25 Best Rockstar Games of all time, ranked

This list is here to help you discover the best Rockstar games of all-time.

Over the years, Rockstar has brought us so many experiences, with some of the best adventure games and best shooters among them. Between the hugely successful GTA series and the much loved Red Dead games, the studio also delivered racing games, a memorable detective noir story, and so much more.

With Rockstar cementing its reputation for some of the most successful and talked about experiences with some the best single-player games around, it's no wonder there's so much excitement for what's next in GTA 6. But if you can hardly wait for the new game to arrive, this ranking is here to help. So, read on to explore the best Rockstar games of all-time below.

The best Rockstar games of all-time

25. State of Emergency 

One of several games on this list that doesn’t feel all that much like a Rockstar game. Mainly because it isn’t… well, not really. Published under the Rockstar label but developed by VIS Entertainment, this chaotic street brawler was rough around the edges in 2002, let alone in 2022.

Still, there is a brash charm about the sheer bedlam State of Emergency’s constant on-screen riots sstirstir up. In that sense, it’s basically ‘Black Friday: The Game,’ 15 years before the anarchy of the festive season’s most frenzied shopping day became a thing.

24. Smuggler's Run

If nothing else, Trevor Phillips' outrageous drug-peddling missions in GTA 5 may never have happened without Smuggler's Run. Years before everyone's favorite Canadian sociopath was bombing through Sandy Shores in an ATV, this scrappy PS2 launch title made carrying illicit cargo through virtual deserts cool.

So why does hardly anyone remember this deliciously down-and-dirty racer? Blame the game launching within a year of the medium-changing GTA 3. Still, getting lost in the critical shuffle is probably a good thing when you’re a smuggler, right?

23. The Warriors

"Warriors… come out to play-ay!" We guess no one told that to the titular street gang of Walter Hill's 1979 cult classic because, somehow, it took the iconic characters 26 years to get from the multiplex to a home console. We're just thankful Rockstar's keenly faithful, ultra-tardy tie-in is a bit quicker in ferrying the gang from the Bronx to their home turf in Coney Island.

A stylish love letter to Streets of Rage that dances around the clunky melee fights of every GTA game, The Warriors was a passion project of a studio clearly besotted with cinema. At this rate, maybe we'll get 'Rockstar Games Presents: Serpico' sometime in 2034.

22. Red Dead Revolver

In a parallel bizarro world, there's a reality where Capcom published this love letter to spaghetti westerns, not Rockstar. Said reality probably involves Red Dead Redemption or its equally sensational sequel never becoming a thing, so thank Clint Eastwood's last fistful of dollars the troubled Capcom production was eventually saved by Rockstar.

Would John Marston and Arthur Morgan's incredible Frontier epics gun down this slightly awkward, largely linear outlaw in a second? Sure. But such is Rockstar's affection for Westerns. Revolver's legacy is that of a game that inspired two of the greatest open-world games of all-time.

21. Manhunt 2

Manhunt 2 might just be the most unlikely Wii game of all time. Nintendo's sensors used to be notoriously ban-happy, so it's some turn of events that this grizzly sequel hit Nintendo's family-friendly box. Sadly, this phoned-in follow-up lacks the sharpened satire of the original.

Whereas that game felt like a deliberate attempt to probe and point fingers at voyeuristic fetishes, this feels like a mindless straight-to-DVD film wannabe. But hey, at least it let Little Jimmy shake his Wiimote back and forth like he was trying to garrote someone. That's a back-of-the-box selling point right there.

20. GTA: Liberty City Stories

It may be little more than a barebones retread of GTA 3, but come on. This is a fully functioning 3D Grand Theft Auto on a PSP! All those same seedy Liberty City corners can still be bombed around in cars – and even bikes this time around – as you go whacking wiseguy to wiseguy as GTA 3 quest-giver, Tony Cipriani.

The fact Rockstar Leeds managed to squeeze Liberty City onto a shrunken-down PS2 is a truly gobsmacking technical achievement. Seriously, this title doesn't get the credit it deserves and is still worth a revisit today.

19. Red Dead Online

Red Dead Online is a terrific multiplayer experience, but it also reeks of unfulfilled potential. Despite wriggling free of Arthur Morgan’s lasso and becoming a standalone game in 2020, new updates have dried up.

Being a Wild West bounty hunter used to swallow our evenings whole, but those prairies have since gone a little quiet. In a world where GTA Online updates are constantly churned out, it looks like this outlaw came off second best next to its Blaine County cousin.

18. GTA: Vice City Stories

Rockstar Leeds managed to squeeze another mini marvel out of the PSP with this sun-dappled sequel. Improving Liberty City Stories targeting system and introducing a likable new lead in the form of Vic Vance – yes, that would be the brother of Lance – this is another winning take on portable GTA.

The game's biggest legacy is introducing a feature the series would revisit with massive success in GTA 5. That would be its "empire-building" property system: a mechanic that let you fatten Lance's wallet as you bought and fought to keep local businesses running.

