The best games I’ve played in 2026 so far

I’m fairly pleased with the number of games I’ve managed to finish this year—especially ones that launched in 2026. At least half this list is made up of games I bought myself because I wanted them, but I was offered Steam keys from PR folks or publishers here and there. For my tastes, this was a great year for spy games, offbeat horror titles, and licensed stuff. Some of the games I was looking forward to most were also the biggest disappointments. I’ve played nothing in the realm of console exclusives from 2026, I don’t own a Switch 2, and I don’t plan on diving into Grand Theft Auto VI till the PC port arrives (though I’d probably play through the story on PS5 if Rockstar reached out).

So there are still plenty of interesting 2026 games on my wishlist or in my backlog, but now’s as good a time as any to take stock of what I have played so far, declare some genuine “year’s bests,” and reflect a bit. As for games I finished from previous years, my favorites have been Far from Noise (2017), Firewatch (2016), Five Nights at Freddy’s (2014), Mouthwashing (2024), Paratopic (2018), the Resident Evil Remake Trilogy (2023), the Sith Inquisitor campaign in Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011), and The Thing: Remastered (2024).

These, then, are the new releases that impressed, moved, or thrilled me most this year—for one reason or another. Some, I’d call masterpieces; some are the entertainment equivalent of a Burger King Whopper or a fun-size Twix. We contain multitudes, and when I’m not revisiting old favorites like Halo, Mass Effect, Morrowind, or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, I do my best to sample a wide variety of cool games.

1. 007 First Light

Since I’ve put these in alphabetical order, a young British aircrewman named James Bond gets top billing. And he’s earned it. I’ve always had a soft spot for licensed games and for 007; I grew up playing GoldenEye and Mission: Impossible on the N64, and those left a profound mark on me. Bond’s a fascinating character who’s been with us for more than 70 years. Like Batman or the myths of old, he lends himself to reinvention, holding a mirror to masculinity, geopolitics, and technological progress through the ages.

I’m already playing through this a second time and enjoying it even more. It’s got some of IOI’s Hitman design ethos in the mix, but it offers its own unique cocktail of Tomb Raider action, stealth, rich narrative, and spectacular setpieces. I posted a full-length review on YouTube.

2. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (Multiplayer)

From a pure thumbs-on-the-sticks standpoint, the core multiplayer experience here is on par with the first two Modern Warfare titles, Black Ops III, World at War, and so on. I’m even tempted to say that Search and Destroy and Gunfight, my two favorite modes, are better than they’ve been in years, and the new Kill Block variant is pretty exquisite. (I haven’t played the campaign yet, though I may do so this winter; I have no plans to ever revisit DMZ or Warzone.)

There’s a lot that remains to be seen as the game evolves from season to season: How much AI imagery can we reasonably expect to hit the in-game store in the months to come? Will I still be able to enjoy myself if a bunch of slop does suddenly hit the shop? And will the devs stick to their guns in terms of keeping things focused on “mil-sim” elements? For so many reasons, it’s hard to give this an enthusiastic recommendation just yet, from the $70 pricetag to the ongoing calls for a boycott of Xbox Game Pass.

3. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival

If Hellbound: Hellraiser II left you wanting more from Clive Barker’s bizarre dark-fantasy mythos, with its cruel god Leviathan and curious golden puzzle boxes, you’re in for a treat. This lean, mean survival-horror adventure packs loads of fun, gore, sexy time—unimaginable depths of sensation and torment, one might say—into a 12-hour story campaign that really impressed me.

It manages to turn a fetch quest involving “the biggest, thickest dildo you can find” and some erotic spanking into one of the most wholesome character moments I’ve seen in a game all year. Yet kinky ex-con Aidan Lynch (Xalavier Nelson Jr.) is no cinnamon-roll protagonist. There’s an ocean of darkness and self-delusion roiling under the surface of this game, and the overarching story is as haunting as that of, well, Barker’s The Hellbound Heart or its 1987 adaptation. Suffering is serious business; puzzle-solving is a matter of life and death. In this story, everyone has a potential monster lurking within. It’s a helluva good time.

4. Control Resonant

I’ve only played a few hours of this one, but it makes a great first impression, and I’ve played enough Remedy games over the years to know that I’m going to enjoy diving further and further into this trippy open-world nightmare. If the quality stays relatively consistent, I’m probably going to like this one quite a bit more than the original Control, which I thought had a great story but not-so-great gunplay. Quantum Break and the original Max Payne are my favorite games from this studio, but I really like Dylan and Jesse Fade, and Aberrant is a phenomenal piece of superheroic weapon design.

