Additionally, there have been some technical and gameplay improvements for a more seamless experience. This epic space saga not only takes you across multiple galaxies and worlds but pits you against all sorts of enemies. Whether you follow the main story or one of the many side quests, the narrative is engrossing. Best of all, you get all three games in a single package. The newest release from Rockstar Games was an instant hit upon release. Red Dead Redemption 2 is an engrossing western following Arthur Morgan and his gang as they try to survive a fictionalized Wild West as outlaws on the run.
However, the game is much more than just that. The gameplay is stellar, and the graphics are gorgeous. You can even run the game in 8K , if you have the hardware. Doom: Eternal takes everything from the remastered Doom of and turns it up to The game is intense, visually and sonically overwhelming, and is exactly what you would expect a fever dream inspired by Doom would feel like.
The gameplay is a seamless first-person shooter where you trek into hell to battle an assortment of never-ending demons and reclaim an overrun earth.
However, this game is all about creating havoc and rushing into battle as loud and as brash as possible. Not only is Doom: Eternal a hell of a ride pun intended.
No game has been as anticipated for as much or as long as Half Life 3. So, as gamers will have to wait a little longer for it, Valve has graced us with what may be the most compelling reason to get a VR headset with Half-Life: Alyx.
Half-Life: Alyx is set 5 years before Half-Life 2. From the interactive puzzles, the well-thought out combat and the fantastic story, this prequel is a welcome dive back into the Half-Life world that has been universally praised for its quality. Microsoft's racing series is only getting better with each release, and in many ways this spin-off has exceeded the main Forza Motorsport line as the best racing games on PC at present.
They're definitely more fun, adding a dash of arcade fun to the strikingly recreated cars and race tracks we've come to expect from Forza. Forza Horizon 4 is easily one of the best PC games you can buy today, and this entry brings the racing to the UK after having explored America, France, Italy and Australia in the previous three instalments of the franchise. Now, you can rip through charming villages, seaside towns and the city of Edinburgh by way of many miles of country roads and dirt tracks in between.
Fair warning though—the subject matter covered in Fata Morgana could be potentially triggering for some. Jody: I love the music and some of the art, but found the subject matter a bit much. Fata Morgana lays on tragedies with a trowel, especially sexual violence, until they lose impact. It's great to have a visual novel in the list, though. Jody: If you went through a "slightly too into vampires" phase, Bloodlines is for you. An RPG made by people who played immersive sims, it turns you into a bloodsucker then turns you loose on the streets of LA.
To survive you have to drink blood in lush, spotlit scenes, the camera spinning round the act , and navigate vampire society in dialogue with characters so expressive they make more recent games seem stiff. Its vampires are vintage manipulators, as much a danger to each other as their hunters are. You're given plenty of freedom in how you deal with them—enough rope to make your own noose.
Phil: Given that the planned sequel doesn't seem to be happening, I guess we'll pop the original back in the list. Just make sure to download the fan-made patch before you play it. Morgan: I love a good immersive sim, but the further back I reach into the genre's history, the jankier they get. I'll give Bloodlines a shot one of these days. The clear care that's gone into the Remastered Collection's presentation gives you the space to focus on what's truly remarkable about these games: that, over a quarter of a century after their original release, they're still a hell of a lot of fun to play.
The pacey campaign missions challenge you to wipe out your enemy with often limited resources, making full use of environmental features, special units and a weird and wonderful tech tree.
It's a concentrated blast of everything that makes the RTS genre great. Actually, wait, that's only the second most remarkable thing about these games.
The most remarkable thing is their music, which is given centre stage through the Remastered Collection's Jukebox feature. Any new footage of Joseph Kucan in-character as Kane is a gift to the universe. What kind of space captain do you want to be?
Your version of Commander Shepard's free to be a diplomat giving inspiring speeches, a badass punching first and shooting later, or a dreamboat smooching blue aliens. The first game starts strong, introducing a galaxy built on familiar sci-fi ideas, but with rad weird aliens too. It finishes strong as well, a run of missions building to a climax where you defeat an impossibly powerful invader.
In the middle there's some padding where you drive across identikit planets, which is a shame. And the less said about the third game's ending, the better. Mass Effect Legendary Edition is mostly in this list for Mass Effect 2, the Goldilocks centrepiece that set plot aside to focus on character. Mass Effect 2 has you put together a crew of 12 squadmates who, like the universe they're in, build on familiar cliches taken to surprising places. Across missions that jump from undercover infiltration to action setpiece to mystery thriller you get to know your Dirty Dozen, and in choosing how you respond to their dilemmas, build a hero to lead them.
