

Sekiro is amazing, so happy I got bullied into playing it. One of those games where anxiety-induced sweating forces you to put the pad down for a few hours, then you come back to it a few hours later and just smash the source of all stress in one or two goes. Guardian Ape and Owl (Father) were way worse than the Sword Saint. I've since been through Bloodborne & DS3, having a nice break before Elden Ring.

Loved Obra Dinn too but I'd like to shout out the (sort-of) knock-off Case of the Golden Idol, which I think I preferred. Love that these sort of games exist, spent today playing a similar-ish one called Chants of Sennaar (different really, but you know).

Also got obsessed with both Zelda games, very enjoyable to just spend an evening pissing about exploring with some music or podcast on in the background.

[Memorex MP3]

I definitely preferred Obra Dinn but Golden Idol has the potential to be absolutely massive with spin offs (despite feeling like the hackathon version of Obra Dinn) if it gets to a wider audience.

It's a massive bummer I probably will get to play Obra Dinn at most once more in my life, am very happy Golden Idol has streamlined the best bits while retaining most of the appeal.

[Rev+]

Would have been in my list too but, sorry...

Look, absolutely everything nominated so far came out two years ago tops.

Similarly, Twin Peaks didn't return over six years ago.

[Mister Six]

It's a massive bummer I probably will get to play Obra Dinn at most once more in my life

I'm almost afraid to ask, but... why?

[Poobum]

Disco Elysium - Never has a game been so much fun when failing.

Psychonauts 2 - Played both one after the other. I like 2's open area and each level is just a joy to experience. Randomly find myself singing the Grulovian national anthem. Compton's Cookoff was just genius. Really wish the combat wasn't there though.

Halo Infinite - Loved the grapple so much. The actual levels were fun but the options and methods for fighting and taking bases in the open world were fun to plan and execute.

Elden Ring - My first ever Souls game. I am very bad at games so assumed I'd try it and give up. That world though, wanted to see every bit. The risk reward made everything so intense and there were the gutting times where I lost so many runes. It took me twenty hours of gameplay playing as a great shield wielding coward to finally read the tool tips during the load screen properly and learn that you can auto counter with it. Spam attack, roll, and panic was my go to style for a long time but something clicked fighting Alecto in the evergaol. Got into a zone and was able to consistently anticipate and counter their attacks. Got down to the three fingers in one attempt and only took about 4 hours to down Malenia, two of my greatest gaming achievements.   

Cyberpunk 2077 - Had no expectations going in and bizarrely probably one of my favourite games ever. Really hated Johnny Silverhand to begin with, just seemed a silly gimmick, but I ended up getting really invested, also loved the character I was playing more than any other I can think of. Loved the gameplay as well, so much fun going the hacking route and just getting people to turn on each other before clearing everyone else out during the confusion.