Half of 2026 is gone, and the scoreboard is unusual: only two games have cracked 90 on Metacritic all year, yet the 80s are crowded with genuinely great releases. Here’s how the year actually ranks across the two big aggregators — and the game we think deserves the crown, with our reasoning shown.
The numbers, cr
Black Flag Resynced — one of 2026’s standouts so far. Image: Ubisoft
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Scores diverge between aggregators more than most people realise, so we track both. Per OpenCritic and Metacritic, mid-July 2026:
Mixtape — 94 OpenCritic / 85 Metacritic. Beethoven & Dinosaur’s coming-of-age adventure is the year’s most polarising data point: OpenCritic’s #1 by four clear points, yet nine points lower on Metacritic. Aggregator methodology matters.
Dave the Diver: In the Jungle — 92 OpenCritic. The June sequel that made “just one more dive” a threat to your sleep schedule again.
Forza Horizon 6 — 91 OpenCritic / 92 Metacritic. Metacritic’s highest-rated game of the year, and the only title in the top tier that both aggregators agree on almost exactly.
Mina the Hollower — 91 / 91. Yacht Club’s Zelda-meets-Castlevania throwback, identical on both boards.
Schrödinger’s Call — 90 and Lost and Found Co. — 90 round out OpenCritic’s 90+ club.
The high-80s pack: Pokémon Pokopia, Resident Evil Requiem, Mewgenics, Hermit and Pig (89), Esoteric Ebb (88) — and July’s Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced (85), the best-reviewed AC in thirteen years.
Our pick: Forza Horizon 6
Not the sentimental choice — the defensible one. Mixtape is the critics’ darling, but a nine-point aggregator split means its 94 tells you as much about which outlets OpenCritic weights as about the game. Forza Horizon 6 is the only 2026 release that tops one aggregator and sits within a point of the top on the other: near-total critical consensus, across the biggest review pool of the year, in a genre where iteration usually breeds indifference. When every kind of critic agrees a tenth entry in a series is the best thing this year, that’s the signal.
Honourable mention: Mixtape — because when a three-hour indie about a last night with your friends outranks every AAA release on one major board, you should probably play it and pick a side.
The PlayTheory take
All of this is prologue. The back half of 2026 has Phantom Blade Zero, Silent Hill: Townfall — and a certain November 19 release that will bend every chart it touches. The interesting question isn’t whether GTA VI scores in the 90s; it’s which of these games still gets talked about in December. Disagree with our pick? The comment section and the PlayTheory Discord are open.