By the end you feel so much ownership of your Shepard, you'll get confused by screenshots because the wrong character is in them. Phil: I've worked at PC Gamer for almost a decade now, which means my overriding memory of Mass Effect is us arguing which one should be included in the Top each year. Finally, BioWare has put an end to that argument by releasing them all as one game. And for that reason alone, it should be celebrated.
Also because the games are good—if increasingly showing their age. Phil: A puzzle game about building beautiful machines. You're tasked with creating alchemical compounds, using pistons and rotators to manipulate atoms into their desired form. But as much as the story has fun with the conceit, the real satisfaction of Opus Magnum comes from the process of engineering a solution.
There is no one way to solve any of the game's problems, and that means every machine is inherently your own design. Your attempt may be inefficient, even inelegant, but you'll love it all the same. Mollie: I think I may be one of the last remaining Sea of Thieves likers on our team, and that's mostly because I'm a massive gremlin in the game. In no other situation is it socially acceptable for me to get absolutely trollied, vomit into a bucket and then douse my friends in my chunky goodness.
Sailing the seas and plundering booty is fun and all, but drunkenly playing the concertina is the real reason I love this game so much. I'd love to see Rare overhaul the sword combat system which is still deeply clunky, but it's probably still the best hangout game on PC.
The Tall Tales are fantastic open-ended adventures. It's still a refreshing rarity in live service games to have a new mission you can just figure out, rather than having a checklist of tasks to complete that it holds your hand through.
Though it does have one checklist I'm a sucker for. Someday I will catch every fish in the sea, even if it means I'm fishing off the back of a sinking ship while my crewmates frantically steer us through a storm. Morgan: I love everything Sea of Thieves is about, I just wish there was more of it—ships, weapons, maps, quest types, I need more! Then perhaps my friends and I would stop getting bored after our second night on the sea. Phil: 'More' would help, but I don't think it's the only answer.
I think one of my biggest problems with Sea of Thieves is, for as good as the experience of sailing with a crew is, there isn't much beyond that to hold your attention. The ground combat isn't much fun, the progression systems are shallow, and the handful of fun activities don't hold up to intense repetition.
It's a cool hangout game, as Wes says, but it would take a fairly major overhaul to persuade me to return. Nat: Titanfall 2 has seen better days. That campaign is still an all-timer even if I probably don't rate it as highly as others , but the game really shone in multiplayer—and while there appears to be a brief respite from the hacking and DDOS problems that plagued its predecessor, it's a rock-hard game to get into this far after launch.
Wes: Hopefully those multiplayer problems will soon pass, since Titanfall 2 on Steam gives it a real shot at maintaining an active multiplayer community for the next few years.
But really, I'm just here to keep beating that campaign drum: if you somehow still haven't played it and are in the mood for an FPS, this should be your first stop.
Fraser: I was very vocal about putting Titanfall 2 on the list last year, so I'm obviously a bit disappointed that it's dropped from 11 to 88, but take it from me: this is the smartest, most surprising FPS here.
The multiplayer is great, even though it's been dealing with those aforementioned issues, but the main reason to play this now is its unsurpassed campaign. Chris: It's so deep that no matter how many times you've played, there are still new choices to make.
I still don't think any Fallout after the first one has really nailed its theme as well as the original did, but in Old World Blues and a few other questlines, New Vegas came close.
Fraser: Old World Blues is a cracker, but even without its expansions New Vegas is the best Fallout, and the only one I'd recommend to most players today.
It's never felt like Bethesda really gets Fallout, and while 3 was really good, it still felt like an adaptation or spin-off rather than the main course. Given that, New Vegas will probably continue to be the best game in the series for a long time, unless Bethesda gives up the reins again. Rachel: It may have fallen a fair way down in our top list, but What Remains of Edith Finch is still a powerhouse of storytelling. It's an anthology of stories set in the Finch household where exploring each room helps you discover more about the eccentric family and their lives.
Wes: Going into What Remains of Edith Finch, I didn't expect how fantastical and imaginative it would be with every story it tells. For a game about the history of a family it's endlessly inventive; you're not just looking around a musty old house and getting some voiceover about the objects you see.
Edith Finch manages to convey the humanity and tragedy of the family through dream sequences and animal transformations; bits of history that seem separate at first slowly blossom into a family tree and finally connect to your character in the present. It's really stuck with me for a game that I played in just a couple hours. Sarah: I'll always love World of Warcraft but I've struggled with motivation to log in since the launch of Shadowlands.
