22 Video Games You Absolutely Have to Play, According to…

About this gallery:

Shuhei Yoshida has been around enough great games to know when one truly leaves a mark. Long before players started treating his recommendations like required reading, he had already built a reputation for spotting the titles that rise above the noise. The games gathered here are the ones he has personally highlighted as essential, and it is not hard to see why they stayed with him.

They are listed by release date rather than ranked from best to worst, because this works better as a timeline of taste than a fight over placements. Some choices will feel obvious, others might catch you off guard, and that is part of the fun. Which one would make your list too, and which choice would you challenge immediately?

| © Kiyoshi Ota / Bloomberg

1. Nine Sols (2024)

Parries are the whole point here, not some flashy extra tacked onto a Metroidvania. Nine Sols mixes razor-sharp deflection combat with side-scrolling exploration, then wraps the whole thing in Red Candle’s gorgeous taopunk world of Taoist mysticism and sci-fi ruin. It is demanding, elegant, and much sadder than its brutal boss fights first suggest. | © Red Candle Games

2. Sifu (2022)

Revenge stories usually run on anger, but Sifu runs on discipline. Every death ages your fighter, so the game’s smartest trick is turning failure into part of the lesson rather than a cheap punishment screen. Once the combat rhythm settles into your hands, it feels less like button-mashing and more like surviving your own martial arts movie. | © Sloclap

3. Inscryption (2021)

That grimy cabin setup is only the first layer of Inscryption, and saying much more would be rude. Daniel Mullins built a deckbuilder that keeps shape-shifting under your hands, folding horror, escape-room logic, and meta mischief into something far stranger than its opening suggests. It is one of those games that gets more interesting the moment you stop trusting it. | © Daniel Mullins Games

4. Returnal (2021)

Housemarque took its old arcade instincts and launched them straight into a prestige sci-fi nightmare with Returnal. The shooting is fast, the loop structure is merciless, and Atropos never stops feeling hostile, but the real hook is Selene slowly coming apart inside all that spectacle. Not many PS5 exclusives hit this hard mechanically and psychologically at the same time. | © Housemarque

5. Before Your Eyes (2021)

Blinking should be the easiest thing in the world, which is exactly why Before Your Eyes hurts. It uses eye-tracking to move you through memories you cannot fully hold onto, turning a tiny human reflex into part of the game’s grief and tenderness. Plenty of bigger games aim for emotion; very few land it with this much grace. | © GoodbyeWorld Games

6. Fall Guys (2020)

Pure slapstick carried Fall Guys from bright curiosity to instant multiplayer staple. Mediatonic understood that watching a jellybean-shaped disaster miss a jump by half an inch is somehow universal comedy, and the game never really needs to apologize for how silly it is. Under all the candy colors, it is a ruthlessly efficient chaos machine. | © Mediatonic

7. Nioh 2 (2020)

Anyone who likes their action RPGs a little mean will feel right at home in Nioh 2. Team Ninja deepened the first game’s stance-based combat with yokai abilities, a strong character creator, and a Sengoku-era setting that treats folklore like live ammunition. It is dense, punishing, and far more flexible than people sometimes give it credit for. | © Team Ninja

8. Hades (2020)

Escaping the Underworld should not be this charming, yet Hades somehow makes repeated death feel like a reward. Supergiant found the sweet spot between crisp combat, mythological family drama, and roguelike momentum, so every failed run still pushes the story somewhere worthwhile. No wonder it became the game people opened for twenty minutes and then lost an entire weekend to. | © Supergiant Games

9. Genshin Impact (2020)

Skepticism was fair at launch, but Genshin Impact earned its enormous reach the hard way. Its open-world exploration, elemental combat, and constant flow of characters turned what looked like just another free-to-play gamble into one of the biggest global hits in modern gaming. The monetization debates never disappeared, though neither did the urge to wander Teyvat for one more hour. | © miHoYo

10. Ghost of Tsushima (2020)

A samurai epic this polished could have coasted on scenery alone, but Ghost of Tsushima has more discipline than that. Sucker Punch built a world that looks stunning and moves cleanly, then grounded it in Jin Sakai’s tension between honor and survival during the Mongol invasion. The duels are fantastic, yet the quiet rides across the island do just as much of the work. | © Sucker Punch Productions

