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The Highest-Rated Games From Every Year Since 2000

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Gaming - June 18th 2026, 17:00 GMT+2
Perfect Dark 2000

2000 — Perfect Dark (Metacritic: 97)

Rare walked into the new millennium with the confidence of a studio that had already rewritten console shooters once, then somehow squeezed another miracle out of the Nintendo 64. Perfect Dark gave players Joanna Dark, alien conspiracies, multiplayer bots, gadget-heavy missions, and enough ambition to make the Expansion Pak feel less like an accessory and more like a membership card. It was slick, strange, overstuffed, and exactly the kind of technical flex that made late-era N64 owners insufferable in the best way. | © Rare

Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3

2001 — Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 (Metacritic: 97)

The revert changed everything. With one simple move, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 turned already-addictive skateboarding chaos into a near-endless combo machine, where schoolyards, airports, and cruise ships became playgrounds for anyone willing to embarrass themselves chasing a bigger score. Neversoft caught the exact moment when extreme sports, punk soundtracks, and arcade precision all belonged in the same sentence, then landed it cleaner than most of us ever landed a kickflip. | © Neversoft / Activision

Metroid Prime Remastered

2002 — Metroid Prime (Metacritic: 97)

Putting Metroid in first person sounded like the kind of idea that gets a studio politely escorted out of the meeting. Retro Studios proved everyone wrong by making Metroid Prime feel less like a shooter and more like a lonely archaeological expedition with a cannon attached to your arm. Tallon IV was beautiful, hostile, and patient, rewarding players who scanned, wandered, backtracked, and trusted the silence between encounters. | © Retro Studios / Nintendo

The Wind Waker

2003 — The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Metacritic: 96)

The internet was not gentle to The Wind Waker when its cartoon style was first revealed, which is funny now because the game aged better than almost everything that tried to look “mature” beside it. Its flooded world gave Zelda a breezy melancholy, with a tiny expressive Link sailing through myth, ruin, and seagull-infested detours. The Great Sea could test your patience, but its sense of adventure still feels hand-drawn and alive. | © Nintendo

Half Life 2

2004 — Half-Life 2 (Metacritic: 96)

Half-Life 2 didn’t kick the door open; it picked up the door with the Gravity Gun and launched it across the room. Valve built City 17 as a place that felt oppressed before anyone explained the rules, then let physics, facial animation, and environmental detail do half the storytelling. Gordon Freeman remained silent, naturally, but the world around him had plenty to say about fear, resistance, and suspiciously elegant crowbar work. | © Valve

Resident Evil 4

2005 — Resident Evil 4 (Metacritic: 96)

Capcom didn’t just revive Resident Evil with Resident Evil 4; it dragged the entire action genre behind Leon Kennedy’s laser sight. The over-the-shoulder camera, panicked crowd control, and glorious attaché case turned survival horror into something sharper, faster, and far more flexible. Its village still feels like a masterclass in pressure, where every chainsaw growl makes the player question all their previous life choices. | © Capcom

Twilight Princess

2006 — The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Metacritic: 95)

After the cel-shaded backlash, Nintendo answered with the brooding fantasy epic many fans thought they wanted, and Twilight Princess delivered it with wolves, shadows, swordplay, and one of the series’ best companions. Midna gave the adventure a sarcastic spark, while Hyrule leaned into twilight gloom without losing the dungeon craft that made classic 3D Zelda tick. It was old-school design polished to a mirror shine, just before the formula began to loosen. | © Nintendo

Super Mario Galaxy

2007 — Super Mario Galaxy (Metacritic: 97)

Nintendo looked at gravity and decided it should be cute. Super Mario Galaxy sent Mario bouncing between tiny planets, orchestral swells, upside-down jumps, and level ideas so confident they often disappeared after a single use. It had the innocence of a children’s storybook and the precision of a Swiss watch, which is a ridiculous combination until you are triple-jumping around a moon the size of a beach ball. | © Nintendo

Grand Theft Auto 4

2008 — Grand Theft Auto IV (Metacritic: 98)

Grand Theft Auto IV traded San Andreas sprawl for a colder, heavier Liberty City, and critics rewarded Rockstar’s sudden appetite for grime, guilt, and immigrant disillusionment. Niko Bellic’s story gave the open-world crime fantasy a bruised human center, even when players were still driving like maniacs through red lights. The result was not always the funniest GTA, but it remains one of the series’ most serious swings at consequence. | © Rockstar North / Rockstar Games

Uncharted 2

2009 — Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (Metacritic: 96)

