The top 100 PC games

Welcome to the PC Gamer Top 100—our annual list of the best games you can play right now. For the last few months, the PC Gamer team has been busy whittling down the hundreds of thousands of games available on PC; campaigning, voting and arguing until we arrived at the 100 games you'll find below.

It's a list designed to represent the passion of our global team of over 30 writers and editors. If you're wondering why Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is back on the list for the first time in years, it's because Josh made a fully animated powerpoint presentation that he delivered to the team while dressed up as a pirate. Not everyone went to those lengths to advocate for their chosen favourites, but you can be sure every pick is a game that at least a few people on staff care deeply about.

As always, the key question when creating a list of the best games is: What does it mean to be the 'best'? Is it a canon classic—a game that can't be ignored for its legacy to all of PC gaming? Is it an original idea, offering up something that's never been seen before? Or, more simply, is it a finely crafted masterpiece—the pinnacle of its chosen genre? In truth, the answer is that can be any or all of the above, and so those are the criteria our scoring system is built around.

How we make the list

Ahead of the vote, the PC Gamer team is free to nominate any PC game for Top 100 voting. These nominations gave us a longlist of 300 games. Each member of the team is then asked to rate those games subjectively across three weighted categories.

• Quality: How good is it? A purely personal rating of its calibre as a game. (60% of the Top 100 Score)
• Importance: How noteworthy is it? Its influence on other games and beyond. (20% of the Top 100 Score)
• Freshness: How unique is it? Its ability to stand out from other games. (20% of the Top 100 Score)

Importance and Freshness are weighted around the Top 100's role as an annual list. Too much weighting to Importance, and the list remains stagnant each year. Too much to Freshness, and there's little consistency. Quality remains the most important category—if we don't think a game is actually good, it doesn't make the Top 100.

The sum of each game's ratings is divided by its number of voters, and then run through a few special formula—including a confidence rating that penalises games that receive too few votes—to produce the final Top 100 score.

We then make a few custom tweaks. In the interest of variety, we restrict the list to one game per series—we'll only include multiple if we feel the games are different enough from each other to both be worth mentioning, for instance Baldur's Gates 2 and 3. Otherwise the lower scoring games in a series are removed.

For the final step, every voter can pitch for one change to the list—promoting a game higher, or demoting it lower. Each pitch is voted on by the wider team, and if it gets a majority vote in favour, the change is made. Where that's happened, we've noted the editor responsible for its new placing.

Only after all that do we arrive at the 100 games you'll find below. We feel it's an accurate reflection of the PC Gamer team, and who we are as gamers—our best attempt to corral our subjective, varied tastes into a list of games we wholeheartedly recommend. As always, we'd love to hear what you think—both of the list and how we make it. If you've got thoughts to share, email us at editors@pcgamer.com. Enjoy!

Note: Top 100 voting was completed in July, prior to the release of games such as Borderlands 4, Battlefield 6, Hades 2, Hollow Knight: Silksong and Silent Hill f. These will all be eligible for next year's list.

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100. Unavowed

Released: August 8, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 210.60, promoted by Robin Valentine

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: I'm extremely relieved that Unavowed managed to slip in at the end—though it deserves to be so much higher. This is Wadjet Eye's best adventure game, and thus simply one of the best adventure games ever made, whether you're an old-school point-and-click aficionado or have more modern sensibilities. A smart, pleasingly tangled supernatural story; a fascinating roster of supernatural investigators, from a hardboiled fire mage to a spirit medium with a tiny BFF, waiting to help you on your cases; clever puzzles that don't outstay their welcome—I love it. If you've got an appetite for urban supernatural affairs like Dresden Files or Constantine, you're gonna have a great time.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I'm a little sad that no one's really picked up the formula laid down by Unavowed—even Wadjet itself—because it feels like a really strong case to me for how point-and-click adventures can modernise for the new era. So much of the genre is about nostalgia and throwbacks, but by bringing the best of it together with BioWare-inspired elements such as a party of companions and a story full of heavy moral choices, Unavowed feels really fresh and different.

99. Cities: Skylines

Released: August 10, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 213.12, promoted by Fraser Brown

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: The sequel has dented the brand, but the original Cities: Skylines remains a supremely impressive city builder, elevated by years of DLC and mods. It's better than the follow up in nearly every regard—including being considerably better looking. If you've got a sudden craving to become a modern urban planner, there simply isn't a better option, and I suspect this will be the case for a very long time.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: City builders are thriving, in part because so many developers are putting their own specific, weird or cosy twists on the genre. If you want the pure hit, though—the 100% uncut thrill of residential zoning, tax policies and traffic flow management—Cities: Skylines has spent the last decade as the undisputed king.

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Cities: Skylines is the world's best lesson in the incomparable power of the noble roundabout.

98. Against The Storm

Released: December 8, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 213.80, promoted by Evan Lahti

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: It strikes a perfect balance of resource-accumulation coziness (bake pies for frogs, brew beavers beer, delight your heat-loving lizards by assigning them to work in a kiln) and managing the looming stress of the storm, which pours on ever-increasing hardships that drive your animal and human villagers away or kill them outright. In a game about imperial settlements, it asks you to be thoughtful about your impact on the environment: the cost of each felled tree is felt, as nature itself resents your presence and gets more dangerous as you cut further into it.

The art is warm, effortlessly readable, and original. The structure of the game is one of the most clever I've seen in a roguelike—each run is one leg of an excursion into an overworld map's fog of war. The latest DLC adds gloomy bats as a playable species, and a giant fuzzy creature-pet you need to placate by throwing resources at it.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: On paper, 'roguelite citybuilder' is my personal videogame nightmare. But Against the Storm is so devilishly moreish that I've struggled to put it down. Its dark and dreary vibe is surprisingly cosy, and there's no better feeling than finally getting the blueprint for that one building you need to have your entire encampment running like a well-oiled machine.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Far more than a gimmick, the roguelite structure of randomised modifiers and choose-between-three-things upgrades works so well to enhance Against the Storm's win condition. You're not here to build a city that lasts. Your job is to satisfy your liege's demands and get out of dodge—moving on to the next town. Whatever buildings you're offered, whatever randomly generated threats are thrown your way, there's always a path to victory if you're flexible enough to use the options you're given. In the very best runs, that victory arrives moments before the inevitable disaster—when you've pushed the economy and your people beyond breaking point in order to squeeze out the last few production cycles needed to finish the job.

97. Dave the Diver

Released: June 28, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 218.12

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: This quaint-seeming underwater platformer is actually a bottomless array of features and minigames. "Surely weapon upgrading will be the last feature I unlock," you naively say to yourself before unlocking a photography system, fish farming, seahorse racing, and a multi-hour sea-people storyline. Otherwise, the over-the-top anime cutscenes (one of the DLCs introduces Godzilla) pair well with Dave's coastal calm.

Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: Yeah, when I was creeping through a stealth section while armed guards hunted me, I asked myself "Is this game ever going to stop giving me new stuff to do?" Nope. Even the end credits has a new minigame to play.

96. Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director's Cut

Released: February 27, 2014 | Top 100 Score: 218.40

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I like games where wizards and warriors go into a dungeon, avoid traps, fight monsters, and emerge with a pile of loot, and I also like games where hackers and cyborgs go into a corporation, avoid cameras, fight security guards, and emerge with a cache of data. Shadowrun: Dragonfall looks at the similarities between fantasy dungeon crawls and cyberpunk heists, takes one in each hand, and says, "Now kiss!"

The result is a turn-based RPG full of engagingly warped takes on the clichés. The dragon doesn't demand tribute, they host a talk show and demand attention. The dwarf doesn't craft magic swords, they code ultimate leet warez. And the hub's not a medieval town, it's an anarchist collective in the middle of Berlin.

95. Dusk

Released: December 10, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 218.40

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: The trailblazer of indie boomer shooters is still hard to beat after seven years and hundreds of lo-fi, movement and exploration-heavy FPSes released in its wake. Dusk remains fresh and surprising, even on repeat playthroughs. It manages breathtaking visuals (E2M4, E3M7) that once again show how art direction can trump fidelity. Dusk is also a very funny game, boasting some of the most earned jump scares in all of gaming, an aspect of the shooter that prefaced creator David Szymanski's breakout horror game, Iron Lung.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I love Dusk because it looks old, but it feels new: There's a clear reverence for the games that inspired it, but it doesn't wallow in nostalgia the way lesser games might. The stripped-down approach to the genre is equally great. It works brilliantly well because it's so pure—just guns, weird bad guys, clever levels, and nothing to do but shoot.

94. Metaphor: ReFantazio

Released: October 11, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 219.00

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Not into Persona? I wasn't, either, and it didn't matter—even if you aren't comparing it to some of Atlus' other games, Metaphor: ReFantazio stands on its own two leather boots as an excellent JRPG. Which it shouldn't be, because "it's an election campaign trail" is a terrible elevator pitch for a genre that usually hinges on killing god at some point.

That still happens, but the road to get there is downright fascinating—and surprisingly thoughtful. Mind, I'd never been exposed to Atlas' writing before, but I was always astonished at how cleverly it played around with the very serious themes it juggled. The flawed concept of utopia, the dangers of nationalism, the way people in power turn us on each other to hold onto it.

Also, you can turn into a giant fantasy mecha and hit someone with a sword very hard.

Overall, Metaphor: ReFantazio is bursting with intriguing fantasy politics, well-written characters, and a main villain I absolutely did not develop a strong crush on. Stop asking.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: It might not be the highest-ranked JRPG on this list, but I remain convinced Metaphor is the greatest JRPG ever made, taking all the good stuff from Persona 5 and sticking it in a better game. As an added bonus: no more school.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Persona's rag-tag teen shtick is losing its relatability as I barrel into my 30s, which makes me all the more grateful Metaphor exists. Fantasy, politics, and like Harvey said, a whole heaping of hot villains to love-hate. It's shorter than a Persona game with a lot less min-maxing to stress out over, too.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: The only videogame brave enough to just make Reinhard von Lohengramm its primary antagonist and so, by default, one of the best videogames ever made.

93. Hotline Miami

Released: October 23, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 219.20

Jake Tucker, PC Gaming Show Editorial Director: Fast, brutal, and utterly hypnotic, Hotline Miami is a game that grabs you by the throat and demands attention. It's a puzzle game at heart, with every room being a conundrum solved only through violence. You slam through doors, batter white-suited Russian gangsters with hammers (and other bits), and do everything in your power to survive in this top-down fever dream of neon, blood, and carnage. It's twitchy, unforgiving and a total headfuck if you pay attention to the story.

All of this is threaded through with a killer soundtrack that pulses through the entire game. Each track doesn't just accompany the violence, it feels like it drives it, surreal electronic music that amps up Hotline Miami's grim atmosphere.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: This OST still makes up a big chunk of my workout playlist.

92. Lethal Company

Released: October 23, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 219.40

Elie Gould, News Writer: Multiplayer wackiness is at an all-time high right now and that is thanks in large part to this hilarious co-op horror game. The best part? Zeekerss just gives players all the tools they need to create some zany moments and unforgettable memories and then just stands back and lets everyone get on with it.

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: We were sprinting back to the dropship when, inches away from the door, an Eyeless Dog snatched me up in its teeth. My teammate, who had been just two meters ahead of me, was puzzled when I didn't walk in behind him, having just heard me over prox chat seconds ago. "Uh… Evan?" He waits nine seconds for me to appear. With perfect comedic timing, the Eyeless Dog casually walks into the spaceship like it belongs there and eats my teammate.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Turns out, positional audio might be the single best game mechanic for making you laugh—Lethal Company might have a lot of imitators, but that's only because it was the first to recognise this immutable fact. It's also gone and revitalised (potentially created?) a genre unto itself.

Yes, the term "friendslop" is a little derogatory, and I reckon we ought to come up with something better, but "nu-party game" doesn't quite slide off the tongue. Besides, I could never mean anything by it. Because after playing similar games as well—including the excellent Peak—I'm just glad these indie playrooms are giving me an excuse to hang out with my mates again.

91. Microsoft Flight Simulator

Released: August 18, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 219.43

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Alright, so the 2024 edition was pretty donked up. But Flight Sim 2020's 1:1 scale virtual Earth remains one of the most impressive technical marvels in videogames, one that's responsible for the closest I've ever come to having a spiritual experience with a controller in my hands: soaring north through Italy to approach the Alps rising to meet the evening sun, and feeling firsthand how terribly small we are.

Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: It's the rare game that feels like we haven't quite invented the hardware powerful enough to handle it, and may not for another decade. The level of detail in the planes is simply ridiculous, with each and every switch and button and toggle modeled and completely functional, which alone puts every other sim game to shame. And once you've gotten over the beauty of the cockpit, you can look out the window and see, y'know, the entire planet in real time. It's still hard to believe this sim really exists.

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90. Team Fortress 2

Released: October 10, 2007 | Top 100 Score: 219.60

Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: Still the pinnacle of the class-based shooter, the world's premiere hat simulator, and the exemplar of how to build-out and maintain a truly community-driven title. Valve continues to issue periodic updates, albeit using crowdsourced content, and every so often still surprises fans by doing things like releasing a new comic (after a "relatively short" seven-year delay). Not bad going for a game that, on October 10, will somehow be 18 years old.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I'd be hard-pressed to find a game that's contributed as much to internet gaming culture as Team Fortress 2—with memes that've been burned into the public consciousness with all the fire of a branding iron. Couple that with some of the best class shooter gameplay to ever do it, and you've got one fresh-baked cultural touchstone ready to go. In other words, what makes Team Fortress 2 a good videogame? Well, if it were a bad videogame, I wouldn't be sittin' here, discussin' it with ya, now would I?

