Best-reviewed games of 2026: top Metacritic scores so far

The best-reviewed game of 2026 so far is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the Switch 2 remake that came out on November 5. It sits at 96 on Metacritic and 95 on OpenCritic. Behind it are Resident Evil 2: Deluxe Edition at 93 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered at 92.

Notice what those three have in common. None of them is a new game. Nine of the top fifteen on Metacritic's 2026 list are remakes, remasters, ports or expansions of older games. The best-reviewed brand-new games of the year are Sektori at 92, Big Walk at 91, and Forza Horizon 6 and Mina the Hollower at 90.

Every number here was taken on November 10, 2026, and will move. Grand Theft Auto VI comes out on November 19 and hasn't been reviewed yet.

The highest-rated games of 2026 on Metacritic

This is the top fifteen from Metacritic's own list of 2026 releases, sorted by Metascore, with OpenCritic's top-critic average next to it where the game appears in OpenCritic's top twenty for the year.

Rank	Game	Metascore	OpenCritic	Released	Type
1	The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time	96	95	November 5	Remake
2	Resident Evil 2: Deluxe Edition	93	Not in top 20	October 16	Switch 2 port
3	The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered	92	91	September 29	Remaster
4	Sektori	92	Not in top 20	May 14	New game
5	Big Walk	91	89	August 4	New game
6	DOOM: The Dark Ages, Revelations	91	89	July 7	Expansion
7	Forza Horizon 6	90	91	May 19	New game
8	Mina the Hollower	90	91	May 29	New game
9	Elden Ring: Tarnished Edition	90	89	August 28	Switch 2 port
10	Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter	90	92	September 17	Remake
11	and Roger	90	Not in top 20	June 17	New game
12	Schrödinger's Call	89	90	May 28	New game
13	Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade	89	Not in top 20	January 22	Switch 2 and Xbox port
14	Valheim	89	90	September 9	1.0 release
15	Resident Evil 4: Gold Edition	89	Not in top 20	October 16	Switch 2 port

Five more games are tied at 89 just below the cut: Pokémon Pokopia, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, Resident Evil Requiem, Desktop Explorer and Well Dweller. Phantom Blade Zero, Fields of Mistria and Denshattack! follow at 88.

Metacritic lists a game on this chart under one platform's score, so a multi-platform release can sit a point or two higher or lower elsewhere. Our explainer on how Metacritic and OpenCritic scores work covers why the two sites disagree and what a minimum review count does to a list like this.

Forza Horizon 6 screenshot from the Steam version of the open-world racer set in Japan

How does OpenCritic's 2026 list compare?

OpenCritic sorts the same year a little differently. Its top ten at the time of writing:

Rank	Game	OpenCritic average
1	The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time	95
2	Mythmatch	93
3	Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter	92
4	The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered	91
5	Dave the Diver: In the Jungle	91
6	Mina the Hollower	91
7	Forza Horizon 6	91
8	Schrödinger's Call	90
9	Lost and Found Co.	90
10	Queen's Domain	90

The top spot matches. Below it, OpenCritic gives more room to small PC games such as Mythmatch and Lost and Found Co., and doesn't rank the Switch 2 ports that fill Metacritic's upper half. Neither list is wrong. They count different outlets, weight them differently, and set different thresholds for how many reviews a game needs before it appears.

Why are so many of 2026's top-rated games remakes and ports?

Three things are happening at once.

The first is Switch 2. The console is in its second year, and publishers are bringing over their best-reviewed back catalog: Resident Evil 2 and 4, Elden Ring, Final Fantasy VII Remake. Each port gets reviewed as a 2026 release, and each starts from a game that was already acclaimed. A good port of a great game scores like a great game.

The second is that a remake of a classic starts with a design that has already been proven. Ocarina of Time was famously the highest-rated game on Metacritic in its original form. A careful rebuild was never likely to land in the 70s. We went through what critics praised and what held it short of the original's number in our Ocarina of Time remake review deep dive.

