Welcome to the PC Gamer Top 100—our annual list of the best games you can play right now. Every year, we look at the hundreds of thousands of PC games that are available to buy, and think, “yes, we can whittle this down into a numbered list”. Hubris? Yes. A months-long crucible of heated arguments and impassioned pleas? Also yes.
More than anything, the Top 100 is designed to capture a moment in time. It’s a place where the ‘canon’ classics of the past rub shoulders against the fresh new hotness. Where being a game that a significant portion of the team currently loves is as important as being a game that is recognised worldwide for its contributions to the medium.
It is a deeply subjective process—a way for PC Gamer’s editorial team to advocate for the games they’re passionate about. One member of our team has spent years attempting to get Overwatch back on the list, taking every opportunity to persuade their fellow editors to give it a chance. Not every entry required that level of dedication to earn its spot, but every pick is a game that at least a handful of our staff cares deeply about.
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How we make the list
Ahead of the vote, the PC Gamer team is free to nominate any PC game for voting, giving us a longlist of over 300 games. Each member of the team is then asked to rate those games subjectively across three weighted categories:
- Quality: Is it good? A rating of the game’s calibre. (60% of the Top 100 Score)
- Importance: Is it noteworthy? A rating of the game’s influence. (20% of the Top 100 Score)
- Freshness: Is it unique? A rating of the game’s originality. (20% of the Top 100 Score)
The weightings are designed around the Top 100’s function as an annual, ever-changing list. Too much weight to Importance, and the list stagnates. Too much to Freshness, and there’s no consistency year-to-year. Quality is the most important category because, ultimately, if we don’t think a game is actually very good, it doesn’t make the list.
The sum of each game’s ratings is divided by its number of voters, and then run through a few special formulae—including a penalty for games that receive too few votes—to produce the final Top 100 Score for each game.
We then make some manual adjustments. In the interest of variety we mostly restrict the list to one game per series—only including multiple if we think the games are different enough from each other to be worth mentioning, as with Baldur’s Gate 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3. Otherwise, the lower scoring game in a series is removed. We also let editors pitch for a change to the list—each of which is voted on by the wider team, and only ratified if it gets majority approval.
What’s left is the 100 games you find below. Some might claim it folly—attempting to wrestle the varied tastes of our editorial team into a list of games we wholeheartedly recommend. Nevertheless, we’re sure that within these entries, you’ll find something new to love.
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100. Deadlock
Released: TBA | Top 100 Score: 213.58
Elie Gould: I’m in no way a MOBA-lover but I sure do love Deadlock. I love its fantastically written characters, exciting and experimental game design, and its mode for dummies: Street Brawl.
Jacob Ridley: Welp, Elie has called me out. I play Deadlock for dummies, otherwise known as Street Brawl, and it’s something special. A large cast of otherworldly characters keeps every round fresh. It’s surprisingly accessible through excellent character, UI, and game design—a high skill ceiling, but fun all the way down. Great game, and I’m yet to even try the MOBA mode.
Elie Gould: That wasn’t a call out, Jacob. I also love and play Deadlock for dummies, it rocks!
Andrea Shearon: It’s me, the MOBA-lover logging in to say I’ve only put a handful of hours into Deadlock and already love it. I’m the reverse of Elie and not into hero shooters, but Deadlock (and Calico) have won me over.
Harvey Randall: It’s also me, the person on the PC Gamer team with 360+ hours in this thing—and while I do (unfortunately, it’s a character flaw) know how to play MOBAs, Deadlock is shaping up to be the best-in-class of the entire genre. Which means, as my fellows have stated, it also has an absolute ton going for it outside of just being a very good example of itself.
Valve has cooked up one of its coolest settings—a supernatural 1950s New York where barrel mimics lurk on street corners and Lovecraftian gods play at their own versions of the Grand Budapest. And while it’s not yet finished, the fact it’s getting record-high concurrents should tell you just how much Valve has cooked here.
