Alongside our Game of the Year top 10 list and personal picks from the Push Square editorial team, we are recognising the best PS5 games of 2024 in select categories. Today is the turn of the best PS5 action game of 2024.
Bronze Trophy: Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2

Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 does an outstanding job of making you feel like a proper Space Marine. Decked out in armour that would crush a normal man, cleaving your way through legions of grotesque alien freaks... It's weighty, it's hyperviolent, and it's an absolute blast. A surprisingly involved melee combat system really sets Space Marine 2 apart, bringing blocks, parries, and combos to an already rock solid third-person shooter template. The Emperor himself would be proud.
Read our Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 PS5 review through the link.
Silver Trophy: Black Myth: Wukong

Walking a line somewhere between Souls and pure action, Black Myth: Wukong is a brilliantly creative romp through Chinese legend. While the combat system does take a while to truly shine, it's consistently carried by superbly crafted opponents — especially when it comes to boss battles. The protagonist himself is worthy of praise as well; our mischievous ape is an impressively unique action hero, equipped with an extendable staff and capable of changing his form mid-fight. Design-wise, Wukong deserves a lot of credit.
Read our Black Myth: Wukong PS5 review through the link.
Gold Trophy: Stellar Blade

Stellar Blade often feels like the kind of frantic and flashy action games that were so common on the PS2 — but sky-high production values and some surprisingly demanding combat mechanics elevate it above those often forgotten titles. When Stellar Blade clicks, it's a gripping dance of combos, special moves, dodges, and all-important parries, resulting in a fast-paced and satisfyingly slick experience. We also need to give a special mention to Eve; the protagonist's artful animations are often eye-popping in motion, and she really sells the action as a whole.
Read our Stellar Blade PS5 review through the link.
Platinum Trophy: Dragon's Dogma 2

The storytelling is extremely hit and miss, the characters are wooden, and it's in desperate need of a big expansion, but Capcom absolutely nails the action in Dragon's Dogma 2. Just like in the first game, combat is really the crux of the experience, providing dynamic encounters against all manner of fantastical monster. It's weighty, it's crunchy, it's supremely satisfying; whether you're battering goblins or downing a colossal drake, Dragon's Dogma 2 captures the thrill of sword-and-spell combat unlike anything else on the market.
Once again, Capcom proves that it's the undisputed king of video game action.
Read our Dragon's Dogma 2 PS5 review through the link.
Do you agree with our picks for the best PS5 action game of 2024? Put your thoughts in the comments below and check out more of our Game of the Year coverage through the link.
What was your favourite PS5 action game of 2024? (1,339 votes)
- Black Myth: Wukong
- Dragon's Dogma 2
- Granblue Fantasy: Relink
- Stellar Blade
- Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2
- Zenless Zone Zero
- Other
Comments 63
My vote goes to Stellar Blade with Granblue not far behind.
I really should give Dragon’s Dogma 2 a second shot. It’s one of the few games this year I question if I gave it my best or if I was just grumpy in my gaming and sort of rushed on it. I’ll redownload it for the sake of it winning.
Also, yes! Finally GotY season! Some of my favorite articles to read all year.
I love Stellar blade but Wukong got me better.
Fully agree with Dragons Dogma 2......a brilliant experience in emergent gameplay. Stellar Blade is also unmissable
God I still have my DD2 copy wrapped. I really wanna give it a go now after all the patches. I'm glad it and stellar blade are at the top
🤣 Stellar Blade’s… erm… ‘column’ on the chart looks like it’s tent-poling (horizontally)
N.i.c.e. all of those video games are excellent.good choice at number 1.word up son
@somnambulance DD is weird. Kind of a game inverted: we're used to games "happening" at checkpoints and at story beats, but DD2's game happens between these, on the road, when the player decides to see "what's over there", or to mess about with new combat combinations. If you meet the game on its own terms, (which it kind of insists on, and I can see how that's the sticking point for many) and especially don't rush things, you could well have a blast. I hope you do anyhow!
Black Mid Wukong wasn’t that great. Looked amazing but it was basically a derivative Soulslike
@Mattock1987 pretty much everything is derivative of something else
Glad to see Dragon's Dogma 2 actually get some of the recognition it deserves. This game SHOULD have been nominated for GOTY but I digress. The write up really hit the nail on the head though. Whatever other problems DD2 may have had, they all kind of fade into the background. Because what you come to Dragon's Dogma for is the combat and the combat is top notch
Dragons Dogma is such a step up on PRO to!
Nice to see Stellar Blade getting some love somewhere!
I never could get into Stellar Blade or Dragons Dogma2 after playing the demos, cause I honestly, no matter how much i tried, cant get over the anime artstyle.
Pretty surprised that my personal choice for platinum, W40k: Space marine 2 placed as bronze! Well deserved!
