Fraser: This is still one of the best FPS campaigns around, with each level boasting the kind of creativity that puts it on par with the wildly imaginative Dishonored 2. Plus your best friend is a mech. Jody: New Vegas blends the strengths of Fallouts old and new. It’s got some of the originals’ problem-solving variety, letting you talk round a fascist legionnaire or a brain in a jar, and the 3D world and VATS combat of modern Fallout, with the pleasant ding of XP earned and the foreboding rumble of new quests begun.

Imogen Mellor, Features Producer: Can’t believe we don’t have rules against games that require a library of mods to work well. Jody: Three mods isn’t a library! Then you’re good to go. But for an RPG I’ve already played multiple times I could dive back in today and have a wholly different experience with new choices and consequences I’ve never encountered before. Sean Martin, Guides Writer: Plus it’s got some of the best expansions ever made. Each expansion tells its own story, but still informs the decisions you have to make in the main game.

Masterful stuff, really. Phil: Two classic RTSes in one loving package makes this an easy recommendation despite the age of its source material. Red Alert, in particular, is practically timeless—an alternate history World War 2 where Einstein travels back in time to assassinate Hitler. The result is much as you’d expect: campy FMV cutscenes, a pumping industrial soundtrack, and the deadly thrum of Tesla Coils as they prepare to decimate your army.

Still a joy to play. Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: Inside may be bringing up the rear in this list but, for me, it’s one of the very best experiences I’ve had in gaming. A contemporary re-casting of the Frankenstein myth, the environments are a near-seamless blend of clever puzzles and evocative, bleak suggestions about where you are. Horror, science fiction, and for my money the best twist in games. Sean: For me, Inside is the perfect narrative sidescroller: it’s got atmosphere, a moody soundtrack, smart puzzles, and most important of all, tension.

As you pilot the boy through rainswept ruins and enslaved cities towards whatever end, Inside does that rarest of things, making you consider the act of playing the game itself, and the nature of that control. Nat: Inside is a game you only play once. But that one time is a masterclass in mood, in building up tension and dread as you push a small child further into a brutalist meat grinder.

It’s playing in almost the exact same space as Limbo, a trial-and-error platformer more than a real puzzler, but the artistry on display is phenomenal, woods and barns and deeper, darker industrial places all painted in a dreary watercolour greyscale that pushes you towards hopelessness. Robin: Has to be said, it’s got one of the best endings of any game. If it’s not been spoiled for you yet, then oh boy are you in for a treat. Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Snowrunner is the best game about driving trucks through mud ever made.

Not that it has much competition, but this is one sim you should really try for yourself. Jobs are various versions of “deliver X to Y,” but they’re really just reasons to have fun carving a path through natural hazards.

It also sports some of the best physics-based suspension and land deformation tech around. It dropped a few places this year, but Snowrunner is still an easy recommendation. Fraser: Mud plus snow is a winning combination. Snowrunner is more of a physics puzzler than an open-world driving game, and those puzzles are going to make you work hard and get absolutely filthy doing it.

There are few things as satisfying as liberating a stuck vehicle out in the muddy wilderness. Nat: Homeworld is PC gaming’s great space opera. A majestic, galaxy-spanning drama played out in a way only games could manage—by way of a perfectly executed three-dimensional spacefaring RTS. Gearbox did a hell of a job remastering the games to not only look gorgeous, but play with a little less ’90s faff, and a thriving mod scene means Homeworld also doubles as a phenomenal RTS adaptation of Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, Mass Effect and more.

Fraser: Homeworld’s 3D movement still feels like a revelation, decades on. I was still in school when I took command of a refugee fleet looking for a new home, but it’s no less impressive now. The remaster is extremely welcome, but if you switch off the enhancements you’ll still find a game that’s rich in atmosphere and smarts. Mollie: Bombastic, crisp combat and an electrifying soundtrack keep me coming back to Tekken 7 time and time again. I still can’t find another fighting game that’s this much fun to watch and play.

It has a steeper learning curve than the likes of Street Fighter, but it’s totally worth it. The dramatic slow-mo cam that inches in on the final punchup should be in every fighter! Morgan: Tekken freakin rules.

Its’ the only fighting game that I like to watch partially thanks to those crisp hitboxes and slo-mo finishers and the only one I’ve considered playing.

I recently sat through a multi-hour video explaining the series storylines and I now understand why its fighting tournament setup also makes for a pretty good Netflix anime series.

Morgan: This 7-year-old open-world stealth gem is starting to show its age, but the best bits of Metal Gear Solid V are still some of the best moments in the genre. Even the best immersive sims struggle to match The Phantom Pain’s freeform approach to missions and huge variety of tools.

Wes: Some say Kojima’s a visionary because of politics or somesuch. Nuts to that. He’s a visionary because everyone’s going to be collecting cassette tapes in five years and MGS5 called that shit in Josh W: One of the few games I went out of my way to get every achievement in, just because I wanted excuses to keep playing. Sean: In the often warm and cosy city-builder genre, Frostpunk is a shard of ice.

You’re not an omnipotent eye in the sky governing a faceless population; as you balance sacrifice and survival in a snow-strewn apocalypse, Frostpunk forces you to face the people, and ultimately be held accountable.

Jody: When I played SimCity I’d always get to that point where my city was running so nicely there were no challenges left. That’s when I’d open up the disaster menu.

Floods and fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, sometimes Godzilla. It was fun in the same way as watching a sandcastle you’ve built all day get washed away by the tide. In Frostpunk, the disaster’s already here. Winter isn’t coming, it’s arrived and it’s never going away. All that’s left of humanity is one pseudo-steampunk city in a pit of misery. You don’t get to pick where to build it like in a regular city builder, nor do you get to sprawl your grid of streets across a map.