89. Peak

Released: June 16, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 220.20

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Peak came out of nowhere and climbed to the top of my estimation—it's basically everything you'd want out of its genre of friendship-based co-op fun. You and your friends must ascend while maintaining your stamina, naturally crafting moments of peak physical comedy via the power of positional voice chat and a physics engine that hates you. Or you can just yell at your co-workers. I'm over it, Mollie, don't worry.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Help me up that damn cliff next time, Harvey!

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: No.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I love that Peak is adjacent to, but not mimicking, the crop of co-op friendly horror games spawned from Phasmophobia. Unlike Lethal Company or REPO, Peak is bright, inviting, and enduringly simple. Yet that doesn't betray a level of skill and coordination needed to clear its highest peaks. You can feel the expertise of two skilled indies in Peak. Yes, it was mostly made in a month, but there's high craft here.

88. The Sims 4

Released: September 2, 2014 | Top 100 Score: 220.20

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Other life sims have attempted to knock The Sims 4 off its throne, but it continues to be top dog. If you're willing to look past a small loan's worth of DLC, The Sims 4 still excels with a well-oiled simulation, and a build mode I wish more games would crib from.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Do I think the Sims 4 deserves to be the only game of its ilk? In a just world, and given EA's reputation for microtransactions, maybe not. But as Mollie rightly points out, nobody's managed to compete with it. Is the genre cursed by a witch? Perhaps.

Lauren Morton, SEO Editor: The Sims 4 returns after the coup I committed against the series last year. Inzoi's launch this year hasn't really managed to shake The Sims 4's stranglehold on this genre of one, so on the list it stays, just banished to the 80s. Every year there are two wolves inside me: the one who still spends dozens of hours meticulously decorating houses each year and the one who knows that each new expansion brings increasingly cursed save file bugs to the game. Maybe next year I'll get everyone to vote in The Sims 2 now that we've got the Legacy Collection available.

87. Subnautica

Released: January 23, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 220.33

Elie Gould, News Writer: I can't go any deeper than up to my shoulders in the sea so it just goes to show how much I love Subnautica for all its beautiful corals, intuitive crafting, and fun base building that I'm able to stomach the sickening thalassophobia.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Timeless survival crafting goodness, easily gotten on a bargain these days.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Subnautica may be the best videogame fakeout I've ever encountered. An exciting sci-fi game! An intriguing exploration adventure! Some… weird criticisms of capitalism here and there? And after lulling me into lazy-eyed complacency, my first goddamn Leviathan encounter. Most of the noises I made in that moment were not components of the English language, and of the bits that were, I cannot repeat them here, but it was balls-out terror worthy of anything conjured by Frictional. Those undersea horrors were my least favorite part of the game—I get creeped out by Jacques Cousteau documentaries, so going face to face with massive, unearthly horrors lurking in the black depths of an alien world is definitely not my thing—but it lent Subnautica a sense of intensity it otherwise would've lacked, making it unforgettable in the process.

86. Rocket League

Released: July 7, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 220.50

Joe Donnelly, PC Gaming Show Deputy Editor: Rocket League is the epitome of 'easy to learn, difficult to master'. At top-level, it's a football-aping sports sim about small cars knocking around a massive ball inside a cage. But beneath this veneer lies a game of skill, tactics, aerial mastery and astute physics manipulation, with a decade's worth of crossover and customisation content.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: I have such fond memories of the times I used to get home from work and jump straight into split screen Rocket League with a friend. As Joe points out, it's a magical combo of being easy enough to pick up and play, but still with enough depth and skill ceiling that you find yourself striving towards mastery. It's a surprisingly hard balance to achieve with a game.

85. Thank Goodness You're Here!

Released: August 1, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 220.80

Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: Still one of the only games that has made me ugly cackle at my PC. I'm not convinced I understand what a comedy slapformer is, but I know for sure that I want more of them. Especially if Matt Berry is somehow involved. Thank Goodness You're Here! is filled with minigames that are as unsettling as they are entertaining.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Thank Goodness You're Here! is an unequivocally brilliant comedy game. Not "funny for a game" but simply funny. Phenomenal gags, lots of slapping, and a tiny man who defies the laws of reality.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: It's an absurdist satire, sure, but also incredibly loving in its homage to Northern England. An absolute delight, finally beating out Jazzpunk for me as the best comedy you can play on your PC.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I grew up on shows like The Goodies and The Young Ones so I thought British comedy was in my veins, but the third time Thank Goodness You're Here! expected me to piss myself at a man who collects WWII memorabilia having to clean up chimney dust I realized it was too British even for me.

84. Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Released: December 3, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 221.00

Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: It doesn't feel like Microsoft knows what to do with Halo these days, but luckily it got one thing right: The Master Chief Collection is the definitive way to enjoy the series' golden years. It's a generous package too: Five superb Bungie titles plus the half-decent Halo 4, with multiplayer modes aplenty including co-op and crossplay functionality. It's the single best way both start, and finish, the fight.

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Battle rifle <3

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I have to second Lincoln here, Battle Rifle indeed <3. After firmly switching to PC and not having a way to replay Halo for many years, the classic games dimmed in my memory a bit. But the old magic returned immediately when I booted up Halo: Reach on my desktop for the first time at the end of 2019. For my money, the double Scarab fight at the end of Halo 3 is the defining moment of the series, and an all-timer FPS fight.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I played the hell out of Halo 1—in its intended Castilian Spanish (don't worry about it)—back when I was a kid, but I'll be honest: I never really understood the hype. That is until pandemic lockdowns led me to return to the game and finally try to beat it solo on Legendary difficulty. It was like sharpening the whole thing to a fine point. Suddenly, facets of the design that had slid off my incredibly smooth brain like water from a duck's back became impossible to ignore. The placement of enemies and composition of their units, the precise natures of every individual weapon, the layout of each combat encounter: it all dovetailed into something I actually enjoyed ramming my head into over and over again.

And then there's Halo 2, which, battle rifle <3.

83. Echo Point Nova

Released: September 24, 2024| Top 100 Score: 221.00

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Echo Point Nova is a sprawling open-world FPS for trickshot sickos. It's co-op Doom for friends who'd spend entire nights trying to do cool stuff in Tony Hawk or Skate. It's the "yes and" movement shooter unconcerned with rational speed limits and unapologetically made for a mouse. It's the cure to boomer shooter bloat—all killer, no filler, flow state action ripped out of a reality where Tribes sold more copies than Call of Duty.

Echo Point Nova is a beautiful object that I'm continually impressed by: 1-4 player co-op that's equal parts arena shooter and extreme sports platformer. It's got Crackdown agility orbs. You can slap stickers on your hoverboard. There's a modifier to turn on friendly fire, and another that makes the floor lava.

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: You can use a grappling hook on clouds, you can hoverboard up walls, and you can blast guys with a shotgun while backflipping in first person. What else is there to say?

82. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Released: April 24, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.63

Jess Kinghorn, Hardware Writer: The isolated residents of Lumiere know their days are only ever counting down. Every year the Paintress across the sea wakes to inscribe a new number upon her monolith. If you're that age or older, well, time's up and you 'gommage', becoming nothing more than petals upon the breeze.

Staring down this end, the titular expeditioners instead choose to spend their final year of life taking the fight to the Paintress through many, many turn-based fights. The twist here is that combat features an element of timing, with perfect parries against nightmarish painted creations netting you devastating counter attacks.

Marinated in the angst of many classic console JRPGs from the early oughts, Clair Obscur wrings out its existential set up for all its worth with a cast of party members I'm actually close in age to. Between that, lively dust-ups, and world-building that wouldn't feel out of place in a premiere YA novel, it's little wonder this French-developed RPG has since become my whole personality.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I don't have enough good words to say about Clair Obscur—I could talk about its very competent and interesting spin on turn-based RPG combat, but what really hit me sideways was its story. Clair Obscur starts out a solid, intriguing jog, then breaks out into a dead sprint after the end of Act 2 that had me glued to my screen until I'd finished it.

It's rare my opinion on a narrative flips so quickly from mild enjoyment to absolute fascination, but Clair Obscur really did just pull a magic trick on me. Except the dove in this question was a fistful of existential dread, and the magician punched me in the face after yelling "tah-dah!"

Also, you can electrocute a mime to death and steal its baguette.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: The most aggressively French Final Fantasy X you can play, which I mean as a complement. I don't love it as much as some people on team—unlike Harvey, I wasn't enamoured by its third act—but overall there's much to praise about Clair Obscur's design, story and characters.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: If I had my way, this game would be banned from the list forever just for those absolutely criminal Gestral Beach platforming sections.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I respect Phil's opinion, but not Robin's, and will be challenging him to single combat over it. The criminally terrible nature of the minigames is half of the point. All JRPGs need an optional, awfully-designed activity, like FF7 Remake's squatting section. Just be glad we didn't see Gustave drop it low.

81. Blue Prince

Released: April 10, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.97

Chris Livingston, Senior Editor: I never would have guessed there'd be a fresh take on the now-ancient "walking around a mysterious house solving a bunch of puzzles" genre—but then Blue Prince became a nearly year-long obsession for me. Its roguelite elements can be occasionally frustrating, but the depth of the mansion's mysteries and the sheer brilliance of developer Tonda Ros' puzzle designs made this one of my favorite games of the past, I dunno, decade?

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Like a fool, I went into Blue Prince expecting a short, breezy 10-or-so-hour puzzler that I could lose myself in between playing larger games. But then it just… keeps going, each mystery hinting at something deeper than I ever expected. If I have one criticism of Blue Prince it's that, at the end of my 77 hours with the game, its late-late-late-late game puzzles became so obtuse that they wore out my patience. If I have a second criticism, it's that the Gallery room is some spectacular bullshit. Everything else, though? Flawless. A perfectly executed mystery box that keeps unfolding in fascinating ways, with an ambience that drives you forward into its surprising twists and heartfelt story.

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80. Stellaris

Released: May 9, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 222.00

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: Though recent DLC and support has been uneven at best, this nearly 10 year old 4X remains a wonderfully rich and dense simulation of a whole galaxy's worth of life, culture, and inevitably war. At this point in its life, it has almost every sci-fi trope you can imagine covered, playing out like a grand and remarkably coherent mash-up of every space sci-fi series in the universe.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Yeah, that's absolutely the appeal, here. Sure, it's a great real-time 4X, but there are loads of great 4Xs—Stellaris is special because it's like 20 great sci-fi games rolled into one. And it's elevated even further by the incredible mods, like Star Trek: New Horizons, an absurdly huge Star Trek mod that lets you take control of a species from the show, leading them from their first warp-flight adventures to galactic conquest. Stellaris is effectively the best Star Trek game ever made.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I am a sentient communist rock on a quest to dominate the galaxy. Also, Stellaris is good.

79. Cult of the Lamb

Released: August 11, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 222.00

Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: Cult of the Lamb is one of those games you expect to keep you entertained for a couple of hours, but quickly becomes an all consuming entity that perfectly blends cult management and heretic slaying roguelike mechanics. There is nothing better than running your own little cult full of woodland creatures who praise the very ground you walk on.

Elie Gould, News Writer: This game makes me go non-verbal for hours, would recommend.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Since the first time I saw The Wicker Man I've wanted to be in charge of my own pagan settlement like Lord Summerisle. Cult of the Lamb comes closest to that, only instead of Chrisopher Lee at his peak I'm an adorable sheep.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: There's such a magic to the way Cult of the Lamb mashes its two genres together. In some ways, both halves are quite shallow, and by the time I was done with my original run, I left the game feeling like I'd enjoyed my time with it but there wasn't enough depth to ever bring me back. A few months later, I had to jump back in just to check out one of the updates for a news piece… and before I knew it, I was completely hooked all over again, throwing myself at all the new post-game content.

It's the absolute definition of a game that's more than just the sum of its parts—the way village life and dungeon runs feed into each other makes for one of the best videogame hooks ever.

78. Total War: Warhammer 3

Released: February 17, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 222.00

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: The joy of early Total War games was the zoom. Order a block of soldiers around, then scroll the mousewheel and watch individual soldiers charge – mindblowing 25 years ago. Warhammer gives us back that joyous spectacle, because when you zoom in it's no longer dudes with spears, it's a bear-rider slamming into hot pink daemons.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: After 620 hours (not to mention 2,000 hours with the first and second), I still find myself loading up Total War: Warhammer 3 and hopping into Immortal Empires. The joy of Total War is that every campaign is different; new early game challenges, late-game obstacles, random factions in ascendancy—it lends itself so well to repeat play. This is also helped by Creative Assembly's continued support through DLC, but also via free updates and reworks that add entirely new features, such as Unusual Locations, or the Dwarf Deeps we got last year.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I've never been able to get on board with Total War. Something about the way combat works is just anathema to me—I can never quite find the fun in it. And yet I've spent hours and hours bashing my head against it in the Total War: Warhammer games, and even bought DLCs I'll probably never be brave enough to try.

I can't help myself—it's the pure authenticity of the series to the lore and history of Warhammer Fantasy that keeps me coming back despite my ineptitude. It's an absolute feast of nostalgia for a longtime fan like myself, bringing in elements from across the decades. Not only does it now include every proper faction the tabletop game had, it dives into wonderful obscurity, resurrecting unit and army ideas from one-off campaigns, hazily remembered White Dwarf articles and even stranger sources.

There are Warhammer games I prefer to play, but I don't think any of them can beat Total War: Warhammer for sheer density of reverence to the franchise.

77. What Remains of Edith Finch

Released: April 25, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 222.00

Joe Donnelly, PC Gaming Show Deputy Editor: What Remains of Edith Finch arrived towards the end of the walking sim craze that swept the 2010s indie scene, but it is, for me, the pinnacle of that movement. In telling the titular character's poignant family story, it is one of the most imaginative, creative, thoughtful, heartfelt and truly unpredictable adventures you'll ever play.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I reviewed What Remains of Edith Finch for PC Gamer back in 2017 and I absolutely stand by its 91% score. Just thinking about it now, all these years later, I still feel that knot in my gut: Such a brilliant yet powerfully sad story, made all the more sorrowful by its inevitability. Calling it a "walking simulator" is accurate but woefully inadequate. It is, as I said back then, a masterful piece of storytelling: Uplifting, devastating, and utterly unforgettable.