To me, Dragon's Dogma 2 holds the prestigious honor of being not just the biggest disappointment of the year, but of the decade so far. Waiting 12 years for a sequel just to have feel like a step backwards in most ways was bad enough, but most of it's steps forward just made it even less fun. It's going to be a while before I'm over it.
Stellar Blade on the other hand really surpassed my expectations. Even with how likely I was to love it, I didn't expect to play it start to finish five times this year. So it definitely takes the top spot for me.
Yeah, gotta agree with the blurb on DD2. The story is..not good. And they somehow managed to tell it in an even worse way than the original's one.
But the game is just so...fun.
I spent more than 100 hours on it because the adventure/journey itself is just so good. Sure, enemy variety could be better, I'd love to have one or two more attack skills at a time and there's...no dungeons this time, which is odd. But all that doesn't matter to me when I actually sit down to play it. The game just immediately takes hold of my attention when I jump back in in a way DD1/DA didn't manage to and I think a lot of it has to do with how seemingly effortlessly Dragon's Dogma 2 delivers on moment to moment gameplay as you travel and it feels SO good to absolutely body enemies.
It's a shame that it ultimately fell so short in certain areas. And even more so what it did to the fandom and how incredibly toxic it could get.
Stellar Blade definitely takes this category for me personally.
Looking forward to seeing worst games of the year lists being made 😎
Easily Stellar blade for me. Im on my 3rd playthrough and i never replay games. DD didnt do anything for me. I found it hard to navigate. Maybe i should give it another go.
For me is also Stellar Blade, despite already platinum it already I'm going for a fourth playthrough. The action combined with the music (and lots of costumes!) it feels so relaxing playing it.
I personally wouldn’t classify DD2 as an Action Game. Stellar Blade was inexplicably snubbed as Best Action Game at the Geoff’s this year in favor of the good-but-strictly-inferior BMW, so it’s nice to see it get the praise it so rightly deserves here.
If DD2 is an action game, does that mean DA Veilguard is too? If so, that would probably get my vote. I gave up on DD2 about halfway through - it just never quite clicked for me.
I voted for space marine 2
Nice to see some love for DD2 which was my favorite of the year.
Waiting for Game Science to now issue a fatwa upon Push Square for not sufficiently respecting their game.
Somewhere a Chinese man is crying
Stellar blade gets my vote but I’m yet to play wukong!
You didn't give it to Black Myth, you'll be hearing about this!
@SterlingEyes Personally I'd consider DD2 to be an "Action RPG". So realistically it could be lumped in with either best action or best RPG. Depending on who you ask
With that being said though, I do find genre definitions in general to be somewhat pointless and dumb. Seeing as no one can ever seem to agree on what anything is
Stella Blade, then BMW.
@colonelkilgore true, but there was a lot of whining about Wukong not getting GOTY
@Mattock1987 aye well if you don’t already know the ‘reasons’ behind that, well… I ain’t the guy to school you. Let’s just say certain financially-overly comfortable countries/geographical locations want to exorcise their crimes against humanity with huge investment into sport and some want to do it with investment into Gaming. I’ll leave you to guess which locale is applicable to which… and subsequently which is applicable to this conversation.
For all the tediously overblown controversy Stellar Blade was a thoroughly entertaining game. It's unfair to.judge it (either way) solely on body physics.
Dragons Dogma 2 was awful
@shogunrok
Can we have a category for 'Whiny Gamer Controversy of the Year'? Damn near every game had one.
The top 3 on this list alone were: mtx, Fast-Travel, T*ts & China 😅
Dragon’s Dogma 2 all the way. The gloriously bombastic random nature of wondering around is unparalleled. I stumbled into a three-way battle after bringing down a gryphon I’d ended up clinging to as it took flight, somehow we both survived but ended up fighting the dragon we’d almost collided with before bandits for some reason joined the fray. How many games have that kind of unscripted carnage?
Action is such a broad term. You have semi-souls likes with Stellar Blade and Wukong, an RPG with Dragon’s Dogma, and Gears style Hack n Slash. I think Hi-Fi Rush is my favorite PS5 Action release of the year and even then that’s a whole separate genre with character action.
@Deoxyr1bose Agreed entirely on Hifi Rush. That game is just so darn satisfying. Also, it has incredible writing. It had me laughing out loud way too often.
Can’t wait to get to both Black Myth: Wukong and Dragons Dogma II. When I eventually get a pro, DDII will likely be the first game I play.
@Can-You-Believe-Sith My guess for those top contenders: Dustborn, Concord, Suicide Squad and the game every reviewer called a “return to form for BioWare” ad nauseam, Dragon Age Veilguard.
Space Marine 2 for me.
@somnambulance i gave it a go for about 5 times now ending in deleting it after 2 hours or so... it just is not on par to the other games on the list. Its even not bronze to me honestly. Story is not good tbh and gameplay is boring to me. Engine out of date too. Never ever the best Action game of 2024.