There’s no sandbox here. There’s just the pit, where you mine coal and fight sickness and shore up buildings to keep out the cold. Then it gets even colder, and you need to crank up the generator to dangerous levels. Anyone beyond the shrinking range of its warmth freezes to death and there’s nothing you can do about that.

Frostpunk starts somewhere after the point I’d reach at the end of a game of SimCity, and then it tells you to hold back the tide. Jody: Alien Isolation is a cinephile’s dream, recreating the look and sound of Alien with loving care. It’s also a nightmare, recreating the xenomorph from gurgling growl to lashing tail and letting it loose to stalk you through a space station’s corridors. The corridors are also lovingly recreated. If someone’s not into strategy games I don’t feel guilty convincing them to play one.

When people aren’t into horror, it’s usually with good reason. If you don’t like being afraid you won’t like Alien Isolation. It’s terrifying. That said, if you enjoy the relief of triumphing over a boss in a soulslike, think how relieved you’d feel confronting actual fear rather than some guy who transforms into a thing with long arms.

Sean: Made by Alien fans for Alien fans, and it’s so easy to recognise the care and attention to detail in how wholly it embodies that cinematic style. Also I’m pretty sure it’s responsible for popularising all those smart, scary monsters that hunt you in games now. Thanks for that! This year I’ve actually made some progress though! This is a testament to how much this thing terrifies the shit out of me, but also how utterly perfect it is as an Alien game.

I have to keep going. Very, very slowly. Jody: The early parts are the best parts, for sure. Just like the Alien series as a whole. Robin: The vibes are just impeccable.

If you could distil Control’s weird, SCP-inspired atmosphere into a liquid, I’d drink a gallon before lunchtime. And I love how much fun it is to move and fight through its bizarre, impossible spaces while you’re soaking all that in.

Fraser: It’s brutalist architecture porn. And as striking as it is, boy does it have a glow up when you turn on ray tracing.

There are a lot of flat, reflective surfaces in the Oldest House, so it’s a great showcase of those fancy reflections. Josh L: Control is a game all about being lost, lost in the maze-like architecture of the Oldest House, lost on your place in its world and lost in the knowledge—or rather the unknowableness of the objects and places the bureau deals with.

There’s really nothing quite like it. Wes: In Satisfactory we built a power plant tower so tall you could see it from across the planet. We built factories with so many glass windows that even an RTX gave up on rendering them all.

We connected conveyor belts carrying precious resources across the desert to a cargo train that spiraled up the side of a mountain. We built a mining facility so far away it needed aerial drones to collect its materials—even though we couldn’t actually build drones yet. Satisfactory begins as a game about optimization, finding the most efficient ways to pump out resources. Master that, and you’re left with a sandbox that rewards building however and wherever the hell you want, just for the satisfaction of it.

Morgan: The stories that come out of Satisfactory sold me on it instantly. I, too, want to look over a mighty empire of automation and discover that my robot children no longer need me. I’m also just really into watching materials actually travel down conveyor belts and pass through machines, instead of everything happening inside a menu.

More games should do this. Jody: Village is Resident Evil at its most decadent and gothic. There’s a bit with a baby in a puppet house that’s as scary as the series has ever been, a werewolf attack in the village that pays homage to Resident Evil 4’s early siege, and the vampire-haunted Castle Dimitrescu, which lives up to its reputation. Playing RE8 a while after release, I didn’t think Lady D could possibly be as cool as the hype around her suggested, but she absolutely was.

And there are plenty of surprises after that, with plot twists I wasn’t expecting, neat references to older games in the series, and a Mercenaries mode that’s basically bullet heaven. It’s more run and gun than previous games, but since it’s a modern vision of Resident Evil it’s not short of variety to keep things interesting. You visit heaps of beautifully designed levels throughout, and each one offers a taster session in everything Resident Evil has done well over the years.

The story does follow on from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, so you may find you want to start there before hitting up Village, but Village does do a pretty good job of explaining what’s going on in case you’re not up to speed. From Village you can dive back into the horrifying and gory world of Resident Evil with the remakes, but be prepared to feel a lot more panicked and underpowered in those games—Mr. X is absolutely terrifying in high definition.

Rich: As CS:GO’s twitter bio says, this is “your favourite first person shooter’s favourite first person shooter. And incredibly, the most-played game on Steam 10 years into its lifespan.

But it’s waning in importance as the tail of battle royale and extraction shooters lengthens. Speaks to the timelessness of Counter-Strike’s stop-and-pop design that it doesn’t need new seasonal guns or magical movement abilities to stay interesting. Fraser: There’s understandably still a great deal of fondness for the original Company of Heroes, but here the multiplayer really got to shine, leading to CoH2 having a much longer tail.

And, honestly, I’ve had enough of France and the invasion of Normandy. The main campaign has a lot to recommend it, too, if you don’t mind the Russian cold, and is further elevated by the impressive non-linear Ardennes Assault expansion, paving the way for the impending Company of Heroes 3 and its dynamic campaign.

Morgan: Psychonauts 2 is what happens when the brilliant folks at Double Fine get as much time and budget as they need to make a 3D platformer. This is a gorgeous sequel that picks up right where the first left off. A charming, heart-wrenching story through the lens of a collectathon platformer. Jody: The original Psychonauts was a wonderful concept buried under uneven concessions to its genre. Which is to say, it was a Double Fine game.

What a concept, though: a summer camp for psychics run by a spy ring that trains them for espionage by letting them rummage around inside the mental landscapes of troubled folk. If only it weren’t for the fussy boss fights, and platforming that was let down by poor controls and checkpointing. Like Morgan says, Psychonauts 2 is Double Fine finally getting the freedom it needs to make a game that lives up to that idea.