76. Alien: Isolation

Released: October 6, 2014 | Top 100 Score: 222.32

Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: The best licensed game ever? Alien: Isolation is one of those rare examples of a game that truly 'gets' the source material, and its setting of Sevastopol is a brilliant slice of retro-futurist design that takes all its cues from the Nostromo while still feeling like its own place. Probably the single best piece of Alien media outside of the first two films, and also just straight-up one of the scariest things I've ever played.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: You're 100% right when you say it 'gets' the source material, Rich. I remember interviewing the Creative Director, Alistair Hope, about working on the game, and it was immediately obvious both him and the team were just massive Alien fans who'd essentially pushed and lobbied to get this made at Creative Assembly. It's still strange to think that the foremost British strategy developer made such an excellent survival horror game, but it shows what you can do when you respect and love the source material.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: No game ever had a better save mechanic. Saving your progress in Alien: Isolation means running up to a dreadfully exposed and wonderfully lit public phone and standing there like a lemon while you wait for the machine to stop beeping at you. It's a fantastic exercise in suspense: craning your head from side to side but unable to look behind you as you pray the xenomorph won't turn you into lunch while you're distracted. Perfection.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: It took a full decade for me to finish this game because I had to keep checking out. I'm a big ol' coward. But I kept coming back! I couldn't help myself. Alien is the pinnacle of sci-fi horror, and Alien: Isolation is the game that captures its horrible magic the best.

75. Monster Hunter: World

Released: August 8, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 223.13

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Oof, it hurts to put World here over 2025's Wilds, but the newer game's sublime monster-killing action can't overcome its flaws: PC performance, lacking challenge, and promising environment systems it does practically nothing with.

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: While Wilds is in desperate need of a redemption arc it may never get, World is a complete package.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: If I were stranded on a monster-infested island, this is the Monster Hunter I'd take with me.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: I mean, I'd probably just take my Insect Glaive… a copy of Monster Hunter World ain't going to do much when you throw it at that hungry Tigrex lumbering towards you.

74. Cyberpunk 2077

Released: December 10, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 218.57, promoted by Ted Litchfield

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Sorry haters, I didn't need a Netflix anime or balance patch to realize a simple truth in December 2020: Cyberpunk was always good. Sure, its many patches really made it sing, but I took the long view from the start: Many all-timer RPGs (some further down this list) were overambitious, uneven, and technically quite shit at launch. CD Projekt, you watch the streets, Troika will watch the skies.

Night City is a triumph, a union of graphical grunt and art direction that has 2077 remaining a benchmarker's favorite. Cyberpunk's main quest is better plotted and paced than The Witcher 3's, while it continues CDPR's industry-leading standard of quality and quantity for side content. The sidequest centering on a VR recreation of Christ's Passion made out of an actual snuff film is pure Philip K. Dickian sci-fi excellence, and one of my very favorite quests in RPG history.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Unlike our true believer Ted here, I had the fortune of coming to Cyberpunk 2077 late—and while I'm willing to take his word for it that the game endured a harsher reception than was strictly deserved, I'm kinda glad I waited. The game I wound up playing was incredibly put together and, best of all, my car didn't explode at random intervals. Phantom Liberty is also a masterclass in DLC, somehow managing to patch itself into the central nervous system of Night City without ruining anything.

Regardless of its jank history, Cyberpunk 2077 has been forged into an all-timer RPG that's deservedly up there with the greats. Also, in the grim corporate future, you can go Cool/Reflex and wavedash your enemies to death.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Like Harvey, I waited nearly four years before jumping into Cyberpunk 2077, and as far as I'm concerned it was the best thing I could've done. The game I played was brilliant: Occasionally hinky, as such massive undertakings inevitably are, but solid, steady, and alive in a way that precious few games are. The city is largely an illusion, yes, but the sensation of depth is so well done—I fast-travelled once to see what it was like, but otherwise I drove everywhere, or often just walked so I could more easily take it all in. Yeah, the future is godawful by every measure, but I could not get enough of it.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I just love Johnny Silverhand, is the thing. He's a prick, an egotist, a selfish asshole, and my bestest pal in the whole world. Getting to know the guy—who never stops being a dickhead, but who has a lot of depth nonetheless—was my favourite part of the whole Cyberpunk 2077 experience.

Andy C: Neither here nor there as far as 2077 goes, but this is the one thing that gives me pause about Cyberpunk 2. How do you possibly pull it off without Johnny?

73. FTL: Faster Than Light

Released: September 14, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 223.41

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Call it nostalgia, but FTL is still one of the first roguelikes I'd recommend to friends. Its Star Trek trappings compliment its narrative pit stops perfectly, and I've yet to play a game since that weaponizes door controls.

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: I'm surprised to see it make our list. I think countless roguelikes have made meals out of its ingredients that leave FTL looking like the primordial soup of modern roguelikes.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Few of the roguelikes that came after it nailed the fundamentals so effortlessly, though. So many of these games are described as "FTL but…" when all we really need is good old fashioned FTL. There's a reason why, all these years later, it's still inspiring studios and comparisons.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Playing the more recent (also great!) Cobalt Core reinforced for me that FTL nailed the essentials; there's so much room for panic, disaster, triage, and triumph in the moments you're micromanaging your crew.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: FTL, a game that can be summed up as: Space hates you. Space hates you so much.

72. Vampire Survivors

Released: October 20, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 223.57

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I'm a certain kind of sucker, and that kind is "put Castlevania stuff in a game and I'll play it." Vampire Survivors pioneered a certain type of breezy time wasting, but after becoming a smash success it began stacking on secrets, characters, and just more more more. It's generous in a way I haven't seen since Terraria. Still, it took the Castlevania expansion to make me fall in love.

It offers structure Vampire Survivors lacked, with a castle to progress through and a huge cast of heroes to unlock by defeating a lore-appropriate boss or upgrading a key weapon, like a grenade into a rocket launcher. (After centuries of Belmonts failing to off Dracula with whips, 21st century teen Soma Cruz got serious). Call it Unlocking Fun Toys: The Game.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Just a lethal, time-devouring videogame. You know the phantom cigar Venom Snake gets in MGS5? It's that. Fire it up on a flight and before you've looked up from the OLED glow of your Steam Deck you're at passport control.

71. Alan Wake 2

Released: October 27, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 224.42

Elie Gould, News Writer: A truly horrifying experience that somehow makes me feel impressed and grateful for all the wonderful quirky monstrosities as they scare the living daylight out of me.

Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: When Elie recommends you play a horror game, it's always a good move to listen. No one knows horror like them, and Alan Wake 2 was one of the games that they simply couldn't (and still can't) stop talking about. Having now put myself through the terrors, I completely understand why.

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: Alan Wake 2 feels like Remedy's quirky, distinctive style at its most unrestrained. Weirdness, melodrama, and highly specific Nordic references abound, packed into a story layered across different mediums woven seamlessly together. From novel pages to radio excerpts to TV ads to a sprawling FBI pinboard to an entire Finnish horror movie, there's so much to explore and experience in the game—all of it contributing to making Alan Wake's world feel expansive and lived-in.

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70. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory

Released: March 29, 2005 | Top 100 Score: 224.57

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Our staff tends to skew toward the Looking Glass lineage of stealth games, but Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory is the sneak-em-up I keep installed for a rainy day. The controls are a bit weird now, but Chaos Theory is still unmatched in terms of pure sneaking. Sam Fisher's dynamic crouching animations build tension when approaching guards, and Michael Ironside's commanding performance is still a treat.

But really, it's the levels that make Chaos Theory an amazing replay to this day. The cargo ship, the bank, Hokkaido—Ubisoft just nailed it on the third go-around. What stands out about Chaos Theory now, and why I still consider it "fresh" compared to today's stealth genre, is its tight, linear encounter design that offers multiple solutions without giving so much freedom that challenge is optional (the Far Cry and MGSV approach).

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Morgan's nailed it. I'm a sucker for a ship level, and Chaos Theory's cargo ship stands at the pinnacle of the trope.

69. Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced

Released: September 17, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 224.73

Joe Donnelly, PC Gaming Show Deputy Editor: It may be 12 years old, but Grand Theft Auto 5 is the best open-world crime simulator out there today. Driven in part by the success of its now standalone offshoot GTA Online, GTA 5 has shown remarkable staying power—with its Legacy and Enhanced editions both staples at the higher end of Steam's most played charts week-to-week. GTA 6 is coming, but, right now, GTA 5 still ain't going anywhere.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: I'm almost annoyed at how compelling GTA Online can be, because it's an absolute mess of a thing—one of the most unintuitive online experiences around. The fantasy of it far outstrips what Rockstar actually delivered back in the early 2010's, but there's nothing else like it even today. At its best, it's an effortless story generator—a frequently hilarious way to spend time with friends. Just be prepared to also have to deal with it at its worst.

68. Resident Evil 2 (Remake)

Released: January 25, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 224.73

Joe Donnelly, PC Gaming Show Deputy Editor: Survival horror has made some phenomenal strides in recent years, with a deluge of old-school remakes reimagining a golden era of the genre for newer audiences. The Resident Evil 2 remake is pretty much responsible for that, taking us back in time with Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield as they fight to survive Raccoon City's zombie apocalypse. Shinier and scarier, the RE2 remake is the quintessential retelling of a classic.

Elie Gould, News Writer: Is this the scariest Resident Evil? No. Is it the wackiest? Also no. But it does manage to straddle the two in a way that somehow makes it the most Evil Resident of them all.

67. Deep Rock Galactic

Released: May 13, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 225.00

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: DRG's popularity isn't just enduring, it's wonderfully enthusiastic—no other online multiplayer community is anywhere near as relentlessly positive. And I really think that's a reflection of the kind of game DRG is.

It's not just about coordinated violence, it's about true cooperation—working together to creatively solve tricky problems. And thanks to some of the best deployed procedural generation in the industry, those problems are ever-fresh, as you discover unique and endlessly surprising environments with your fellow dwarves.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere of blue collar camaraderie and the entirely uncynical progression system wonderfully foster a sense of genuine dwarven pride. Rock and stone, to the bone.

Rory Norris, Guides Writer: Did I hear a rock and stone?

66. Mass Effect Legendary Edition

Released: May 14, 2021 | Top 100 Score: 225.16

Robert Jones, Print Editor: The fact that this remastered trilogy is frequently going for five bucks on Steam is just ridiculous, as it delivers the definitive way to play the entire Mass Effect trilogy, which remains buckets of fun today in 2025. Yes, sure, the quite clunky third-person cover shooting now feels a little dated, and the whole Paragon/Renegade morality system childishly simple, but the world, characters and writing remain great reasons to board the Normandy.

Tyler Wilde, US Editor-in-Chief: The military conspiracy plot is a bit more Call of Duty than I would've admitted back in the day, but the Mass Effect trilogy is still the most I've felt like the Picard of a little spaceship, getting to know a quirky and loveable crew of humans and aliens in a way that isn't hurried or couched in irony.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: We're PC Gamer, and this is our 66th favourite videogame on the Citadel.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: These are some of my favorite games of all time, but it's still insane that they let you punch a reporter and a ton of gamers took it as an epic win moment. Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani was right. They let a deep state black ops killer just go nuts across the galaxy with no oversight. Commander Shepard should have been dishonorably discharged for punching her, relegated to hosting an operator space podcast where he hawked N7-themed coffee and nootropics.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: Ted… I've had enough of your disingenuous assertions.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Shepard should've been discharged for banging a subordinate, Ted. I don't think the Systems Alliance is real big on the whole "rules" thing.

65. Counter-Strike 2

Released: August 21, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 225.40

Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: Counter-Strike 2 is a very Valve game. It's billed as the first true sequel in series history, but it's really more about being the definitive version of the same competitive shooter we've been playing for decades, with the focus on improvements to things like smoke physics, UI and contemporary quality-of-life features. In a field packed with would-be rivals, there's a reason CS2 attracts 30 million players a month: It's still as brilliant as ever.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: It's the spot to go to get screamed at by Russian teenagers.

Elie Gould, News Writer: Amidst all the big glossy visual upgrades CS2 still manages to not be optimised very well, but hey, did you see how bullets pierce smoke? That's pretty cool. But I'll take just about anything at this point, I couldn't get Valorant or Overwatch 2 onto the top 100, but at least there's CS2.

64. Diablo 2

Released: June 28, 2000 | Top 100 Score: 225.55

Tyler Wilde, US Editor-in-Chief: I'm still not convinced that this genre is better with flashier lighting effects, non-stop rebalancing patches, and battle passes. The Diablo 2: Resurrected remaster is excellent if you want a more modern (but not too modern) way to play through a classic ARPG adventure that came out before hell had to be experienced through a film of live service cruft.

Jake Tucker, PC Gaming Show Editorial Director: Diablo 2 Resurrected made basically no changes and proved good design is eternal. Later Diablo titles always have a "but" in there somewhere, but Diablo 2 is astonishingly fun, letting you steamroll entire dungeons for the sweet, sweet loot within.

63. Garry's Mod

Released: November 29, 2006 | Top 100 Score: 225.82

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: I used to spend long hours surfing Garry's Mod's server browser, just to see what strange, esoteric game modes I could find—like a hyperspecific Quantum Leap themed entirely around Half-Life 2 assets and late-'00s internet humour. Maybe this time I'm a watermelon, racing other watermelons across an abstract obstacle course suspended in the air. Next time it could be anything—RP, bunnyhop platforming, zombie horde shooting, whatever the server owner had cobbled together.