The train sequence alone could have carried Uncharted 2, but Naughty Dog surrounded it with collapsing hotels, snowy betrayals, razor-sharp pacing, and a hero who always seemed one bad jump away from a hospital bill. Nathan Drake became PlayStation’s favorite charming disaster here, while Chloe and Elena gave the adventure a screwball energy between explosions. It felt like a summer blockbuster that somehow let you hold the camera. | © Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment

Super Mario Galaxy 2

2010 — Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Metacritic: 97)

Sequels often arrive with more story, more lore, more explanation; Super Mario Galaxy 2 arrived with Yoshi, a drill, cloud suits, and absolutely no interest in wasting anyone’s time. Nintendo treated its own masterpiece like a toy box that still had secret compartments, pushing gravity puzzles and platforming ideas even further. It is playful in the purest sense, as if every level begins with someone saying, “Okay, but what if Mario did this?” | © Nintendo

The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim

2011 — The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Metacritic: 96)

Skyrim became so huge that it almost escaped being a video game and turned into a shared cultural weather event. Dragons attacked villages, giants launched players into orbit, guards discussed knee injuries, and somehow everyone had a different story about the same frozen province. Bethesda’s RPG was messy, majestic, endlessly moddable, and built around the dangerous promise that any random cave might ruin your plans for the next three hours. | © Bethesda Game Studios / Bethesda Softworks

Cropped Persona 4

2012 — Persona 4 Golden (Metacritic: 93)

On paper, Persona 4 Golden sounds like a murder mystery about teenagers entering a television world, which is exactly as odd as it should sound. In practice, Atlus turned rural Inaba into one of gaming’s most memorable social spaces, where dungeon crawling, part-time jobs, friendship, and supernatural dread all shared the same calendar. The Vita version added enough charm and polish to make an already beloved RPG feel like the definitive after-school obsession. | © Atlus

Cropped Grand Theft Auto V

2013 — Grand Theft Auto V (Metacritic: 97)

Rockstar’s Los Santos was not subtle, but subtlety was never the point. Grand Theft Auto V split its crime saga across three protagonists, letting players bounce between Michael’s midlife rot, Franklin’s ambition, and Trevor’s radioactive chaos with terrifying ease. The heists gave the campaign structure, the city gave it swagger, and the satire came wrapped in enough speed, noise, and bad decisions to fuel a decade of conversation. | © Rockstar North / Rockstar Games

Super Smash Bros for Wii U

2014 — Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Metacritic: 92)

Super Smash Bros. for Wii U turned Nintendo’s crossover brawler into a museum where the exhibits kept throwing each other off cliffs. The roster was absurd, the stages were loud, the eight-player battles were barely civilized, and the GameCube controller adapter became a sacred object overnight. Masahiro Sakurai’s team understood that Smash works because it treats nostalgia with both reverence and complete disrespect. | © Sora Ltd. / Bandai Namco Studios / Nintendo

METAL GEAR SOLID V THE PHANTOM PAIN

2015 — Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Metacritic: 93)

The Phantom Pain is a fascinating contradiction: one of the finest stealth sandboxes ever built, wrapped around a story that still feels like it slipped out the back door before closing time. Afghanistan and Central Africa became playgrounds for improvisation, where balloons, buddies, cardboard boxes, and bad decisions could solve the same problem in wildly different ways. Kojima Productions delivered mechanical brilliance with a phantom ache baked right into the title. | © Kojima Productions / Konami

Uncharted 4

2016 — Uncharted 4: A Thief's End (Metacritic: 93)

Naughty Dog gave Nathan Drake one last treasure hunt and, wisely, made the real prize emotional damage. Uncharted 4 still had cliffside shootouts, pirate ruins, rope swings, and jeep chases, but its best trick was making Drake look tired of being Drake. The game aged the blockbuster hero without turning him into a scold, balancing spectacle with the uncomfortable question of what adventure costs after the credits usually roll. | © Naughty Dog / Sony Interactive Entertainment

Breath of the Wild

2017 — The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Metacritic: 97)

Nintendo burned the old map and handed players a mountain instead. Breath of the Wild rebuilt Zelda around curiosity, physics, weather, cooking experiments, shield-surfing, and the simple joy of seeing a distant place and actually reaching it. Some players still complain about breakable weapons, which is fair enough, but the game’s larger magic was making discovery feel dangerous, funny, and genuinely personal again. | © Nintendo

Red dead redemption 2

2018 — Red Dead Redemption 2 (Metacritic: 97)

Red Dead Redemption 2 moves at the speed of a tired horse, and that patience is exactly why it hits so hard. Rockstar built Arthur Morgan’s world out of mud, smoke, campfire arguments, hunting trips, awkward loyalty, and doom creeping over every ridge. It is lavish to the point of madness, but beneath the technical flex is a slow tragedy about men who keep calling themselves free while history tightens the rope. | © Rockstar Studios / Rockstar Games

