Ricardo’s Top 10 PS4/Xbox One Games – July 2018 Edition

It’s been a full year since I last updated my Top 10 PS4/Xbox One Games list and today I’m finally publishing a new edition of it. Originally my plan was to update the list every six months, but this past January I was really busy and never got around to revising the list. Having played a few games over the preceding months, a few of which I knew were Top 10 contenders, it became clear that I couldn’t put this off any longer, so this past weekend I hunkered down at my computer and let the mental battle begin. Today you’ll see which games came out on top when the dust had settled.

Before I lay out my list, let me give a few quick notes on it so you can understand where I’m coming from. First, obviously, this is a personal list, so it’s limited to just the games I’ve played. There are too many games to play these days and there are some genres that I like more than others, so this list is no doubt missing many legendary games that I’ve simply never played. Second, and somewhat related to the first note, I normally don’t play games until several months to several years after they’ve been released, so you’re not going to see anything recent on this list. Third, I placed no special restrictions on what games could appear on this list other than that I played them for the first time on either PS4 or Xbox One. That means remakes/remasters and ports of older games are in contention alongside games that first debuted in the current console generation.

With all that out of the way, below is the list of my Top 10 PS4/Xbox One games. Clicking the titles of the games will take you to their respective writing pieces where I discuss them in greater depth. To view the old Top 10 list, click the link here. If you compare the new list with the old one you’ll see that the top four games have remained unchanged but two new games have fought their way onto the list and there have been some changes to the ranking of the returning games in the bottom six slots. Underneath the list I’ve included a section with short blurbs that give basic details of each game and some of my thoughts on them. Enjoy.

Ricardo’s Top 10 PS4/Xbox One Games

10. Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
9. Bastion
8. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture
7. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
6. Watch Dogs
5. Child of Light
4. Batman: Arkham Knight
3. Destiny (Complete Edition)
2. Ratchet & Clank
1. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

 

10. Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition

The number 10 slot on this list turned out to be the hardest to decide and eventually devolved into a bloody three-way fight between Valiant Hearts: The Great War, Infamous: Second Son, and Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition. It was an excruciatingly hard call, but after much deliberation I declared Tomb Raider the victor. Tomb Raider is a reboot of the long-running series by the same name and the Definitive Edition of it was my first time playing a Tomb Raider game. In it we see a new origin story of Lara Croft and her transformation from a history nerd who doesn’t like to get her hands dirty into a badass survivor. Taking cues from the Uncharted series, Tomb Raider is an excellent mix of exploration, combat, puzzles, and character moments for Lara. I may be really late to the Tomb Raider party, but I’m glad I showed up when I did.

9. Bastion

In Bastion you play as the Kid, a young man who wakes up to find his entire civilization has been upended by a disaster known as the Calamity. The only way to make things right is for the Kid to complete a device known as the Bastion, and in an interesting twist the Kid’s entire journey is told by an old man who narrates everything that happens in the game. In addition to this novel storytelling technique, Bastion has a few other tricks up its sleeve, including a colorful fantasy world that assembles around the Kid as he moves forward and fun, responsive gameplay that kept me coming back for more. Bastion is the oldest game to appear on this list, having been originally released back in 2011, but even today it can still compete with its modern gaming counterparts.

8. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture

What happened here? That’s the question you’ll be trying to answer in Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Set in fictional Shropshire County in 1980s rural England, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture has you walking around a land that appears to have been abandoned just a few minutes before you arrived. Mysterious visions of the events in Shropshire prior to the mass-disappearance give you tantalizing pieces of the puzzle as well as insights into the lives of the people who are now gone. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture’s story had me hooked from start to finish of it’s five or so hour playtime, and together with its outstanding soundtrack and colorful visuals made for one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in the last few years.

7. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Once again it’s time to dive back into the Animus, a machine that allows its users to experience the lives of people from the distant past, and this time you are Edward Kenway, a pirate turned assassin whose ship prowled the waters of the Caribbean in the early 1700s. Though Black Flag does feature the usual Assassin’s Creed elements of traversal, stealth, melee combat, assassinations, and exploration, at the heart of the experience is fantastic naval gameplay that lets you live out your pirate fantasies of battling on high seas, plundering valuable cargo, and building up your ship and Edward to become the most fearsome pirate around. Black Flag is the pirate game we’ve always wanted and it is undeniably one of the best entries in the voluminous Assassin’s Creed series.

