We're getting closer and closer to producing our Pure Xbox Game of the Year roundup for 2026, and with that in mind, we recently asked you which games you considered your personal GOTY picks before December rolls around.

But what about Metacritic? As you likely know, Metacritic produces an average rating based on the professional reviews that have been submitted for a game. As long as the title has seven critic reviews or more, it gets thrown into a list of the "Best Games" for that platform.

Multi-platform games tend to get reviewed a lot more on PS5 and Switch than Xbox, which can sometimes skew the top 10 list a little bit, but we've nevertheless got a pretty fantastic lineup of the 10 best Xbox games of 2026:

  1. Hades 2 (95)
  2. Resident Evil Requiem (93)
  3. Mixtape (92)
  4. Forza Horizon 6 (90)
  5. Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve (88)
  6. 007 First Light (88)
  7. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade (88)
  8. Gears of War: E-Day (87)
  9. Pragmata (86)
  10. Star Wars: Galactic Racer (86)

Beyond these 10, there are also three other games that could have made it into the list with an 86 overall average, but Metacritic puts them in the #11-13 spots. Those are Vampire Crawlers, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection.

As mentioned though, multi-platform games tend to be reviewed more on PS5 and Switch (as well as PC) compared to Xbox, and if we look the all-platform list, it suddenly changes the picture quite a bit.

So, if we add in the Xbox releases from the all-platform list as well, this is how the top 10 ends up looking:

  1. Hades 2 (95)
  2. Resident Evil Requiem (93)
  3. Sektori (93)
  4. Mixtape (92)
  5. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered (92)
  6. DOOM: The Dark Ages - Revelations (91)
  7. Forza Horizon 6 (90)
  8. Mina The Hollower (90)
  9. Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade (89)
  10. Valheim (89)

Bit of an interesting mix, right? There's still time for all of this to change over the next few weeks, but realistically we're probably only looking at one or two additions - the big one being Rockstar Games' GTA 6.

Rockstar and Take-Two will be hoping that the most highly anticipated video game in history will be able to top the list on Metacritic by this time next month, but with Hades 2 sitting on 95, it's going to have to be incredible to beat it!

What are your thoughts on this? Are these the best Xbox games of 2026 so far? Tell us down below.

[source metacritic.com]