Disco Elysium

2019 — Disco Elysium (Metacritic: 91)

Disco Elysium begins with a hangover so catastrophic it becomes a design philosophy. ZA/UM removed traditional combat and replaced it with politics, shame, skill checks, neckties, bad memories, and an inner monologue that argues like a committee of broken philosophers. Revachol is not just a setting but a wound with architecture, and Harry Du Bois may be gaming’s finest disaster detective. | © ZA/UM

Persona 5 Royal

2020 — Persona 5 Royal (Metacritic: 95)

Persona 5 Royal took a game that was already dripping with style and somehow found more red paint, more jazz, more menus worth staring at, and more emotional complications. The added semester gave the Phantom Thieves a stronger final act, while the quality-of-life changes made the whole RPG glide with dangerous confidence. Atlus polished rebellion until even checking your schedule felt cooler than most boss fights. | © Atlus / Sega

Forza Horizon 5

2021 — Forza Horizon 5 (Metacritic: 92)

Forza Horizon 5 made Mexico feel like a racing vacation where every road, jungle, desert, volcano, and beach had personally been cleared for irresponsible speed. Playground Games understood that technical showcase and pure good mood do not have to cancel each other out. The handling was generous, the car list was ridiculous, and the festival structure turned open-world racing into the rare blockbuster that seemed allergic to cynicism. | © Playground Games / Xbox Game Studios

Elden ring

2022 — Elden Ring (Metacritic: 96)

Elden Ring dropped players into Limgrave, pointed vaguely toward a giant golden tree, and trusted panic to handle the rest. FromSoftware stretched its brutal RPG language across an open world without sanding down the weirdness, giving players dragons, poison swamps, tragic demigods, and a horse brave enough to ignore basic survival instincts. It made getting lost feel like progress, which is a very specific kind of genius. | © FromSoftware / Bandai Namco Entertainment

Baldurs Gate 3

2023 — Baldur's Gate 3 (Metacritic: 96)

Larian Studios made a massive Dungeons & Dragons RPG and somehow turned dice rolls into mainstream suspense. Baldur’s Gate 3 thrives on bad plans, worse romances, spectacular consequences, and companions who feel like they might start arguing even after you shut the game off. Its biggest achievement is not just scale, but reactivity: the sense that the story keeps bending around your choices, even the deeply stupid ones. | © Larian Studios

Astro Bot

2024 — Astro Bot (Metacritic: 94)

Astro Bot arrived like a reminder that joy is still a perfectly respectable design goal. Team Asobi packed every level with tactile gags, PlayStation history, DualSense tricks, and platforming ideas that never overstayed their welcome. In an era obsessed with roadmaps and forever games, this little robot delivered a complete, polished, endlessly charming adventure that felt handcrafted rather than committee-approved. | © Team Asobi / Sony Interactive Entertainment

Cropped tears of the kingdom

2025 — The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition (Metacritic: 95)

Supergiant could have played it safe by giving players more Zagreus, more dad issues, and another victory lap through the Underworld. Instead, Hades II followed Melinoë into witchcraft, time, and a darker mythological war, expanding the original’s roguelike rhythm without losing its bite. The writing still snaps, the combat still sings, and every failed run still has the nerve to feel productive. | © Supergiant Games

Mina the Hollower

2026 — Mina the Hollower (Metacritic: 91, Current Leader)

With 2026 still in motion, Mina the Hollower currently holds the top Metacritic spot, and it is not hard to see why critics have rallied around its tiny gothic claws. Yacht Club Games channels Game Boy Color adventure, classic Zelda, and whip-cracking action into something compact, creepy, and surprisingly elegant. The burrowing mechanic gives Mina her own identity, proving retro inspiration works best when it digs up something new. | © Yacht Club Games

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Review scores can start arguments faster than a final boss with three health bars, but they also capture what the industry was obsessed with at the time. From generation-defining console exclusives to PC landmarks and surprise critical darlings, the highest-rated video games since 2000 tell a strange, fascinating story about how gaming grew up. Looking back year by year, this list revisits the releases critics couldn’t stop praising — and the ones players still argue about today.

Review scores can start arguments faster than a final boss with three health bars, but they also capture what the industry was obsessed with at the time. From generation-defining console exclusives to PC landmarks and surprise critical darlings, the highest-rated video games since 2000 tell a strange, fascinating story about how gaming grew up. Looking back year by year, this list revisits the releases critics couldn’t stop praising — and the ones players still argue about today.

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