Jake Tucker: I’ve tried and failed to get into Deadlock a few times now, and the main draw is the incredible world. MOBAs could be accused, usually, of being a little bit of a fantasy hodgepodge, but Deadlock’s setting is consistent and fascinating, a tiny city for you to explore each game.
99. Death Stranding 2
Released: March 19, 2026 | Top 100 Score: 215.31
Morgan Park: I consider Death Stranding 2 the perfect kind of sequel. It builds on all of the fantastic hiking, delivery, and construction stuff that ruled about the original while rethinking what kinda sucked (combat). The addition of proper bandit camps and expanded combat options really rounds out its sandbox into something special—a contemplative walking simulator, a complex logistics game, and a memorable immersive sim. The first Death Stranding is one of my favorites, but On The Beach upstages it on all fronts. Personally, it should rate higher.
Sean Martin: Death Stranding 2 has a similar magic to Control, but where that game juxtaposes the mundanity of office life with paranormal occurrences, Death Stranding 2 actually makes logistics work ridiculously fun. I built a little truck, slapped as many batteries to the outside as I could, and drove it across Australia, even through Timefall events, which is more than any delivery man should have to deal with.
Jody Macgregor: I’m the guy who thinks the first one was better. The deliveries were more challenging, and the setting more mysterious. I loved not knowing what was going on and then slowly getting to grips with this bizarro whale-themed apocalypse. By comparison Death Stranding 2 has a bad case of the exposition dumps, with Dollman in particular basically existing just to parp out explanations in case you didn’t understand the thing that literally just happened.
Fraser Brown: I loved the first one, but I refuse to spend £70 on a PC game. I have a dog to feed.
98. Total War: Warhammer 3
Released: February 17, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 216.90
Sean Martin: What we talk about when we talk about Total War: Warhammer 3 is really Immortal Empires, the colossal campaign culmination of a decade-long trilogy of games and expansions. I’ve played Total War almost my entire life, but Immortal Empires stands at the pinnacle of campaign gameplay—a fantastical brewing pot of fun factions and units, enough to enthral any would-be Warhammer-lover.
And it keeps growing and mutating like some endlessly ravenous troll. The Lords of the End Times expansion arrived recently and introduced the iconic period alongside a fresh endgame rework.
Jody Macgregor: One of those Lords of the End Times, the Great Necromancer Nagash, has a nailbiting campaign where basically everyone hates you and your economy is mid, but fortunately you are a gigantic bony badass (seriously, even his bootlaces look skeletal) who cannot be stopped. Your minions are constantly failing and you have to go bail them out personally, arriving like Darth Vader on the day an officer screwed up big time, then absolutely demolishing whatever opposition was causing the trouble. It’s glorious.
Fraser Brown: I used to be a diehard historical Total War boy, but the work Creative Assembly has done on Warhammer has been too damn impressive. There were some bumps in the road, but the most recent string of DLCs have been incredible, culminating in one of my favourite expansions. God, Nagash is good. OK, he’s actually incredibly evil. But I love this lich.
Jake Tucker: Hard same, why would I ever want to play as medieval knights smashing each other when I could play as Skaven fighting against monstrous ogres?
97. Cities: Skylines
Released: March 10, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 218.90
Fraser Brown: Still the best urban city builder around, even after all these years. The sequel is better than it was at launch, but the OG is still comfy on its city planner throne. City planners do get thrones, right? They should.
Phil Savage: There’s no shortage of options if you want a focused city builder that hones in on a particular vibe or scenario. But if you want pure, maximalist city-building—the full uncut hit of zone distribution, traffic management and tourism expansion—Cities: Skylines is still the only true game in town.
96. Doom Eternal
Released: March 20, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 219.27
Morgan Park: The list of big-budget singleplayer shooters is depressingly small these days, but even if they were the hotness, I don’t think Doom Eternal would have trouble keeping its FPS throne. Eternal is the ultimate marriage of acrobatics and heft, casting the Slayer as a helldiving fighter jet with dashes, jumps, but no wallrun. Though sometimes dinged for some brave difficulty spikes, this is still peak modern Doom, and a true PC shooter—as in, you really should play it with a mouse and keyboard.