Elie Gould, News Writer: I went to dinner with some mates the other day, and it quickly just devolved into us talking about how much we miss playing Trouble in Terrorist Town, even if no one in the group can lie to save their life. Gary's Mod had so many gems, many of which play an influential role in tons of games to this day.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I'm very, very glad Elie's mentioned the good ol' TTT—because I feel everybody forgets that games like Among Us had their roots there. Kids these days don't know their history.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: When I was 14 years old, I had to get my first colonoscopy for ulcerative colitis and spent the entire day before chugging laxative mixed with Gatorade, pooping my goddamn brains out until my entire body was emptied of refuse and sin.

I spent that day playing a custom Garry's Mod racing game where you launched a watermelon and bounced around with Source physics, potentially breaking apart if you crashed into a surface too hard. For some reason, this is now a crystalized, fond memory for me. 10/10 one of the Games of All Time.

62. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2

Released: December 6, 2004 | Top 100 Score: 226.00

Robert Jones, Print Editor: Still, twenty years later, the most interesting Star Wars game ever made, as well as a fantastic (albeit unfinished) RPG. Some of the characters, but notably Kreia, are GOAT territory, and they're brought to life by mature and challenging writing that takes the Star Wars universe into areas no other Star Wars game, TV show, or film has done. Hey Disney, can we have more Star Wars stories like this, please?

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Most of Star Wars is playing checkers while KotOR 2 was beating Deep Blue at chess. Star Wars is a beloved setting with history, politics, and economics that make no sense, but The Sith Lords took it extremely seriously, following its ideas to their logical conclusions, and the result is the best Star Wars story ever.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Sara Kestelman's performance as Kreia is perfect, and KOTOR 2 would be severely diminished without her. It's an all-timer act made all the more impressive by the fact Kestelman isn't a videogame voice actor—this is one of only two games she ever featured in, and she spent the rest of her life on the stage. And yet, she turned in one of the most iconic performances ever as everyone's favourite objectivist space grandma.

61. Yakuza 0

Released: August 1, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 226.20

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: If somebody walks in at the wrong time they can get the wrong idea about a game. To my girlfriend, Yakuza 0 is that game where you help weirdoes like the wimpy rock band who want to be tough. Only she's right. I've heard "real fans" care about the plot and the oddball substories aren't a big deal. Real fans can get lost: Yakuza 0 is about helping a kid buy a spank mag.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Wait, I thought Yakuza 0 was a Scalextric simulator?

Lauren Morton, SEO Editor: Guys stop, Yakuza 0 is a cabaret club management sim.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: One of my only saved screenshots on Steam is a picture of my real estate manager—a chicken called Nugget—engaged in a 'money battle' with someone named 'the Pleasure King' for dominance of an establishment called the 'No-Panties BBQ'. Yakuza 0 is a story about organised crime.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: I'd point out that its main story is genuinely the highpoint of the series, extracting serious melodrama and pathos out of its inciting battle over a small plot of abandoned Tokyo turf. But who am I to stand in the way of the memes?

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60. Arma 3

Released: September 12, 2013 | Top 100 Score: 226.61

Andy Edser, Hardware Writer: Few games are as crunchy as Arma 3, and that's probably a good thing. Twist your fingers around the unforgiving interface and put up with the woeful performance, however, and you'll find the milsim to end all milsims. It's the best "hike for two hours before being shot in a bush" simulator on the market, and at least one of those should make this list, right?

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: Low-key an outstanding hangout game with lots of downtime and goofing off. Still one of the biggest banner-carriers for modding and user-generated content on PC.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Seriously, though, don't sleep on the depth of Arma 3's Steam Workshop page. If you're looking for a recommendation, I have lost many an hour to Pilgrimage, a singleplayer scenario that tasks you with retrieving the body of your deceased brother from one of the many churches found across Altis's enormous map. Think of it like an orienteering RPG—you help civilians and interrogate soldiers in order to gain clues that help you narrow down your initially overwhelming needle-in-a-haystack search.

59. Satisfactory

Released: September 10, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 227.14

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Satisfactory is a building game about optimization in the same way that eating is about ingesting calories. You could take the most boring path to efficiency, but wouldn't you rather spend weeks designing a series of artfully suspended conveyor belts that deliver pizzas straight into your mouth? Why live off chicken and broccoli when you could build a tower taller than god whose only purpose is producing the exact number of ingredients needed to assemble one perfect al pastor burrito every 15 seconds?

…It's possible this metaphor has gone way off track. But that's what Satisfactory is all about really: devoting hours to silly, elaborate, or mathematically precise constructs in whatever form you find creatively nourishing. Harnessing a huge open world sandbox of resources to graduate from making iron bars up to non-fusile uranium sometimes first requires building an elevated train network from one corner of the planet to the other, y'know?

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: On my journey to exploring efficient factory design, I used the Satisfactory Tools site's calculator to create a deranged nightmare spaghetti hell of industry that outputs 2.819 rotors and 0.598 assemblers per minute. I keep it around purely to irritate the sort of player who would have an aneurism at that sort of behaviour.

58. Stalker: Call of Prypiat – Enhanced Edition

Released: May 20, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 227.17

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Some of us want to be the heroes of grand, sweeping fantasy narratives. Others want to be shot to death for a tin of Spam in a world that doesn't care about you. Call of Prypiat's ever-lovable, ever-janky Zone is the home of the latter camp, at least while GSC finishes cooking its last run of patches for Stalker 2.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: One of my many, many dirty gamer secrets is that I can't really differentiate between the games of the original Stalker series. Who's to say what really happened in any of them? But Joshua is absolutely correct: The vibe of the place, and its absolute willingness to kill you at any time, is unsurpassed. I loved just being there: The purpose of my presence was almost irrelevant.

57. Nier: Automata

Released: March 17, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 227.60

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Listen, I think we've all probably hopped on the 'haha, game with sexy androids' train when it comes to Nier: Automata. Behind that gentle mockery, though, is the understanding that Yoko Taro made one of the most effective, haunting, and unique action RPGs out there. And that you can do that while still having sexy androids—these aren't mutually exclusive ideas.

Its freshness score is only so low, in my mind, because it shifted the landscape in ways we're all a bit tired of. Its imitators might be able to replicate the hot robot people, but they're seldom able to duplicate the deep, existential dread the game heaps upon you. It also exists in the Kojima-brand tradition of "there ain't no rules saying a game has to move in a straight line"—taking some truly big swings as to what you can get away with when designing a videogame.

Also, its soundtrack is one of the best in the business. Look me in the eye and tell me that Possessed by Disease isn't a banger, I double-dare you.

56. System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster

Released: June 26, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 228.00

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Sorry to JC Denton, but System Shock 2 is my favourite imsim of all time. Its pitch-perfect horror, innumerable secrets, endless character builds, and absolutely unhinged techno soundtrack combine to produce a game I'll never stop coming back to as long as I live, especially with Nightdive's fantastic remaster that finally hit this year.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I love this game to bits, particularly the Nightdive Remaster, but I've got to dissent on which System Shock we put on the list this year: I think the best place for a new player to start in the series is Nightdive's 2023 full remake of System Shock 1, which is also my gold standard for a videogame remake.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Long story short, System Shock 2 is the game that cemented my love for videogames. I have no idea what prompted me to buy it—probably just the nifty box—but I was hooked immediately. Joshua is correct across the board but I also have to shout out the audio effects: The voices of Shodan and Xerxes, the screams of mutant monkeys in empty halls, the lonely warbling of cyborg assassins, and even the background beeping of computer systems are pitch-perfect and unforgettable. When I see System Shock 2, I hear System Shock 2.

55. The Case of the Golden Idol

Released: October 13, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 228.00

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: Wonderfully intricate detective puzzles unfold into a bizarre and fascinating narrative spanning decades of alternate history. Also, everyone has the most brilliantly ugly faces you've ever seen.

Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: I know we sometimes play a game and think it would make a great movie (and we're almost always wrong) but I would absolutely love to see Color Gray Games' adventure turned into a book. The story—the complete story we slowly piece together while solving bizarre murders—would be perfect for a sprawling, gritty, gruesome novel about a mysterious item that inspires brutality and backstabbery among any who possess it.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: I played purely because it kept cropping up in the Top 100, despite everything about its screenshots suggesting it would not be my thing. I'm glad I did, because it's a pitch-perfect puzzler—a real triumph in staring long and hard at a scene, investigating all the hidden notes and clues, and just really figuring out what the hell is going on. It's incredibly satisfying to piece together and, while you're in the game itself, those grotesque dioramas have an intense charm and intrigue. It's a must play for mystery enjoyers.

54. The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind

Released: May 2, 2002 | Top 100 Score: 228.14

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: The last time Bethesda felt like it had something to say. Morrowind is a (spice) melange of influences ranging from Dune to The Dark Crystal, filled with murky morality and strange politics and set in one of the few fantasy worlds that feel actually fantastical. Also you can get so hopped up on Dunmer drugs you can kill god with a single blow, which you can't do in Skyrim without several speciality mods.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Something really telling is that every Elder Scrolls game up through Oblivion basically had its own art style, and then Skyrim looked like a real callback to Morrowind in its race, armor, and weapon designs⁠—there's even the Dragonborn DLC that takes us back to Solstheim.

When Virtuos then remade Oblivion, it skewed the art heavily toward Morrowind/Skyrim. I haven't even gotten into the lore of Morrowind, which is equally foundational to the series, but Morrowind defined how the Elder Scrolls looks.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: To me, Morrowind represents the last time Bethesda acted like it had something to prove, rather than something to lose. Bold, weird, dark, janky, and genuinely alien, Morrowind remains the best Elder Scrolls game ever made, and it's not even close.

53. Papers, Please

Released: August 8, 2013 | Top 100 Score: 228.33

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Papers, Please is the only game I've ever played that makes you want to win so you can lose on purpose, later. It's a magic trick I've seen few games replicate since, and without nearly the same clarity of purpose.

Yes, spot the difference games are interesting—but the real core of Papers, Please lies in how its bleak story gnaws at its central mechanics. The task of figuring out whether someone's paperwork is valid is almost entirely secondary to the question of 'what are you gonna do about it?'

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: I talked to creator Lucas Pope about how now this game feels, and he said, "You want your work to be relevant, but at the same time, wow, I really wish it was not that fucking relevant." If Papers, Please convinces even 0.1% of the people who play it that the global right-wing backlash against immigrants and asylum seekers is deeply wrong, it will be one of the most important videogames ever made.

Joe Donnelly, PC Gaming Show Deputy Editor: Indeed, few games evoke the 'life imitating art vs art imitating life' dichotomy quite like Papers, Please, and that's terrifying unto itself—even more so 12 years on. But from a purely video game perspective, Lucas Pope's breakout hit is a super-intelligent, meticulous management sim that's equal parts thought-provoking and heartbreaking.

52. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege X

Released: December 1, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 228.43

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: When Rainbow Six Siege launched disastrously in 2015, folks were understandably ready to write it off. But Ubisoft knew it had something genuinely unique on its hands, and ten years of updates later, Siege really has never been better.

The Siege X update (bad name, Ubisoft, go back to the old one) took a big swing by adding Siege's first new primary mode since launch: Dual Front is a 6v6 twist on Siege where teams have to attack and defend at the same time. I never thought I'd be in favor of a Siege mode with respawns, but here we are.

Tyler Wilde, US Editor-in-Chief: The buggiest game that I play anyway. Its casual mode sits at just the right middle ground between competitive and chill to bring seasoned Counter-Strike players together with 'just let me play with gadgets' types. I still haven't played another multiplayer shooter that makes swinging through a window or smashing through a wall as fun.

51. Dragon Age: Origins

Released: November 3, 2009 | Top 100 Score: 228.60

Robert Jones, Print Editor: A landmark fantasy RPG which, on release, laid the foundation for the genre for years to come. With funny and moving writing, an exquisite dark fantasy tone, GOAT characters like Witch of the Wilds, Morrigan, and full-fat RPG systems that let you play the game your way, Origins remains the best Dragon Age experience and a must-play for fantasy RPG fans. Without Origins, there is no Baldur's Gate 3.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Larian and Obsidian aside, they just don't make 'em like Origins, anymore. A crystallisation of BioWare's golden age of RPG design, Dragon Age doesn't let the fact its dark and gritty get in the way of heartwarming character development, a good joke (swooping is bad), or a charming party full of bickering idiots.

In particular, Dragon Age understands something about dark fantasy that a lot of other games get wrong: Misery loves company. If you have a miserable game and/or setting, you need to have people in it worth fighting for to make things better. I'm glad Larian picked up the baton, but I'll always pay reverence to the OG RPG.

Lauren Morton, SEO Editor: If anything, Origins should have an even higher importance score. This is the game that set a new bar for RPGs that BioWare itself struggled to clear thereafter. I don't think we'll ever get a Mass Effect-style remaster on this one and I won't claim it's aged well, but the characters here are the blueprint for the past 15 years of RPGs we've had since.

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50. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Released: February 9, 1999 | Top 100 Score: 229.20

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Forget Civ, folks, Alpha Centauri is still the best 4X Firaxis has ever made. The exceptional faction design, unusual setting and simmering sci-fi story have kept this a must-play for decades. Civ might have established the 4X playbook, but Alpha Centauri showed us what 4Xs could be with a bit of imagination—something bold and bizarre and brimming with character. Please play it—the drones need you.

Few other studios have attempted to continue this mostly-dead evolutionary thread, with the exception of the brilliant Endless Legend and its early access sequel, which is sadly not on this list but absolutely deserves to be.

