7 must-play PS5 games you (probably) haven't played this generation

Tom's Guide

14-05-2025

This article is part of Tom's Guide's inaugural Gaming Week, an entire week of content dedicated to all things gaming. From insights into the latest hardware, guides to the best games you can play today, to the essential accessories we can't play without. Tom's Guide Gaming Week will guide you through the world of video games in 2025.
Somehow, we're already well into the PS5's fifth year on the market. In the years since Sony's console hit the scene, we've been treated to some top-tier gaming experiences.
Sony's console has brought us exclusives like Astro Bot, God of War: Ragnarok, Spider-Man 2, Helldivers 2 and Returnal, plus amazing multiplatform releases like Baldur's Gate 3, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Elden Ring, to name but a few.
Of course, anyone who keeps up with gaming knows there's always something new to play just around the corner, and the backlog only seems to get bigger. Inevitably, that means you can't always get to some of the best PS5 games and some games fall through the cracks or fail to get the audience they deserve.
Seeing as it's gaming week here at Tom's Guide, I felt now was the perfect time to look back at some of the great PS5 games that you might not have gotten around to playing just yet.
Third-person, soulslike combat isn't exactly unique these days, but Aggro Crab's fun indie adventure from Aggro Crab is has bags of charm. In Another Crab's Treasure, you take charge of Kril, a wayward hermit crab who has his shell taken away by a loan shark.
Armed with a humble fork, you embark on an epic journey across the ocean, battling formidable foes, leveling up, earning new skills, and trying on various bits of sea-floor trash (each with unique abilities) in place of your stolen home.
It's following the genre formula, but boasts distinct environments and enemies, satisfying combat, and a fun sense of humor that marks it out from many of its grimdark peers.
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And, unlike similar titles, if a boss takes one too many tries… You can always just pop into the menu real quick and take out your frustrations on the foe in question by toggling an option that equips our plucky hero with a 9mm pistol for a guaranteed one-hit kill.
Everywhere I look, I see Firaxis' Marvel's Midnight Suns being called an underrated gem, and these gamers are right.
This expansive XCOM-adjacent tactical RPG sees you forming a team of heroes like Blade, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, and Iron Man before heading out into the field and battering foes in brilliantly-realized scraps through an innovative card-based system.
Of course, superhero-ing about is tiresome work, and perhaps what really makes the game tick is the in-between stuff, wherein you return to your team's base of operations, The Abbey, and juggle resources, upgrades, research projects and mission rewards while also sending your protagonist, the Hunter, off to hang out with individual teammates — and everything feeds back into making you more and more powerful.
You might need some time to get to grips with the combat systems, but Midnight Suns is seriously worth investing time in.
I only got around to playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown at the end of 2024, but it ended up being one of my favorite games of the whole year — and that was enough to earn it a spot on our list of the best games you didn't play in 2024.
If you like Metroidvania exploration and challenging boss fights, The Lost Crown deserves to be on your radar. It boasts fluid and dynamic combat, engaging boss fights and platforming challenges, secrets to discover, and an intriguing story to boot.
I've continued to be disappointed that we won't be getting a follow-up ever since (apparently due to lower-than-expected sales). Despite pitching a sequel, the team's subsequently been disbanded, which is a crying shame.
Typically, I'm not an FPS kind of guy. My go-to games are usually sprawling RPGs or your typical single-player, third-person adventures. So when I picked up RoboCop: Rogue City, I really wasn't prepared to be as pleasantly surprised as I was.
It's about as authentic a follow-up to the original movie as anyone could want, and it impresses in the visual department. Plus, it matches that admiration and glossy look with punchy combat.
The story itself might not be the most inspiring, and it's not exactly ground-breaking gameplay, but for the sheer power fantasy of it all, this is well worth playing. Stomping through the streets as a walking tank of a man and doling out justice is seriously satisfying stuff.
Now's a great time to play RoboCop: Rogue City, too, seeing as there's DLC inbound this summer. Hopefully, you added it to your PS Plus library last month — it's worth a play.
Awaceb's Tchia is a lush island getaway that everyone should check out. Inspired by New Caledonia, you roam around a fictional archipelago as the titular protagonist in search of your kidnapped father.
Exploration plays out Breath of the Wild style, equipping you with the ability to run, jump, sail, glide, and climb about the world with abandon, in search of new things to see and do.
Throw in the brilliant 'soul-jumping' mechanic, allowing you to possess animals and inanimate objects, memorable minigames, and tons of collectibles to hoover up, and you've got a beautiful game with a unique identity that makes for a joyful journey
Looking for a bite-sized adventure? Fancy playing what is doubtless one of the funniest games on the system? Coal Supper's absurd 'slapformer' is the must-play for you.
Casting you as a balding, tiny traveling salesman, Thank Goodness You're Here! is essentially a playable sketch show that sends you off to Barnsworth, a strange town modeled on Northern England.
There, you're suddenly wrapped up in the dramas and problems of the local population, helping to grease a man's arm so he can free himself from a grate, securing meat for the local pie shop, or assisting an innuendo-prone gardener played by Matt Berry with his chores. It's incredibly British, absolutely absurd, and side-splittingly funny.
If there's one PS5 launch title I'd bet a lot of Ps5 owners haven't tried, it's The Pathless, which no doubt players skipped in favor of the heavy-hitters like Spider-Man: Miles Morales or Demon's Souls.
Developed by Giant Squid — the team behind the 2016 underwater adventure, Abzû — The Pathless is another gorgeous, immersive third-person adventure that casts you as 'The Hunter', a nimble archer who is tasked with lifting a curse from the realm with the help of her trusted eagle companion.
It's a game that soars thanks to its simple yet satisfying movement system. The Pathless combines a blistering sense of speed with surprising scope, and makes getting from place to place as satisfying as ticking off your main goals.
Whether you're dashing from point to point, solving puzzles, or taking on the jumbo-sized, corrupted guardian animals, I'm sure you'll have a blast. And frankly, it's worth playing simply to listen to another album's worth of beautiful music from Austin Wintory.