Shaun Prescott: I’ve struggled to care much about new FPS games since Doom Eternal. It’s so unrelenting, so exhausting, that I think it filled my cup forever.
95. Dwarf Fortress
Released: August 8, 2006 (Alpha) | Top 100 Score: 219.30
Lincoln Carpenter: Dwarf Fortress is one of the most distilled forms of PC gaming. Acclimating to its demands and expectations is almost a lifestyle in itself, but you’re rewarded for the effort with a sprawling fantasy management sim and a deeply simulated roguelike, with systems for modeling nerve damage and geographic water drainage and civilizational ruin. It’s a synthesis of conscious craft and procedural generation, an engine for a long tradition of oral storytelling, and the product of the years-long and ongoing effort of obsessive software wizards. It’s an absurd achievement of fantasy simulation, and its creators only intend on doubling down.
Oh, and it regularly produces patch notes like “Made the corpses of small animals that die out of water stop teleporting”—the surest sign of quality one could ask for.
Joshua Wolens: I’m genuinely convinced Dwarf Fortress might be the best game ever made. At the very least, if I were given some sort of ambassadorial role where I had to explain the power of videogames to an alien race, DF would be the first thing I showed them.
94. Inside
Released: July 7, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 220.67
Lauren Morton: Inside is one of those bucket list puzzle games you play once and remember fondly forever. I wish I could bottle those “Oh do they want me to… Oh wow, of course,” moments that you can only ever experience once in a game and only one game in a decade truly gives you. This is that game, a surreal and creepy descent into sci-fi horror that so many sidescroll puzzlers with children in imminent danger have tried to capture since. It’s nigh on perfect level design: beauty and blood pressure-spiking combined.
Andy Chalk: Inside is so good. I had no idea what was going on at any given moment or what the hell it was all about when it was over, but the vibe was pure and immaculate: Horrifying yet starkly beautiful, showing just enough of its world to satisfy without surrendering the mystery, and having the balls to end inconclusively—and, frankly, incomprehensibly. Importantly, too, Inside doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s a short, sharp, surreal shock that’ll leave you too wondering what the hell it was all about when it’s all over.
Sean Martin: If we’re talking space occupied in my brain relative to hour count, Inside is one of the most memorable, atmospheric, and smart side-scrollers I’ve ever played.
93. BattleTech
Released: April 24, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 221.14
Evan Lahti: Mechs are metal piñatas. Their modular durability make them the most fun-to-shoot targets in video games, more than Nazi zombies, helicopters, or terrorists. Mechs die gradually: first layers of armor, then internal structure (a mech’s bones, basically), then a weapon or other component. Worst-case, an ammo compartment explodes, annihilating the equipment around it. That combat pacing is a perfect template for a video game, and it works even better in the context of an XCOM-style campaign where you’re a mercenary company that’s scavenging parts over time and making risk-reward judgments on which contracts to accept.
Lincoln Carpenter: The real magic trick of BattleTech is Harebrained Schemes’ ability to make speed and motion so crucial in a turn-based tactics game about massive, hulking war machines. A slow mech is just an easy target.
Fraser Brown: One of the worst things Paradox ever did was not let Harebrained Schemes work on another BattleTech game. The good news is that this one has so many great mods that you can make your own sequel.
Jake Tucker: One of the best turn-based strategy games ever made, the fact this didn’t spawn a multi-part series or even get the level of support of several of Paradox’s other titles makes me sad. There’s something about the fantasy of running an intergalactic band of mechanised mercenaries that nothing else quite hits and has got me installing this game again on my second screen while writing this entry.
92. Hollow Knight: Silksong
Released: September 4, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.14
Sean Martin: Year after year, I’ve advocated for Hollow Knight’s position on this list, but I’m more than happy to see Silksong succeed. Scaling the kingdom of Pharloom, from its abyss-shrouded depths to its towering silken spires, is a frustrating endeavour, but I’ll be damned if it’s not the richest action-platforming experience you’ll ever have. Hollow Knight punches above its weight constantly and Silksong is no different, weaving together masterful combat, exploration, and platforming, with an infamous ability to make you delight and despair in equal measure.
