2015!
We're almost halfway through the year, and already the PC has enjoyed some amazing games. The second half of 2015 promises to be even better, thanks to Fallout 4, XCOM 2, Metal Gear Solid 5 and more. While we wait, let's reminisce about the best of the year so far.
Here, you'll find a list of everything we've awarded over 80% for review, along with some of our favourite in-development games from Early Access.
Kerbal Space Program
Score: 96%
Read our review.
KSP is a game about building and flying rockets into space—although, of course, it's not that simple in practice. Don't let the cute little Kerbals fool you: this is a bewilderingly deep simulation of space travel and engineering that employs real-world physics and makes great demands on any player that decides to dive in. You'll start with the ambition of merely building a working rocket in this massively freeform sandbox game, before setting your sights on the Moon—sorry, the Mun—and beyond. But it's those bumbling, funny Kerbals that give KSP its warm, chewy centre, making it quite unlike many of the cold, dry simulations available elsewhere.
Grand Theft Auto V
Score: 92%
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Nobody makes sandbox games like Rockstar—really, who else would be obsessive enough to recreate Los Angeles with this much attention to detail, and on such an enormous scale? That detail is easier to appreciate in this belated PC version of GTA5 thanks to the first-person view and new Director Mode, which allows you to make films from your probably crime-related adventures. There's a story, there's a fulsome online multiplayer mode and even co-op heists, but as a tool for generating fun—and as a place to exist in—GTA5 shows Rockstar at the top of their game.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Score: 92%
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CD Projekt Red's latest could easily end up being the best RPG of the year, and is certainly the most successful Witcher game to date. It's vast in scope, and filled with mysteries to uncover. The Witcher 3 doesn't go in for light-hearted fantasy; rather, it draws inspiration from the often horrific folk tales of ages past. Geralt's impassive determination in the face of such horror is a refreshing change from the grand heroism of most fantasy role-playing protagonists. The Witcher 3 is both bleak and beautiful, and one of the most atmospheric RPGs available on PC.
Pillars of Eternity
Score: 92%
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Kickstarter has essentially broken game history, giving fans the world over the chance to resuscitate comatose genres and give developers the chance to reclaim their history. Pillars of Eternity is a new Infinity Engine-style RPG in the space year 2015, and that will never stop being a wondrous thing to type. Moreover, it's an Infinity Engine-style RPG made on a healthy budget, and with many of the talent from the cRPG golden era involved. We reckon it “lives up to the towering legacy of the games that inspired it”, and really, what else needs to be said?
Homeworld Remastered
Score: 92%
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Homeworld never stopped being beautiful, of course, but a bunch of new high-resolution textures and fancy lighting effects are hardly going to hurt. Gearbox have exhaustively updated Relic's elegiac space RTS so that it will play—and look—lovely on modern PCs, but the emotional core of this sci-fi exodus remains intact. There aren't many strategy games where you feel this attached to your units, but then your ships are more than just units here: they're the last of a dying race, who have set out on an arduous pilgrimage to their ancient homeworld. Battles mean more when you care this much about survival, and the result is some of the most tense space battles you'll find in a game.
Out of the Park Baseball 16
Score: 91%
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Possibly the best sports management sim gets even better with Out of the Park Baseball 16, a rich and complex game of numbers, bats, balls and home runs. The series now boasts the official Major League Baseball license, meaning it uses real teams and players for the first time (though you will need to grab a few fan-created packs to display their pictures). If you've enjoyed the series previously, you'll already know how good this is, but OOTPB16 is definitely worth a try if you're more used to organising football teams in Football Manager.
Her Story
Score: 90%
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Sam Barlow's excellent mystery is told entirely through a database of short video interviews. You access these clips by searching for the words spoken in them, and must use the results to deduce new search terms, leading to new videos. It's one of the most inventive and satisfying detective games ever made.