5. Don’t Sleep with the Fishes

I’m ranked at number 57 in the world on the Speedrun.com board for this game, and I’ve never considered myself a competitive gamer. Outside of the occasional Trials of Osiris card in Destiny 2 or my Halo 5 ranked arena days a decade ago, I just don’t think of myself as having much to offer in a speedrunning context. It’s not my intention to get good: I’m here for a good time. But there’s something different about Don’t Sleep with the Fishes, a deceptively simple roguelike survival-horror game in which you try not to drown (or be devoured) out on the open sea. It speaks to the day-to-day anxieties of our cultural moment, with its widespread food insecurity, unprecedented manmade horrors, and environmental concerns. I adore this game.

6. Forbidden Solitaire

I think of this clever, nineties-infused horror game as Balatro meets The Blair Witch Project, but it’s got a great deal of narrative meat on the bone, which it delivers in mixed-media form as you descend further into the rabbit hole, trying to plumb the depths of its mystery. In the world of the game, Forbidden Solitaire is itself a haunted piece of lost media from the 1990s, and its unique brand of madness is contagious—like the novels of Sutter Cane or the videotape from Ringu.

7. Forever Ago

I just started this one last night, but after more than two hours with it, I feel it’s earned an affectionate nod on this list of 2026 favorites. The central romance in this story is explored through flashback sequences across decades, and it’s all so sweet and authentically written—and serves as a welcome reprieve from the aging protagonist’s struggles in the present day. The acting and music is terrific throughout, too; it makes you long for a road-trip adventure with that special someone in your life. Relationships can be hard work, but stories as beautiful as this remind us why they’re worth the effort.

8. Halloween: The Game

This is one of those games I daydreamed about for years, hoping it would come along and relieve some of the pain of losing Friday the 13th: The Game. It’s been a fantastic time with friends and fellow streamers, but it’s not at all the game I assumed it would be. In this interesting twist on the asym-horror formula, it isn’t your fellow players but the NPC residents of Haddonfield who are your real priority. You’re not looking after your own skin; instead, it’s your job to save as many of your fellow citizens as possible before the match ends. The game has some balancing issues—it’s not especially fun to be Michael Myers against a lobby of really skilled civilians at the moment. But if you’re a fan of the Halloween series (and, boy, am I ever), this is a must-play.

9. Meccha Chameleon

Like Halloween or Modern Warfare 4, this is one best enjoyed with a handful of friends, but I’ve had a blast with Meccha Chameleon. It cost me less than $5 around launch, and I’ve gotten at least seven fun-filled hours out of it. This is a straightforward game of hide-and-go-seek, more or less, except that you can paint your character model to blend in with your environment. Finding a really dark corner and doing your best to disappear into the shadows is an exciting challenge, and it’s a very, laid-back casual experience by design, so there isn’t a lot of pressure to perform well for the sake of your team.

10. Mixtape

There’s been a lot of hyperbolic praise around this game, and a predictably equal amount of eye-rolling in response, but this game has a lot of heart. It’s embarrassing to be a young person on the verge of a scary new chapter—moving out of the house and into the uncharted realm of adulthood. Even if the plot is a bit timid and safe for my liking, the characters are charming, and it’s impossible for me not to love a soundtrack that includes Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” and Stan Bush’s “Dare.” I suspect this will inspire a wave of imitators, because it’s truly a joy to play.

11. Paratopic: Overdub

I’d always wanted to check out Paratopic anyway, so the release of Paratopic: Overdub seemed like a good opportunity to finally see what I’d been missing. I played both games back to back, and enjoyed the first Paratopic’s confidence and simplicity, but found that the sequel improves on the mythmaking and game design in some significant ways: the puzzles, the art direction, the scope of the characters’ journeys into nightmares. These games recall films like Lost Highway and the heyday of found-footage horror, and the dialogue has such a lyrical quality to it. It’s the sort of game that makes you want to make a game, which I suppose is one of the highest compliments one can pay a work of art. If you only play one, I’d skip right to Overdub, but you can easily play them both in under three hours.

12. Retro Rewind: Video Store Simulator

The hold this game had on me! I couldn’t put it down till I’d unlocked every upgrade, every Steam achievement, and had turned my video store into a glorious, fully automated palace of home entertainment. I lived at Hogan’s Video as a child; as I grew, my dad and I would take walks to Family Video in the evening and browse the shelves for hours on end. My wife and I used to walk from her place to Family Video, pick out a DVD or two, and then grab ice cream for the coziest at-home date night possible.

Streaming services and digital on-demand have their perks—don’t get me wrong—but the loss of video stores was a terrible loss of curation, of community, and of that sense of discovering a new film on a physical, tangible shelf. If you want a game that recaptures some of what was so special about video-store culture, this is a must-play.

