Best Games of 2001
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of LibertyThe boldest bait-and-switch in blockbuster games, decades ahead of its time and slightly behind on level design.Read the review
Silent Hill 2The monsters are the guilt, the town is the sentence, and the whole thing was about the letter from the start.
Final Fantasy XThe first fully voiced entry, and a pilgrimage story that turns out to be about a religion built on a lie.
Grand Theft Auto IIIThe open world stopped being a backdrop and became the level, and games never went back.
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor LegacyOne continuous world with no loading screens anywhere in it, on hardware that had no business managing that.
Super Smash Bros. MeleeA party game with an accidental competitive engine that people are still playing two decades later.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3The revert closes the loop the manual opened, and suddenly a single combo can eat an entire level without touching the ground.
Zone of the EndersA short, gorgeous mech game that most people bought for the demo taped to the front of it.
Halo: Combat EvolvedThe console shooter's founding document, half brilliant sandbox, half copy-pasted corridor.
Devil May CryA scoring system disguised as a sword, and the birth certificate of the character action genre.