So, uh, thanks, Microsoft? It’s a Pixar movie you can run around in, zooming across levels based on a psychedelic Yellow Submarine or a papercraft library where you end up trapped in a book, leaping across pages as the platforming suddenly transitions to 2D. One level’s a hospital that is also a casino, with a maternity ward where wannabe parents gamble on a roulette wheel of babies. It’s constantly imaginative and twisted. Phil: A city-builder about creating elaborate, automated production chains—ferrying myriad resources from across the world to turn into the goods your citizens crave.

The cities you create will be ornate and beautiful, but the real joy is found in watching a successful, stable supply of sewing machines leave your factories. Fraser: The DLC has made it feel a bit bloated, especially now that you can set up colonies in even more places, but the logistics porn keeps me coming back anyway.

It’s intensely satisfying serving the needs of your demanding citizens, and like Phil says the cities make for great eye candy. Evan: Perhaps the best raw, customizable storytelling engine on this list, RimWorld is the progeny of hyper-granular colony sims like Dwarf Fortress.

Your pet turkey can break individual bones or lose their beak to say, frostbite in the winter after a specific level of cold exposure. It’s moddable as hell: I played hours this year with a multiplayer add-on.

Every fresh start means it’s time for new experiments, which have been greatly enhanced by the expansions, introducing royals, psychics and cults. It works surprisingly well on Steam Deck, so I’ve fired it up yet again to play on the go. Finally I can live the dream of sitting on a noisy bus while leading a colony of tyrannical transhumanist cannibals.

Katie Wickens, Hardware Writer: Firmly is Rimworld embedded in my yearly game rotation, as the call of sandbox colony sims inevitably draws me in when real life gets hard to parse. Rimworld has so much to give, with each restart delivering a totally unique experience. I bid thee tug on my heartstrings once more, o’ tiny pawns of the outer Rim.

Evan: The launch of the early access prototype Arma Reforger in May complicates this a bit: Arma is improving on its path to Arma 4, but slowly.

For now, Arma 3 is still my recommendation for a feature-complete military sandbox. Arma 3 continues to remind us that scale is one of the precious feelings games can give us. That doesn’t just mean “big maps. Morgan: Arma 3 is the game that pushed me to finally get a desktop PC in I picked up the best prebuilt PC a year-old could afford, meaning Arma 3 still ran like crap.

That’s OK, because I still managed to dump hours into AI scenarios, Day-Z adjacent sandbox survival modes, and a proto-version of PUBG battle royale developed by PlayerUnknown himself you’d join servers from your external internet browser, it was pretty cool. Arma is one of the few series out there actively pushing the capabilities of videogames and placing that power in the hands of players to make new things. After a decade of updates, Arma 3 is both gigantic and often cheap.

Robin: I can’t believe this is still on here. Both we and Bethesda need to let it go already. Jody: I get it. I’d be tempted to replay Morrowind if I wanted a full playthrough of an Elder Scrolls RPG today, yet I still keep Skyrim installed and hop back on the regular just to check out new mods.

I’ve recently explored a cyberpunk city and begun a multi-part quest mod with fully voiced followers. Skyrim’s alive, and people are doing more interesting things to it than most live-service games.

Mollie: Robin, you’re going to have to pry Skyrim from my cold, dead hands. It’s been my comfort game for the past decade, the one I can easily fall back into for some bittersweet nostalgia. Will I ever play anything other than a stealthy archer? Who knows. Old habits die hard. Sean: Skyrim is irreplaceable, but that’s also its biggest fault. Without another Elder Scrolls game to take its crown, I’m doomed to keep returning to it even though I know full well I’ve done everything there is.

Lauren M: How does one bond with friends if not by stomping around a haunted house and wailing increasingly awful “where are you? Jacob: I used to jump into Phasmophobia expecting to be terrified almost immediately, now I do it because it’s a great social game to play with a handful of friends. Enjoying a stroll through an abandoned and potentially haunted campsite or prison is now my idea of a good time, just shooting the breeze and poking fun as we idly check for ghosts on our vast array of ghost hunting gear.

I love those moments simply tracking spectres so much that I’ve actually explored haunted castles or those claiming to be haunted with friends in real-life because of it. Phasmophobia made me realise I love the quirky ghost-hunting culture that I thought only existed in episodes of early s British TV show Most Haunted; a world filled with EMF meters, spirit boxes, infrared thermometers, and ‘I’d rather be ghost hunting’ caps.

Rich Stanton: I return to Phasmophobia every few months with the same group, because it’s always different. Yeah we’ve seen much of what the game has but its combinations, its capacity to shock you out of over-confidence, remains undimmed. My favourite horror experience ever. Fraser: Too many people know what my screams sound like now.

Thanks, Phasmophobia. Josh L: I love paranormal investigation shows, and this game lets me experience that world for myself, in VR, and it’s terrifying, I love it! Jody: Bloodlines remains an unbeatable example of a specific kind of RPG: one with sexy vampires you can kiss.

It’s got atmospheric urban hubs to explore, wonderfully animated NPCs, and a sudden switch to full horror that scared me shitless even on playthrough three. The Unofficial Patch continues being updated long after fixing Bloodlines’ biggest bugs back in the day I got stuck in half-open doors and had to reload more than once.

It even inserts shortcuts past combat-heavy areas, the main weak spot of a game otherwise happy to let you sneak, talk, or kiss your way out of problems. Actually, I think kissing caused more problems than it solved. But they were newer, more interesting problems, so that’s OK. Josh W: It just nails the World of Darkness vibe so well: the scheming elders, the ancient conspiracies, the general millenarian dread. Sure, some aspects—like literally every interaction in the Chinatown section—have, ah, not aged so well, but where Bloodlines shines, it shines brighter than any game that’s tried to do the same thing before or since.