49. Persona 5 Royal

Released: October 21, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 229.27

Robert Jones, Print Editor: While I still hold Persona 3 to be the highlight of this series, there's no doubting that, objectively, Persona 5 Royal is the best version of Atlus' magical JRPG high school drama simulator to date. Royal boasts the most immersive world, slickest turn-based combat system, and cutest animal sidekick of the series to date.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Atlus continues to milk the Phantom Thieves for all their worth, and for good reason: Persona 5 Royal is a top-notch JRPG with an excellent cast, banging soundtrack, and meticulously-designed dungeons that put it a step above its predecessors.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: Persona 5 Royal is also the best 'routine' JRPG I've ever played. If you love that whole vibe of going to school, hanging out with friends in the city, working your part time job etc, then its academic year structure is perfect.

48. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster

Released: May 12, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 229.29

Andrea Shearon, Evergreen Writer: Truly the last Final Fantasy of its kind, FF10 and its sequel bookend an era of series greats that started with FF6 in the '90s and refused to slow down for decades. The remastered RPG lost some of the original art direction's charm, but Yuna's selfless pilgrimage is one of the best examples of Square Enix in its turn-based prime.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: There's no other game quite like Final Fantasy 10. A gripping love story, my favourite iteration of turn-based combat, and immaculate vibes that span from the gorgeous Macalania Woods to the gruelling Thunder Plains.

Its sequel is also brutally underrated, sporting a stellar job-based combat system and a more lighthearted story that perfectly compliments the more sinister undertones of its predecessor.

47. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

Released: November 16, 2004 | Top 100 Score: 229.85

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I always try to sell Bloodlines to potential converts as a prototype New Vegas, translating the flexible RPG design of 2D Fallout to full 3D. But it also delivers an unforgettable atmosphere the likes of which we may never see again in games, wedding grungy noir, aughts raver culture, and gothic vampire fantasy.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: We're writing this before Bloodlines 2 comes out, so this isn't commentary on the sequel. We just really bloody love Bloodlines.

Yes, sure, it does have too much combat in the back half, but you can easily trivialize that by spending some XP to improve your combat—and Bloodlines gives away XP like nobody's business so quit complaining.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Has any other game had a soundtrack as banging as Bloodlines? Killer tracks from top to bottom, all of them absolutely on point as an aural encapsulation of turn-of-the-millennium goth Los Angeles in idealized fantasy. And Rik Schaffer's score is every bit its equal: The man absolutely understood the assignment.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: I fired this bad boy up again after my hands-on with Bloodlines 2 left me with a craving but, while I still love it, I think we've reached the point now where I probably wouldn't recommend it to new players unless they are into videogame archaeology. Even with mods and community patches, it's a rough, janky, ugly game that just doesn't feel pleasant to play in 2025. The caveats now outweigh the points in its favour. It will always be one of my faves, though, and if you have a high tolerance for rough, jagged edges then it might become one of yours.

46. Wildermyth

Released: June 15, 2021 | Top 100 Score: 231.33

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: Basically 'what if your XCOM runs were also procedurally-generated D&D campaigns?'. It's really remarkable how rich the stories Wildermyth's layered systems churn out are, as you travel across the map and fight tense turn-based battles. Characters grow, change, accomplish greatness, suffer hardship, and if they're lucky retire and have children who go on to have their own adventures. And sometimes somewhere in there they get turned into a frog-man.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: As Robin points out, in replicating the feel of a TTRPG campaign, Wildermyth understands that it isn't just about fantasy heroics—it's about how absolutely baffling the before/after picture of a character in your mind is. Because sometimes they are a frog, now.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: When recommending this, which I often do, I tend to avoid mentioning XCOM. It's got turn-based tactical combat, but it's not going to scratch an XCOM-shaped itch. Instead, this is a game for those of us obsessed with procedural storytelling and dramatic character development—the kind of folk who want to be able to cram a brilliant years-long D&D campaign into an afternoon. Few other games satiate this desire so well, and none so concisely.

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Wildermyth's real magic takes place across campaigns as your past characters are woven into new adventures as figures emerging from your own bespoke folk mythology. It's a game that understands how stories and characters aren't static: They evolve and change with each telling.

45. Straftat

Released: October 24, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 232.00

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: Slapstick Quake. Straftat is the world's only French 1v1 FPS that features cigarettes as cosmetic DLC, a brutalist playground that you bring variously clownish and exotically violent weapons into. There are an uncountable number of maps: some feel like Mario Party (an ice luge Möbius strip where you have to catch falling guns), others like a fighter jet duel. A generous July update added 1v1v1v1 and 2v2. The best free FPS on Steam.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Despite its rapid-fire format, STRAFTAT successfully mimics a relaxed multiplayer environment that we don't get much of anymore. It's a LAN party in a can—unserious, infinitely repeatable fun best enjoyed with friends who can talk trash but still appreciate a wild play.

44. Into the Breach

Released: Februrary 27, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 232.80

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: Our 2018 Game of the Year and the most replayable turn-based game on PC. Deploying teams of giant robots that move in different chess-piece patterns (appropriately, on an 8x8 grid), Into the Breach asks you to defend Earth's few remaining cities from waves of kaiju monsters. The game's achievement is the disproportionate amount of strategic thinking it draws out of the three humble units you control (my favorite is the Judo mech, which suplexes monsters over its head). On Unfair difficulty, every round is a set of life-or-death decisions against Deep Blue Mothra. Ben Prunty's soundtrack does heavy lifting to make its pixel art feel cinematic and somber.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Into the Breach's great trick is telling you exactly what your opponent is about to do—an insight into just how badly things will go unless you intervene. If you can't kill an enemy this turn, maybe you can use your mech squad's abilities to manipulate your foes in such a way that all their attacks miss and nothing is destroyed. That's the dream, but in practice it means a lot of hard choices about what you're prepared to sacrifice.

43. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe

Released: April 27, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 232.92

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Harvey sat down to write a few dozen words about the Stanley Parable—but as he put his fingers to his keyboard, he realised it'd be a mighty task indeed to convey how its omnipresent narrator is one of the best running gags in all of videogames. He chose, instead, to write a pale imitation of him, as though it might liven his copy up a bit.

Really, he should've mentioned that The Stanley Parable is almost singular in how much simple, unapologetic fun it has with its premise, sprinkled (as all good comedy is) with just a touch of existential dread.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Who the hell was that guy?

42. Kerbal Space Program

Released: April 27, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 233.13

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Kerbal Space Program is the perfect distillation of two of my favourite things: space exploration and abject failure. It's a sandbox about building rockets—all complex physics and advanced mathematics—but from the perspective of silly, slapstick critters. The onus is always more on doing than thinking. Slapping together a bunch of parts, shooting your creation into space, and learning from the inevitable.

There's a career mode if you want some direction for your tinkering, but for me the joy has always been striving for the next big milestone. Go to space, reach the nearest moon, land on the nearest moon, and so on. Maybe one day I'll even set my sights on the biggest challenge of all: Rescuing the many, many Kerbals that I've left stranded up in space.

41. Hollow Knight

Released: February 24, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 233.45

Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: I do wonder if the launch of Silksong will knock our high praise for Hollow Knight down a notch, but let's be real. Nothing will beat that initial feeling of being utterly lost in Hallownest. Or, if you're anything like me, the frustration of frequently failing to beat the Mantis Lords. Seriously, the amount of times I've had to step away from Hollow Knight before I break something needs to be studied. But, I still come back time and time again.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Team Cherry was brave enough to ask: Can you make Dark Souls and Metroid as cosy as a mug of hot chocolate, sipped by a rainy window? Turns out, yes.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Chiming in months after Harvey and Kara wrote their blurbs⁠—which were done before we even learned a release date⁠—and Silksong-mania has taken gaming by storm. Not the six year pre-release Silksong-mania. I'm talking everybody playing, loving, and complaining about the difficulty in this game.

Silksong is a bigger and better sequel and a huge 2025 GOTY contender, but I think Hollow Knight still stands as the game a new player should check out first⁠—the memey joke is that Hollow Knight is the tutorial for its challenging sequel.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer, also months later: I can concur with Ted that Silksong is absolutely brutal. Nothing in Hollow Knight prepared me for Flea Dodge. If you're looking to check out Team Cherry's work, start here: It'll build up the callouses you need on your d-pad thumb for later.

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40. Pillar of Eternity 2: Deadfire

Released: May 8, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 234.00

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Obsidian made the best CRPG of the last decade in 2018, and then no one played it. The sequel to (the excellent but dry) Pillars 1 swapped out the OG's Faerûn-style rolling green plains for Caribbean colonialism, putting you smack-bang in the middle of factions competing for the rights to control and exploit the Deadfire region and forcing you to decide which one you can tolerate most. Oh, and you're pursuing a resurrected god who's inhabited a 300-metre-tall statue that used to live beneath your house. That's also a problem, sure.

Andy Edser, Hardware Writer: Having put far too many hours into this fantasy pirate simulator (whaddaya mean it's a regular CRPG with a salty skin?) feels like having played one of PC gaming's best kept secrets at this point. It's not perfect, but I'd personally rate it higher than the original. You can fight me in the nearest tavern, if you like.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: A well deserved place for Deadfire as one of only two games with the Cipher, one of my very favorite RPG classes. Think a weapon DPS rogue with psychic mind powers. Deadfire even adds a multiclassing option, letting you pair Cipher with Rogue, a "goated" combination, as the kids say.

39. Hunt: Showdown 1896

Released: August 27, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 234.32

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: What earns this horror-cowboy extraction shooter a recurring spot in the Top 100 is how extraordinarily organic its gunfights are. When you stumble on another team in one of Hunt's realistic, variegated forests, it feels truly spontaneous because you used your eyes and ears to find them, not UI. Hunt's audio tech is unmatched for fidelity, precise enough to let you land a blind shot through a wall after hearing an opponent's crouched footstep on the other side.

I love the way its generally slow-firing, 1896 weaponset gives firefights rhythm and pacing, in contrast to the mag-dumping firehoses we wield in most other FPSes.

38. Slay the Spire

Released: January 23, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 234.58

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Listen. I know we're all sick of roguelike deckbuilders (I'm not) and that we're tired of diving in for one more run (couldn't be me)—but you have to give it up for Slay the Spire: A game so deliciously moreish that it kicked an entire genre into the stratosphere. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Slay the Spire is being flooded with smutty letters from every indie dev wanting to capture the same magic.

You might also say it inspired a little too many deckbuilders, but I feel discourse of that ilk ignores what Slay the Spire does well. Which is to say, a lot—all of its classes interact in different, interesting ways with its relics, it's not unbearably hard, its encounters are cool and interesting (well, mostly—I loathe the Time Eater), and it's got some great end-game scaling in its Ascension levels.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Every time I try another roguelike deckbuilder I reinstall Slay the Spire, and every time I realize I still like Slay the Spire more than whatever the new hotness is.

Tyler Wilde, US Editor-in-Chief: I've had the same experience as Jody. I do think Monster Train is cool, but the high from my first Slay the Spire infinite combo still hasn't fully worn off. The artwork deserves recognition: It looks like a game designed by a talented and unusually industrious child, which I mean entirely as a compliment. The characters and creatures give the impression that they were designed spontaneously, and the Spire has stuck in my head like a place visited in a dream.

37. Hitman: World of Assassination

Released: January 20, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 234.62

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: A grand tour of exotic locations filled with terrible people waiting to be creatively murdered. I love it so much that I'm willing to wear a suit to work.

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: What I deeply love about modern Hitman is how smoothly it transforms you into a sicko. The signposted mission stories don't just serve up ideal assassination opportunities. They act as a survey course for later lethal experimentation: You might pass by more wrenches, chef's knives, body dumpsters, and conveniently unattended drinking glasses than you'll need at the moment, but they'll be part of your arsenal when you return for future murders.

Lauren Morton, SEO Editor: Ever since Hitman, I've viewed the entire real world through a murder sandbox filter. Touring the Kentucky bourbon trail? Agent 47 would totally push someone into a giant fermentation tank. Trip to Disney World? Agent 47 would dress up as staff and sneak through the hidden back halls. Local water park? Oh heck yeah, Agent 47 would skip to the front of the giant slide line dressed like a lifeguard. I can't unsee the costume-based social engineering and stealth of it all.

36. Max Payne

Released: July 25, 2001 | Top 100 Score: 235.00

Tyler Wilde, US Editor-in-Chief: Remedy's classic third-person shooter is such a perfect crystallization of the turn-of-the-millennium action genre: The fixation on slow-motion and flying debris, the comic book influence (before everything credited comics), the sulky noir tone that you can't quite call parody, even if it is purposefully too much. Ragdolls went out of fashion too quickly, as did fight scenes in tile-walled subway stations and the sort of fourth-wall-breaking seen in The Matrix's distorted green WB logo and Max Payne's in-character quit screen messages ("I was afraid to go on").

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: What's made the original Max Payne age so well is that its fights aren't really fights—they're high speed combat puzzles. As you dive into each room, the goal is always to figure out how to clear it before you even hit the ground, living in those moments of perfect slow motion action.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: "The rain was coming down like all the angels in heaven had decided to take a piss at the same time" may be the single greatest line in videogame history. I still like to roll it out in conversation now and then.

35. Spelunky

Released: August 8, 2013 | Top 100 Score: 235.04

Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: PC gaming's Mario. As you descend deeper into this excavatory platformer, Spelunky makes you feel perpetual precarity. The many randomly-arranged dangers along your path makes reaching its many secrets incredibly sweet. To gain entrance to the City of Gold, you have to find four Egyptian artifacts in painstaking fashion, then die and be resurrected on a specific level in order to discover the entrance. I put 376 hours into Spelunky 2.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: I'm a sucker for any game where you occasionally have to pause the action and spend some time trying to work out what the hell just happened. What random confluence of events—what happenstance of consistent systemic interaction—caused the shopkeeper to be mad at me? Spelunky 2 is a game for the true sickos, as evidenced by Evan's playtime. For me it was too much. Spelunky's first outing hits the sweet spot—the perfect balance of challenge and chaos.

