Highlights
- Portal is praised for its innovative gameplay and memorable characters like GLaDOS, while Half-Life 2 excels in storytelling and first-person shooter mechanics.
- Counter-Strike: Source brings realism to the team-based shooter genre, Left 4 Dead offers thrilling zombie survival gameplay, and Dota 2 is a highly popular MOBA game that emphasizes multiplayer competition.
Valve is well known for its creation of Steam, a PC platform that helps distribute games. However, besides this, Valve has also created plenty of its own games over the years that have been great sellers on Steam with countless players continuing to play them.
From creating both single-player experiences to large multiplayer titles, there have been countless highly rated games by Valve. With so many titles available since the company was founded in 1996, some players may wonder which titles are truly the best of the bunch from the highly successful developer and publisher company. Out of all the games created these titles have been ranked the best on Steam.
10 Portal
Portal is arguably one of the greatest puzzle games to ever be created on PC and was described as being an innovative new game when it was first released in 2007. In Portal, players are tested on various levels where they must make it to the other end of an experiment using a portal gun to reach difficult places.
Besides gameplay that forces the player to think, Portal also has its own incredible characters such as the infamous GLaDOS who was the main antagonist of the first title. Testing the players' limits while sounding incredibly judgmental and sarcastic while doing it.
9 Half-Life 2
Half-Life is a well-loved franchise that players have adored from Valve. With the second game released in 2004, many players on Steam have rated this title far better than its original for its interesting story and easy-to-understand first-person shooter mechanics.
The original Half-Life made waves for the PC gaming community with the title from Valve winning more than fifty awards. Half-Life 2 hoped to beat this with its newfound realism that combined the environmental physics with the reactions of the people around the Half-Life 2 environment as players returned to controlling Gordon Freeman.
8 Counter-Strike: Source
In the year of 2004, Valve created their latest engine known as Source. With the introduction of this new engine, games were taking on a new form as more realism could be achieved in various titles. One such example of this was Counter-Strike: Source.
Counter-Strike: Source was a remake of the original Counter-Strike that was released in 2000 but now used the Source engine. This meant that the game kept its first-person shooter mechanics as it competed to achieve team-based objectives while being far more detailed than in its predecessor.
7 Left 4 Dead
Another staple of Steam as well as Valve is the zombie shooter title Left 4 Dead. Players work in a team of four to complete various maps where they are attacked by hordes of zombies. Releasing in 2008, many players have still returned to the first-person shooter to destroy some zombies even after all these years.
Players could even enjoy this zombie survival title alone, as the A.I. could control the three other survivors that make up the player's team. They could even take part in a versus mode that saw players even take on the role of the zombies to see who would win overall.
6 Half-Life: Alyx
Set between the events of the original Half-Life and Half-Life 2, players were finally able to return to the franchise in 2020 with a slight twist to how the game played. Unlike the past titles, Half-Life: Alyx made its return through using Virtual Reality Headsets.
Through using a VR headset, players have now been able to feel as if they are truly a part of the Half-Life story that plays out magnificently while using VR mechanics. Taking on the alien race known as the Combine has never been scarier than experiencing it face first.
5 Portal 2
While some gaming sequels are never able to beat the originals, Portal 2 proves that sometimes games can improve as plenty more players on Steam enjoyed their time with Portal 2 far more than the original Portal. It continued to make players think as they completed various levels using their portal gun as well as the return of everyone's favorite tester, GLaDOS.
Besides the incredible single-player experience, players can even enjoy themselves in the magnificent co-op mode that was introduced with Portal 2. This added multiple more levels for players to enjoy with a friend where they play as the robots ATLAS and P-body.
4 Left 4 Dead 2
Continuing this theme of the second title of a franchise being better than the original. Players even enjoyed Left 4 Dead 2 more than the first, with players ranking Valve's second zombie survival title higher.
With five unbelievable campaigns that can be enjoyed in single-player, co-op, or versus, Valve took their zombie survival title to new levels with Left 4 Dead 2. The game played like the original with the classic weapons that many enjoyed but even included upgrades to some of these weapons and four new survivors to use.
3 Dota 2
Valve has created quite a wide assortment of games across various genres in their time. Their highest-ranked games on Steam tend to be those that can be played with others. Therefore, it's no surprise to see that Dota 2 is one of the highest-ranked games by Valve on Steam.
In this MOBA, players are on a team where they must compete against other players to see who is truly the best. Dota 2 is also arguably one of the most played games on Steam with all the characters in the game being available for the player to experience.
2 Team Fortress 2
Team Fortress 2 is another Valve classic that released was in 2007. Even years after its release many players still have fond memories of the game and continue to play it when they are looking for a first-person shooter with plenty of selection.
As the game has nine interesting classes for players to choose from there should always be at least one class that fits a player's play style. Part of the fun of Team Fortress 2 is trying new things and being involved in objective-based combat.
1 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Out of all the games created by Valve by far the highest ranked and therefore most loved out of all of them on Steam goes to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. As seen the second title Counter-Strike: Source was another first-person shooter title from Valve that players enjoyed when it was originally released.
With Counter-Strike: Global Offensive released in 2012, it took over its predecessor as being one of the best when it comes to team-based shooter combat. The game contains upgraded content of the classics while also adding new characters, game modes, and even maps for the player to explore.