Curated playlist

Science fiction video games

Assassin's CreedAssassin's Creed began as a Prince of Persia sequel with the prince cut out.
The Last of UsThe Last of Us is a video game series from the studio Naughty Dog, published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and by early 2023 the franchise had sold more than 37 million games. It takes place in a United States ruined by a mutated…
BioShockBioShock, a first-person shooter released in 2007, hides its sharpest trick inside a polite request: "Would you kindly." The phrase sounds harmless. In the game it carries a hidden weight, and it changes what the player believes about…
Horizon (video game series)Horizon is a science fiction game series from the Amsterdam studio Guerrilla Games, and by November 2025 it had sold over 40 million units worldwide. That figure places it among Sony's best-selling first-party properties. Its setting is…
Halo (franchise)Halo is a military science fiction franchise, and in 1997 its earliest form went by a codename its own programmer was too embarrassed to say aloud. Bungie's team first called the project "Monkey Nuts." Jason Jones could not bring himself…
Far CryFar Cry, the first-person shooter franchise published by Ubisoft, began life as an island full of dinosaurs. At the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 1999, the German studio Crytek showed a technology demo called X-Isle: Dinosaur Island.…
Life Is Strange (video game)Life Is Strange opens in October 2013, as an 18-year-old photography student named Max Caulfield returns to Arcadia Bay, Oregon, to attend Blackwell Academy. During class she has a vivid vision of a tornado destroying a lighthouse and…
Half-Life 2Half-Life 2 is a 2004 first-person shooter from Valve Corporation, and it cost 40 million US dollars to make. Development lasted five years. By 2011 it had sold 12 million copies worldwide. In November 2024, twenty years after its release,…
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 reached stores on the 10th of November 2009, and within 24 hours it had sold roughly 4.7 million copies in the United States and the United Kingdom. Those sales brought in $310 million. At the time, that made…
Fallout: New VegasFallout: New Vegas, a 2010 action role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, was built on a schedule that journalists called remarkably short for a major release. Publisher Bethesda Softworks allowed the studio 18 months. The game…
Final Fantasy VII RemakeFinal Fantasy VII Remake's reveal sent Square Enix's stock to its highest point since November 2008.
Resident Evil 4 (2023 video game)Resident Evil 4, Capcom's 2023 survival horror remake, earned an unusual compliment from the man who made the original. Shinji Mikami, who directed the 2005 game, said on Twitter that he enjoyed the remake very much. He also admitted that…
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 reached players on the 14th of November 2025, and within weeks its user score on Metacritic had fallen to 1.5. That was the lowest rating any Call of Duty game had ever received on the site. Yet critics were…
Fallout 4Fallout 4 begins on the 23rd of October 2077, the day the nuclear bombs fall. The 2015 action role-playing game comes from Bethesda Game Studios, and it is the fourth main entry in the Fallout series. Earlier games in the series start long…
Mass EffectMass Effect began in 2003 as a pitch to build a universe on the scale of Star Wars. BioWare wanted to own it entirely.
Death StrandingDeath Stranding is a 2019 video game in which a courier named Sam Porter Bridges crosses a wrecked United States on foot, carrying a premature baby in a pod. The baby is not cargo. It is a tool, a companion and, as the story unfolds,…
Portal (video game)Portal, a 2007 puzzle-platform game from Valve, begins with an artificial intelligence promising a silent woman named Chell a reward of cake. The reward is for surviving a long run of laboratory tests. Players soon learn to distrust that…
Call of Duty: Black Ops IICall of Duty: Black Ops II took in more than $500 million in the first 24 hours after it went on sale. That figure made the 2012 first-person shooter the largest entertainment launch of all time. The record stood until Grand Theft Auto V…
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of LibertyEvery trailer for Metal Gear Solid 2 showed Solid Snake in fights that Raiden had. Players had never heard of him.