34. Hades

Released: September 17, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 235.73

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: A game that's had an impact on roguelikes similar to Slay the Spire in terms of heft, Hades is basically the platonic ideal of what it is: An isometric action RPG with roguelike elements, polished to a mirror shine. A novel narrative structure, gorgeous artwork, charming voice acting, thoughtfully executed character work, and the unmatched tunes of Darren Korb. I don't know what Supergiant's feeding its composer, but he keeps getting stronger.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Hades rules, but I think you should actually be playing Hades 2 right now—it's already bigger and more varied, and includes a grenade launcher that fires flaming demon skulls.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Wes, you forgot to mention the siren band that makes a diss track just for you.

33. Portal 2

Released: April 19, 2011 | Top 100 Score: 236.29

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I can understand why some prefer the purity of the first game, but Portal 2 just adds so many fantastic, creative ideas to the formula. Puzzles that push the absolute limits of thinking with portals, a genuinely hilarious story, and just so much more to see, do, and play with.

Often overlooked is the multiplayer. For my money, it's one of the best co-op campaigns ever made—if you've never played it, you owe it to yourself to rope in a friend and give it a go. It is precision engineered to create 'A ha!' moments that are so joyful to discover with a partner, fully leveraging the wild potential of not just two portal guns, but the physical presence of two characters. I'll say no more, before I spoil some of the coolest puzzles you'll ever solve in your life.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Seconding Robin's recommendation for the co-op, though for an entirely different reason: Portal 2 is the perfect engine for slapstick comedy and momentum-based pranks. Maybe Robin has really nice friends flooded with the spirit of jolly co-operation, but everyone I've played Portal 2 with has never hesitated to fling me to my doom in a variety of creative ways. Maybe this says more about me.

32. Return of the Obra Dinn

Released: October 18, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 236.57

Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: A mystery game that is actually a mystery, and an environment so densely packed with secrets and discoveries that by the end you feel you've holidayed there. Well, if your holidays involve the unspeakable horrors of the sea. Nothing else looks or plays like Obra Dinn, and few games have the confidence to demand as much from players: I had to play with an actual notebook to help my puny brain.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: I feel like having to use a notebook is a pretty good sign when it comes to information games like these, Rich. As Lucas Pope said to me in a past interview: "I didn't actually know I was making a detective game until Obra Dinn was mostly done." Similar to Sam Barlow's Her Story, what makes Return of the Obra Dinn special is that it's an information sandbox—a detective game that doesn't get too bogged down in genre tropes, instead giving players an open experience where they can discover clues and formulate their own deductions.

31. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater – Master Collection Version

Released: October 24, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 237.00

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Hideo Kojima at the height of his powers brings us the most personal story in the entire Metal Gear series. Big Boss' origin story is a mad tearjerker about soldiers caught between duty, survival, and a large man who shoots lightning from his fingertips—but it's the doomed relationship between Snake and his mentor, The Boss, that has us coming back to this one two decades later.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Probably the tightest story Kojima has ever crafted. I love MGS 5 for its open systemic freedom, but MGS 3 is the best overall package—a triumph from the moment-to-moment stealth, to the boss fights, to the Boss fight.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I'll say it, I'll be one of those guys: I hate how MGS3's remake, Delta, looks. The hype around it has only made me want to replay MGS3 on my Steam Deck, which I guess is one positive in Delta's favor. One of these days I'll build up to European Extreme, which remains the best name for a videogame difficulty ever conceived.

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30. Fallout: New Vegas

Released: October 22, 2010 | Top 100 Score: 237.36

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Rockstar can model all the horse anatomy it wants to, but this is the best cowboy game ever made. The historical materialist storytelling that defines Obsidian got its start here with a story about a land on the periphery of two empires torn apart as they compete for the right to exploit it. That land is literally Las Vegas, too, which means you get to listen to a load of rat-pack music and play blackjack while you shoot Caesar's Legion centurions.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I have racked up 240 hours of New Vegas since 2010 and I have still never rolled credits on this game. It's just so expansive, and there are so many different types of Courier to be. Right now I've got a 50-hour unarmed character with one DLC down and half of the main quest to go, but when I think of returning I just want to make a cowboy sniper. I may find myself restarting New Vegas and getting halfway through every few years until I die, and maybe that's ok.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: "Play the guitar/Play it again, my Johnny..."

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: Goddamn, I'm still so hyped that the Fallout TV series is headed to New Vegas.

29. Pentiment

Released: November 15, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 237.43

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Pentiment is one of those rare adventure games that actually make you feel like an investigator—though not necessarily a very good one.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: It's something videogames can handle that other media would struggle with. You can only do "Sherlock doesn't know what the fuck is happening" on TV if you make it a comedy, but videogames can play that straight because the protagonist, in this case Andreas the illuminator, is actually just some gamer behind a keyboard.

While Andreas is a Renaissance man in the literal sense—a man who lives in the Renaissance—he becomes a detective because he's a literate outsider rather than because he's some kind of crime genius. You're investigating murder in a 16th century village without preternatural powers of deduction, modern forensics, or a police badge, and you won't get everything right. You won't even know what you got wrong and will just have to send people off to be executed based on scraps of evidence and gap-filling guesswork. You're just a little man who looks like marginalia doing his best.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Perhaps the best praise I have for Pentiment is that it's the only game one of my smartest friends, a classicist and lawyer, could bother to make time for in the past few years.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I struggled to get into Pentiment, and it was only the insistence of a friend that kept me going through the first few hours. He also refused to say why he was so insistent about it, which at the time I thought was odd. At some point, though, it started to click, and when I "solved" my first crime—which was mostly just me sitting here yelling "No!" at my screen while something awful happened to a person I'm pretty sure didn't deserve it—I was hooked. What followed was one of the best and most wildly unpredictable game stories I've ever enjoyed.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I just want to say sorry to all the people I got executed for murders they super did not commit.

28. Nine Sols

Released: May 29, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 237.60

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I finally got my coworkers to play this, and every one had the same reaction I did in 2024: 'How'd it take me so long?' Nine Sols is an entrant into the Sekiro-like genre that utterly flies off the screen. It's beautiful, tightly written, and somehow immaculately designed despite its developer mostly making horror games beforehand.

What really impressed me, however, were the boss fights. I could take or leave the exploration—it's competent, but nothing revolutionary. However, Nine Sol's bosses are downright gorgeous from a mechanical standpoint, and its final battle is the only time I've ever felt inclined (or even come close) to attempting a no-hit run on a boss battle in one of these games. I liked it that much.

There's also a great love letter to Hollow Knight's Mantis Lord boss fight in here that somehow ups both the spectacle and the complexity without getting overwhelming. It's a complete treat. Don't let this one pass you by.

27. Helldivers 2

Released: February 8, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 237.75

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Arrowhead Games leveraged physics simulation, orchestral bombast, hyperbolic sociopolitical satire, obsessive attention to ordnance audiovisuals, community-driven metafiction, award-worthy commitment to the bit, and 23 years of expertise in generating slapstick cooperative mayhem for the singular purpose of making it funny when you accidentally obliterate someone with an orbital bombardment. That's something we can all salute.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: The Helldivers 2 playerbase, which once named a city 'Gun', is a little unruly—and sometimes not even for terrible reasons. If you chart the course of Arrowhead's development of Helldivers 2, it's an up-and-down torment cycle that fluctuates between "we're so back" and "it's so over".

For full transparency, we gave Helldivers 2 this score before its latest foibles and bugs with the Terminid homeworld, but I'd personally still rate it this highly again. If history is any indication, the game may very well be 'fixed' by the time this list goes online. Or it might be broken again, who's to say.

But as Lincoln cleanly put it above, it's a flawed game that's worthy of the love—when it works, it's still one of the best co-op shooters you could spend your hard-earned Super Credits on.

26. Deus Ex

Released: June 23, 2000 | Top 100 Score: 250.00, demoted by Wes Fenlon

Jake Tucker, PC Gaming Show Editorial Director: Deus Ex endures because it gave players unprecedented freedom. Missions had multiple paths—stealth, hacking, brute force— and making choices between them felt meaningful. Its cyberpunk world was rich, conspiratorial, and eerily prescient. It's harder to play today, but the storytelling, mechanics, and deep player agency set a benchmark. Decades later, few games offer such ambition.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Maybe I'm just an old head stuck in the past, but I would truly rather replay Deus Ex than most recent games, even other immersive sims. Baldur's Gate 3 is the only other game I have ever played that has matched Deus Ex's combination of simulationist reactivity and written contingencies for even seemingly minor actions. Even as the game is regarded as a universal classic, I think Deus Ex's story and themes are significantly under-rated, and its ending choice remains one of the most difficult and thought provoking in gaming.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Ted is an old head stuck in the past, but don't hold that against him. I had a great time with Deus Ex when I played it back in 2014, but even then some of its core interactions—like aiming, I don't know, literally anything—were clunky as hell. I don't know that it'll ever drop out of the Top 100, but I think it's a better immersive sim to experience as an archeological exercise after you've been totally sucked in by one of its descendants still to come further down the list.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Deus Ex feels like an artefact from a completely different era. Oh, no, not because its characters look like Lego people or because it's arduous to play (it's really not), but because it feels like its ambition was genuinely unbridled. If Deus Ex wants to give you 15 different ways to tackle one situation, that's what you're gonna get. If Deus Ex wants to engage you in a solemn reflection on the nature of power and democracy in the digital age, that's what it'll give you. If Deus Ex wants to pitch you on the benefits of market authoritarianism to see just how tightly you really cling to those liberal ideals you claim to uphold, an inexplicably Australian bartender will be along shortly to do just that.

Where later Deus Exes (which I still love) feel hemmed in by the limits of corporate acceptability, DX1 feels like a game no one ever said 'no' to during development.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: You can kill Anna! You can save Paul! You can do all this other wild shit even though the game pretty explicitly tells you that you can't—except it's not the game, it's the characters in the game, and who died and made them king anyway? I actually think that the Deus Ex story might be a little overrated—I feel like the X-Files was hot and Ion Storm was just cramming in whatever conspiracy bullshit came to mind in the moment—but as a reactive, "have at it" game world, it's a work of genius. (And all that conspiracy bullshit is a lot of fun, too.)

PS: Stay out of the ladies restroom.

25. Dishonored 2

Released: November 11, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 238.36

Robert Jones, Print Editor: Whisper it quietly, but Dishonored 2 is the best immersive sim ever made. The level of control and choice you have in this game to play it your way, and to experiment and get rewarded for your ingenuity, is top tier and takes its replayability to crazy levels. Dishonored 2 is exceptional for many other reasons, too, such as its beautifully realised world and characters, its jaw-dropping level design (A Crack in the Slab, anyone?), its slick and empowering combat, its mature themes and its engaging narrative that asks you the question: truly, how far would you go to get your revenge?

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: It's not just the best immersive sim—it's one of the absolute GOATs, regardless of genre. There's no better level design. And the ways in which you navigate and interact with these incredible sets? Phwoar. It's simply bliss.

Like so many of the greats, it wasn't truly appreciated in its time, but Arkane did get to make one more of them, Death of the Outsider, which is also superb. Death Loop is technically a Dishonored game too, set as it is in the same universe. But D2 still reigns supreme, and I hope Arkane's recent difficulties doesn't mean we'll never see its like again.

24. Dark Souls Remastered

Released: September 22, 2011 | Top 100 Score: 239.00

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: In 2011, FromSoft taught gamers that deliberate attack animations can be fun, and the world was forever changed—largely for the better, if you like parrying stuff. While there's a bit of Dark Souls in just about every third person action game now, it's worth revisiting to appreciate just how little FromSoft's design ethos has changed. The hitboxes have gotten a little tighter, but it's always had the same brooding heart.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: You never forget your first, and Dark Souls was my introduction to one of my favorite game studios. One thing that wasn't present in Demon's Souls that you see firmly fleshed out in Dark Souls is FromSoft's full commitment to the dodge and timing-based bosses it's known for.

Demon's Souls has a surprising number of gimmick and puzzle boss fights, while in Dark Souls, the emphasis is firmly on combat mastery: You have your weapon, dodge roll, and maybe a shield, and those are all you need to defeat almost every boss in the game, something that flummoxed me at first when my closest touchstone was the puzzles and weak points of the Zelda series. One notable exception: The Bed of Chaos, a series-low puzzle boss that truly beggars belief with its trial and error design.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: The original Dark Souls was the first game to ever inform me that difficulty can, in fact, be fun—and I've never recovered. I am one of those insufferable "git gud" guys. I recently rocked up to our poor guide writer, Sean Martin, to talk about how I found a Silksong boss to be incredibly easy, only to discover that years of hard-earned muscle memory had kicked in and made me triumph way ahead of schedule.

This is where it all started. FromSoftware has all my love, and also a hell of a lot to answer for. Also, I agree with Ted, the Bed of Chaos is goddamn terrible.

23. Undertale

Released: September 15, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 239.40

Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: One of those games that never ages—making you feel the same way you did the first time you played, no matter how many years have passed. The soundtrack, characters, and story as a whole stick with you from the very moment you get your first taste of Butterscotch Pie and beyond. Somehow, everyone I know who's played Undertale has somehow perfectly timed it with a time they needed some serious comfort, which is exactly what it offers. If you're ever in need of a good emotional outlet, Undertale always has your back.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: An underrated aspect of Undertale is its combat, or ideally lack thereof. I love that you can commit to meeting a character's anger with kindness, even if that means taking a beating.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I replayed Undertale over and over in 2016, unlocking (nearly) every ending shortly after it came out, but I've never really gone back since. It's still worth it, though, cutting through a decade's strata of calcified memes and discourse to uncover the smart, surprising, heartfelt RPG underneath.