Harvey Randall: Despair really is the name of the game, here—while I like Silksong for all the normal reasons (its gorgeous setting, its excellent combat, its beautiful music), part of what enraptured me about it was its animosity towards the player. Silksong is a jerk to you. Hidden benches, traps, unreasonable runbacks, poison maggot swamps and infuriating side-quests. But that acts as a counterbalance to its beauty, and gives it enough personality that I just kept coming back to it.
91. Marathon
Released: March 5, 2026 | Top 100 Score: 221.33
Rory Norris: Time and time again, Bungie has proven it’s the best in the business when it comes to the simple joy of shooting virtual guns. Marathon combines impeccable weapon feel and a deep toybox with the innate tension of an extraction shooter for truly nail-biting action. Add to that its knack for environmental and mechanics design honed with Destiny’s endgame, and you’ve got the most intricate, cerebral, unchained extraction shooter for those sickos willing to learn its ways.
Phil Savage: Arc Raiders is definitely the better game, but damn does Marathon’s PvP feel good.
Issy van der Velde: Improving is an incredibly rewarding feeling. At launch I was a scared little runner, now I’m an Arachne angel of death
Jacob Ridley: My obsessive interest in this game during its first two weeks then sudden, complete drop-off to not playing it again since—not even once—should be studied by scientists.
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90. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
Released: September 30, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.40
Evan Lahti: “If by our deaths a single drop of noble blood should water the earth, they shall not be in vain.” Compared to the 1998 original on PlayStation, Tactics’ contemporary English translation is extraordinarily Shakespearean. This is Japanese, turn-based King Lear. Soft colors and art direction blend cuteness with a backstabbing medieval tale.
There are charming, dated aspects to this chesslike RPG, like the need to grind random combats to level up critical abilities like Auto-Potion, but the depth of the jobs system and a light sandbox campaign structure makes Tactics enduring. You’ve also gotta love the outright strangeness of some of the job classes: the Orator (there’s an actual “Lecture an enemy to sleep” ability), the Calculator (target spells based on prime numbers), stealing weapons or armor outright off of enemies as a Thief—all of which resist modern notions of a damage-maxing meta in favor of playing Tactics with a touch of silliness.
89. Arc Raiders
Released: October 30, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.59
Rory Norris: While Tarkov might be more gnarly and Marathon more satisfying shooting, Arc Raiders is wholly unique in how it has naturally, seemingly accidentally, become a social sim. Blasting players and machines is sublime, but making friends with strangers on the surface and the chaos that ensues are among my fondest moments in any game.
Evan Lahti: Can’t understate the technical achievement of the ARCs themselves from an animation and pathfinding perspective. These are the best, most dynamic and unpredictable robot enemies to ever grace a video game. Even the lowly Tick has a small chance of screwing a seasoned player in the right circumstances.
Sean Martin: For me it’s the Fireflies, they’re such genuine buggers, always setting me aflame at the worst possible moment. But honestly, I wouldn’t change them. The wild variety of ARC machines and how they insidiously permeate each map is part of what’s kept me coming back even a year later. With the Frozen Trail’s addition of raid-style activities like the Fallen Emperor and Arc Frigate, I’m excited for the game’s current trajectory.
88. Alien: Isolation
Released: October 6, 2014 | Top 100 Score: 221.60
Sean Martin: Peak cinema is the only way to describe Alien: Isolation. It’s undeniable that the Xenomorph’s elaborate AI, which stalks you through Sevastopol space station, redefined the survival-horror genre. But for me, its greater success lies in creating a game that feels exactly like its movie counterpart. We see all sorts of films made from old games, but few games made from old films, and almost none that achieve such aesthetic parity with their source material—it’s a monumental achievement, and another reason to get excited for the sequel.
Issy van der Velde: 12 years later and I still scream every time the Xenomorph drops down from a vent right in front of me.