Crypt of the Necrodancer
Score: 87%
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Most turn-based roguelikes give you plenty of time to think; to strategise your way around a procedurally generated dungeon so that you aren't gobbled up by a goblin, or so that you don't drink a potion designed to destroy your guts. The ingenious Crypt of the Necrodancer is different. It's the world's first rhythm roguelike, meaning that you explore its gridlocked dungeon to a catchy beat. These disparate worlds aren't as distant as they might appear, and the rhythm elements complement Necrodancer incredibly well.
Titan Souls
Score: 87%
Read our review.
One arrow, one measly point of health, and a bunch of fearsome bosses that stand in your way—sounds like a recipe for frustration, right? And yes, to be fair, there is a lot of restarting, and countless walks of shame back to boss arenas in Titan Souls. But those thrilling boss fights more than make up for it. Thanks to your one HP limit (and to the bosses', as well), you're thrown into each fight at the point of maximum tension, when you know that you're one hit away from death. There are no extended health bars or XP to muddy the waters: Titan Souls is a series of smart boss battles, and that's why it's great.
Ori and the Blind Forest
Score: 87%
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A staggeringly beautiful Metroidvania platformer that's a lot crueller than it might appear at first glance. As a creature lost in a Studio Ghibli-esque magical forest, you have to jump and fight and puzzle your way through a spiky, enemy-filled labyrinth while oooohing and aaaahing at all the lovely animation. Thankfully, Ori's sky-high difficulty level is offset somewhat by your ability to set save points on pretty much any solid surface.
Galactic Civilizations III
Score: 87%
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GalCiv 3 doesn't provide a major overhaul for Stardock's galactic conquest and exploration game, but did you really want one? GalCiv 2 was a hugely rich and, well, hugely huge 4X strategy with real heart, rooted (but not slavishly) in the Master of Orion 2 mould. That template is still a thing of wonder today, and now we can enjoy it with fancier visual effects, and with added multiplayer—the only notable omission of the previous game. Despite that, this game is currently a little lacking when compared to the enormous feature-set of its much-expanded predecessor, but its systems will be fleshed out over time.
Frozen Cortex
Score: 87%
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Frozen Synapse's simultaneous-yet-turn-based combat system is adapted here to form the basis for a fictional sports game, in which robots pummel each other for our amusement. There's depth to every lasting sport, and Cortex's mixture of American Football and savage robo-beatings stands up mightily to the scrutiny of turn-based play. After every five seconds there's a time-out of sorts, giving both sides a bit of time to adjust their strategies on the fly. Frozen Cortex is deep, tactical and thoroughly original.
Cities: Skylines
Score: 86%
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After SimCity, this was really an open goal for Colossal Order and Paradox Interactive, but Cities: Skylines is a solid city builder in its own right. It's the offline-friendly, mod-happy city sim you've been looking for, on a huge scale that makes SimCity's boxy hamlets look like...well, like boxy hamlets. It's not perfect, but this is a fun and addictive city builder that was well-timed to welcome players left disappointed by EA and Maxis.
Axiom Verge
Score: 85%
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There aren't that many open-ended platformers that are truly inspired by Metroid, despite the term 'Metroidvania' being so popular these days. The original Metroid was a game of alien geometry, bountiful exploration, and glitches that could be exploited by canny players. Tom Happ's excellent Axiom Verge taps into all of those things. You're given a glitch-removal device that can clear fake corrupted game code, and a coat that lets you teleport through solid objects—a wee bit more exciting than the power-ups typically found in this sort of game. This is a challenging, retro-flavoured platformer that understands what made the first Metroid so great.
Heroes of the Storm
Score: 84%
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MOBAs are known for being complex, demanding and, at times, obtuse. Heroes of the Storm is different. It's a MOBA that benefits from Blizzard's trademark polish, offering a satisfying competitive challenge that doesn't penalise you for not having spent months of your life learning that, for instance, a floating green banshee's swarming wraiths do physical damage because of reasons. Also it lets you enjoy a battlespace where Diablo can ride triumphantly atop a rainbow unicorn to battle against the siege tank from Starcraft 2.