We went from being ridiculously overpowered in BFA to power systems that feel like they were tacked on as an afterthought. I'm still there and still raiding, but even that feels more like a chore the further into the expansion we go. Steven: World of Warcraft is still such an influential game, but yeah, it feels like it's in the midst of a serious identity crisis. If you've never played it, it's still an enormous and enjoyable experience, but my god is Shadowlands starting to feel like a big disappointment.
Fraser: I've finally managed to get WoW out of my system. It just took 15 years. It's one of the most important games ever made, and it's exceptional that it remains not only alive but massively popular after such a long time, but I think I've put enough time into it now.
And frankly I'm not sure I can really separate it from what we now know about Blizzard, and what a terrible work environment management has fostered. Phil: Thanks to magazine lead times, this list was locked down in early Summer, before the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard alleging discrimination and sexual harrasment. Even before that, it only just about managed to hang on—the team increasingly down on Blizzard's direction for the game.
If we were to make this right now, I don't think it would be here at all. Chris: The Super Mega Baseball series has always been a fun and cartoony on-field baseball game, but SMB3 added tons of depth when it comes to making your randomly generated players memorable. Their skills can be enhanced during a season or fade over time as they grow, age, and eventually retire.
Creative Assembly created something really special here: a big budget game based on a major Hollywood property that is intelligent, subversive, and systematically interesting. There will never be a better Alien game.
Fraser: Just popping my yearly update in here. Nope, still not very far into it. Yep, hoping I will eventually finish it. It's brilliant, but I'm still too scared of xenomorphs to make much progress.
One day, though! One day. Steven: Frankly, I'm shocked that it's and one of my favorite games is a card game. You'd think after so many games there'd be no room for a new one to swoop in and innovate, but Legends of Runeterra continues to be brilliant.
Robin talks a lot about its new stuff, but part of what keeps me coming back is just how wonderful the foundation it is built upon is. It's just a shame that it seems like Runeterra's curse is that it will continue to be criminally overlooked by so many players.
Fraser: Spaceships? Space locomotives? Now we're talking. Sunless Skies makes you brave the dangers of space while inside a train full of troubled crewmates, usually starving and being driven round the bend. Part trading sim, RPG and exploration romp, it's all weird, and elevated by the best videogame writing around. The great game has also been made better, recently, thanks to the far-ranging Sovereign Edition update, throwing new characters, trains and stories into the already dense mix.
Dave: It's zen trucking. Slowly churning through the mud with some tunes as your only company for miles. Super chill. Until you roll your rig down the side of a mountain, of course. Morgan: Snowrunner is the mud trucking sim of my dreams. It's Death Stranding without all the drama and ghost babies: just you, your truck, and the stack of pipes that need to get to the top of this mountain. Snowrunner is no tranquil driving sim.
Every job is a battle against nature itself and your weapons are wheels, winches, and will. In the year since launch, Snowrunner has only gotten bigger and better with quality DLC and a vibrant modding community.
Evan: Replicating the weapon set, map philosophy, and beautiful rhythm of Counter-Strike is some sort of scientific cloning accomplishment. Valorant is its own game, though, one with meaningful technical advancements it'll give you 90 fps on a graphing calculator, practically and magical character abilities that let you and your opponent make counter-punches with utility as you compete for precious positioning.
Phil: I recently dipped back in with some pals after about a year away, and, oh boy, Valorant is a punishing game to return to. But after a couple of demoralising losses, our third match—a nail biting win—was one of the most exciting multiplayer experiences I've had this year. Nat: Homeworld's tragic space opera is timeless, but its original release is a little less so. Thankfully, the Remastered Collection is still a fantastic way to experience a truly singular, unique spacefaring RTS—with a healthy modding scene that lets you recreate fleet battles from Star Trek to Mass Effect.
Fraser: There's no other RTS with this much style and grace. Homeworld is a spaceship ballet and epic tragedy that I never thought would be replicated—how could it be? Homeworld 3 is coming, but will it live up to the impossibly lofty expectations set by its predecessors? Spin-off Deserts of Kharak certainly got close, but there's magic in those first two games that sets them apart.
We'll see. Wes: I've returned to Vermintide this year and especially appreciate how each character plays so differently. My first time through I stuck to up-close-and-personal dwarf Bardin Goreksson, but lately I've played as battle mage Sienna, standing back and flamethrowing legions of low-level ratlings. The equipment system still kinda feels like fluff, but I love that each character has three classes that play differently, and styles of weapons that add even more granularity.
This is the co-op game to beat, even three years in. Steven: Caves of Qud is a near-perfect middle ground between the daunting complexity of classic roguelikes and the mind-boggling simulation of Dwarf Fortress.
