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You might think that Max Payne's superpower is being able to slip into slow-motion, but really it's his ability to repeatedly leap onto his sides without bruising his shoulders or jabbing the house keys in his pocket into his thigh.
In any case, it's these moves combined that make Max Payne a great action game. You'll leap around corners, shift into slow motion as you sail through the air, and unload akimbo pistols into one mobster after another on the rain-soaked streets of New York. The first Max Payne let you pull off these stunts first, but it's Max Payne 2 we'd suggest you return to today.
The first game is visually dated and lumbered with regrettable hallucinated platforming sequences, while the sequel still looks decent, is a tight six hours of leaping and blasting, and has the same dark comedy and purple prose. It also added a new technological marvel between the first game in and this successor: physics.
It's old hat now, but spraying bullets everywhere is undeniably more satisfying - and more reminiscent of the John Woo movies which inspired it - when there are cardboard boxes and old buckets to send spilling from shelves. Where can I buy it: Steam , Humble. Assassin's Creed had got a bit samey over the years, so when the series got a bit of a reboot with Assassin's Creed: Oranges, everyone felt invigorated.
Ubisoft took the new template and improved upon it for Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the story of a lone but preternaturally badass mercenary having jollies around Ancient Greece. The ongoing AC lore about computer-wizard-aliens technically and sinister cults is, technically, still going, but who cares when you can sail a boat across the Aegean, meet the minotaur, kill the minotaur, and then head to Olympia for lunch.
The breadth of the world in Odyssey is extraordinary. Ubisoft managed to recreate an entire country. So many treasures from Greece have been lost, but even the least Classics-y nerd will be impressed by the chryselephantine statue of Zeus, or the giant Athena overlooking Athens from the acropolis.
Importantly, Odyssey continued the trend of harder combat, gear mattering more and stealth being your best option, which makes it feel less like busy work and more like an actual challenge. Most importantly, Kassandra, the female player character, is the best thing to happen to games for actual years. There are some amongst you who will dispute that Ape Out is an action game, and to those I say, "Try saying that to a gorilla punching armed guards to death!
Even if you could speak, gorillas famously do not understand the English language. Ape Out is absolutely an action game, with the clarity of purpose and perfect design of a silverbacks noble fist. Played top down, Ape Out is vaguely reminiscent of other Devolver Digital favourite Hotline Miami, except instead of a man in an animal mask you are a giant furious ball of furry hominid, and instead of guns and bats and that you use your furious hominid limbs. As the titular Ape who is trying to get Out, you speed through different floors of buildings a science lab, a military base, an office block to make your escape.
The world is painted in vivid blocks of expressive colour: angry reds, cold unforgiving blues, bruised purples. Soldiers with different weapons try to stop you, but cannot. They have body armour, shotguns and explosives.
But you are an ape. Your controls are move, hit, and grab, so while you technically don't have any weapons, you also very much do. You can hold on to a man with a machine gun and aim him at your buddies! A lad with dynamite is basically a grenade the size of a person! All this is without even mentioning the soundtrack, a masterpiece of procedural jazz drumming that matches pace with your orgy or destruction.
Ape Out is so much one whole, perfect thing that isn't like playing a game so much as it is like having a profoundly beautiful, violent, synaesthetic thought. Sega's open-world brawler RPG series about the Tokyo underworld finally branched out onto PC in , and its prequel Yakuza 0 remains both the best entry in the series, and the best starting-point for wannabe crime dads.
Its two protagonists Kiryu and Majima are quite different in tone and style, but they're both absolutely delightful. What good boys, and what excellent thugs. Yakuza 0 has something for everyone.
It's like a smaller scale GTA set in the backstreets of Tokyo its beautifully detailed city of Kamurocho is modeled after Tokyo's Kabukicho entertainment district where you can thunk punks with your fists, bicycles, baseball bats or whatever manner of destructible street furniture you can lay your hands on, while also busting out dance moves, play arcade mini-games, help a floundering dominatrix believe in herself, befriend Michael Jackson, hire a chicken to be a property manager at your real estate business, and loads more.
It's melodrama in video game form, and it fully commits to turning you into both Japan's meanest, toughest mob man and its nicest uncle. It's just such a lovely place to be, too. It's warm and funny yet still an interesting crime drama, and its cities are chock full of diversions that make them feel like real, living places. Outside of its raucous brawls, its action is pretty low-key compared to other games on this list, including designer Toshihiro Nagoshi's other big work, Binary Domain which we've put next door to this entry , but it's also something we'll never get bored of.
More please. On paper, this doesn't sound great. It's called Binary Domain, for starters, features a hero whose design brief was "draw a man with muscles" and attempts a misjudged voice system that sees you bellowing ignored orders at belligerent companions like an angry dog-owner in the park. Binary Domain is what happened when the Yakuza team attempted to muscle in on the cover shooter craze of the early s: leaving behind Kamurocho, albeit for a different, futuristic Tokyo, and flooding it with hostile robots.
And giant robot animals. And a friendly French robot who wears a trendy scarf. It feels like a cynical bid for a western audience, but one that can't stop the teams bizarro energy bubbling up.
