Adventure games offer the perfect escape from reality.
For a few hours, you can immerse yourself into a whole new world where you can find relief from your own problems and focus on the main character’s journey.
PlayStation has been home to plenty of brilliant adventure games with gripping storylines and engaging gameplay, allowing you to have the ultimate gaming experience. If you’ve just bought a new PS5, you can enjoy an almost limitless number of adventure titles to explore new worlds, collect majestic objects, and uncover secrets.
In this post, we’ll look at some of the best-ever adventure games for PS5 that will keep you hooked until the end.
Why You Should Play Adventure Games
Besides being incredibly fun, adventure games bring along a whole lot of benefits. They offer a new perspective to gamers.
You get to play as a new character in each game, with unique attributes and characteristics, about to embark on a journey of exploring a new environment while completing different quests, discovering hidden treasures, and uncovering secrets.
Open-world adventure games allow you to let your curiosity run free. You are given a new world, all yours to explore. The side quests in these games are designed to encourage you to probe the environment and learn about your surroundings.
Depending upon the particular game, you can interact with NPCs, discover different landscapes, test your powers, and galivant through the streets as you like.
It also offers plenty of room for improvisation. There’s no one strict path to victory. Instead, you can explore your ways and carve your unique path. Moreover, these games also come with puzzles and brain teasers, so your mind is constantly being tested.
Here are some of the many benefits of solving puzzles in adventure games:
➡️ Develops Attention to Detail 🎯
When you’re challenged with mind-bending puzzles, your attention to detail improves as you’re forced to pay attention to the minutest details and figure out how to make sense of scattered elements.
In adventure games, you’ll find quests where you’d have to put your mind to the test and solve puzzles. This helps increase mental speed and speed of processing thoughts.
➡️ Increases Your IQ 🧠
According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan, it was revealed that if you spend 25 minutes a day solving puzzles, your IQ will increase by 4 points.
Adventure puzzles force you to use logic to solve problems. The more you play, the smarter you become. So next time your mom asks why you’re wasting your time playing video games, just tell her you’re working on improving your IQ.
➡️ Enhances Problem-solving Skills 🧐
Simple puzzles like Sudoku or Rubik’s Cube might not improve your problem-solving skills as much as puzzles in adventure games do. While playing these games, you’d constantly have to change perspectives, test different hypotheses, and see how the puzzle pieces fit together.
The more you solve problems in the virtual world, the better you become at problem-solving in the real world too, since you develop critical thinking and adaptive skills.
Solving puzzles has also been said to delay conditions like Alzheimer’s and Dementia, increase productivity, and improve reflexes.
Now that you know the benefits of playing adventure games regularly, let’s jump into the best PS5 adventure games list. Once you start playing them, you won’t be able to put down your controller that easily.
A Plague Tale: Innocence
A Plague Tale: Innocence follows the adventure of two orphans, named Amicia and Hugo, who find themselves fighting their foes amidst a plague-ridden France. The duo has to battle human enemies, as well as gigantic rats.
Amid the deadly backdrop, the story shows the heartfelt dynamism of the two orphans while testing your mind with stealth gameplay and unique puzzles to keep you hooked till the end. If you’re considering playing the game, be prepared to witness an empty, gloomy, and dangerous world.
From swarms of creepy rats to mass graves of Plague victims, you’ll be the only living among the dead. While the game follows a straightforward story, you’d get the illusion of an open world. This gives you the freedom to explore as you like while eliminating filler quests and activities.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
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A Plague Tale: Innocence (PS5) - PlayStation 5 |
$24.99 |
Buy on Amazon |
If you’re a beginner gamer, I’d strongly suggest you play this straightforward yet intriguing stealth game, where the ultimate goal is survival when nobody else manages to.
Developer: Asobo Studio
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
Assassin’s Creed is easily one of the most popular gaming franchises, with 12 installments that have kept millions of gamers hooked to the same gaming template.
If you’ve played any of the AC games, you’d know each installment features a new setting, a new country, and new people. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is set during the invasion of the Vikings in England, where you’ll be playing as Eivor, along with their adoptive brother Sigurd, the Norse warrior’s duo who’s on the hunt for glory.
You can play the main character either as a woman or a man or switch between them to test which one you like the most.
The story is about how Sigurd was set to become the local king, but an unexpected unification of Norway under the rule of King Herald forced Sigurd to have two options, either leave or bend the knee. Sigurd, adamant about being a ruler, convinced Eivor to abandon Norway and flee to England to carve a new future.
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Assassin’s Creed Valhalla PlayStation 5 Standard Edition |
$27.00 |
Buy on Amazon |
As Avior, you lead your clan from Norway into England and fight your way through Saxon armies to build a new settlement for your clan. The gameplay is pretty much similar to every other AC game — stealth play from a third-person perspective but with a more streamlined story.
If you’re looking for the ultimate PS5 adventure, you’ve found your prize.