Katie: Seven years is a long time for any game to stay relevant, but Cities: Skylines remains the big apple of my eye as one of the greatest city builders of all time. It’s not moved in the top list this year, since we consider it truly representative of the genre—the pinnacle of traffic management and a well rounded city design sandbox. The game’s easy to pick up, and deep strategies reveal themselves as you learn to manage traffic flow, master road hierarchy, and exert your authority with evil cycle-to-work schemes.

The fact there are still tons of active modders in the community today, and that Colossal Order is still releasing DLCs, means there’s a constant stream of content to keep you amused until they finally grace us with Skylines 2. I’ve got two cities on the go at the moment. One of them is a new attempt at a cyberpunk city, after my last one got a bit out of control thanks to some broken mods. The other is one that’s aggressively anti-car, because cars can fuck right off.

Sean: Vermintide 2 is the most down-to-earth Warhammer game around; it’s essentially about five roommates trying to deal with the end of the world. They drink together, bicker together, and yes, slaughter an endless number of humanoid rats together. In a setting rife with OP gods and champions, I love that it’s about a bunch of misfits just trying their best.

Robin: And I love that that set up lets it just be this perfect encapsulation of what the Warhammer Fantasy setting is about. It’s got that wonderful humour and satire in the dialogue, the characters sniping back and forth, but always against this absurdly grim, violent backdrop. It’s authentic to that world in a way that I think few games outside of Total War manage. Fraser: There are few things in this world as cathartic as smashing lots of evil rats.

Vermintide 2 is the best panacea for a bad day. Just try to frown when you’re covered in blood and guts and fur. Wes: After a few years of playing Vermintide’s missions over and over, I really enjoy the roguelike-esque mode Fatshark added.

A full run takes a couple hours, but each level is a smaller commitment than a normal stage. Bring on Darktide. Chris: For years I wondered what the appeal of a hardcore farming sim was, but then I spent a couple seasons plowing, planting, cultivating, growing, and harvesting. When my first crop of beets began pouring into my trailer—and I am not being sarcastic here—it was a genuine rush.

The deep complexity of the farming systems and the exquisitely recreated farming vehicles, which to my mind are just as impressive as sci-fi spaceships, make it easy to turn farming into an obsession. Morgan: I haven’t kept up with the Farming Sim series in recent years, but I’m glad to know it’s as chill as ever.

This is the game that truly kicked off the “simulator” trend on Steam, but it’s never treated the label like a joke. This is an honest-to-god snapshot of farm life: a lot of menial labor building up to a single delivery that doesn’t pay quite as much as you hope, but enough that you should probably plant more wheat and do it again. Sarah James, Guides Writer: If Farming Simulator has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t want to be anywhere near me when I’m reversing something with a trailer attached to it.

Phil: Excuse me while I mourn the fact that this has become our sim du jour over Euro Truck Simulator 2—for my money still the king of the pretend-to-do-someone-else’s-job genre. Robin: I genuinely had to uninstall this game to make myself stop playing it, because I was in so deep I could feel it giving me RSI. It’s the perfect pick up and play game and fits perfectly with Valve’s handheld.

As much as it’s a skateboarding game it reminds me of the compulsive nature of scrambling action puzzler, Trials 2, where I would restart levels time after time and settle for nothing less than a clean run every time. It’s the same thing with OlliOlli World, but with a more esoteric aesthetic.

Dave: While Football Manager absolutely is a management simulation of what it’s like to control the finer points of a football team in modern times, it’s also one of the most engaging RPGs around. Most people will simply dismiss it as little more than a set of spreadsheets with no soul, but for the people for whom FM has become the game they play, it means so much more than that.

Sure, at its simplest FM is about shuffling a pack of little computer people into an order and with a strategy that will win you more football matches than you lose, but the wider career can last for years, even decades, as you live a full life in football. And in that lifetime you can experience the many varied highs and lows of football; whether that’s a last minute winner delivering an elusive Champions League win, a courageous full-back declaring their sexuality to a packed press conference, a brilliant season pushing your tiny home team of Bath into the professional leagues, or the pain of relegation, sackings, and a son who turns out to be too rubbish a footballer to fit in with your team and you have to destroy their career and the tender age of 21 with a cancelled contract.

It’s also become a game I don’t just play at my PC; I deliberate over transfer decisions in the shower in the morning, agonise over tactical tweaks long after I’ve shut down my rig from a bad run of matches, and dream of actually making it into the football league again.

Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor: I hate spreadsheets in real life, but will apparently spend hundreds of hours in one to take Rangers to the top of the Champions League.

My favourite regens were called D. Truman and I. Innocent, and that’s all I have to say about FM Robin: This game’s such a vision for what the place of point-and-click games could be in the modern industry. Instead of resting on laurels of nostalgia, it’s pulling in inspiration from Bioware and Telltale to craft a brilliantly textured narrative and world to go with its smart puzzles. Fraser: Not just one of the best adventure games around, Unavowed is also a high point for urban fantasy.

There are shades of Dresden Files and John Constantine, but this is a singular yarn, grounding the fire mages, ghost assistants and confused demons with human drama, and setting it in a version of New York that absolutely feels tangible. Designer Dave Gilbert loves this city and loves these characters, and that makes me love them too.

Morgan: Jackbox Games continues to demonstrate why it’s the master of party games. You’d think eight releases later these packs would be out of good ideas, but Party Pack 8 features some of the cleverest games the series has ever seen, like a hidden drawing murder mystery game Weapons Drawn or a genius twist on Family Feud in Poll Mine.

I especially love the creativity of Job Job, a game where you write stories using word clouds written by each other. Imogen: I wanted Jackbox to be kicked off this list in favour of Gartic Phone. Sure, Jackbox is unique and fun, but it’s the series that’s good, not any one individual game.