13. Slay the Spire II

The sequel to 2019’s Slay the Spire is still in early access, so it’s got some rough edges to it. It’s ever-so-slightly inferior to the original—at least for the moment. But it also offers fresh Slay the Spire, this time with a co-op multiplayer component built right in. Given the choice between this and decades of incremental changes to the original Slay the Spire, I think Mega Crit made the right choice; a sequel gives you so much room to experiment and grow.

At first glance, it’s easy to say that this doesn’t quite feel like a new game, but it’s like Destiny 2: it’s easy to take new content design and quality-of-life upgrades for granted. In a few years, “Slay the Spire” will likely just be shorthand for the superior sequel, and no one will want to go back to the version that didn’t offer multiplayer. One hopes, anyway. It’s hard to imagine Slay the Spire II’s Early Access period not leading to a finished product with as much depth, replayability, and sheer joy as the first game.

14. Space Warlord Baby Trading Simulator

This game is a real treat for the senses. The whole thing is essentially a virtual stock-market trade interface in which you bet on the fortunes and futures of various alien infants, or at least computer simulations of alien infants, and it makes for a fabulous arcade-game experience in the vein of Balatro, offering incredible highs and lows as it teeters on the precipice between “one more run” and your next frustrating crash-out. I don’t understand the stock market, but I’ve had a blast making my way through the first couple mini-campaigns in this. I look forward to playing more on my Steam Deck real soon.

15. Star Wars: Galactic Racer

It’s still too early to call, but if I had to declare a 2026 game of the year right now, Galactic Racer is the easy pick for me. I grew up with the prequels and podracer Lego sets, and I share George Lucas’s appreciation for fast cars and the sense of danger they represent. There’s a special magic that happens when talented developers get to focus on what they care about most (“I’m just here to race”) in a setting like the Star Wars universe, and the warm response to Galactic Racer has been great to see. So many people who might avoid a racing game or roguelike title are taking a chance on this one because of the packaging, but longtime fans of the genre know there hasn’t been a racer this buzzworthy or inventive in years. Fuse Games has earned its place in history with this mic-drop debut.

16. Star Wars Zero Company

I haven’t spent a ton of time with XCOM-style games; I’ve played some Fire Emblem, some Gears Tactics, and some Live A Live. But a new Star Wars game tends to be a bit of an event in my life, and I’ve been that way more or less since 2002, when I picked up Obi-Wan on the original Xbox for my birthday. Zero Company delivered the game I needed to fall in love with the tactics genre, but it also tells a phenomenal Star Wars story in a fresh way.

Set during the era of the Clone Wars TV show—which feels like a breath of fresh air after years of games set mostly during, before, and after the Galactic Civil War—it features a notable cameo or three. However, it has a sense of confidence and restraint I never would’ve expected from a game like this, and I think that’s largely the reason so many reviewers have called it the best thing since the first two Knights of the Old Republic games.

It knows it’s a Star Wars game, and it does an outstanding job of being that, but it’s more interested in showing skilled, thoughtful players a good time. The more time I spend with Zero Company, the more it grows on me, and Kabbney Uppercut and Tel-Rea Vokoss are both standout characters in the realm of games this year.

17. Void/Breaker

Billed as a “bullet-hell roguelite FPS,” Void/Breaker was a last-minute addition to this list, and I feel I’ve hardly scratched the surface after my first couple hours with it. It plays like a mixture of equal parts Risk of Rain 2 and Titanfall, with an intriguing Tron-style simulation world and bits of found narrative to keep you engaged.

The difficulty spiked quite a bit when I encountered my first true boss fight, but the game gives you plenty of tools to work with, including a slick inventory system that lets you refine the exact order and placement of weapon upgrades for maximum effect. And I love that you don’t simply select the next node on a map when you’re navigating this digital world; you have to traverse this vast environment in real time, with air-dashes and Tony Hawk grinds getting you from one arena or refuge to the next.

18. Zero Parades: For Dead Spies

Without a doubt, the biggest surprise of 2026 has been Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, the controversial follow-up to ZA/UM Studio’s beloved 2019 RPG, Disco Elysium. I’ve still never finished Disco, despite spending quite a bit of time with it over the years, but I had a hunch that Zero Parades’s premise, about a dirtbag spy getting her old crew back together for one more ill-advised mission, would be more my speed. I didn’t know just how right I was.

This game is pure poetry. In my video review, I described it as a “Rubik’s Cube,” and discussed the many ways it challenged me again and again. There are images and story beats here I’ll remember forever, and I’ve spent the better part of the year eager to get back to this game for a second playthrough. It has all the hallmarks of a new all-time favorite.