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release Date: November 10, 2020
AWAY: The Survival Series
If you want to escape to an environment nestled in the heart of nature while surviving the threat of nature’s most deadly creatures, then AWAY: The Survival Series awaits you.
As someone who loves nature-inspired gaming backdrops, I have a soft spot for this game. Its pristine landscapes, wide range of unique species of insects, plants, and animals, and gripping gameplay includes hunting your prey and using stealth to fight or flee against larger enemies.
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Away: The Survival Series - PlayStation 5 |
$29.75 |
Buy on Amazon |
The goal is to sneak past deadly predators without being noticed to finish quests and win the game. You pilot the sugar glider to save your family from natural threats. You’d totally enjoy the platforming gameplay and realistic graphics.
Developer: Breaking Walls
Publisher: Breaking Walls, Game Seer Ventures & Perpetual Europe
Release Date: September 28, 2021
Beyond A Steel Sky
Beyond A Steel Sky is a thrilling cyberpunk game that’ll challenge you with intelligent puzzles around AI, social control, and total surveillance. Think of it like another horrible episode of Black Mirror where technology takes over the human race.
The game’s plot circles around Robert Foster, who’s on a mission to find a missing child. The trail leads him to Union City, one of the only megacities left that hasn’t sustained the damage of the wars and political conflicts.
In fact, people of the city appear to live happily under the rule of an AI, where their lives are being operated on their Qdos scores, a metric indicating their social status. While on the surface, Union City appears to be a utopia, Robert probes further into the case of the missing child with a fake identity and discovers the dark secrets of the system.
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Beyond A Steel Sky: Beyond A SteelBook Edition (PS5) | 79 Reviews |
$33.95 |
Buy on Amazon |
With Beyond The Steel Sky, you’d be signing up for a technological thriller where you’d come across genius hackers and gruesome murderers while experiencing the stark contrast of the top and the bottom barrel of society.
The puzzles in the game will have you scratching your head from time to time, but you’d love the plot, the gameplay, and the brain teasers the game throws at you to keep you engaged till the end.
Developer: Revolution Software
Publisher: Revolution Software, Microïds
Release Date: November 30, 2021
Elden Ring
For a wholesome adventure experience that will eerily remind you of Dark Souls or Game of Thrones, Elden Ring truly packs a punch. From an exquisite open world to some of the most gruesome enemies, this game brings you everything you can ask from a long-form adventure game.
The game will have you play as Tarnished, where you must traverse the Lands Between to become the Elden Lord. On your journey, you meet different characters and challenging quests, which will have you screaming at your screen while lauding the creators at the same time.
Be prepared to experience a whirlwind of emotions as you experience various parallel stories. The only drawback is that you don’t get a quest log or a journal to keep track of all the stories, so you may end up missing out on a lot of side quests, combats, spills, weapons, and skills in the first go, but you’d nevertheless have the best gaming fun.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
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Elden Ring - PlayStation 5 |
$48.88 |
Buy on Amazon |
If you’re looking for a classic open-world experience, book your Sunday to explore the Limgrave and all the interconnected regions of the Lands Between.
Developer: FromSoftware Inc.
Publisher: FromSoftware Inc. & Bandai Namco Entertainment
Release Date: February 25, 2022
Far Cry 6
Far Cry is one of the most popular open-world game franchises available today. From driving amazing cars and flying in wingsuits to hunting animals and experiencing the best first-person shooting perspective, it’s the whole package for people like me who have a thing for shooter games.
In Far Cry 6, you play Dani Rojas, a guerrilla fighter and a one-person army, to overthrow the dictator, Anton Castillo. You’ll meet many interesting characters along the way, starting from the main villain (Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito), who’s both charismatic and detestable.
You’ll get to use a hoard of weapons, gadgets, and mods to take down the Yaran military and further your revolution against the fascist forces that starkly resemble Cuba regarding the history and the socialist revolution of the 1960s.
The game will have you do many things simultaneously, but you’d nonetheless have fun for 30 hours as you fire your way through the co-op missions, treasure hunts, and weekly insurrection.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
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Far Cry 6 PlayStation 5 Standard Edition |
$21.88 |
Buy on Amazon |
Not to mention, you can customize your characters, get more weapons and vehicles, recruit more people to your cause, enjoy hunting, go fishing, and everything in between.
Developer: Ubisoft Toronto
Publisher: Ubisoft
Release Date: October 7, 2021
God of War Ragnarök
God of War Ragnarök picks up a few years after 2018’s God of War was left off. The game focuses on the coming of the apocalyptic Ragnarok, the age of Fimbulwinter, with the tale circling around Atreus, the son of Kratos.
After proving to their father that he has grown up and swinging into action right from the game’s onset, you’ll embark on a journey to find a missing Norse god after leaving Midgard. I like the game for its amazing plot line, which includes its fair share of misdirection, plot twists, and fakeouts.
You’ll find many old faces from the first installment, along with some new characters, including the iconic Thor and Odin. If you enjoyed the MCU equivalent of the story, I doubt this game would disappoint you in terms of plot and gameplay.