Mollie: Sometimes I think Jackbox has had its day. Then I’ll end up drinking with some buddies, the game will come out and the floodgates open to countless Jackbox-themed inside jokes. I agree with Imogen, the series is good rather than one particular pack standing out as the must-have.

I’m partial to Jackbox 5 myself—the last time I played Patently Stupid I had bellyache from laughing so hard. Even if each pack has its duds, you’re bound to find a good time from at least one game. Morgan: This gorgeous, well-written, and downright fun story didn’t get the love it truly deserved across the internet last year. Yes, the combat is simple, but Eidos Montreal’s take on the Guardians of the Galaxy demonstrates a lot of love for the source material and a high bar of comedy that I wouldn’t have expected from the Deus Ex studio.

The characters are so good, this game made me like the Marvel movies a lot less. Give it a shot. Fraser: GotG has been accused of being a movie knock-off that couldn’t afford the expensive cast, but it’s really one of the best comic adaptations around, capturing the argumentative found-family far better than any two-hour MCU flick ever could. Like Morgan says, the gags are great, but the comedy is accompanied by powerful emotional highs and lows that make this rollicking space adventure incredibly heartfelt and genuine.

Fraser: I’m terrible at cards and even worse at sleight of hand, but Card Shark makes me feel like a master. As the mute apprentice of Comte de Saint-Germain, I’ve learned a lot about how to part 18th century French nobles and revolutionaries from their cash.

The mechanics of deceit are both complex and compelling, embracing the tactile nature of card games and then layering oodles of intrigue and a nice big conspiracy on top.

I finished the whole thing in a single long afternoon, but I’ve hardly stopped thinking about it since. I even picked up a real deck of cards to see if the game rubbed off on me, but no, I’ve still got the dexterity and wits of a sloth. Morgan: Ashamed that I haven’t given this one a proper shot. Cheating at cards is such an immediately fun game premise and I’m delighted that it actually works. Wes: Surely you’ve heard of Valve’s FPS puzzle comedy Portal and its sequel, which will make you laugh and feel incredibly smart at the same time.

I’m going to assume you’ve played the campaign, because you strike me as a reader of fine taste and culture. What really keeps Portal 2 on the Top year after year is its co-op campaign and staggering Steam Workshop scene, providing effectively infinite test chambers to solve.

Play nothing but Portal 2 and Kerbal Space Program for the next year and you could probably earn an honorary physics degree. Nat: It’s so easy to forget how Valve’s writing was on top of its game in Razor sharp and effortlessly funny, even without memetic cake jokes.

Morgan: Portal 2 lives in the corner of my brain reserved for perfect games. It’s not a crowded space. Man, I can’t wait for Valve to make narrative games again.

Sarah: It’s hard to believe Portal 2 is over 10 years old. I haven’t played recently but I remember the last time I fired it up, it hadn’t aged at all. I think it’s time for another replay.

Nat: I’d always written off Flight Sim as this stodgy old thing, something dads fuss over on their yellowed old CRT in the garage. But a scale model of the Earth is a hell of a thing, and with a flight model that can be as accessible or as finicky as you like, I’ve found endless joy in even the familiar drudgery of an Edinburgh to London flight—especially if I’m doing it in the Halo Pelican. Fraser: My love of flight is usually overshadowed by my hate of airports and uncomfortable seats.

Flight Sim’s perfect for me, then, cutting out all the shit and just letting me soar above the clouds and occasionally do flyovers of Paisley to see if it accurately simulates the amount of broken glass and dog poo on the streets. It doesn’t, but it’s still an incredible recreation of Earth.

Morgan: My brief love affair with Flight Sim in sent me down a long road. Not only am I way more familiar with plane operations than I never imagined, but I’m also way more afraid of these magnificent steel beasts that regularly defy god.

Even when I think I’m doing everything right, stuff goes wrong and I just start flipping switches. I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep on a flight again. Jody: So many space games are about being a pilot or the spaceship itself. Mass Effect understood we wanted to be the ship’s captain, just like on TV. The one who bosses people around, gives inspiring speeches, leads the away team, plots the journey, and, yes, macks on blue alien honeys.

Imogen: Mass Effect is two of my favourite aspects of games rolled into one. Stupid otherworldy politics that make no sense and gun action. Oh, and my third favourite too, smooching aliens. The point is Mass Effect games showed me how deep relationships can go in games whether they be platonic, intergalactic, or romantic. Nothing has ever made me feel the same as realising the consequences of the suicide run or saying goodbye to Tali.

Mollie: I’m all here for alien smooching. What a babe. Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I often find myself ragging on Mass Effect, its militarism, the way it ended, the questionable ethics of its workplace romances. But at the end of the day I replay the whole trilogy at least once every two years. It’s a touchstone for me, a world I’m always happy to go back to. It also doesn’t hurt that the Vanguard class lets you teleport around shotgunning dudes in the most satisfying way imaginable. Nat: They “improved” the Mako for this “remaster”, as if it were ever possible to improve on perfection.

Morgan: A murder mystery visual novel set in a twisted vision of heaven. The pitch was enough for me to try Paradise Killer, but what kept me around is the unique approach to its central mystery, allowing players to track each citizen’s timelines, solve puzzles out of order, and make your own conclusions about whodunnit.

It’s pretty serious business wrapped in a completely absurd world, with memorable characters like Lady Love Dies, Dr. To solve the brutal murder, you first need to make sense of this world and its strange rules. Unravelling this mystery isn’t all that challenging, it turns out, but it’s absolutely rewarding. Wes: I did wish in the end that this mystery had required a bit more deduction and a bit less “talk to everyone after finding every new piece of evidence,” but I loved how freeform it was, loved that it would’ve let me present my case way earlier if I’d chosen to, loved how it cleverly organized evidence, and loved the creativity poured into every single bit of this world.