The only ending I haven't gotten is the darkest timeline playthrough where you kill every living thing in the game, spitting in the face of warmth and humor to become something worse than the antagonist. The stain even persists on subsequent playthroughs, adding a sinister twist if you try for the best ending afterwards. This undercurrent of something sinister, the potential for a truly horrific outcome, lends the golden ending some true dramatic weight though, preventing it from becoming overly saccharine. Avoiding the bad ending does mean I've missed a truly all-timer boss fight (monster spoilers in that link).

22. Divinity: Original Sin 2

Released: September 14, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 239.67

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I'm glad Original Sin 2 is still on the list, even with its younger sibling ranked higher up⁠—it's not just the game you play after Baldur's Gate 3 if you want more Larian. Much as I love The Forgotten Realms and D&D, Larian's own worldbuilding and bespoke mechanics are something special.

The studio gleefully spits on continuity, spinning a yarn that directly contradicts the events of past Divinities, but who cares, nerd? The combat's focus on stripping enemy defenses while maintaining your own is like no other RPG I've played, and I hope Larian revisits the concept with fresh eyes and hard-won knowledge soon™.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I have 80.6 hours in Divinity 2, and at least 70 of those were spent running Fort Joy across six abandoned playthroughs. I have a soft spot for Divinity 2's chaotic combat where the floor is always lava, but I just keep running out of gas.

21. Planescape: Torment

Released: December 10, 1999 | Top 100 Score: 240.75

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Disco Elysium may be the gold standard for this type of RPG⁠—I want to make "Talking Simulator" a thing⁠—but its inspiration still has the juice. I'm in it for the little moments in this story of an amnesiac immortal, like paying your past self's bar tab to get the eyeball he left as collateral, then gruesomely gouging out your current eye to plop in the old one, unlocking buried memories.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Planescape: Torment lets you kill yourself to win an argument, which makes it some kind of patron saint to internet commenters everywhere and also one of the best games of all time.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: As an unrepentant boss fight hater, I will never pass up the opportunity to point out that Planescape: Torment is the one game that lets you talk things out, and thus it is objectively the best boss fight ever.

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20. Minecraft

Released: November 18, 2011 | Top 100 Score: 241.04

Elie Gould, News Writer: We joke about how the children yearn for the mines, but I still can't get over how Minecraft managed to make a mundane act of hitting rocks so much fun that it's still going strong over a decade later. As the dedicated rock smasher on any server I'm in, I approve this message.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: This is your annual reminder that a Minecraft server with friends (and mods!) is one of the great PC gaming experiences.

Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: A timeless classic. Dress it up with mods or shaders, or still have a cracking time with a vanilla build. Like Morgan says, there's nothing quite like starting a brand-new Minecraft server with your pals before someone inevitably accidentally burns your entire settlement down with a rogue lava bucket.

Lauren Morton, SEO Editor: At this point, just get your friends back together on an unmodded Minecraft server. I guarantee they don't know half of what's been added to vanilla Minecraft in the past 5 years.

19. Thief Gold

Released: December 1, 1998 | Top 100 Score: 241.20

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: You'll have to remap the controls and be aware that some of the missions added in the Gold edition aren't as good as the originals, but quibbles aside, Thief is still top-tier stealth. The levels are diverse yet never gimmicky, something others in the genre could learn from, all tying together perfectly to make a taut film-noir fantasy thriller.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Metal Gear Solid and Thief Gold both released in 1998, but I don't think Kojima matched Thief's level of stealth mechanics until Metal Gear Solid 3, seven years later. The original Thief duology remains my gold standard for videogame sneaking, a perfect implementation of the infiltrator fantasy.

Even though Thief's chunky, polygonal graphics are primeval by today's standards, I still think it's one of the best-looking games ever made. Part of that is down to the focused art direction and believability of its medieval world seized by a premature industrial revolution, but I also don't think a game has ever nailed the look and feeling of a city by night as well as Thief. Every level feels like you just stepped out for a late stroll, or perfectly evokes staying up late with everyone else in the house asleep.

Thief also boasts a quietly all-time great modding community, with a deep well of fan missions adding up to the equivalent of several sequels. The peak, and a perfect starting point after you beat Thief Gold and Thief 2, is The Black Parade, a prequel campaign that contains some breathtakingly huge, intricate levels.

Andy Chalk, NA Lead: I have to echo everything Jody and Ted said, but add that one of Thief Gold's underrated strengths—and the reason it stands as superior to Thief 2—is the presence of the "monster missions" dedicated to the more fantastical side of Thief. Some fans disparage them, preferring the more conventional B&E jobs, but it's the game's explicit acknowledgement of these hidden crypts and forgotten cities, crawling with supernatural creatures and long-lost secrets, that makes the world so special. Without those experiences lying just beneath the surface, the city is, well, just a city; with them, it's genuinely magical.

18. Prey

Released: May 4, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 242.62

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Kinda weird how someone's out there making System Shock 3 when Arkane already made it. Prey is a special thing: a jumble of systems and pathways that's more than happy to let you pick your own, strange route through it. It's not as tight as Dishonored, but it makes up for it with an incredible sense of openness.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: The first third or so of System Shock 2 is a masterpiece of atmosphere, but I didn't get to play the game I was expecting to follow it until Prey came out. You can even leave the station, going on a spacewalk shortcut or tracking down dead crew floating in space.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Oh, I forgot to say: you can turn almost everything you come across into cubes. Love that. Love a good cube.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Chaps my ass to no end that after making a masterpiece like Prey, Arkane Austin got stuck doing a half-assed co-op shooter it had no business making, and was then shuttered when it tanked. Absolute bullshit of the highest order.

17. Rimworld

Released: October 17, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 244.00

Andy Edser, Hardware Writer: I'd like to write about Rimworld's intricate dance of systems, its chaotic yet beautiful, ballet-like emergence, but I'd be doing it an injustice. The reason I actually play Rimworld is to see which of my colonists will eat each other first—and that's a compliment.

Beyond being a fantastic way to lose an evening, Rimworld is capable of turning into an idle game that rarely fails to entertain, where an old save running in the background can quickly turn into your own macabre soap opera. The Sims? Nah, Rimworld please. It's a gripping post-apocalyptic hell sim like no other.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: I always start a new game of Rimworld with the best of intentions. Like the last time, when I decided my colony would become a society of high-minded explorers in their little spaceship: the Federation of Rimworld. An hour in, I'd enslaved my first person. A few hours later, I invited a vampire to join the colony and started maintaining a stable of human-shaped blood bags. I also have a collection of feral children. Rimworld brings out the worst in me, but boy is it good.

16. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Released: March 21, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 244.36

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I'm smug beyond belief that we ranked this above Dark Souls this year. The Souls that launched a thousand -likes will always sleep easy in my git-gud heart, but Sekiro is peerless. From's RPGs offer build expression, but if you've not played Sekiro you haven't seen what it can do when it narrows its focus to a honed, thrice-folded nippon edge. Also: the best Souls bosses. You can fight me on that.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: Sekiro above Dark Souls, or in fact Dark Souls 3 and its DLC (to which we owe Elden Ring) is a miscarriage of justice, but as someone who's also a Sekiro-enjoyer, it's impossible not to see the widespread impact this game has had on Soulslikes. From Black Myth: Wukong, to Lies of P, to this year's really quite good The First Berserker: Khazan—the kids are deflection-pilled now; it's literally everywhere. One of the things I do really love about Sekiro is how it's more of a character-based narrative than Dark Souls; Wolf has an actual backstory, Ashina changes before your eyes, and it allows for some incredible sequences.

15. Half-Life 2

Released: November 16, 2004 | Top 100 Score: 255.42, demoted by Morgan Park

Robert Jones, Print Editor: Despite starting to creak somewhat, with many of its once-pioneering qualities since built on and, occasionally, improved on by subsequent games, there's no doubting that Half-Life 2 remains an FPS of immense quality, replayability and foresight. Lacking the incredible opening of the original Half-Life, but then delivering a far stronger overall game, one that introduced us all to the enduring charms of Alyx Vance, Half-Life 2 continues to immerse and enthuse in equal measure.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: It may be like 50% physics showcase, but it's a physics showcase that still puts most modern shooters to shame, and honestly a lot of the retro ones look rough next to it as well.

Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I did indeed demote Half-Life 2 here, not because I don't love it, but because it's not the first singleplayer FPS I'd recommend to a new PC gamer today. It's got some boring bits that were a lot more impressive in 2004 and rough enough edges that modern games have smoothed out. All problems that Half-Life wouldn't have if Valve would get its act together and make another one (outside VR goggles).

14. Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition

Released: September 21, 2000 | Top 100 Score: 244.80

Robert Jones, Print Editor: Every time I hear David Warner deliver the lines of Jon Irenicus, Baldur's Gate 2's incredibly memorable villain, I get chills, as it sums up the immense quality that pours forth out of this game at all moments. Defiant statements such as, "I cannot be caged. I cannot be controlled. Understand this as you die". Philosophical musings on the meaning of existence, such as, "Life… is strength. That is not to be contested; it seems logical enough. You live; you affect your world". And despair-laden realisations like, "I… I do not remember your love, Ellesime. I have tried to. I have tried to recreate it, to spark it anew in my memory. But it is gone... a hollow, dead thing". I remember why, until Baldur's Gate 3, this game was the greatest fantasy RPG ever made. Incredibly smart, epic in scale, and nearly infinite in replayability. Legendary.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I find it easy to forget how weird Baldur's Gate 2 is: Planar Spheres, jaunts to Hell (and the Abyss, aka. "Hell 2"), gangs of vampires kidnapping your companions, the works. The toughest boss in the game, a legendary RPG bragging rights fight, is a floating skull whose house is hidden in plain view not far from the opening area of the game. The titular city isn't even here! We're in Athkatla now, baby, a gilded society of wizard-haters who will sic Johnny Law on you for slinging spells in public. I love Baldur's Gate 3 to bits, but the pre-rendered fantasy psychedelia of Baldur's Gate 2 is still so special.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: One of the only RPGs ever to actually give you a narrative reason to spend 40 hours getting distracted by side quests. No, really, why don't more games do that?

13. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2

Released: February 4, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 244.50

Andy Edser, Hardware Writer: I can't remember the last time a game made me grin this hard during its intro sequence. Oh, yes I can. I would have been a teenager, full of youthful vigour, untarnished by the horrors of reality. Speaking of which, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 brings such a hefty dose of crunchy, faux-medieval realism to its RPG mix, it comes out smelling of onions and turnips. Unforgiving yet easy-enough-to-master combat, dialogue that sounds like real people might have said it, and an open world that feels genuinely reactive—this is an RPG we'll still be talking about for many years to come.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is the kind of game where you die of food poisoning because you risked an old sausage, or because you tried to travel to the next town over and two bandits clubbed you to death for your shoes—people died a lot in medieval times is what I've learnt. But beneath the absurdity its realism can sometimes conjure, it's genuinely one of the best RPGs you will play, with excellent combat, characters, choices, plus a setting its devs obviously care about and have worked hard to do justice.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: It's a game that almost never says no to you. It has that immersive sim magic where understanding its systems lets you exploit them infinitely, and it's very happy for you to do it. Wanna steal back all the money you just spent on swordfighting lessons right out of your teacher's pocket? Fill your boots, and then take theirs.

12. XCOM 2

Released: February 4, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 246.00

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Turn-based tactics don't get better. The complex strategy layer means you're not sure if you screwed up by diverting to rescue a squaddie instead of chasing alloy for an upgrade, and the missions turn on a dime by introducing new enemies you're not ready for or springing a cluster of aliens on you at the worst time. Beginning in stealth gives you confidence, then you turn a corner and it's ripped away. XCOM 2 is a perfectly balanced knife aimed at your throat.

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: War of the Chosen is an essential addition, adding some truly hateable villains and narrative stakes to the original game's tactical sandbox. Nothing since has nailed this combination of strategic tension and Star Trek actors mocking you for missing a 90% shot.

11. Doom (1993)

Released: December 10, 1993 | Top 100 Score: 246.03

Robert Jones, Print Editor: The forever FPS. The game which, no matter how many years pass, remains the shooter of shooters. The FPS you take with you to the desert island as the world ends. Whether it was the creative brilliance of John Romero, the technical wizardry of John Carmack, or the pioneering spirit of the entire id Software team, back in 1993 gaming history was made, and it continues to be made today thanks to Doom's incredible mod community. Pure PC gaming gold.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I want to provide ample respect to fellow designers Tom Hall and Sandy Petersen, but it's insane that, with his leadership, design rules, and very own levels, John Romero effectively invented 3D level design as we know it. Mario 64, Goldeneye, Ocarina of Time⁠—all that comes after Doom. And right here, coming up with this stuff out of the ether, id somehow made a perfect game.

John Carmack's later work with the Quake engine was more influential on the future of 3D rendering, but his 1997 decision to make Doom fully open source was generous and far-sighted, paying dividends with mods, source ports, and full commercial games to this day.

"I don't have a real good guess at how many people are going to be playing with this," Carmack wrote in a .plan file with the source code release, "But if significant projects are undertaken, it would be cool to see a level of community cooperation." Little did he know.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Kids today simply cannot appreciate what an absolute pain in the ass it was setting up for a four-player Doom LAN party back in the day. First of all, who had a network card installed back then? Nobody, that's who. So that meant you had to jack a bunch of stuff from school or work or whatever (which for the record is not an admission of wrongdoing, this is all hypothetical) and then pray you could figure out how to make it all work before everyone got too wasted and opted to sit around watching old episodes of Batman instead.

And man, it was worth it. We take big multiplayer shooters for granted these days but in the early 1990s, feeding lead to your friends in a videogame was revolutionary. I spent hundreds—maybe thousands—of hours playing through all the OG Doom games, expansions, and WAD CDs, but that incredible multiplayer was the peak of the experience, and it set the stage for many of the biggest, most popular online gaming experiences we enjoy today. Little did we know.