17. GTA: Chinatown Wars

Who said top-down GTA was old hat? If you told a kid playing Pokémon Yellow on their GBA that a few years later, they'd be gunning down felons in a GTA that had been bespoke designed for a Nintendo handheld, they'd have gotten dizzier than Pikachu mid-Volt Tackle.

Not only was Chinatown Wars smartly designed, but it also made canny use of the DS' unique features – like using the second screen as a map or blowing into the handheld’s mic to hail a taxi. Huang Lee's pocket-fitting hit is a cruelly overlooked GTA gem.

16. L.A. Noire

The try-hard motion capture performances in this evocatively moody detective game hasn't aged well, but at the time of its release, it was revolutionary... even if there's something deeply strange about watching L.A. Noire's very particular brand of overacting.

With various cases to solve and suspects (with exaggerated facial expressions) to question, LA Noire does succeed at bringing to life a very memorable detective game. Did Team Bondi’s MotionScan tech revolutionize the industry in the way Rockstar may have hoped? Nope. Yet, though L.A. Noire isn't the pioneer it set out to be, its pitch-perfect 1940s Los Angeles feels grown-up and authentic in a way so few modern AAA games ever are.

15. Grand Theft Auto

It might not technically be a Rockstar game, but there's zero chance we could do this list without the original GTA. Developed by Scottish outfit DMA Design – whose key members would go on to form Rockstar Games – Grand Theft Auto is a living, breathing, car-jacking history lesson.

The top-down viewpoint might be old fashioned, but 1997's GTA represents the series at its core. Brutal carnage delivered with a knowing slice of slapstick? That’s a Rockstar open world. Fun fact: other than this game's London set of side missions, the first Grand Theft Auto introduced (and features) every GTA city that has appeared in the series since.

14. GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony

Alright, alright! So this is a piece of DLC, not its own full-blown game. But when Tony Prince and Luis Lopez's antics are this outrageously entertaining, exceptions on the best Rockstar games list need to be made, dammit! This is the most fun GTA has ever been.

Taking GTA 4's wonderfully detailed Liberty City and shunting aside all that lowkey misery for outright absurdity, Gay Tony's campaign involves violent golf buggy chases, parachute shootouts, and the most glorious automatic shotgun in all of the games. We adore it.

13. Midnight Club: Los Angeles

No one really talks about Midnight Club, but they should. GTA has always led the sandbox pack when it comes to responsive driving models, so it should be no surprise the one dedicated racing series Rockstar did make feels lovely to control.

The last mainline entry in the series, and with over a decade without mention of a follow-up, it looks like Midnight Club's race is run. Still, we'll remember the final game fondly for its tight steering and thrilling cop chases through a lovingly rendered City of Angels.

12. Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis

How the hell did this happen? The only explanation for this thoroughly odd but equally awesome passion project is someone at Rockstar must have watched that scene from Forrest Gump 173 times.

Casually dropping the GOAT of all ping pong games on the Xbox 360, Table Tennis is a wonderfully light, ferociously focused game. With zero bloat on its rangy frame, this stealth vehicle for GTA 4's RAGE physics engine serves up hyper-elastic thrills for a sport that, in retrospect, deserves more video game love.

11. Bully

Or 'Canis Canem Edit' to our UK readers. A newspaper-riling phenomenon when it hit store shelves a couple of years removed from GTA: San Andreas, few recent AAA games have courted controversy quite like Bully. A virtual playground sim that lets you dish out wedgies faster than the school canteen can plate lunch, the tale of juvenile delinquent Jimmy Hopkins is GTA… with pimples.

The strip clubs and headshots might have been given detention until the end of time. Still, Bully's slingshot-firing, kiss-stealing, chaos-causing action delivers the wickedly playful sandbox formula you’d expect from Rockstar. In retrospect, we feel a bit guilty about shoving that kid who helped us with Jimmy's homework into a bin 17 times in one school week.

10. Manhunt

Would Manhunt be made today? Probably not. Taking a perverse but knowing glee in the on-screen carnage it forces you to unleash as an escaped Carcer City inmate, Manhunt is truly repellent. Oh, and utterly, utterly compelling. This is video game violence that actually has something interesting to say.

A pre-Succession Brian Cox coaxes you at every juncture in a chillingly low-key performance. Compared to the Scottish actor’s famously cold ‘f*ck offs’ in Succession, the snuff film director he plays in Manhunt makes Logan Roy look like Santa Claus. Disgusting, yet always must-play, they really don’t make ‘em like this anymore. And maybe that’s for the best.

9. Max Payne 3

This is not Remedy's Max Payne. Ditching the machete-sharp cheekbones of series creator Sam Lake, the burned-out ex-op we meet slumming it on the streets of Rio is as relatable as this iconic character has ever been.

Rockstar finally (and wisely) bases Max's appearance on longtime voice actor James McCaffery, with the newly bloated former law enforcer proving he can still go toe to toe with Neo when it comes to gravity-defying shootouts. Payne's action may be one note, but when said note is as spectacularly high as the gleefully cinematic Bullet Time gun battles on offer here, we say: "Play it again, Max."