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God of War Ragnarök Launch Edition - PlayStation 5 | $48.00 | Buy on Amazon |
A Norse mythology fan like me relished the game thoroughly, including the grand conclusion to the Kratos’ Norse saga that provided a fitting resolution to ensure a good night’s sleep.
It should be noted that it’s best to play the game if you’ve played the first part; otherwise, you’ll find yourself lost on more occasions than one. While it provides a story recap, it’s more to refresh the memory of old players than to help new players catch up with the events.
Developer: Santa Monica Studio
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Release Date: November 9, 2022
Grand Theft Auto V
From I to V, the Grand Theft Auto franchise always lived up to the fans’ expectations and ended up outdoing itself with each successive installment.
Grand Theft Auto V gives us a commentary on the post-economic crisis of America. The setting is the fictional version of Southern California, the state of San Andreas, where you follow the story of three main characters:
- Franklin Clinton – a street gangster
- Michael De Santa – a retired bank robber
- Trevor Philips – a drug dealer
The whole game, you switch between these characters in and out of the missions while being able to play either in the first or third perspective.
As you complete various missions and side-quests, you must attempt heists, kill people, loot, and escape police while facing pressure from the government and powerful criminals.
GTA games garnered fame in the first place because of their seamless fusion between open-world adventure, thrilling criminal actions, immersive stories, and satirical perspectives. The good news is GTA V maintains those in full swing.
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Grand Theft Auto V - PlayStation 5 | 1,990 Reviews | $21.25 | Buy on Amazon |
I thoroughly enjoyed the attention to detail regarding story, design, gameplay, and immersion. If you’re a GTA fan, you’ll regret not giving this beauty a shot, which easily wins over all its previous releases.
Developer: Rockstar Games & Rockstar North
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Release Date: March 15, 2022
Horizon Forbidden West
Horizon Forbidden West is the sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn, which was set in a post-apocalyptic world recovering from extinction. In this game, you get to explore a majestic open world populated by giant dinosaur robots from the perspective of a hunter, Aloy.
As you play, you lead a band of allies on the journey to the Forbidden West to search for the source of a mysterious plague that’s been killing all that it infects. You’ll get a larger map that has been fashioned after the real-world Western United States, which includes the states of Nevada, California, and Utah.
You’d love this game’s involving experience, which includes thrilling elements like threatening machines, warring tribes, underwater discoveries, and lore to uncover.
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
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Horizon Forbidden West Launch Edition - PlayStation 5 - PlayStation 5 |
$53.50 |
Buy on Amazon |
Despite some reviews calling the game bad or boring, I recommend giving it a shot yourself so you don’t miss out on an incredible open world, intense monsters, and impressive gameplay.
Developer: Guerrilla Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Release Date: February 18, 2022
LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
If you’re a Star Wars fan, it’d be criminal not to play LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. It’s the ultimate Star Wars game that bundles all nine movies of the franchise into a single story and allows you to have the best gaming experience.
One of the reasons why this game was a standout is that it gives you the freedom to start the story from any of the Skywalker Saga trilogies and finish them in the order of your choice, unlike other LEGO video games. Each episode of the game comes with five main missions of 45 levels.
The game’s hub will have you explore several planets with some of the most iconic Star Wars landmarks, including Naboo, Coruscant, Jakku, and many more.
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LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga - Standard Edition - PlayStation 5 | 877 Reviews |
$24.88 |
Buy on Amazon |
This game is a must-play for any Star Wars fan, especially if you’re looking for an upgrade from the previous launches, Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga and Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Developer: TT Games & Traveller’s Tales
Publisher: Warner Bros. Games
Release Date: April 5, 2022
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
With over 6.5 million copies sold, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales speaks of its immense popularity. This is one of the handful of Spider-Man games that has crazed the fans with its advanced gameplay and winning story, which follows the exploits of Miles Morales, the legacy hero of the iconic Peter Parker in the Spidey-verse.
You’ll go bonkers over the improved mechanics of the game (including the character’s movement and combat), advanced storytelling, and animation that has turned the game into a huge success.
Nothing about the game feels like “same old, same old” since it’s a different game, story, gameplay, and resolution. You’d be able to enjoy a wider variety of combat skills, such as bioelectricity.
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Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition - PlayStation 5 | 1,661 Reviews | $20.41 | Buy on Amazon |
Overall, it’s a fantastic re-introduction to our favorite Marvel franchise that always manages to exceed our expectations.
Developer: Insomniac Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Release Date: November 12, 2020
Closing Thoughts
Adventure games have always had a special place in my heart because of the fact that they have a gripping plot, various puzzles, and exciting characters. While not every game may have the “wow” factor, the ones mentioned in this post have solidified their name as some of the best games ever created for the PS5.
If you’re a fan of adventure games and thrilling puzzles, these titles should keep you engaged for times to come and give your brain a good tease while engrossing you in immersive worlds and heart-wrenching stories.
Next, learn how to connect your PS5 controller to your phone and take your gaming anywhere.
