My son is 15 years old, and when I tell you that he had very specific thoughts about the best video games for teenagers, I am not kidding. “What platform?” “How old are the teens?” “Are they newbs?” “PC Games aren’t for baby players.” “You probably can’t recommend GTA, but everyone I am friends with plays it.” You’re right, son, I can’t recommend to teenagers, but I can admit they play the heck out of it. I’ll accept the silent judgment from parents everywhere. Also, to be fair, he came by his love of GTA honestly — I love that game.
Fortnite Transformers PackPuyo Puyo Tetris 2Portal 2In order to determine the best video games for teenagers, I consulted several experts: the six teenagers my son plays games with over Xbox Live and on his PC, as well as fellow Reviews editor and our own resident gaming expert, Mike Epstein, who has also written for publications like GamesRadar and Popular Science. “The first thing to keep in mind when buying a game as a gift, regardless of age, is taste,” he says. “Buying a game isn’t any different than buying a movie, or a book, or a CD.” You know, back in the ancient times when people bought such things.
He adds, “You want to buy a game that reflects your teen’s taste, both in terms of aesthetics and gameplay.” Think puzzle games like Puyo Puyo Tetris for kids who are into solving things, building games like for LEGO fans, and shooting games for action fans. He understands that parents have a harder choice when it comes to buying games, and I think we can all agree that it’s so hard to police everything they watch and play, especially when most of our kids can figure out pretty quickly how to hide anything we don’t want them to see. We also need to be educated about the games they want to play and the games they should be playing. For example, Epstein says that many games feature heavy violence and some even nudity.
The band of teens I spoke with admitted that with programs like GamePass, Steam, and PlayStationPlus, there’s not a lot they can’t play. You can put on parental controls, but if you’re okay with games like Call of Duty, you have to set it to M for mature, which opens up the floodgates. Listening in occasionally, checking in when they don’t expect it, and even entering their games as fellow players are some of the best protections. Or, you can do what more and more parents are doing and nix the unlimited games, buying the games individually instead. If you are gifting a teen, or you are buying for your own child, here are our picks for the best video games for teenagers according to them. Many of them are available across platforms, but a few are single-platform games. I chose a range for this list.
1For Easygoing Game Play
“This is basically a multi-layer farming game about how capitalism screws over small businesses, and you’re a farmer.” Did you follow that? It’s like Farmville — a farm simulation game — but less annoying and spammy. It’s good to know that kids only understand Farmville in the abstract these days.
2Best for Fortnite Fans
I have played my fair share of Fortnite, and I’m still not 100 percent sure of the purpose of this game, but it’s fun. You build forts, fight each other, do dumb little dances that your children love when you break out in public, and choose new skins. It’s fun and easy!
It’s a party royale style game, which mostly means it’s a multiplayer game with maximum fun in mind. As a player-versus-environment cooperative game, your children team up to win challenges.
3For Silly Silly Teens
This adventure game in the traditional action/sandbox style started a fight about the description and how it compares to Minecraft, but they all agreed it’s campy and silly and doesn’t take itself too seriously. You can dig, fight, explore, and create.
It has a 16-bit (Super NES) style with a fun interplay between the procedurally-generated world and your character. It’s built for long, engaging play.
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4For Parents Who Want a Slim Chance of Winning
I will let everyone know that I beat my 15-year-old at this game just last night. He didn’t see me coming. I don’t even have real-world paintball shooting experience. Splatoon is basically paintball gone cartoony and wild.
It’s a third-person paintball shooter game with combat that all revolves around ink. Cuttlefish and other creatures fight the befurred group to prevent the downfall of the power of the city.
5As Close to a Classic as it Gets
New versions of this basketball game come out yearly, and it’s always solid, with great graphics, fast play, and ease of entry. Kids love it, adults love it, and even people who don’t like basketball like it. It’s universally popular.
6For Advanced Puzzling
Apparently, this game has vexed the 15-year-olds on more than one occasion. The game, according to my sources, is a first-person perspective puzzle game, where you’re trying to escape a facility where you have been trapped. Upon entering each level, you’re given harder and harder puzzles to solve.
The optics in this game are gorgeous, and the challenges force the player to think around them with multiple layers of obstacles coming into play. It’s a thinking game that gets the player hooked very quickly.
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7For Retro Style Fun
Imagine if old cartoons from the 1930s were made into action games. That’s Cuphead. It’s absolutely ridiculous, it requires very little brainpower.
You are an anthropomorphic cup who works at a casino repossessing souls for the devil in repayment of debts. It sounds very dark, but I assure you that it is not. It’s all boss fights and silly run-and-gun intervals that keep it entertaining.
8Tom Nook is the Worst
I have a personal vendetta against Tom Nook, and so do all the teens. Does it stop any of us from playing it? No, it does not. He’s a tyrant, and we are his servants, but the cooperative animal game became popular during the pandemic, and it’s only grown since then. If you ask anyone the point of Animal Crossing, the only answer you’ll get is “to be screwed over by Tom Nook,” and try to win the cash you lose back.
9Best Video Game Gift for All Players
Everyone loves playing Minecraft. Both my kids love Minecraft and all the games that you can play in the game itself. Where else can you build your own castle and then have it invaded by a plague of zombie pigs? Chiefly a building game, it has echoes of the Sims and some strategy games as well.
Take it from my teen son, who says: “Minecraft is like the Keanu Reeves of video games. Everyone likes it.”
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10Best Puzzle Game
Yes, this is essentially just a fancy Tetris game, but if you have played Tetris, you understand both the basics of play and the benefits of it.
This is the game my son and his friends play to chill out. One of the teens said, “It’s a puzzle, but it’s like, really pretty and really easy, and if you’re feeling up to a standard one-vee-one, you can do that, too.” FYI: The kids really do say it like that, “one-vee-one.”
The soundtrack is annoying, though.
11For Lovers of Atmospheric Games
“Just imagine yourself in the Star Wars Universe, and you need to fight absolutely everyone. It’s atmospheric.” I did play this one, and while I couldn’t figure out the missions, much like the old Mortal Kombat, it’s a third-person fight game and tons of fun.
It follows former Padawan, Cal Kestis, a target of the Imperial army, as he completes his training and becomes a full-fledged Jedi.
12It’s The Sims
We can tell each other that we don’t know every facet of this game, and we have definitely never mimed SimsSpeak, but I think we both know that we’re well aware of The Sims, and we understand the ever-present allure of the game. This is just the newest version, and the most sophisticated. Teens apparently still love it as much as we did when we were young.
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13Madden Never Goes Away
Raise your hand if you’ve ever been a Madden weekend widow. I’m here to tell you that you can now lose both your partner and your child for an entire weekend (or more) playing the newest version. It’s more than a football game — it’s the football game.
14A Mega Meta Game
It’s a mega brawl with all the most popular Nintendo characters. Every release of this game gets better, according to the kids, and according to me, who has been playing Princess Peach since she’s been able to rescue herself. Mario certainly isn’t good at it if the number of times she’s been kidnapped is any indication.
15Best Racing Game
According to my experts, other racing games right now are buggy messes, but LEGO 2K is actually fun, and really makes you think about your moves. Which, I think can only be a good thing. Let’s just hope they take that into their essay writing for their SATs.
It’s your basic racing game but with far better graphics, challenges, and tricks. It’s a zen-out-and-play game.
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