Star Wars Battlefront (2015 video game)Star Wars Battlefront cut its single-player campaign to make a Christmas 2015 release.
Mega ManMega Man's producer, Keiji Inafune, told readers of his blog on the 29th of October 2010 that he was leaving Capcom. He wanted to start his life over, and he had spent 23 years at the company. The blue robot hero known as Mega Man, or…
Death Stranding 2: On the BeachHideo Kojima, the director of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, responded to glowing playtest results by tearing up part of his own script. Roughly halfway through development, audiences testing the game liked it a great deal. Kojima told…
Alien: IsolationAlien: Isolation is a 2014 survival horror game in which the monster hunting the player cannot be killed. Creative Assembly developed it and Sega published it. No weapon in the game ends the threat. The player can only hide, listen and…
Among UsAmong Us, an online deduction game from the American studio Innersloth, arrived in June 2018 to an audience of roughly 30 to 50 players online at any one time. In late September 2020, the same game peaked at 3.8 million concurrent players.…
Marvel's Spider-Man 2Marvel's Spider-Man 2 sold more than 2.5 million copies in its first 24 hours, the fastest start of any game from PlayStation Studios. Insomniac Games made the action-adventure for Sony Interactive Entertainment, and it reached the…
Halo: Combat EvolvedHalo: Combat Evolved reached shops on the 15th of November 2001, the same day as Microsoft's first game console, the Xbox. Bungie built it, and Microsoft Game Studios published it. A reviewer at Edge magazine called it "the most important…
MetroidMetroid is a Nintendo science fiction series that owes one of its best-known twists to a casual question. Halfway through development of the first game, a staff member asked his colleagues, "Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned…
TekkenIn Tekken, a son throws his father off a cliff, and the father survives to throw him into a volcano.
Star Wars Battlefront II (2017 video game)A Hawaii lawmaker called Star Wars Battlefront II an online casino designed to trap little kids.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen OrderLucasfilm wanted Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to star a smuggler, not a Jedi. Director Stig Asmussen refused.
The Outer WorldsThe Outer Worlds is a 2019 action role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, and it begins with a history that never happened. In the game's timeline, U.S. President William McKinley was never assassinated in 1901. Theodore Roosevelt…
Control (video game)Control is a 2019 action-adventure game from Remedy Entertainment, and nearly all of it takes place inside a single building in New York City. From the street, the Oldest House looks like a featureless concrete skyscraper. Inside, it is…
Half-Life (video game)Half-Life, the 1998 first-person shooter from Valve Corporation, was budgeted on the assumption that it would sell around 180,000 copies in its entire lifetime. That forecast came from Gabe Newell, one of the studio's two founders. Yet the…
Helldivers 2Helldivers 2 begins with a fall. Players drop onto hostile planets inside a metal pod called a Hellpod, launched from a starship known as a Super Destroyer. Once on the ground, they call down bombardments by tapping out sequences of…
Starfield (video game)Starfield is a 2023 action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, and it lets the player land on more than 1,000 planets. That scale raises a few questions. Why did a studio tied to Skyrim and Fallout 4 turn its attention to space?…
Outer WildsOuter Wilds, a 2019 action-adventure game from Mobius Digital, gives its player exactly 22 minutes to live. At the end of that time the sun goes supernova and the whole planetary system is destroyed. Then everything begins again. The…
Detroit: Become HumanDetroit: Become Human, an adventure game from the studio Quantic Dream, had sold 15 million units by January 2026. That makes it the best-selling game the studio has ever made. Sony Interactive Entertainment published it in 2018. Its…
Doom (franchise)Doom is an American media franchise created by five people: John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud, and Tom Hall. Its hero never receives a proper name. Players call him Doomguy, the Doom Marine, or, in later entries, the…
Star CitizenOn the 10th of October 2012, the website built to launch Star Citizen crashed in the middle of the game's announcement at GDC. By May 2026, combined crowdfunding and early access sales for the project had passed US$1 billion. That sum…