The third is selection. A port or expansion tends to be reviewed by fewer outlets, and mostly by people who chose to cover it because they liked the original. That pulls averages up.

None of this makes the scores meaningless. It does mean a 93 for a Switch 2 port and a 92 for a new game are answering different questions. We wrote about the business side in why there are so many video game remakes, and the definitions are in our guide to remake vs remaster vs reboot.

What are the best new games of 2026?

Take out the remakes, ports, expansions and re-releases, and this is the year's top tier of new games by Metascore.

Sektori (92)

A twin-stick shooter set to hard techno, released on May 14. It's the highest-rated wholly new game on Metacritic's 2026 list, and the kind of small arcade game that tends to review very well among the critics who seek it out.

Big Walk (91)

House House's co-operative adventure about walking and talking with friends, released on August 4. It's $19.99 on Steam. We covered why it landed so well in our Big Walk review deep dive.

Forza Horizon 6 (90)

The open-world racer finally went to Japan, and it's the best-reviewed big-budget new release of the year so far. Our Forza Horizon 6 review roundup has the outlet scores.

Mina the Hollower (90)

Yacht Club Games' top-down action game, out May 29, sits at 90 on Metacritic and 91 on OpenCritic. See our Mina the Hollower review deep dive for where the praise and the complaints fall.

and Roger (90)

A narrative game released on June 17 about a girl who wakes to find a stranger in her father's place.

Schrödinger's Call (89)

A visual novel about last phone calls at the end of the world, and one of the year's quiet surprises. We wrote about it in our Schrödinger's Call review deep dive.

The 89s: Pokémon Pokopia, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave and Resident Evil Requiem

Three of the year's biggest new releases share the same score. We've covered all three: Pokémon Pokopia, Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave and Resident Evil Requiem. Well Dweller, also at 89, is in our Well Dweller and Graveyard Keeper 2 roundup.

Mina the Hollower screenshot from the Steam version of Yacht Club Games' action-adventure

Which of the re-releases are worth your time?

If you missed the originals, most of them. A few notes on the ones that matter most.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a full remake for Switch 2 and the best-reviewed release of the year on both sites.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered came out on September 29 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and PC, with both expansions included.
Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is a remake of the second game in a long-running RPG series, so it needs the first chapter played before it. Our Trails series guide explains the order, and our review deep dive has the scores.
DOOM: The Dark Ages, Revelations is an expansion and needs the base game. Critics thought it fixed the base game's combat, as we covered in our Revelations review deep dive.
Valheim left early access with its 1.0 release, five years after it first appeared.
The Switch 2 ports of Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 4, Elden Ring and Final Fantasy VII Remake are the same acclaimed games on a new console. If you already own one elsewhere, you don't need it again.

Big Walk screenshot from the Steam version of House House's co-operative walking adventure

Will the list change before the end of the year?

Almost certainly. Grand Theft Auto VI launches on November 19, and its predecessor holds a 97 on Metacritic. Late-year releases and late reviews will shuffle the 89s. And scores drift for weeks after launch as more outlets file, often downward by a point or two.

Awards are a separate question from averages. The highest Metascore of the year often doesn't win Game of the Year, and remakes and ports are judged differently there. Our look at the Game of the Year 2026 frontrunners goes through who is in the running.

How should you use a list like this?

As a shortlist, not a ranking of what you'll enjoy. A 96 tells you that almost every critic who reviewed a game thought it was excellent. It doesn't tell you whether you like 40-hour adventures, twin-stick shooters or visual novels. Pick the two or three here that match what you already play and ignore the order.

Your own ratings are the better guide over time. In Perthro, you can rate and log what you finish and keep an Interested list of the ones from this page you want to try, so next year you can check the critics against yourself. Our game tracker page explains how it works across Switch 2, PlayStation, Xbox and Steam.

The best-reviewed games of 2026 so far, ranked by Metacritic score