Life Is Strange: Episode One
Score: 84%
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Mixing the fantastical and the mundane, the genuinely cool with the painfully uncool and putting you in the shoes of a painfully awkward teenage girl, Life is Strange is definitely... strange. It's also one of the most engaging, grounded and affecting adventure games out there - and it just keeps getting better with each new episode.
Project Cars
Score: 83%
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It's not often you see such uncompromising approaches from developers, but that's exactly what we got with Project Cars. It's a racing sim that casts a wide net and covers a range of disciplines, but it always sticks with what it knows best: catering to the hardcore. Also, you can play it in 12K.
Westerado: Double Barreled
Score: 83%
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It's been years—time to give up on the 'Red Dead Redemption on PC' dream. Instead we have to cope with smaller, simpler open world western adventures like Westerado. Fortunately, it's fantastic fun, open to the kind of experimentation and exploration that would make much bigger games blush. Oh, and poker. Always poker.
Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China
Score: 83%
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While the main series might stick to what it knows, the Assassin's Creed spin-offs are free to dabble in other genres. As such we ended up with the surprisingly great AC Chronicles: China, a 2.5D stealth platformer that pares back the padding of its big brother and offers a simpler, more fun stabbing simulator.
Total War: Attila
Score: 83%
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Yes, there are still issues that need to be patched out. But the fact remains that Total War: Attila refreshes the series' somewhat stale take on the strategy genre and forces you to learn something new and exciting. Never before has the Total War moniker been more apt as you see Europe razed by the Huns.
Evolve
Score: 83%
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Some seem overly keen to ignore Evolve, but the fact is it's one of the biggest kicks up the backside for the multiplayer FPS in years. The boiled down, asymmetrical tale of hunting and survival (oh, and evolution) is pure, balanced and a hell of a lot of fun.
Grey Goo
Score: 82%
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Petroglyph remembers a time when the RTS was king, and Grey Goo harks back to that classic design—with enough tweaks to the formula to make it relevant and interesting. The best part about the game, though, is its focus on rewarding actual strategy and planning, rather than just the player who can manage individual squads better.
Endless Legend: Guardians
Score: 81%
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The vanilla release of Endless Legend was good enough in its own right, but if it needed one thing to make it better, it was massive units that could wipe out whole armies. The Guardians expansion brought just that—and a few other things—and slotted perfectly into the already great game.
Kalimba
Score: 81%
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Kalimba's a striking puzzle-platformer where you're charged with moving two totem thingies simultaneously. When you move one, the other moves too (you can also carry your totem chum atop your flat head). Add Ikaruga-style colour-based puzzling into the mix, and you have the makings of a seriously smart, seriously hard platformer built from delicious triangles.
Invisible, Inc.
Score: 80%
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You have 72 hours to prepare for a final and likely fatal mission. How do you do that? Doing more missions, of course. Invisible, Inc. is set in a series of procedurally generated offices, each of which you're tasked with infiltrating in order to stockpile funds, abilities, items and new agents. It's an effortlessly smart turn-based tactics game that deviates from the XCOM template by not relying on random chance rolls. It's not luck that will save you, but rather careful planning and clever execution.
Arma 3: Marksmen
Score: 80%
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There are elements you wouldn't want to tinker with too much in a realistic war game like Arma 3—ballistics, weapons handling, sound—so obviously that's what Bohemia Interactive went and did with its Marksmen DLC. Fortunately, it's pretty much brilliant across the board, bringing much-requested changes and new tactical considerations that breathe life into the game.
Dragon Age Inquisition: Jaws of Hakkon
Score: 80%
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When DLC comes out so quickly after the original release, you would be forgiven for being cautious—even for ignoring it. Dragon Age: Inquistion's Jaws of Hakkon add-on, though, surprised us all by being a really very good extra five-to-eight hours of exploration, lore, battling and banter. Plus it's a good sign for future DA:I DLC.
Grim Fandango Remastered
Score: 80%
Read our review.
