Best Crime Games for PS5 & PS4

Why it's here: The best crime game, and the volume is silly: this has more player ratings than anything else on this list by a wide margin. Three criminals, one Los Santos, and a mid-heist switch between gunman, driver and lookout that still has no imitator. When I sifted the recent reviews, nearly every complaint pointed at GTA Online, hackers, grind, prices, and almost none at the story mode. So play it my way: the campaign is untouchable, and Online is strictly optional.

Why it's here: The best story in the genre, and I am not hedging: an outlaw epic told through one gang's slow collapse, detailed down to how a stranger remembers a slight. The pattern in the reviews I went through is remarkably consistent: the highest praise is for immersion, and the recurring complaint is pace, long rides and systems that refuse to hurry. That is the entry fee, not a flaw. Give it ten patient hours on PS Plus Extra and it hands you the decade's best western.

Why it's here: The highest-rated game on this list, and the one I recommend first to series newcomers: neon-lit 1988 Japan, two future legends, and a tonal range that swings from brutal brawls to karaoke without blinking. The reviews agree with a consistency I rarely see, calling it the ideal entry point; the honest gripes are grindy skill progression and cutscenes that run long. Start here, and know the first hour undersells what the next sixty do.

Why it's here: The tightest story here: a Depression-era cabbie talks his way into a crime family and slowly loses everything to it, remade from the ground up. The reviews I read discuss it like a favourite film, gripping and atmospheric, done in a focused dozen hours, and their complaints are equally consistent: frustrating driving, thin combat, no sandbox depth. Take it on its own terms, a scripted tragedy you steer rather than a world you live in, and it is excellent.

Why it's here: The genre's one true detective: 1947 Los Angeles worked case by case, where the clue is a suspect's twitching face, captured with motion tech that still impresses. Players who click with it call it a masterpiece in the reviews I mined; the friction list is specific and worth knowing: a mandatory Rockstar account, a 30 FPS lock, an inflexible save system. None of that touches the interrogations. If you want to solve crime instead of committing it, this is the pick.

Why it's here: The sleeper I push on people: an undercover cop losing himself in a Hong Kong triad, with hand-to-hand combat that owes more to martial-arts cinema than to the genre's usual gunplay. Review after review says the same two things: the story and combat still land, and the open world around them is compact and dated. I count that a fair trade: it fits the undercover fantasy more sharply than games three times its size, and it wastes none of your time.

Why it's here: The most replayable game on this list: Agent 47, a clockwork level, one target, and a hundred ways in. In the reviews I went through, the level design gets called the genre's best almost by reflex, and the venom is saved for the storefront: a World of Assassination bundle so tangled that decoding what you own is the real first mission, plus an always-online requirement. Push past the pricing and what is underneath is the purest crime puzzle on PlayStation.

Why it's here: The heist pick, with one condition I will state up front: bring friends. Four players case the job, pick loadouts, and try to walk out quiet, one slip from a firefight. The reviews are unanimous that this is where the game sings, and just as unanimous that the solo bot AI is weak and the years of stacked DLC are both a content mountain and a cost trap. As a crew game bought on sale, the best pure heist loop on console. Solo at full price, I would pass.

Why it's here: The wildest swing here, and mostly a hit: the crime saga as a full turn-based RPG, dragging its relentlessly optimistic ex-yakuza from Japan to Hawaii with the series' old guard along for a last ride. The reviews I combed split neatly: real love for the battle system and the mountain of side content, real anger at the story's pacing and a New Game Plus locked behind DLC. On PS Plus Extra the value question disappears, which is exactly how I would play it.

Why it's here: The premise pick: crime where the weapon is Chicago itself, every traffic light, phone and camera one tap from becoming a trap in a personal vendetta. The reviews I read rate the hacking fantasy and the story better than its old reputation suggests; the consistent knocks are clunky driving and repetitive side missions. A decade on, included with Extra, the hacking loop holds up better than the discourse around it ever did. Worth an evening to see for yourself.

Why it's here: The palate cleanser: a gang leader becomes US President, aliens invade, and superpowers turn the city into a playground, crime as pure parody. I checked whether the reviews back the premise and they do: the humour and superpowers carry it, bugs and a forgettable story are the price, and nobody arrives expecting grounded drama. Slot it between the heavy hitters on this list for when you need the genre to stop taking itself seriously.

Why it's here: The most divisive game I kept, and I kept it for a reason: no crime game has a better setting than 1968 New Orleans, soaked in period music and racial tension, and the reviews praise that story and soundtrack without reservation. The other half of those reviews is just as clear: the district-by-district structure repeats itself into a grind, and bugs persist. My verdict: buy it on a deep sale for the story missions, which hold the best of it.

Why it's here: Here is the stat that made me look twice: the highest player rating on this entire list belongs to the kids' game. A master-thief raccoon runs episodic heists with his crew, all cel-shaded stealth and caper-movie structure, rated E10+ and sitting on PS Plus Premium. It predates our review pipeline, so I am leaning on that remarkable PS Store score and its standing among PS2 classics. For a family, or anyone who wants their crime cozy, quietly perfect.