Fraser Brown: It took me a decade to finish Alien: Isolation because it simply scared the absolute shit out of me. Playing for an hour left me a sweaty, cowardly mess. Incredible game.
Joshua Wolens: They should never have given you the flamethrower. By the game’s end I was using it to shoo away the xenomorph like spraying a water bottle at a stray cat.
87. Terraria
Released: May 16, 2011 | Top 100 Score: 221.70
Andrea Shearon: I often joke I’ll love any game handing me a set of Legos, but Terraria is a particularly good set. I’ve been digging holes to hell and hacking up mutant eyeballs for well over a decade now, and I’m still not tired of it. While all of my friends were playing Minecraft, I was in my own little survival sandbox corner with Terraria. The 2D side-scroller was always more my style, and after this year’s update, I’m back to regularly building NPC castles and spelunking for treasures.
Jake Tucker: I’ve been playing Terraria for what feels like my entire adult life, and I still find things that make me squeal with delight. The developers have a fantastic sense of what would be fun in their own game. Each and every update, including this year’s surprisingly huge content pack, feels essential.
86. Overwatch
Released: August 10, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 222.00
Elie Gould: I’ve been gunning for Overwatch to get onto the Top 100 ever since I rocked up at PC Gamer and seeing it finally do so after a monumental 10th year is pretty special. An absolute staple of the genre, Team 4 has managed to turn the ship around with great effort from a stagnating hero shooter to an FPS game that’s experimental, polished, and continues to be a hell of a lot of fun.
Rory Norris: Don’t forget the monkey scientist and hamster in a wrecking ball.
Harvey Randall: I admit it—after a long time of Elie trying to get me to play Overwatch (there definitely has not been a gun to my head at any point, and I’m not saying this because there currently is one) I’ve got to give fair dues: Overwatch is pretty fun at the moment. It’s a very competent hero shooter, and the foibles of Overwatch 2, which put me off the game in the first place, have mostly been done away with.
85. Deep Rock Galactic
Released: May 13, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 222.00
Rory Norris: Deep Rock Galactic is a rare co-op game that actually demands you work together to creatively solve problems. Each class brings unique tools to help you survive the bug-infested caves of Hoxxes IV, from a zipline to drills. That’s not to mention their banter, which plays into DRG’s cynical, blue collar humour.
Mix these Dwarves into a cocktail of unique, challenging enemy design, procedural level generation, and some of the most creative weapons I’ve seen, and it’s easily the most fun I’ve had with the genre. Rock and stone, to the bone.
Lincoln Carpenter: Deep Rock’s gameplay just has such a pleasant rhythm: Punch your way into the next procedural cave, light it up to see what you’re working with, figure out how to navigate up to that delicious Morkite seam glittering above you, fight guns blazing with your backs against the wall when a swarm catches your scent, repeat. It’s an enduring delight.
84. Citizen Sleeper
Released: May 5, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 221.17
Issy van der Velde: Like all great sci-fi, Citizen Sleeper uses its futuristic setting to explore a very current problem. Trapped on derelict space station the Eye and caught between a corrupt trade union, gang, and your former corporate owners, you play as a Sleeper whose mind has been digitised and put into a decaying robot body. The expensive stabilizer needed to keep from falling apart can easily be swapped for numerous real-world analogs: insulin, inhalers, hormones, antidepressants, even food and water. The fact that the need for stabilizer is the result of planned obsolescence only makes the game’s parallels to our present day even more conspicuous.
I managed to carve out a nice life on the Eye despite the horrors of capitalism, and maybe that’s the point—you may not change the whole world, but you can change yours.
Harvey Randall: Citizen Sleeper is one of those games that caught me at a very important time in my life—new job, new city, and big, scary changes. In the same way that I found a home in real life, I found one on Erlin’s Eye: An apartment, a cat I said hello to, friends and responsibilities pushing through the industrial megastructure like green shoots.
It’s also just a remarkably clever game—that journey being reflected in its mechanics, too. It slowly fades from a harsh resource management game into something more like a visual novel, and that’s far from an accident.
