Best PS5 Action Adventure Games 2026

I put off playing Astro Bot for months. It looked like a cute mascot platformer, and I'd already written off its predecessor as the free tech demo Sony bundled with the console. Then the reception kept piling up, so I finally gave it a proper run, and I was wrong about all of it. Every level throws something new at you: a gust of wind through the trigger, a rumble that tells you exactly where a bot is hiding behind a wall. The combat and puzzles stay simple, so purists might call this a platformer wearing an adventure coat. Doesn't matter. It's still the easiest recommendation on this whole list for a family game night.

I've been playing God of War since the original launched on PS2, taking turns with a friend and a couple of beers between us. Ragnarok is the best one yet, and that's not a small claim for a series this long. Every axe throw and shield parry lands with real weight, and the realms are dense with environmental puzzles gating almost every vault. The story actually earns its length instead of padding it. My one gripe: the back half sprawls a little, with side quests that exist mainly to pad the map. No contest, though. This is still the clearest blockbuster action-adventure on PS5.

I skipped Uncharted for years, assuming a treasure-hunting knockoff wouldn't grab me the way The Last of Us did. Wrong call. The Legacy of Thieves Collection on PS5 is exactly why I get the hype a decade late. Climbing, puzzle-gated vaults, set pieces that turn a train chase into a full level, all of it still holds up, and load times on PS5 are basically instant. Nathan Drake's banter does the heavy lifting in scenes that would otherwise just be climbing walls, the same trick that made me love Tomb Raider. The catch: this is a remaster, not a new game, so anyone who already played it on PS4 has nothing new to chase beyond the frame rate. Everyone else should treat it as the genre's benchmark.

I love comics, but the Spider-Man games as a series never quite clicked for me the way Uncharted or Horizon did. Spider-Man 2 is the one that changed that, mostly because swinging through New York by itself is worth the price of admission. Chaining a web-swing into a wall-run into a mid-air dive never gets old, and new districts load fast enough that traversal never breaks. Combat stays accessible, not demanding. The side content leans more toward map-clearing than genuine exploration, which keeps it a notch below the puzzle-heavier picks above it. If fast traversal and comic-book set pieces are what you're after, this is as polished as PS5 gets.

Horizon Forbidden West came bundled with my PS5. It's the reason open worlds still have my attention years later. I can lose entire evenings wandering the Utah ruins or climbing a Tallneck just for the view, not because a quest told me to. The machine fights hold up too: circling a Thunderjaw, stripping parts with tear weapons, figuring out which trap to set before it notices you. I'm actually playing Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered right now, working backward into the story this one builds on. The skill trees and side quests lean a little RPG for a strict action-adventure list, which is the only reason it sits mid-table instead of higher. Anyone who wants a genuinely stunning world to explore should start here regardless.

I played Ghost of Tsushima right after Horizon Forbidden West, and the historical setting is what set it apart for me. Walking through a burned village knowing there's real history under the fiction adds a layer pure fantasy can't match. The sword duels are the best part: one wrong parry against a Mongol officer and you're dead, which keeps every fight tense twenty hours in. Stealth and traversal both hold up too. The open-world checklist of hot springs and haiku spots feels familiar if you've played any Sony open world before this one, and that's really the only knock against it. Director's Cut adds Iki Island, and on PS5 it loads and looks sharp enough for anyone chasing a samurai story with teeth.

Rift Apart is probably the best-looking game I've run on my OLED, full stop. The dimension-rifts happen with zero loading. One second you're in a neon city, the next a swamp planet, and that trick alone justifies owning a PS5. I finished the campaign in under ten hours, which for me these days counts as a genuine luxury. It leans more toward platforming and weapon spectacle than deep adventure design, closer to Astro Bot than to Ghost of Tsushima. The Clank sections and dimension puzzles keep it from being pure shooting, though, and Rivet is a great addition to the cast. Short, gorgeous, and genuinely fun. If you want a game the whole family can watch over your shoulder, start here.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the first-person outlier on this list, and I went in skeptical since almost everything else I play is third-person. It won me over during the first museum heist, when the puzzles turned out to require actually reading the environment instead of just highlighting an interactive object. History always pulls me into a game faster than pure fantasy, the same reason Ghost of Tsushima stuck with me, and the Vatican and Himalaya settings do real work here. Stealth is genuinely optional rather than a chore forced on you between fights. The combat is the weakest part, functional but clearly not the point, and that keeps it a rung below the picks with stronger fighting. Worth playing for the puzzle design alone.

I went into Death Stranding 2 expecting the same wall I hit with the original, which I never finished because hauling boxes across a ruined America didn't grab me. This one grabbed me anyway. The traversal is still the whole game, picking routes down mountains and laying ziplines while the weather turns against you, but the stakes feel sharper and the vehicles help the middle stretch. On my OLED the environments look genuinely staggering, especially the storm sequences. It's a hard one to recommend broadly, though. The pacing is deliberately slow, and anyone who wants combat and quick payoffs should look elsewhere on this list. For players who want atmosphere over action, nothing else here comes close to its sense of journey.

I picked up The Lost Crown through PS Plus, half-reluctant, since I've been playing Prince of Persia since Sands of Time in 2003 and a side-on 2.5D game felt like a step backward on paper. It isn't. The movement is razor-sharp. Chaining a wall-jump into a dash into a parry feels as dynamic as the 3D games I grew up with, and the map rewards real backtracking once new tools unlock. The artwork deserves a mention too, hand-painted backgrounds with more personality than plenty of full 3D open worlds. Combat has real difficulty spikes that will frustrate anyone allergic to trial and error. It's the most platforming-heavy pick on this list, which is exactly why it rounds things out with a different flavor than everything above it.