Dragon's dogma 2 had very fun gameplay but man its story, characters, enemy variety, and even its music was really disappointing. Gotta give it to Stellar Blade personally.
@dskatter Right on the money
I vote Astro Bot as best action game! You get an axe, a pistol and a bow and arrow!
I think stellar blade outshone DD2 for me.
For a new studio, it played well, few bugs, few issues, challenging and good combat. Good bosses.
DD2 while good had issues technically and felt like it was missing abit of spark
Wukong for me. As much as I love dragons dogma 2 I don't think it should be included in this list as its more of a rpg to be honest. Still an excellent game despite its issues but not really an action game like the others.
Space Marine 2, but no Helldivers 2?! What are you people smoking!
Definitely Stellar Blade for me. I had an absolute blast with Granblue Fantasy Relink, and still dip back from time to time, so good to see that on the runner up list as well!
I keep going to pick up Dragon’s Dogma 2 but then something else gets released that gets in the way. At this point it’ll probably be a wait until it’s on PS Plus job.
@colonelkilgore yeah that or it wasn’t a good enough game.
@ORO_ERICIUS Even having dropped it earlier in the year, I think I’d still put Dragon’s Dogma 2 above the rest of the contenders on this list. Warhammer isn’t for me. Black Myth is perhaps a contender for the most overrated game to release this year, even as it does have solid gameplay and visuals. It’s just incoherent as a narrative, which is bizarre as its source material is certainly not. Sorry to say, but Black Myth feels sort of like an extended tech demo to me. And Stellar Blade… well… Electric Playground described it as “one of those games that reminds you of games that are better than it while you are playing it and makes you want to go back and play them.” And I definitely agree with that.
Dragon’s Dogma 2, on the other hand, is clunky, janky, dated, and also incomprehensible as a story, but things are always happening in it and it’s wildly ambitious. I just dropped it because I wasn’t clicking with the story at all. I was sort of lost with what to do in the game. I’ve been back and forth on going back to it for a while, but I just haven’t had the time. This has not been a gaming year with time to spare for me, which is also another reason I dropped DD2. Given how blank next year looks (for me currently), it may be the ideal time to return to it.
@somnambulance same mate. I am sad about it tbh. I wanted it to be GOTY. Unfortunately turned out it is not nearly one.
I’m glad Dragon’s Dogma 2 — my personal GOTY — is getting recognition that it deserves. Outstanding game, that sparked a creative side of me that I didn’t know existed. I became so immersed in the game that I bought a couple of t-shirts relating to it, something I never do. I hope it gets DLC like the first game received.
It's Stellar Blade, nothing was close besides Space Marine 2. But it's a 3rd person shooter.
Stellar Blade. Only disappointment I had with the game is that I don't love how close the gameplay is to a From Soft game. Wish it had been more along the lines of Bayonetta but other than that, no complaints.
I disagree with DD2 being the #1
It's definitely a toss up between Wukong and Stellar Blade for me. DD2 was good but the combat wasn't anything to write home about, and it had tons of bugged quests and stuff.
Maybe the best open world RPG, but definitely not the best action RPG.
Shocked to see DD2 but i cannot disagree. Truly a wonderful game.
Interesting choice, pushsquare. But hey, whatever. My choice is Stellar Blade.
@Majin_Deicide That's interesting I feel like combat is the one category that DD2 absolutely clears either Stellar Blade or Black Myth in (Stellar Blade maybe less so). The sheer variety of options available from each of the vocations almost guarantees that no two combat encounters will ever play out the same. On the other hand Stellar Blade and especially Wukong become very one note by the end with their limited combos and abilities
@Tchunga I actually see where you're coming from with that, DD2 definitely has a wider variety of ways to fight than the others I mentioned.
I suppose when I think "ARPG" I generally think of more high speed combat or the more Soulsborne style methodical combat.
I loved DD2 btw, I just suppose if we're talking ARPG SB and Wukong scratched that itch a little more for me whereas DD2 had fun and diverse combat, but the open world aspect with time sensitive quests seemed more like it was more about the adventure, exploration and story.
SB and Wukong just have that high octane combat I tend to enjoy a bit more than DD's combat style.
All great games though. Space Marine 2 was awesome as well. We were eating good on ARPGs this year come to think of it lol
How is Helldivers 2 not on this??? Not only is it not listed but not winning??
I haven’t played DD2 yet, but I find it hard to believe that its better than both Wukong and Stellar Blade, two INCREDIBLE action games… I guess I need to give it a go, but man I’m just so tired of medieval fantasy…
Stellar Blade wins this category for me as it’s my GOTY anyway, but Black Myth: WUKONG is a really close second.
Concorde, no doubt.
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...