Story Highlights
  • Metacritic has shared a list of the 20 best-rated Xbox games this year.
  • Alan Wake 2 finished in first place, while Hi-Fi Rush and Forza Motorsport finished within the top 20 games.
  • Baldur’s Gate 3 was the best-rated game of the year, but it is nowhere to be found on the list due to four reviews on the Xbox platform.

2023 has been a great year to play games regardless of platforms. However, for Xbox in particular, this year was a significant turning point, with the gaming giant finally fulfilling its promise of more than a few first-party releases.

Since many of the biggest games of the year were third-party releases, Xbox fans got to experience nearly every highly-rated release this year. Among these games, Alan Wake 2 has come out as the console’s best-rated release.

Why it matters: This year had such an abundance of great games that titles that scored in the high 80s failed to make it to the top 10.

This list has been provided by Metacritic itself, sorting Xbox games released this year by their scores.

While Alan Wake 2 had no shortage of positive reviews due to its fresh approach to horror games, this release received outstanding reviews on Xbox specifically. With a score of 94/100, no other new release on the platform could hope to match these results.

While Baldur’s Gate 3 had a higher score overall and won Game of the Year, it did not have enough reviews on the platform to make the list since it was shadow-dropped earlier this month.

Among Microsoft’s first-party offerings, Hi-Fi Rush was the best-rated game. Technically, Diablo 4 also lies under the Xbox umbrella now, so this can be considered the highest-rated first-party game from Xbox, but we will let you decide whether this entry should be counted.

Elsewhere, Forza Motorsport landed at the very last spot in the top 20.

Xbox One

Surprisingly, Starfield is nowhere to be found on the list. Forza Motorsport is rated 84/100 on the platform, pulling ahead of the former by just one point. Therefore, Bethesda’s latest offering narrowly missed the top 20 list.

Metacritic has compiled a similar list for Nintendo games, and we expect another list for PlayStation soon. On the former’s list, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom ranked as the best game, and Baldur’s Gate 3 will likely take the crown among PlayStation’s rankings.

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Avinash Jaisrani
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