6. Watch Dogs

Originally Watch Dogs and Black Flag were ranked further apart, but the more I thought about the more I realized how similar they are to each other, aside from the time period they each take place in. In the end, Watch Dogs narrowly earned the higher slot because I enjoyed it just a little bit more than Black Flag. In the very near future the city of Chicago has become the world’s first Smart City, with much of its infrastructure and utilities controlled by a central operating system. As you might expect, protagonist Aiden Pearce has manage to hack it along with the innumerable number of smart devices being carried around by Chicago’s citizens. Traveling deep into Chicago’s seedy underbelly to find out who ordered the failed attempt on his life that left his niece dead, Aiden has the city itself to use as his tool. There’s an undeniable satisfaction to clearing an area of enemies without firing a single shot or ditching pursuers by turning the city against them, and once you play Watch Dogs you’ll see why it can be hard for me to go back to modern open world games that don’t have its hacking mechanics.

5. Child of Light

Bursting onto the scene as one of my favorite games so far this year, Child of Light tells the story of a young girl named Aurora who wakes up one day in the fantasy world of Lemuria. Although hesitant at first, Aurora embarks on a fairy tale adventure to recover Lemuria’s light from the grip of an evil queen and find her way home. Employing a rich watercolor palate on an impressively deep and detailed art style, Child of Light brings the fantasy world of Lemuria to life in a way that I haven’t seen in years and encourages you to explore to explore every last inch of it. Combine a short but charming story and great visuals with elegantly simple gameplay and you’ve got a fantasy RPG like few others.

4. Batman: Arkham Knight

What has always made the Arkham games great is that they make you feel like Batman—the detective, the predator, the martial arts master—and Batman: Arkham Knight is no different from its predecessors. In the fourth and final entry of the series, all of Gotham City is under threat, with Scarecrow, aided by several other Batman villains as well as the mysterious Arkham Knight, threatening to plunge Batman’s city beneath a cloud of fear toxin. Batman has a long, dark night ahead of him, but this time he can call on some help from allies like Nightwing, Catwoman, and Robin as he slowly unravels Scarecrow’s plot and frees the city from the clutches of the Arkham Knight’s militia. While it’s kind of sad to see the Arkham series of games end, with Arkham Knight it went out on a high note and guaranteed the series’ status of having some of the best superhero games ever made.

3. Destiny (Complete Edition)

Were I rating Destiny solely on its base version and the condition it was in when I first played it, I think it’s safe to say it would be many slots further down on the list. With all the expansion packs and improvements that have been made since launch, however, Destiny has transformed into one of my favorite games of this console generation. Continual refinements to the Destiny formula created an addicting and incredibly fun sci-fi FPS that I poured over 100 hours into, and even though I’ve now stopped playing I still sometimes go online to see what’s going on in the world of Destiny. Whether it was playing story missions, teaming up with other players to complete Strikes, or dipping my feet into competitive multiplayer, Destiny was a blast and I’m looking forward to whenever I’ll be able to play Destiny 2.

2. Ratchet & Clank

If Ratchet & Clank doesn’t put a smile on your face then I don’t know what will. A remake of the iconic PS2 game, Ratchet & Clank is an absolute delight to play and has some of the most hilarious weapons you’ll find in a video game, including one that turn enemies into sheep, another that cause impromptu dance parties to break out, and the trash-talking killer robot named Mr. Zurkon. With a visual style that might best be described as Pixar-esque and a classic story of misfits out to save the galaxy, Ratchet and Clank is the sort of game that reminds you why you love playing video games.

1. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

No surprise, my 2016 Game of the Year is still sitting pretty atop the list of my top 10 games of this console generation. At this point I’ve showered so many accolades on Uncharted 4 that I don’t know what else to say. It perfectly wraps up Nathan Drake’s storyline, delivers everything that we’ve come to expect from an Uncharted game, and shows once again why developer Naughty Dog is one of the best developers in the entire video games industry. It is both the best game I’ve played so far on this console generation and my favorite game of this console generation. Kicking it off its throne will be a tall order for any other game that I play over the next few years.