83. FEAR
Released: October 17, 2005 | Top 100 Score: 223.09
Jake Tucker: Some shooters turn firefights from a shooting gallery into a puzzle. Those shooters are not FEAR, a shooter that turns every firefight into the coolest action sequence of all time. Shotguns blow your enemies in half, the nailgun pins them to walls and grenades turn rooms into the lobby scene from The Matrix. Behind the scenes, incredible AI and some great encounter design keep you moving forwards, but FEAR is the greatest fire-and-forget FPS there is, where the rule of cool is in charge.
Andy Chalk: FEAR was scary as hell when it was new, and that part of it has faded but it’s still a powerful FPS nut-punch that’ll suck the wind right out of you. Tight, looping level design, AI that’ll mess you up, and some of the best videogame guns ever made deliver unsurpassed close quarters combat: The shotgun and Penetrator get all the love but for my money the hard staccato of the G2A2 assault rifle is where it’s at—and now I want to replay FEAR again.
Joshua Wolens: One of the illustrious—and sadly few—games that let you pin your enemies to the wall, and the best of them.
82. Left 4 Dead 2
Released: November 20, 2009 | Top 100 Score: 223.11
Elie Gould: Left 4 Dead 2 is still a hell of a lot of fun. Perhaps it’s nostalgia but I don’t think any other zombie game has nailed the gruesome pleasure of killing off the undead quite like this gem. You’ll still find me dragging my friends into Diescraper Redux despite being thrown from the top more times than I’d care to admit.
Phil Savage: This is a surprise inclusion for me. Left 4 Dead 2 is fine, but I’d argue Fatshark has eclipsed its brand of four-player co-op. I’d take Vermintide 2 or Darktide every time.
Harvey Randall: I’ve got to disagree with Phil a little bit, here—while I would personally rather play Darktide or Vermintide 2 as someone who likes a little meta-progression, there is absolutely something refreshing about the simplicity of Left 4 Dead 2. No classes, no gear, no fumbling about with equipment or meta-progression or cosmetics. You hop in and you shoot a zombie with your shotgun and that’s that.
81. Grand Theft Auto 5
Released: September 17, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 225.00
Issy van der Velde: I’ve spent hundreds of hours in GTA Online, mostly using it as a vehicle to catch up with friends as we resupply each other’s illicit businesses and chit chat about our lives. I enjoy it as a social space, one that exists on an invite-only server, but the chaos of the public ones is too infuriating for me. No thank you, Rockstar, I don’t want to try and sell millions of dollars worth of drugs while people with unstoppable flying rocket bikes blow up hours of my hard work.
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80. Monster Hunter: World
Released: August 8, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 225.33
Lincoln Carpenter: There are arguments to be made in favor of later Monster Hunter entries, but eight years after launch, World and its Iceborne expansion are—pound-for-pound—still the best encapsulation of Capcom’s 20-year investment in making the most satisfying possible duels with the most charismatic possible dinosaurs. World was Monster Hunter’s big budget introduction to a global market, and still feels like a celebration to match the occasion: a roster of excellent monster designs, some of the most vibrant maps in the series, and an admirable iteration of the 14 weapon types.
Sean Martin: And we all know that Insect Glaive is obviously the best of those iterations.
79. BioShock
Released: August 21, 2007 | Top 100 Score: 226.00
Jake Tucker: BioShock is still one of the finest examples of how games can build a world that feels completely alive. Rapture’s crumbling art deco halls, eerie silence and unforgettable atmosphere create a setting you never want to leave. The combat is a perfect mix of guns, powers and experimentation, while its exploration of choice, control and ideology gives the whole adventure a weight few shooters have matched. It’s not just a great FPS, it’s also an FPS that lets you blast a man in the face with an assload of bees.
Issy van der Velde: That twist made me rethink the way I engage with videogames entirely.