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10. Red Dead Redemption 2

Released: December 5, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 246.36

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: The most lavish open world in all of PC gaming—Red Dead Redemption 2 is a stunningly beautiful game, both for the majestic scale of its environments, and the intricate detail packed inside of them. There's a good story here—it's the rare Rockstar game that doesn't default to cynicism, satire and cruelty as its central themes, even though you'll find plenty of all three from its cast of characters. But when I look back on my time with it, it's the journeys that I'll always remember, not the destination. The joy of wandering its world, discovering the sights and stories that take place between the mission markers.

Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: It is simply one of the greatest games to ever exist, regardless of whether or not you used to run around your backyard playing cowboys with your friends and family. If you want fast, gunslinging combat, it's there. If you want to just ride around on the back of your horse trying to spot all the wildlife, you can also do that.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: You come into it wondering who the hell this 'Arthur' guy is and why you aren't playing John Marston, you leave never wanting to play as anyone but Arthur ever again.

9. Elden Ring

Released: February 24, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 246.60

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Thinking about replaying FromSoftware's massive open world action RPG exhausted me at one point, but thanks to the fantastic Seamless Co-op mod I realized how much of the game is elegantly designed to be skippable. It's a decadent buffet of dungeons and boss fights to feast on, while its expansion Shadow of the Erdtree is a Michelin-caliber prix fixe delight with a map precision designed to evoke open-mouth wonder every 30 minutes.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: Whoever said "Let's make Dark Souls but open world" is a genius. Elden Ring just works—the evolution of everything that made Dark Souls 3 and its DLC incredible. I've got over 800 hours in the game, including a playthrough in which I collected every item, and yet my brain still bugs me every month to start a new character. I can't wait for those two new classes coming in the Tarnished Edition…

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I actively dislike soulslikes, so committing to playing Elden Ring was basically a self-inflicted dare. Who knew it would basically take over my life in 2022? I've never encountered anything like it: A massive, sprawling, truly fantastical open world, utterly nonsensical (don't tell me this is "good storytelling," because folks, it ain't) yet somehow deeply melancholy and haunting. And, I have to call this out, smart and considerate enough to include a path for people like me who want to revel in the experience without having to deal with all that stick-and-move dodge-roll bullshit.

(I also have to call out PC Gamer editor Wes Fenlon for showing me the soulslike ropes when I was ready to throw up my hands and walk away in disgust. Made all the difference.)

I can't say Elden Ring was "influential" in any way: I still have zero interest in soulslikes in general, and I passed on Shadow of the Erdtree too. But it was a singular, majestic, damn near perfect videogame, one of the best I've ever played. So, a full-on sequel? Yeah, I'd probably be down for that.

8. Balatro

Released: February 20, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 248.10

Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: You really have to play Balatro to understand what makes it so vital. Those unassuming looks—'what, it's just looking for poker hands?'—disguise an absolute rabbit hole of roguelike strategy and wild, creative build-crafting. It reveals itself to you in exquisite layers—your best run 5 hours in is nothing compared to your best build 20 hours in, as you learn more and more of the cartomantic alchemy of wildly escalating numbers.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I recently had a weeks' holiday, where I was alone with my laptop, and thought: "Well, this thing can probably run Balatro, I haven't played in a while". One week later, I'd doubled my playtime to 80 hours.

Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Balatro's importance has only increased in the last year, as 'score-based deckbuilders in which you strive to reach a number that can only be expressed through mathematical formula' has grown into a full subgenre; a counterpart to Slay the Spire's more combat-oriented style of buildcrafting. We've seen a number of "thing x Balatro" releases and demos this year, where the thing is everything from pool to mahjong to scrabble to the stock market. For now, Balatro still remains the best way to make a cacophony of light and sound that ends with your computer telling you that you've scored 4.681e30.

7. Caves of Qud

Released: December 5, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 248.20

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Caves of Qud is a tile-based roguelike in the same way that a horse is descended from a sort of shrew: The statement's technically correct, but it doesn't quite capture the mystifying contours and inscrutable affect on display. Qud is better understood as a procedural conjuror of deep future fever dreams—of bird-worshipping wasteland villages and their alligator mayors, of marble-skinned warrior-clones entombed in centuries-long subterranean slumber, of chairs that can be people with an application of Spray-a-Brain. Whether I'm bristling with surplus limbs and psionic weaponry on a triumphant run or simply inspecting furniture flavor text, Qud is a showcase of stylistic and systemic artistry.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: It's just excruciatingly well-written, and I use that word deliberately. Consider its item description for a folding chair: "Jointed wood and knit watervine make a movable wharf for the ass." How am I to read this, as someone notionally paid to write for a living, and not simply want to give up?

6. Stardew Valley

Released: February 26, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 249.08

Elie Gould, News Writer: A beacon of feel-good cosy goodness, Stardew Valley has managed to retain its position as one of the most influential indie games for almost a decade now and for good reason. Its warm vibes, whimsical characters, and beautiful locations all cobble together to make a farming sim which is at times almost impossible to put down. I've been working on my Cherrytree Farm for about seven years now, and going about my daily business is just as exciting and fun as the day I began.

Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: It's impossible to not praise the game that inspired every second release to involve some sort of farming mechanics. Yet, despite all the farming simulators I've spent an ungodly amount of time playing, nothing holds a torch to my sweet, dear Pelican Town.

Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: I delayed playing this game until just last year because I was terrified it would take over my life. And of course it did, to the tune of 60 hours in just the first two weeks alone. I love that it lets me think up so many personal goals, whether they're casual (I wanna grow a pumpkin the size of a car this fall) or obsessive (I wanna min-max the profitability of my basement wine-making operation for the next five years).

5. Crusader Kings 3

Released: September 1, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 253.33

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: The best way to experience the medieval world—if the experience you want involves chasing perverts out of your bedroom, murdering family members and alcoholism. Crusader Kings 3 is much more than a strategy game—it's a hugely elaborate RPG, a centuries-long life sim and a platform for so many impressive mods. And it just keeps getting bigger and better as Paradox extends the map and beefs up its multitude of systems.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I repeatedly kidnapped the King of Estonia so much it broke his mind and he became a nudist.

Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: I don't have much of a mind for strategy, let alone grand strategy, but I sure do like personal drama. When you pull your eyes away from the world and focus on your character, their family, and their relationships, CK3 is like a big, bizarre soap opera that gives you a sprawling and often hilarious story to tell each time you play. Yes, yes, Moldavia is invading Walachia, but my spymaster just heard a rumor that a local noble is sleeping with his own son's wife? Juicy!

4. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Released: May 18, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 259.50

Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: It's somehow been a decade since The Witcher 3 changed our expectations for RPGs, but it sure doesn't feel like it. How many games since have had sidequests as clever or funny as A Greedy God, in which a couple dummies have been duped into thinking a gluttonous monster is their god? Or a protagonist with as strong a sense of history in their world as Geralt, yet still malleable in the moments you make key choices? Maybe just one, and it's ranked higher on this list.

Play it again—I bet there's at least one killer quest you haven't seen yet.

Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: A handful of videogames have made me want to read the associated books. With Baldur's Gate, it was not worth it. With The Witcher it was, and I blitzed through the whole saga between playing The Witcher 3 and its expansions. Now if I hear the phrase "Battle of Brenna" my eyes glaze over and I go to my happy place.

They're fun books taken on their own, but they really deepened my appreciation of the games as well. Especially The Witcher 3, which feels the most like a dedicated fanfic continuation of the novels with its focus on Ciri and Yennefer.

Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Possibly the best RPG I've ever played, for so many reasons, but it's the characters who are the real backbone of the thing: Geralt, obviously, but Yennefer, Dandelion, Ciri, and even more background players like Zoltan and Keira are what really bring it to life. Geralt, Lambert, and Eskel getting apocalyptically hammered and drunk-dialing one of Yen's pals is silly and juvenile (and yes, uproariously funny), but it's also one of the game's most genuinely humanizing moments. Whomst among us has not made bad decisions and disappointed our partners while on a night out with the boys? Geralt is already well established as a character by that point in the game, but that episode makes him real in a way we hadn't seen previously: He's absolutely a hero, but he's also just one of the guys.

3. Dwarf Fortress

Released: August 8, 2006 | Top 100 Score: 261.43

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: I started playing Dwarf Fortress sometime in 2010, and since then I've forgotten more about the dwarven histories I've witnessed than most people will ever learn about our own. I've watched goblin sieges broken by one-armed wrestlers, grief-maddened kings sealed in their throne rooms, failed aqueduct projects leading to food riots, and more. It's a testament to the sprawling intricacy of Dwarf Fortress's fantasy simulation that the 15 years we spent with half-functional marksdwarves—now fixed, thanks to a recent patch—was barely a footnote to the endless toil, tragedy, and turmoil of dwarven existence.

It's an incomparable storytelling engine of absurd complexity, modeling everything from geologic erosion to nerve tissue damage to feline alcohol poisoning. With any luck, I'll still be playing it in 2040.

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: My not-so-secret belief is that, if you asked the god Yama to judge all of videogames, Dwarf Fortress would be the one that comes closest to perfection. This is a medium where a million back-of-box blurbs have promised 'anything can happen,' but it's only in DF that I think that might actually be true, thanks to the literal decades of accumulated systems and mechanics that have now accrued in Tarn and Zach Adams' bizarre and beautiful everything-simulator.

2. Disco Elysium – The Final Cut

Released: October 15, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 267.16

Joshua Wolens, News Writer: No game has ever captured the malaise of the end of history better. Disco Elysium's Revachol is a city stuck in neutral, ruled over not by a singular tyrant but by the distant dictates of drab men of finance, who spill more blood with a signature than even the most industrious dictator could with a firing squad. Its people are bleary-eyed, ignored, and exploited in a kind of maddeningly abstract way—they know no future but rather an interminable present, a neverending process of things getting inevitably worse.

Until someone goes and blows away a mercenary hired by the Wild Pines corporation, anyway, at which point all the quiet, tinderbox contradictions that define Revachol threaten to catch alight and engulf it. Suddenly the city where every possible future has been tried and foreclosed is forced to lurch into something new, just like the bloated, self-destroying drunk you play as. I'm not sure a more 21st-century game has, or could be made.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: I am a speed-addicted cop with a drinking problem, my best friend thinks I'm an idiot, I've lost my gun, my car and my badge, I keep trying to eat the rich and I think I can see ghosts. My necktie talks to me. Unrelated: Disco Elysium is very good.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Disco Elysium is a masterfully-written piece of art. It manages to be hilarious, harrowing, uplifting, and depressing all at once. Once moment you're cracking up at Harry DuBois bellowing about an "ice cop-hat fuck show", the next your heart softens as he's treated with understanding by people who've all already lived the worst days of their lives, and are expecting so many more.

Also, Kim Kitsuragi is the best companion character in any RPG, bar none. He is an anchor point in the universe, the perfect platonic ideal of that guy. He is, always has been, and will continue to be Him.

Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: I still don't know where my gun is.

1. Baldur's Gate 3

Released: August 3, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 267.64

Robert Jones, Print Editor: The best fantasy RPG of all time. A game of such staggering complexity, flexibility, fun and beauty, that no matter who you are or how you play it, Baldur's Gate 3 will leave an emotional mark on you. What Larian Studios achieved with Baldur's Gate 3 is already legendary, with the game scooping up every single award going following its release, as well as topping countless lists just like this. But, let me tell you, its legend is only going to grow further as time passes. Baldur's Gate 3 is a game that will go on to influence so many more games yet to come, a game whose impact on the video game industry will be as keenly felt as when Doom released, or Deus Ex or, yes, even its mighty predecessor, Baldur's Gate 2. I, for one, can't wait to see what the future holds.

Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I mean… c'mon, are we really surprised this one's here? The good ship PC Gamer is a flotilla of varying tastes, but the one thing we tend to have in common most of all is that we all love a bloomin' good RPG.

Baldur's Gate 3 is an utter masterclass, hard-earned by Larian's multiple brushes with bankruptcy and years of making increasingly good CRPGs. Swen Vincke and co. wandered out into a field with a bottle, stared at a thundercloud with full confidence, and let the lightning come to them—hitting the D&D renaissance right at its apex.

Compliments need to go to the game's writing, as well. Not since Origins have we seen a cast of characters so well-fleshed out, distinct, and realised. Even Wyll (who I think gets dunked on far too often, IMHO) is only a little less golden because he's standing on the pantheon with some all-timers. That the game allows you to miss, kill, or betray any of them shows a ton of confidence in its immersive sim vision.

I also don't want to let it go unspoken that Larian's post-launch support has turned this game from "just excellent" to an all-timer. New subclasses, difficulty modes, and an honest-to-Bhaal epilogue that turned its slightly-wobbly, hurried-feeling ending into a perfect series of capstones to one of my favourite games ever.

Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Baldur's Gate 3 is one of the few games where I think the 160 hours I spent reviewing it was time well spent. It consumed my every waking moment for weeks and I loved every second of it, giving it the highest score we've ever given a game in the history of PC Gamer (at least in the UK).

Andrea Shearon, Evergreen Writer: Unlike Fraser, I do not have a good excuse for my embarrassingly long Baldur's Gate 3 playtime. Steam says I've put over 400 hours into Larian's behemoth RPG, but it does not indicate how much of that was time spent rotating my Tav and Karlach around like a rotisserie chicken.

Since I got so into modding, I'm gonna say I wracked up at least half of that in the character creator. The other half was time spent petting Scratch and arguing (flirting?) with my brain worm.

Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Man I've got stuff to do and I'm still eyeing another replay.

Personal Picks

Not enough games for you? Luckily the PC Gamer team has plenty of favourites that didn't make it into the main list. Each editor has picked one game that has their personal seal of approval—even though it didn't secure enough votes to make it into the list proper.