8. GTA Online

C'mon, it's absolutely its own game at this point. There must be millions of players out there who can barely recall the terrible trio of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor but who play GTA Online every single damn day of their lives. With uninviting menus and constant, slightly hard to keep track of updates, GTA Online has always been a bit of a hot mess.

Yet it's also literally the most successful hot mess of all time. Stack every physical copy of GTA 5 that's ever been sold, and that pile would probably stretch to the Moon. Thrown on the countless wads Rockstar has made through GTAO Shark Cards, said stack would reach Mars and back. That a game of such stratospheric sales success remains a thoroughly enjoyable online open world is a testament to the amazing driving and shooting mechanics Rockstar cooked up back in 2013.

7. GTA 3

People wax on about the importance of Pong and Pac-Man, but there's a good chance Grand Theft Auto 3 is the most influential video game of all time. Did 3D worlds exist before Rockstar's breakout smash? Of course. But did a single one of them – with the possible exception of 1996's Tomb Raider – get within a hundred country miles of its cultural impact?

Not even close. Essentially creating the modern 3D open-world template as we know it, if it wasn’t for GTA 3's transformative if janky cop chases and shootouts, would Ubisoft as the sandbox-obsessed entity it even exists today? The most important game on this list… and it ain't close.

6. GTA: San Andreas

Considering it launched in 2004, GTA: San Andreas is a game of almost obscene scale. Vastly bigger than both GTA 3 and Vice City combined, Rockstar managed to cram an entire US State onto PS2. A twisted take on California, featuring Rockstar’s down-and-dirty representations of L.A., San Francisco, and Las Vegas, it's absurd a game of this size and ambition was ever squeezed onto a PS2 disc.

But it's not just the scale of San Andreas that made it special. Wisely settling for another period piece after the success of Vice City, this early '90s adventure taps into the spirit of classics like Boyz in the Hood as it tells the tale of CJ, a gang member with a heart and a side serving of self-deprecation.

5. GTA 4

Even if the series reaches GTA 54, we doubt Rockstar will ever nail its take on New York quite like this again. In Niko Bellic's dry-witted, downbeat Liberty City, the studio has its ultimate Rotten Apple. Completely reworking the original trilogy's car handling and shootouts to feel weighty and authentic for the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation, GTA 4 focuses on scintillating detail in its recreation of the most famous city on the planet.

San Andreas has its spellbinding scale, no doubt. But every time Bellic accidentally ragdolls a pedestrian with a passive-aggressive shove on a Broker sidewalk, thanks to that electrifying RAGE engine, you can feel the city’s sardonic soul. A truly amazing (if slightly miserable) Grand Theft Auto.

4. GTA: Vice City

If there's ever to be one last time capsule to encompass all that humanity ever was, we really hope E.T. and fam find Vice City buried under the soil. The ultimate blend of style and substance, GTA will never land in a more perfect setting.

The Miami of Tubbs and Crockett-style sleeves and endless sunshine, Vice City is as welcoming and warm as it is wicked. This is GTA at its most glamorous and gauche. With the best soundtrack in history and Ray Liotta delivering a killer, Goodfellas-aping turn as Tommy Vercetti, there's a reason Vice City remains the timeless standout in an otherwise shaky GTA Trilogy remaster.

3. Red Dead Redemption

There's an argument to be made that Red Dead Redemption is the best story Rockstar has ever told. Finally unshackled from the relentless cynicism and satire of GTA, Rockstar was bold enough to tell an emotionally grounded tale of a decent but flawed man looking for a second chance in the dying days of the Old West.

This is a phenomenal, fabulously realized version of Sergio Leone's Wild West. Vast, funny, and often sad, this cowboy sandbox produces shootouts sharper than any GTA, while the story is far more subtle and heartfelt. In John Marston's astonishingly bold three-hour epilogue, Rockstar delivers what many would argue to be the boldest and best-ever ending to a AAA video game. John, you're (very almost) the best in the West.

2. Red Dead Redemption 2

Perhaps the prettiest AAA game of all time is also one of the all-time great open worlds. In a dimension where the game below and The Witcher 3 don't exist, this is the GOAT of GOATs. Telling an affecting story of servitude, misplaced loyalty, and, fittingly, of a redemptive arch that takes just a little too long, this is hands-down the best yarn Rockstar has ever spun.

It's also an immaculate video game. Red Dead Redemption 2 is not only good at but great at everything it tries its hand at. The feel of your horse as it trots across the vast prairies? Best in class. The six-barrel, incredibly impactful shootouts? Never bettered. Read our Red Dead Redemption 2 review for more.

1. GTA 5

In an incredibly subjective medium, there are so few games that deserve to be considered the greatest of all-time. When you factor in sales and critical success, two outstanding contenders usually stand tall. And seeing as this is not a best list of Mojang games/or Minecraft expansions, it's pretty clear what the GOAT of this list is.

GTA 5 brings to life a devilish, and awesome open world that plays out like a tongue-in-cheek version of Michael Mann's Heat, this is arguably one of the most talked about, successful, and long-standing games in the series, with a very active GTA online community still going strong.

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