If I’m not interviewing an immortal skeleton bartender assassin in the next mystery I play, why bother? And with every new expansion and league, it subtly reinvents itself, beckoning me back. There are always new builds to experiment with.

New challenges to overcome. Path of Exile 2 is coming, but I’m in no particular rush to move on. Every ARPG that’s come since simply reminds me why this one is the best of the bunch.

Lost Ark is basically Path of Exile yassified. Sarah: I’ve tried getting into Path of Exile several times but I always feel overwhelmed by the complexity of the skill tree so never usually get very far.

It’s FromSoft’s tightest game: all action, no RPG fat, 10, blood-spurting death blows standing between you and victory. Is there a Louvre for ninjas? Josh W: People like to talk about Sekiro being a game of mastery. Sekiro didn’t click for me until I realised it wasn’t just a game about straight-up sword fights, it’s also about throwing ash in your opponent’s eyes and fleeing the battle, about dousing them in oil and setting them alight, and about exploiting all the nasty, low-down tricks in the shinobi handbook to fight every battle purely on your terms.

Honour is for suckers: let it warm the dead in their graves. It should definitely be higher up in this list because who doesn’t love roleplaying as a sexy Viking lady with a big hammer? Unimaginative people, that’s who. The various DLC added classic black box missions and new abilities that turn Valhalla from a regular Viking adventure into a mythical masterpiece as you smash god-tier enemies to pieces as the All-Father. I wish Ubisoft would spice up the increasingly staid quest structure and stop just piling on very similar systems, but I’ve still put more than hours into this behemoth.

Josh L: As mentioned, this really isn’t an Assassin’s Creed game, but maybe that’s a good thing? Robin: Ubisoft don’t get enough credit in my book for the sheer scale and craft of their modern open worlds. I think accusations of bloat are warranted—Valhalla is absurdly long and full of filler—but they’re not justification for dismissing the incredibly technical achievement that is the game’s rendition of medieval England.

Mollie: A zen puzzler with very few words, yet says so much through the possessions you neatly stow away inside cupboards and wardrobes across multiple years and living spaces. Jody: Every object clicks in place delightfully, telling a story while it does. But the partner who doesn’t leave wallspace for your degree, aaargh. Fraser: I find it nearly impossible to keep my flat tidy with a chaotic cockapoo puppy roaming around, so tidying up in Unpacking was incredibly cathartic.

The more I played, though, the more it was the unspoken story pushing me forward. And now I’m worried about what my own possessions might tell people about me. I’d better hide some stuff. Wes: My girlfriend brought her diploma home recently, and thanks to this game I had a slight moment of panic about whether she’d have any place to put it. Sarah: Unpacking is such a chill game.

It’s so satisfying to organise a room—or an entire house—just the way you like it. The story of the nameless person who’s stuff you’re organising with each life-stage is subtle and surprisingly moving no pun intended. Morgan: Prey is everything great about immersive sims crammed into one huge space station. It’s got wrenches, shotguns, computers with mouse pointers, and a set a systemic rules that everything follows. I’ll never forget the first time I bypassed a locked door by sniping a button with a nerf crossbow.

This is Arkane’s grand homage to System Shock and I’m still amazed it turned out so good. Jody: This is the direction I want immersive sims to go.

A singular location modeled down to the tiny, characterful details. Talos I is a lonely place, perfect for sci-fi horror, but you get to know its people through the things you find—even character sheets from their roleplaying game. Morgan: Hell yeah, Jody. If you can’t tell, it’s us two that love Prey on staff. This year and last we tired to usurp Dishonored 2 with Arkane’s true masterpiece, but were swiftly defeated by consensus.

This is way too low! It has one of the only truly good crafting systems in gaming, and is absurdly smart throughout. Everyone should play it, no arguments here. I just wish, for a game with as much combat as Prey has, the enemy design was better. Mimics are fun little trick at first, but by the end of my time in Talos I, I was glad to see the back of them. Lauren M: Every one of us who enjoys The Sims 4 is eagerly awaiting the day it has legitimate competition. Until that happens, it’s still genuinely the only game filling the ongoing demand for building dream homes and simulating wacky families.

Plus I can be a werewolf living in a little cottage now. Mollie: My love-hate relationship with The Sims 4 continues. There’s still nothing quite like it, but I struggle to recommend a game that requires remortgaging your house to experience fully. Katie: Further to Mollie’s comments about how gosh darn expensive this series is, I’ve never considered stealing a game so hard as I have with the Sims 4. It’s a genuinely impressive evolution of a game that saw me through some difficult times as a kid, but it’s become so much of an antithesis of its original idea, I also struggle to recommend it in its entirety.

Morgan: I experience The Sims 4 entirely through my partner, who both plays the game and watches YouTubers who make gorgeous houses, complain about missing features, and justify spending a whole lot on DLC packs.

You can tell from their passion that The Sims is really special, even if EA is always on the edge of souring its community on the whole series. Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: Chivalry 2 wouldn’t work if its combat design weren’t so clever.

The complex blocking, riposting, and countering system creates the possibility for skilled players to enter into a multiplayer swordfight outnumbered and win, which is brilliant.

At the same time, a lot of Chiv 2’s fun purely comes down to the volume of janky, farcical ways to beat the piss out of other players. Thus the medieval warfare game charged a few yards up the list this year yelling at the other games in Ye Olde English as it passed thanks to its Steam release and a big update which added two new objective maps and, most importantly, horses. Galloping around with a pointy stick is as fun as it sounds like it would be.

Robin: One of the things I love most about Dorfromantik is that it is fundamentally aimless. As you build up your little slice of countryside one tile at a time, trying to match up elements like fields, rivers, and railways, you’re not trying to exploit the landscape or build a map-conquering empire; you’re not recruiting an army to conquer your enemies; you’re not even really trying to complete an over-arching goal, most of the time, other than just a good score and a pleasing layout.

