(ThyBlackMan.com) Action games can really get your blood boiling when you get into those critical moments. You know, that shootout where it’s absolute chaos. A slash battle with a tough boss amongst their minions. Maybe that car chase you weren’t expecting the story to escalate into which involves you having to jump from a car to a moving truck. Here are the five best action games from the PS4 and Xbox One era—available on both consoles.
1. Grand Theft Auto V (2013 Rockstar Games)
If you love action games, GTA is one of those series you really have to play. I want to say it doesn’t matter which one but I’ve always said San Andreas and Vice City are must play titles in the franchise. They’re Grand Theft Auto at its purest. Of course, the stakes were raised with Grand Theft Auto V in terms of realism and storytelling.
It was simply the natural direction the franchise was going to take when Rockstar figured out how to make the most out of PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 while making the game for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. What I loved about GTA V is that introduces three protagonists for you to play as and they’re not all just given to you off the bat.
This is something games that do this tend to do by allowing you to pick who you want to play as. The problem with that is that you tend to end up playing the whole game as a particular character and unless you’re big on completing games, you’re not going to give the other characters a go. Especially if there’s no difference in the storyline.
Personal favorite Franklin, runner-up Michael, and undisputed favorite Trevor all come together to rob banks, jewelry stores, whatever—and it works. They’re all introduced extremely well, the story is great, the gameplay is a blast, and the radio stations are on point as always. That extended time Rockstar takes to get the GTA games out? They show their work once they’re dropped.
2. Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018 Rockstar Games)
If Grand Theft Auto V (and GTA IV for that matter) saw Rockstar push realism further in its games, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the peak of that. This game gives you intense shootouts with bandits, the law, and anyone else with a revolver on their hip or a rifle on their back.
This is served up with activities such as hunting wild animals for trade and crafting. That is broken down further into needing specific methods to get the best results from your excursion. This is broken down even further with the condition of hides being an indication of how you hunted the animal.
Oh, and if you’re new to Red Dead Redemption you’ll think “It’s the tail end of the 19th century, prices should be cheap.” And you’d be right—until you start wanting to buy the primo weapons and find out “Oh, damn I need to get back out there and hunt more.” A lot of my time was spent hunting game and falling off cliffs because I rode my horse to hard and didn’t see that there was cliff.
That aside, RDR 2 has you living the life of a fading gunslinger in the final days of the Wild West outlaw. You can get a cut and shave, chew tobacco, play cards—you can even get a bath for under a dollar at the local hotel and have a hotel worker bathe you.
Of course, that’s after a hard day of doing missions for your camp, bringing in food and supplies, and robbing strangers. The story isn’t as strong as GTA V’s from start to finish but I felt more into the story since it was told from a single perspective.
3. Tomb Raider (2013 Crystal Dynamics)
If you’ve never seen the roots of where Tomb Raider started, I’d say consider yourself lucky. The games weren’t bad back in the day and they were important for innovating 3D action games but like the GTA games, it’s amazing how far the series has come graphically and storytelling-wise.
Tomb Raider serves as a reboot of the franchise for a new generation and we actually get an origin story for Lara Croft. When the series started, we just had Croft as an experienced adventurer and archeologist. Story didn’t really matter for console games in the mid-90s unless it was an RPG.
As the franchise continued, storytelling got better but we were so deep in Tomb Raider games that it was like “Who cares at this point?” With the 2013 reboot, we get a deep dive into how Lara Croft developed her skills and what drove here into becoming Indiana Jones time ten. She wasn’t just an adventurer but also an action hero.
If this is the version of Tomb Raider and Lara Croft generations of new gamers are introduced to and remember, that’s great because this game was awesome.
4. Assassin’s Creed Origins (2017 Ubisoft Montreal)
There is plenty of good and bad that can be said about the Assassin’s Creed franchise. If you’re an AC fan, Ubisoft Montreal hits it out of the park more often than not. If you’re just an action game fan, you might feel that while Assassin’s Creed can be fun, it comes off as the same game each time. Never mind that most really don’t care about the non-historical parts of the game. It’s playing as an assassin that is the fun part.
Assassin’s Creed Origins continued what Ubisoft has been doing with the franchise since AC II on PS3 and Xbox 360. Each time a new one drops; the studio expands on what you can do outside of doing missions. After the second game, the studio realized “Hey, if we’re going to do this open world parkour thing with multiple cities and towns in the world, we need to give players something more to do.”
That’s how we got the mediocre but existent commerce system in AC III as well as hunting. We also got the use of other Assassins who could be assigned to missions. This was expanded in Black Flag to minor base building, base capturing, improved hunting and sea battles, and the same commerce system.
So on and so forth until we get to Assassin’s Creed Origins which expanded gameplay even further and fully embraced RPG elements. Of the games on this list, this one also improved stealth which brought the franchise to the dance in the first place.
5. Bloodborne (2015 FromSoftware)
Sekiro was the jam for Afro Gamers’ founder for a while. I finally got around to playing it late in 2019 after having a good deal of frustration with Bloodborne—which came from prior frustration with the Souls games. It’s just what FromSoftware does. They don’t make games for those who are impatient and can’t handle failure—because you will fail often in this game and all their games.
Like other FromSoftware games, you need to pay attention to how enemies attack, their patrol patterns, and find out what weapons work against them. This all seems simple on paper but in execution? That’s just not the case.
The bright side to all the deaths that you experience in this game is that it conditions you to be cautious in games that aren’t made by this studio. Even if they don’t have the same approach, you’re on guard and cognizant of weaknesses and the like if you never paid attention to that stuff before.
Honestly, the number five spot was a battle between Bloodborne and Sekiro. Both of them were really neck and neck but I dig the Victorian period dark fantasy approach of Bloodborne and while I did enjoy Sekiro as well, I needed a break from adventures in feudal Japan games for a bit so the setting was the deciding factor.
Staff Writer; M. Swift
This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.