Andy Chalk: I’m sometimes tempted to give Ken Levine a hard time for making the same game over and over, but I can’t complain too much about BioShock. The shooting and the politics are fine, but Rapture itself is the star—one of the most memorable videogame locales I’ve ever had the pleasure of exploring. I tend to be lukewarm on direct sequels but this is a notable exception: Tell me we’re going back underwater to make sure Andrew Ryan’s still dead and you can just have my money.
Sean Martin: Just a shame BioShock 2 is the better game, really. The more you learn about Rapture, the more you realise the city’s story is best told through the perspective (and power fantasy) of a Big Daddy, not some dude who didn’t even live there.
Jake Tucker: BioShock 2 is fine, but it struggles to justify its existence alongside the original. Rapture feels less mysterious the second time around, its philosophical ambitions are less compelling, and the story lacks the original’s devastating twists. Playing as a Big Daddy is fun, but familiarity ultimately diminishes the magic.
Issy van der Velde: I agree with both Jake and Sean here. The sequel lacks the wonder of the original, but it feels so much better to actually play. So, what do we value more? The story and immersion, or how it feels to blast splicers while dual wielding plasmids and a rivet gun?
Jake Tucker: Bioshock is on the top 100 list, and Bioshock 2 isn’t, so…
Joshua Wolens: BioShock 2 is a game that conjures an entirely new, apparently vitally important character out of thin air just so it can do horseshoe theory with her and Andrew Ryan. But oh well, both 1 and 2 are epigones to the true greats: System Shock 1 and 2, which did everything the B’Shocks did but better.
78. Frostpunk
Released: April 24, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 226.17
Sean Martin: I have just over 50 hours in Frostpunk, which is a hilariously short time for a game that’s lived rent-free in my head for the past eight years. Though the city-building genre continues to endlessly innovate, Frostpunk’s atmosphere and narrative leave an indelible mark, as you try to make good choices (and often don’t) to shepherd your city through an icy apocalypse. It’s not a game I’d hop into for fun, but it will etch itself into you forever… why am I recommending this, again?
Jake Tucker: The apex of the “failing is fun” genre, because you will fail in Frostpunk, no matter how hard you try. God, it’s compelling though.
77. Destiny 2
Released: October 24, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 226.43
Phil Savage: This year Destiny 2 ceased updates. It’s no longer a live-service game. What we’re left with, then, is arguably the best version of Bungie’s shooter we’ve had in years. The final update was a triumph, removing the FOMO and seasonal uncertainty that has haunted Destiny 2 throughout its life. Now you get to focus on what was always the most important thing: exceptional gunplay, enjoyable buildcrafting and some of the most impeccably designed combat encounters and missions around. Destiny 2 is dead; long live Destiny 2.
Lincoln Carpenter: I hope I’m still this fun after I’m dead.
Sean Martin: There might be life left in it yet, too, with the campaign and raid content being unvaulted. Dare I hope for Destiny 3? (I daren’t).
Fraser Brown: The best shooting in the worst game. I hope Destiny 2 sticks around forever because I enjoy seeing my colleagues having their hearts broken over and over again. I’m an awful person.
76. Max Payne 2
Released: October 14, 2003 | Top 100 Score: 226.50
Andy Chalk: This is peak Remedy: Max Payne 2 goes for full pathos with a twisting tale of men and women clinging to each other for survival, purpose, and love as bullets scream, bombs blast, and blood flows from bodies broken like a weak man’s dreams. Max’s NYC is a perfect arena for balletic battles and Max Payne 2 packs them with guns, goons, and the poetic movement of bullet-time slo-mo. But it’s the inescapable tragedy of its heroes and villains that make it all so unforgettable.
75. Yakuza 0
Released: August 1, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 226.67
Shaun Prescott: There will never be agreement on which Yakuza game is the best, but there’s something close to a consensus that Yakuza 0 is where you should start. This is the instalment that really took Ryu Ga Gotoku’s longrunning Japanese crime melodrama to the western masses, not least because you don’t need any knowledge of the other (checks Wikipedia) eight mainline games. RGG’s commingling of gangster movie, Lynchian surrealism and goofy sentimentality is on full display here, and the combat is still sublime. Plus: karaoke rules.