It's also the weirdest RPG I've ever played. Sentient beanstalks, tinker bears, space-time paradoxes, fungal infections—it's almost impossible to describe Qud in a way that makes sense. Each time you start a new game, an entire world complete with its own cultures and history is generated for you to uncover.
And within that space, you can play as anything from a desert nomad to a cybernetically enhanced half-man-half-tank. Just play it. Wes: I've still barely just dipped my toe in Caves of Quid during Early Access, but it really was staggering; it feels like someone took on the mad idea of cramming RPG-style writing into the open-ended structure of NetHack, and actually pulled it off.
Along with Disco Elysium, I think Caves of Qud is a modern reminder that good enough writing can make any game utterly captivating.
Harry: What else is left to say about Skyrim? Nothing, really. A decade on The Elder Scrolls V is a fixture in the PC gaming consciousness despite looking janky and dated, even with a choice selection of mods.
Skyrim slips down the Top again this year, but don't expect it to be forgotten anytime soon. Speaking of, The Forgotten City, based on a Skyrim mod has just come out, so it remains to be seen if it makes next year's list. Jody: In my current playthrough I have my own museum, a chainsword, and fabulous hair.
The music's replaced by dark ambient and Nordic folk-metal, there are gallows and gibbets everywhere, and I have to periodically wash off blood and travel dirt. I'm accompanied by two characters from Vermintide, a blue khajiit, and the Skyrim Grandma. The Special Edition means Skyrim handles ridiculous mod loads without instability, and I can alt-tab as much as I want without it crashing.
It's better than ever. I'll be tired of Skyrim when I'm tired of life. Mollie: Skyrim is one of those games that's been there for me through a ton of high and low points in my life. Will I ever branch out and play anything other than a stealthy archer? Hell no, but I will spend hours exploring the same old dinky caves and loading up my house with an unnecessary number of stolen books.
Mollie: I've played my fair share of fighting games over the years, but few have kept me coming back in the way Tekken 7 does. Every hit, block and sidestep feels so intensely satisfying to me. Couple that with a banging soundtrack, cinematic ultimate moves and a heart-pounding dramatic slow-mo cam, and every match feels like a full-blown theatrical performance.
Though I still lament the lack of Christie Monteiro in the game, the roster is solid. Tekken 7 is easily the best 3D fighter out there right now, and my favourite fighting game in recent memory.
Also Yoshimitsu is an alien, I guess? Euro Truck Sim can take a breather. This son of a gun's packing Texas and Idaho, on the way to pick up Wyoming. You ever drive through through 'em? Vast, empty spaces. Buttes and scrub. Flimsy barbwire between state, federal, and private land. A couple mountain ranges in the western halves, Idaho panhandle too. Feeling that small centers a person. Kanye West lives in Wyoming. A recent multiplayer update means you can drive by Kayne's yard with a friend.
Nothing eases the weight of a heavy load, on the truck and the soul, like a convoy. Steady breath, eyes ahead. We'll get to where we're going. Andy K: ATS is great. But my heart belongs to Euro Truck Simulator 2. The larger map has a lot more variety, from the mountains of Norway to the vineyards of France, making for much more exciting road trips. Fraser: Cities: Skylines continues its reign, with few urban city builders appearing to steal its crown. It remains undefeated in part because of the dearth of competition, but the many DLC additions and huge list of mods have ensured that even after five years it still has plenty to offer would-be mayors.
There's even an expansion exclusively dedicated to parks. And it turns out that flooding cities with poo doesn't get old. Sorry, citizens!
Phil: The city building genre has had something of a resurgence thanks to games like Frostpunk and Anno offering up a different take on the basic formula. But if you want the best game to actually build a city in, here it is.
Katie: I don't think I'll ever get tired of creating vast intertwined city-scapes, ever more intricate intersections, and long-ass roundabouts… so many roundabouts they permeate my dreams. Help, I'm traffic managing in my sleep. After the on-rails nonsense of the intro, it pretty much sets you free to be the ultimate spy in an amazing sandbox.
Rich: Simply one of the best games ever made, a unique take on open world design, and absolutely rammed with things to do. This feels like the game Metal Gear Solid was always building towards: ignore the nonsense about it being unfinished, and enjoy the finest game Kojima Productions ever made. Phil: It's let down slightly by a handful of missions that force you to fight the Parasite Unit—tedious battles that ignore almost all of the established rules of the game. The rest of the time, though, MGS 5 drops you onto the map with a handful of gadgets and lets you figure things out for yourself.