You’re basically just quietly piecing together a place that would be quite nice to go on holiday to. There’s a satisfaction to placing pieces in the best, highest-scoring ways, but really for me it’s subsumed by the satisfaction of this lovely field all fitting together just right inside this perfect loop of river. It’s one of the best mindfulness tools I’ve ever used. Which is perhaps a sign that I should just get into model railways. Katie: Everyone keeps telling me this game is “super chill,” but it kind of stresses me out.

I think it’s down to the fact I’m always having to shift my attention to the other side of the map where some forest or village needs completing. It’s not even timed, but it forces me to go against my Mother’s wisdom: “Finish one thing before you start another. Wes: I spent a solid two weeks just building little worlds on the couch with this gem on my Steam Deck.

Nat: Rainbow Six Siege isn’t my go-to shooter see 4. But it’s the best take on a slower, more tactical kind of shooter—a more bombastic Counter-Strike where positioning is key, kills are quick, and every single wall can come crashing down at a moment’s notice. Plus, while the launch lineup was a fairly dull roster of masked CS:GO rejects, Siege’s operators have only gotten cooler, gayer and more mechanically bizarre as the game continues to grow.

Mollie: I still don’t know shit about Siege. My map knowledge sucks, my operator knowledge sucks, I suck. But I think that actually helps me enjoy this game so much more. I always have a good time dicking around with friends in Siege—playing footsies with my pal while scooting around a hostage will never not be funny to me.

Morgan: Rainbow Six Siege isn’t my main squeeze anymore, but it’s still one of the best competitive shooters around. No shooter has managed to outdo its per-bullet wall destruction and I don’t know if I’ll ever have a bigger thrill in videogames than clutching out a round with a combination of good aim, smart camera positioning, and teammates giving useful callouts.

Nat: There’s nothing so satisfying as a job well done, especially if that job is peeling apart a billion-dollar spaceship like an onion. Hardspace: Shipbreaker’s zero-gravity disassembly feels like learning a real trade, mastering the ins and outs of its ships even as those ships become more and more hazardous to take apart. When a laser meant to trim off hull plating ends up igniting a fuel canister that blows half the ship and you to pieces, you can’t help but laugh.

One minute you’re skilfully cutting apart a ship making some serious cash then, ooops, who put that fuel line there? It’s a game that loves putting you under the pressure. Death isn’t a big deal because you’re a replaceable clone. And sometimes clones accidentally blow themselves up. Work in the future is hard to come by, I guess.

Dave: As one of the oldest games on the list it would be easy to dismiss this year-old space sim. But there are so many layers to KSP, so much charm, and so many tricky, varied gameplay challenges, that it’s still absolutely worth playing in If you want to take a crash course in astrophysics now, though, or just build some funny rockets and watch them explode, this is certainly the right choice.

But what I have done is had a great time learning about the physics of space travel by strapping little green halfwits to heroic quantities of rocket fuel and sending them to meet their god.

They’re still out there, somewhere, drifting in the space between the stars. Evan: Its procedurally-generated environments and slippery physics are a brutal combination, but Spelunky 2’s unfair deaths are balanced by moments of wonder as you dig through more of the moon’s odd crust.

Get knocked into a lava pit by baby draculas on one run, discover the secret passage to an alien mothership on the next. Phil: As an old Spelunky 1 obsessive, I’ve still not actually played the sequel. Everything about it seems bigger, harder and just busier than the hard-as-nails roguelike I grew comfortable with.

It’s a series that lives by the motto “fuck around and find out”, and here there seems to be more to find out than ever. Tens—maybe hundreds—of hours finding out, to the point that I’m scared to take that first step. I know I’ll cave eventually. It’s just a matter of time. Imogen: It Takes Two is a co-op adventure where a divorce-bound couple’s kid accidentally turns them into toys. The story is nothing special—and I hate that damn thrusting, gyrating book—but It Takes Two has some of the best platforming I’ve ever seen so it deserves this spot.

I’m absolutely here for Dr. Hakim, though. More thrusting, book man. Robin: Having played this with my fairly videogame-averse partner, I think it’s secretly one of the best gateway games out there.

It gently introduced her to 3D platforming, shooting, puzzle-solving, and more, all while I could play along with her to demonstrate the trickier techniques or point out where we needed to go next. It’s such a clever design for a co-op game, because it means you can play it with nearly anyone.

Jacob: We’ve left the rainy coastline of Britain and flown halfway across the world for the next stop in the Forza Horizon series. The bright sunshine and varied landscape of Mexico makes for an excellent playground to burn up rubber in, and there’s no shortage of excellent cars to take for a spin in what has to be Forza’s finest and most fun Horizon fest to date. Just try and take it easy on the anime car decals, yeah?

Fraser: The Hot Wheels expansion has seen me return to Forza Horizon 5, and it’s an even more joyful experience than before. The playground has never been this zany and exhilarating, causing me to whoop and cheer with every massive loop. In real-life, I don’t care about cars or driving, but this is what I thought it would be like back when I was a kid, tossing tiny vehicles around in my bedroom. Chris L: Despite being wedged in the middle of an established timeline, Alyx managed to take some surprising turns and contain some, ahem, full-life consequences for Half-Life lore.

And I’ve never played a VR game that felt so completely comfortable and natural to move around in that I was able to keep my headset on for hours at a time. Brilliant game.

Josh W: Yeah this game’s probably great, but the moment I came across a poison headcrab I ripped off the headset so hard it tore hair out.