And if sticky cover mechanics and dubious AI allies speak to the team's lack of experience in the genre, they get the most important bit right: shooting things feels great. This is down to the nature of the enemy: armoured robots that shatter like ceramics as you chew through their outer layers and eventually sever limbs and heads. A decapitated robot will go haywire and blast its pals in the perfect payoff for your accuracy; legless droids pull themselves along the floor, creating hectic action where the damn things never stop coming.
You can even go to a crap late-Victorian cinema, or just have a relaxing bath. Where can I buy it: Steam , Humble , Epic. Following on from the reboot, Rise Of The Tomb Raider felt like the new series of Lara Croft's ruff, tuff survival adventures really found its footing.
While 's Shadow Of The Tomb Raider had some good puzzle-and-platforming tombs, Rise combines the traditional Croftian theft of ancient artefacts with some really splendid survival and action bits, which is why it's our pick of the bunch. Perhaps the feeling of danger and isolation is enhanced because it's so bloody cold. For much of Rise, Lara is on the back foot and stranded in Siberia, so scavenging and hunting to enhance your gear feels extra essential.
Those moments where she can warm herself next to a pitiful little fire seem like an actual reprieve for Lara. Lara is packing a lot more metaphorical heat in Rise, though, with a buncha guns as well as the quieter stealth options.
In Shadow the emphasis is much more on the latter, but Rise is a lot of fun precisely because you know that if things go south and you get spotted by the Trinity goons, at least you've got a massive shotgun backing you up.
There are a lot more tense animal encounters in Rise, too, which channels the spirit of the classic Tomb Raider games. If you're not sure where to start with the reboot, popping on a parka and joining Lara in the frozen wastes of Russia is probably the way to go.
Look, we know we said no Metroidvanias on this list, but hear us out. Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow is not what you think it is. While its name may have become entangled with Nintendo's twisty-turny space blaster series over the years, Lords of Shadow is as linear as they come.
And by golly what a corker it is, too. Once again, it's a classic clash between the Belmonts and the big king Drac. This time, it's Gabriel B stepping up to the Belmont plate, and armed with his trusty Combat Cross, he must wade through swamps, temples, forests, lakes and all manner of dungeons before he can finally confront his arch nemesis.
It's as broad and cliched as they come, but it's also deliciously retro-feeling in its style and structure, drawing on the DNA of Super Castlevania IV and re-shaping it into the grand 3D adventure you've always dreamed of. Indeed, with developers Mercurysteam going all in on the type of wild creature design you might expect from a Guillermo del Toro film, Lords of Shadow continues to have a wonderfully ethereal kind of beauty about it even today.
Of course, thanks to Gabriel's lethal Combat Cross, it's not long before those cooing 'ahhhh's turn into ghoulish 'uhhhh's. This retractable chain whip swishes and slashes with deadly precision, and it's probably the closest thing PC has to God of War's Blades of Chaos, which, let's not forget, is arguably one of the most satisfying hack and slash weapons of all time.
It also doubles up as a grappling hook, letting Gabriel soar to ever greater heights as he heads towards Dracula's castle looming forever on the horizon, whether it's taking down the game's Shadow of the Colossus-style Titan bosses or sniffing out secret areas in the world around him. Lords of Shadow can be a bit serious at times, and there are other games on this list that do the whole 'evil, screen-hogging demon' thing with a bit more style and sense of playfulness. In terms of epic scale and thrilling set-pieces, though, Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow still holds up as one of today's action greats.
Just a shame about the sequel, eh? Nuclear Throne is crunchier than a box of cornflakes. Nothing dies in its wasteland without going splat, no gun fires without a reverberating thud. The deep wailing of the big robotic dog, moments before it vapourises you. Disaster lurks behind a moment's hesitation, or a split-second misjudgement.
The path there is paved with ignoble deaths. We think we all knew that we needed an action adventure version of The X-Files, didn't we? Jesse Faden is drawn to the Federal Bureau of Control essentially what would happen if Mulder and Scully were given an entire clandestine wing of government and accidentally becomes the head of the entire place by picking up a magic gun. At the same time, the building is being attacked by an entity called The Hiss, a malevolent energy seeping from another dimension.
Mondays, am I right? What follows is an original and satisfying shooty action game, because you don't have to just shoot bad guys - you can also hurl fire extinguishers at them. And fly, as well. Control has been compared to things like Twin Peaks, because of the general tone. Walls shift. New areas reveal option extras, like a kind of pan-dimensional fungus. You don't have a mini-map, but you do have a map you can bring up sometimes, and cross reference with the helpful signs on the walls.
It's like having a telekinetic firefight in an NHS hospital, but if the hospital was a concrete brutalist beauty, and it absolutely owns. Where can I buy it: Epic. The best thing about Katana Zero is the way it displays text by popping character dialogue out one letter at a time or slamming down whole words communicate pace, and making letters shake and shatter as make people angry and interrupt them.
The reason for so many people being angry around you is because of the second best thing in the game: its action, in which you're an urban samurai with a sword and a time-rewind ability hacking your way through neon-lit 2D platformer levels. Each of those levels is short - maybe 4 or 6 enemies, and finishable in under 30 seconds. The trick is that it's a try-die-retry process to get to the point where you can finish it without dying.