One of the most satisfying stealth sandboxes you can play. Dave: Was having an absolute blast with MGS5's open world; it felt solid, real, and deliciously brutal. But as soon as it got fully into the bloated, ridiculous exposition it immediately pulled me out of the game world and that has meant I can't face going back ever again. Fraser: Few management games have made me feel like such a monster, but that's what happens when you become a fascist to save a few lives and they freeze to death anyway.
The cold and desperation makes you cold and desperate. Frostpunk is a challenging apocalyptic city builder with plenty of engaging systems, but it's the high stakes and brutal consequences of your decisions that makes it special.
And thanks to the DLC, you can also see what life was like just before the big freeze. Spoiler: it was miserable. Chris: I remember getting absolutely furious when my city was running well, I was keeping everyone warm and fed, and I had enough resources to survive, but my citizens were still miserable because they'd heard some rumor that tanked their morale.
It seemed so unfair that I'd done everything right but people still hated me. But then it's a society simulator, isn't it? No matter what you do, you can't make everyone happy, and a portion of any society is going to be filled with people who simply won't use logic or listen to reason.
A relevant lesson! Evan: Is Arma a tedious and complicated sim, or a peerless sandbox-playground for unscripted military antics? Years into its lifespan, the franchise's contradiction is potent: onboarding someone into the game means handing them a list of mods they 'absolutely' need to get started and a longer list of unusual keybinds double tap left Alt to freely swivel your neck independently of your weapon, duh. But at the end of that not-so-basic training awaits a serious and often silly game about riding in a helicopter with a dozen of your closest Discord friends, one of whom crashes that helicopter into a tree after failing to correctly engage the auto-hover.
Nat: Remember the first time you took a sledgehammer to a house in Red Faction Guerrilla? Teardown is that, but pushed to its best extreme. A destruction sandbox where breakable buildings aren't just a backdrop to mediocre gunfights, but instead used to prop up an incredible set of heist puzzles. But oh, that smashing! Teardown may be voxelated, but everything breaks as you'd expect.
Wood buckles under pressure. Plaster cracks to reveal underlying brickwork. Fire spreads as volumetric smoke billows through hallways, and a remarkably efficient approach to ray-tracing makes sure it all looks perfectly tactile. In most levels, you're free to explore and destroy the map as you see fit.
You'll have a set number of items to rob briefcases, safes, cars , and once you snag one, the timer starts. Carve an optimal route through the map, grab the goods, and make it out before the cops arrive. Simple, but nerve-wrackingly brilliant. Beyond that, though, Teardown's exploding mod scene has turned the voxel playground into a brand new Garry's Mod.
There's a workshop packed to the brim with new maps to smash up, and a wealth of toys ranging from GMod-style physics guns to miniguns akimbo. Teardown's puzzles are decent fun, but I'll be smashing my way through fan-made maps for a long time yet. A supernatural mystery, Unavowed throws you into an ancient society of magical problem solvers after a possession ruined your life.
It's got big party-based RPG vibes, evoking BioWare games especially, complete with special origin stories and a branching plot that goes to some surprising places. But this is still firmly a 2D point-and-click, where most of your time will be spent solving mysteries and puzzles.
Here are the top ten games on that list. It's an interesting time to be playing it, too, because we're expecting changes to come with the launch of the new Treyarch Call of Duty game, Black Ops — Cold War. The map is fantastic, the 'ping' communication system is something every FPS should have from here on, the guns and movement are great fun no wallrunning, but sliding down hills feels great , and it's free-to-play with nothing to pay for except cosmetics. It isn't the game we expected from Respawn, but we're glad it's here.
Check James' review for more. It also adds a bunch of quality of life improvements. Siege's learning curve is a result of all the stuff characters, gadgets, elaborate maps, and guns that's been added since December , but eventually you find yourself picking operators, map spots, and roles that you're comfortable with.
Tyler has spent over 1, hours playing Rocket League, and slightly fewer nitpicking the PC Gamer style guide. His primary news beat is game stores: Steam, Epic, and whatever launcher squeezes into our taskbars next.
Halo Infinite. Forza Horizon 5. Instead, careful preparation, planning, and, yes, lots of dying lead to success here. Get it now: Epic Games Store. Things can be a lot, which is where fairly simple but relaxing games like the Gunk come in.
Get it now: Game Pass. Despite what the title suggests, this narrative adventure is loosely based on the classic film only. Players missing Telltale-style adventures that are all about decision-making will feel right at home here — even the visual style developer Pendulo Studios settled on feels somewhat familiar. Get it now: Steam GOG.
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