11. Dead Cells (2018)

Momentum is the real star of Dead Cells. Motion Twin fused roguelike repetition with Metroidvania structure so cleanly that every run feels like permission to improvise with a new weapon, mutation, or terrible plan you suddenly believe in. It moves fast, hits hard, and never wastes a second pretending death is anything but fuel. | © Motion Twin

12. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy (2017)

Nostalgia helped, sure, but these remakes also reminded people how rude old-school platformers could be. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy gave the original three games a bright visual overhaul while keeping the narrow jumps, slippery landings, and cartoon panic largely intact. That balance between affection and cruelty is a big reason it still lands. | © Vicarious Visions

13. Doki Doki Literature Club (2017)

The best advice attached to Doki Doki Literature Club! is still the simplest: do not let the cute art fool you. Team Salvato’s breakout hit starts like a lightweight visual novel, then pulls the floor out with unnerving precision and a very online sense of discomfort. It became a phenomenon because people wanted to warn their friends without spoiling the shock. | © Team Salvato

14. Let It Die (2016)

Nothing about Let It Die is interested in being tasteful, which is part of the appeal. Grasshopper Manufacture turned a tower-climbing survival game into a grimy punk fever dream full of scavenged gear, ugly danger, and Uncle Death hanging over the whole thing like a deranged TV host. It is abrasive on purpose, but there is real bite in the design. | © Grasshopper Manufacture

15. Bloodborne (2015)

Aggression changed everything. Instead of asking you to turtle behind a shield, Bloodborne rewards nerve, speed, and the willingness to charge straight into Yharnam’s Gothic nightmare with a blade in hand. The lore stays cryptic, the bosses stay vicious, and the atmosphere still feels untouchable even after years of games trying to bottle that same poison. | © FromSoftware

16. Super Time Force Ultra (2014)

Time travel becomes a joke and a mechanic at the exact same moment in Super Time Force Ultra. Capybara’s shooter lets you rewind after death and fight alongside your own previous attempts, turning failure into a glorious pileup of second chances and overlapping gunfire. On PlayStation, Yoshida even shows up as a playable character, which feels perfectly on brand for this wonderfully strange thing. | © Capybara Games

17. Sound Shapes (2012)

Calling Sound Shapes a platformer is technically right, but it misses the magic. Queasy Games treated jumps, enemies, and collectibles like pieces of a song, then brought in artists like Beck and deadmau5 so the whole project could feel musical instead of merely themed that way. It was stylish, playful, and far ahead of the curve on how games could build mood through sound. | © Queasy Games

18. Journey (2012)

Almost no dialogue, almost no instructions, and still Journey says more than many games three times its size. Crossing that desert with an anonymous companion remains one of gaming’s purest demonstrations that multiplayer can feel intimate instead of loud. It is short, beautiful, and still capable of sneaking up on people emotionally the moment they lower their guard. | © thatgamecompany

19. The Binding of Isaac (2011)

Gross, funny, blasphemous, and weirdly elegant, The Binding of Isaac helped drag roguelikes into the mainstream. Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl packed it with randomization, risk, and enough item combinations to make every basement run feel unstable in the best possible way. Even now, it carries the energy of something slightly cursed that escaped the lab and kept evolving. | © Edmund McMillen

20. Persona 4 (2008)

A murder mystery set in a sleepy town should not feel this cozy, but that contrast is exactly why Persona 4 works. Atlus balanced school-life routines, dungeon crawling, and one of the warmest party dynamics in RPG history, so hanging out at Junes somehow matters as much as solving the case. Its style is loud, but its emotional pull is surprisingly gentle. | © Atlus

21. Shadow of the Colossus (2005)

So much of Shadow of the Colossus is silence, distance, and the growing suspicion that you are doing something terrible for a reason you badly want to believe. Each giant encounter feels part boss fight, part puzzle, part moral stain, which is why the game never plays like empty spectacle. Hardly anything else has matched its lonely sense of scale. | © Sony Computer Entertainment Japan

22. Ape Escape (1999)

The original Ape Escape arrived before 3D platformers had fully settled into their habits, and you can feel that experimental spark everywhere. Catching time-traveling monkeys with bizarre gadgets was already a great hook, but tying the action to the DualShock’s analog sticks made it quietly influential too. It is playful, inventive, and much smarter than its prankish premise lets on. | © Sony Computer Entertainment Japan