You'll smash through a door, knocking down the enemy standing behind it, and be immediately shot by a second enemy at the other side of the room. Try again. Smash; knock down; this time, use your sword to deflect the bullet that killed you last time. Throw a knife in his head and move on.
Restarts are instant and your incrementally gained mastery of each micro-level causes you to slip into a flow state. You can't help but feel like a whiz when a set of enemies who each killed you the first time you encountered them fall by your sword based on muscle memory alone. There is much in Katana Zero that's familiar, narratively and aesthetically, but it hardly matters when it feels so good to play. Judge a man not by his words, but by his dodge roll. You swoosh between the tortured souls of the underworld, dashing and whacking your way to the surface.
Few attempts will feel the same. On one run, Aphrodite might imbue that dash with a charm effect, weakening the blows of your enemies. Dionysis might make them drunk, or Zeus might help you call down lightning blasts.
Those buffs build up and over each other, changing the fundamentals of your attacks, twirling you towards a different strategy for every escape. You can play for dozens of hours and Hades will still feel fresh. The gods offer patter with their abilities, commenting on your foolishness over accepting help from their peers.
The last time we played, a newly-added Hermes apologised for showing up late. Hades is impressively cohesive, and tied to some of the best dodging money can buy. Where can I buy it: Steam , Epic. Judged purely by its punching and shooting, GTA V is lackluster compared to many of the other games on this list, but there's more to action than just propelling objects into flesh. GTA V excels both in creating cinematic action set-pieces, and in wild and unpredictable physics chicanery.
On the one end of that scale, you've got the scripted story missions. There's an early mission in which have you to catch your son on the hood of your car as he hangs from the back of a boat careening down a freeway, which is pure Michael Bay. There's also the bank heists, which are pure Michael Mann.
They are the highlight of the story, and each requires you to sync the actions of the game's three protagonists in order to break in, complete your objective, and make a messy getaway. At the other end of the scale is the open world, with all its pedestrians, cars, planes, explosives, and ingredients for mayhem.
In single-player, it's a playground in which you can wreak havoc. Hop into GTA Online and it's even better, brought alive by the chaos of other players with whom you can cooperate to complete stunts, heists, or just to tool around, making your own fun.
Nier: Automata is a game of many faces. One minute it's a bullet hell shmup, the next you're riding around on the back of a moose in an open world RPG smashing in the faces of sentient tin cans.
It's a hard game to boil down, but at the core of this action-packed sci-fi story about reclaiming the earth from destructive robots or is it? Like all of Platinum's games, Nier: Automata's stylish combat is simple to execute but tricky to master. The important thing, though, is that every button tap makes you feel like a seasoned badass, whether you're slicing and dicing your way to victory or hacking and slashing through the robotic hordes. It's also the glue that holds this thousand-ideas-a-minute game together, uniting its ambitious story-telling with its deep role-playing elements.
There's simply nothing else like it. Hyper Light Drifter is one of the best action games, and it contains maybe the best single action of any game on this list.
It's not the sword swipes or freezing blasts or any of the other enemy-popping actions you can perform in this beautiful hack-and-slash Zelda-like. It's the simple, short distance dash you use to dodge those enemies and to chain your attacking flurries together.
Dash once and you'll think: ooh. Dash again and you realise that you need never take another ordinary step again - walking is for chumps. Dash a few more times and you realise that the world is designed to encourage your newfound haste, with frequent secret areas only reachable via speculative dashes beyond the edges of the floor.
Dash your way through a portion of the game and you realise the best thing of all: there's an update that allows you, with the correct timing, to chain your dashes together, accelerate and maintain top speed forevermore. Hyper Light Drifter contains mainly delights, and its mixture of action, exploration and story is never less than satisfying. You should dash, not walk, to play it. TowerFall has this feature where the arrows, when fired, will home in on their assumed target just a little.
Zombie Derby 2. Star Defender 4. Invention 3. Zombie Shooter 2. Desert Hawk. Invention 2. Sudden Strike 2. Toy Defense. Alien Wars. Toy Defense 2. Air Assault. Star Defender 2. All Evil Night. Star Defender 3. Royal Defense: Ancient Menace. Zombie Apocalypse. Zombie Shooter. Defense of Roman Britain. Garden Rescue. Zombie Derby: Pixel Survival.
Naval Warfare. Royal Defense. Star Sword. Theseus - Return of the Hero. Strategy and Tactics: Wargame Collection. Scrap Garden. Garden Rescue: Christmas Edition. Sudden Strike Iwo Jima. Sudden Strike Normandy. Sudden Strike Crimea. Devastator Arena. Battle Ranch. Border of Insanity. Steam Defense. All Evil Night 2. Empire: World War 3. Medieval Defenders. Mini Metal. Prohibition Royal Defense 2. Sky Runners. Star Raid. Bug Bits. Hot Zomb: Zombie Survival. Mad Race. Star Gunner.
Tabletop Defense. Age of Steel: Recharge. Tank Game. Battle City. Dark Matter. Fast or Dead. Air Attack. Deadly Stars.
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