The puzzles haven't aged well since 1998, but everything else about Grim Fandango has—and the reworked graphics and control scheme make and already essential game even more essential. Witty, clever, funny and genuinely well-written, it's a great adventure and one of the best games of both 2015 and 1998.
Technobabylon
Score: 80%
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A point-and-click with decent puzzles? Not entirely. There are a few duff moments in Technobabylon, but overall it excels by playing to its cyberpunk setting. It's a police procedural set in a world where the internet is a virtual space called the Trance. There's a conspiracy, there's an old-school cop that the world's left behind, and there's a neon drenched city filled with danger and mystery. Wadjet Eye Games has made a name for itself publishing lo-fi indie adventures, and Technobabylon is one of their best releases yet.
Sunless Sea
Score: 80%
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One part Lovecraft, one part adventure, one part interactive fiction, and a whole host of other parts we won't ruin. Sunless Sea is an experience like no other. Exploration and survival are key themes, and while it's home to some weak combat this never really matters. You're always engaged, and always craving more.
Grow Home
Score: 80%
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Ubisoft surprised everyone this year with a game that doesn’t feature towers that reveal activities on a world map, but that does feature a charmingly bumbling robot named BUD. That it came out only two weeks after it was announced was something of a delight too. It's a game about clambering up giant flowers in order to bolster yourself with robo-upgrades, and you do this through one of the most tactile climbing systems around.
Resident Evil HD Remastered
Score: 80%
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A 13-year-old remake of a 19-year-old game, remade for 2015 and released on PC for the first time. You really wouldn't expect Resident Evil to be as good as it is, but... it is. Pure survival horror requiring caution and planning, a great new control scheme and Barry Burton - what more could you ask for?
Black Mesa
Score: Early Access
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The once-free mod that deserved a full, paid release finally got just that this year on Early Access. Rather than completely bettering its source material, Black Mesa operates as a brilliant update that can happily cohabit alongside Half-Life in your library. The wait for Xen, however, continues.
Infinifactory
Score: Early Access
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Complexity, creativity, intellectual stimulation - Infinifactory has all the ingredients of a truly great puzzle game. Constructing logic-driven machines of ever-increasing scope and intricacy is as fulfilling as it is challenging, and the fact there's a built in gif button to share your best (and worst) creations with the world just pushes it over the edge into true greatness.
Dirt Rally
Score: Early Access
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Some of us missed the days of realistic rally games, bemoaning the current state of 'x-treme' off-road racers and wishing for a return to simpler, purer rally-times. Dirt Rally quietly snuck onto Steam and gave us just that. Challenging, realistic, surprisingly pretty and delightfully grounded, it's the return of pure rally gaming.
The Magic Circle
Score: Early Access
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Basic exploration and adventure has to be pretty special to pique our interest - handily the Magic Circle is just that. Its meta nature (you're playing a game within a game) is more than just window dressing, with core mechanics revolving around reprogramming enemies and items as you progress. It's inventive, interesting and wonderful.
Captain Forever Remix
Score: Early Access
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A change in style and tone for Captain Forever might put some off, but the core element of battling enemy spaceships and salvaging their detached parts in order to make you stronger survives—and is still great—in Remix. Offering short enough sessions that it doesn't outstay its welcome, this has been on constant rotation since it hit Early Access.
Nuclear Throne
Score: Early Access
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Vlambeer has been tweaking and refining Nuclear Throne for over a year now, and it just keeps getting better. The roguelike twin-stick shooter (touching on survival elements) is incredibly kinetic, rhythmic, satisfying and smart. Procedurally generated levels and constant developer updates are just the icing on the (exploding) cake.
Killing Floor 2
Score: Early Access
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Buckets of blood and gore may be the signature of Killing Floor 2, but there's a complex survival shooter underneath all that red. KF2 launched in early access earlier this year, a surprise to most considering how sharp it already feels. Six players against the oncoming waves of Zed, with just enough weapons, bullets, and Dosh to survive.