Tyler W: Early in this year’s Top meeting I said that I’d deal with it if the rest of the staff decided to bump Rocket League off the list to make room for something new. After all, what more can I say about a multiplayer game that doesn’t need any more iteration to be fun forever?

I’ve been writing about how Psyonix’s car soccer game is great for seven years now, and it continues to be great, but I have no notes. Not any that relate to the fundamental design of Rocket League, at least; as much as I’ve probably blamed “the physics” for bad nights, I wouldn’t change a thing about the weird, ultra-challenging way the rocket-powered cars handle. The more I thought about Rocket League and all the good times I’ve had over the course of my thousand-plus hours, the more I resented my past self for being so deferential.

No Witcher 3 fans are shoving it out of the top 10 spoiler just because we’ve spent the past seven years saying that it’s good, so why should I let a game I once called “the only good videogame” be cut? I’m glad that Rich, PC Gamer’s other primary Rocket League-liker, kept his guard up and it only ended up moving 17 places. I know it isn’t traditional to say this unsarcastically, but what a save! It’s a tingly, intimate adventure game about the rot of capitalism that slips into the deepest parts of my brain and whispers to me that, despite everything, maybe it’ll be okay.

Nat: A haunting tale of American decline that seamlessly traverses adventure game, text adventure, amateur stage play and dive bar gig. Kentucky Route Zero is a literary experience rivalled only by the likes of Disco Elysium, one less constrained by the look and shape of what a “game” is supposed to be—especially when it comes to between-act interludes.

Play it with the lights dimmed, and a heart open to some literary melancholy. Wes: Quake: Groundbreaking FPS, Romero’s last game at id, grandfather of esports, progenitor of the rocket jump, yada yada yada. Quake could live in the Top forever, honestly, but it’s back for an especially good reason this year: Nightdive’s remaster, which makes it absolutely sing on modern PCs.

No more digging around folders to configure one of the dozen confusing Quake source ports: you can just boot it, crank your fps to , tweak your FOV and be off and running. Quake Remastered also includes some entirely new stuff: Wolfenstein: The New Order developer MachineGames built two expansions that dwarf the scale and intricacy of the original game, riffing on ’90s level design after 25 years of study.

Jody: The foomp-tink-tink-tink of Quake’s grenade launcher is still one of the best sound effects in all of videogames. Jody: Supergiant’s a consistent studio with a string of bangers to its name.

It began with Bastion, a rare action-RPG with a story worth caring about, and Hades built on its strengths. The combat is frenetic, varying with your loadout but usually built around using a perfect-feeling dash to get yourself both out of and then back into danger.

The story’s just as engaging, a Greek myth saga that takes the obscure son of the god of the underworld and makes his quest to escape Hades into a sexy soap opera. Imogen: Hades is hot. Hot action, hot setting, hot characters, hot dialogue. This article is best for you to collect information about best PC video games in the world. In this article, Top10About will introduce with you top 10 most downloaded video games in the world.

These are the most popular video games which are most downloaded in the world very popularly. Wii play is a special type of gaming console which is very famous among people.

It normally targets the casual gamers. Wii play is a group of around 9 mini games which are very popular. You will find around 28 millions download of these games. Diablo III comes at number 9 th position in our list.

This game was released in and always known as one of the most popular video games of this world. After the release of this game it was placed in many gaming magazines and spread all around the world. According to the report, this video game has almost 30 millions download all over the world. In 8 th position, you will get New Super Mario Bros. This game is quite similar to other games of Mario franchise. You can find almost 31 million downloads and video game selling all over the world of this game.

This is officially one of the most popular and most downloaded PC video game ever. Wii Sports Resort comes at 7 th position in our list and it is an worldwide most famous video game. This game was released in and got much popularity all over the world.

According to the report this game has almost 33 millions download worldwide which is awesome. This game contains 12 sports and all of those games are very interesting to play. Mario Kart Wii is another one of the most popular video games in the world which reaches around 36 millions download worldwide. This game is all about kart racing which is very popular among people. In this game you need to apply your own motor skill and need to beat other racers and win the game. This is a very interesting racing game you can control this game with remote or motion sensor ability.

This game achieves many positive views and most of the player appreciates this video game. This game is also available on online for multi players so you can also play this game with your friends. It comes at 6 th position in the most downloaded video games of this world. Super Mario Bros comes at number 5 th position in the list of most downloaded PC video games. This is the 2 nd game of Mario franchise and it reached almost 56 millions downloads.

This is the game which is the pseudo-sequel of the original old Mario game which is very interesting to play. This game was released in Japan in and reach all over the world within 2 years. This game is known as one of the best downloaded and selling game and no doubt this game deserves the 5 th position. Grand Theft Auto V was released in and it comes at the 4 th position in the list of most downloaded PC video games. This is a very popular game which is made for 7 th generation consoles so you can enjoy this game with your Play Station 3 and Xbox In , this game was released for the Microsoft windows.

Millions of dollars are spend on this popular game and it got success after the release of this game. People just like this game and you can get many good reviews on this game on various forums.

This game sold almost 11 million within 3 days of its release and you can find almost 65 million downloads of this game. Need for speed is a popular video game which is very famous among children. This is a racing game where you can find several cars like Ferrari, BMW.

 
 

 

Most downloaded games of all time pc

 
Summary · Minecraft · Tetris · Grand Theft Auto V · Wii Sports · Players Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG) · Super Mario Bros · Pokémon Red/Blue/Green/. Most Popular Games ; DEATH STRANDING · DEATH STRANDING. $ ; Grand Theft Auto V: Premium Edition · Grand Theft Auto V: Premium Edition · $ $ ; VALORANT. Tetris is at the top of the list of most downloaded video games on computers. This is an old game but very popular and almost million copies downloaded from.

 
 

List of most-played video games by player count – Wikipedia.The top PC games | PC Gamer

 
 
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