Jody Macgregor: Karaoke totally rules. So do Kamarocho and Sotenbori, Yakuza 0’s twin settings. They’re so true to life I was able to navigate Kabukichō and Dōtonbori, the real places they’re based on, the first time I visited them. (Though Sotenbori’s map is flipped upside-down.) Playing Yakuza 0 makes them feel like home, like places you could imagine yourself living. And doing karaoke in.
Lauren Morton: Sorry to the “release order” defenders but Shaun is right that Yakuza 0 is the best place to begin this series if you want to truly fall in love with it. The early games are mired in early ’00s cynicism, which is fine, but the camp and glamor of the ’80s makes the Yakuza cast really sing. Literally, because again, karaoke.
74. The Walking Dead
Released: April 24, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 226.67
Jody Macgregor: I replayed Telltale’s zombie dilemma agoniser this year. It’s even better than I remembered. The opening’s so strong—from being driven to prison by an oblivious cop who doesn’t notice the zombie outbreak behind you to finding eight-year-old Clementine and realising you’ll need to depend on a group of survivors to protect her, all in episode one.
Some choices are easier than others, but no matter what you do she’s there, soaking up everything, making you want to be a better person even as the world collapses.
I cried, again.
Harvey Randall: As a pure videogame, I don’t think The Walking Dead has aged all too well—especially given the gloss of its unique mechanics has faded, given both time and especially games that’ve done branching narrative paths better since. Laborious walkaround sections and choices that stop mattering an episode and a half later don’t help matters.
However, I also have a reverence for the classics—and The Walking Dead is absolutely a brilliant story, one that really furthered the cause and popularity of strong narrative choices in videogames, even if it didn’t live up to its own lofty ideals when viewed as an entire package. I still get choked up by thinking about Lee’s final moments, and thus I cannot say it shouldn’t be here.
Fraser Brown: I’m in the midst of a replay right now, and unlike Harvey I actually think it has aged really well. Its mechanics were never particularly novel—it was always about the presentation and the characters, and nothing has changed in that regard. The first season remains the greatest, but there’s plenty to love in the sequels too.
Joshua Wolens: Keep that hair short.
73. Guild Wars 2
Released: August 28, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 227.25
Phil Savage: Guild Wars 2 is secretly the best live service game ever made. No FOMO, no desperate pleas for engagement—just a steady drip of new stuff to do. 14 years into its life, and it’s absolutely full of things to discover and chase, whether that’s filling out your collection of mounts and new traversal options, testing new builds, or unlocking new fits to step up your fashion game. Everything ArenaNet adds stays relevant—the game’s horizontal progression ensures every map remains populated and worth playing in. It’s the MMO for people who don’t have time for MMOs.
Fraser Brown: I play too many live service games, and Phil is spot on. I took a hiatus of nearly a decade, but then Phil dragged me back to Tyria, and I’m so glad he did. It’s the ultimate MMO toybox, with so many incredible distractions, but with this genuinely fantastic core loop holding it all together.
Lauren Morton: Guild Wars 2 invented the live service schtick of blowing up and recreating your game map years before anyone else attempted it. Old Lion’s arch? I was there. I’ve been a Guild Wars girl since 2006 in the original and it’s genuinely incredible how this series continues to innovate the genre more than its splashier competitors do.
72. System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster
Released: June 26, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 227.52
Joshua Wolens: The trailblazer, the GOAT, the original and best. System Shock 2 set a standard for countless videogames that followed since, and it’s better than nearly all of them. Every new playthrough invites you to try something a little different and thereby reveals something new. My last playthrough was as a psychic operative, absolutely marveling at the number and strangeness of the skills that were available to me. Then the game just let me turn invisible by the end, which was maybe a touch broken, sure.
Ted Litchfield: I’ve got to go hater mode (more contrarian) here, and I’m pretty sure I said the same thing in last year’s Top 100: I think Nightdive’s ‘Shock 1 remake is a better starting point for someone new to the series or coming from BioShock.
I love System Shock 2 to bits, but even with the remaster, it’s a less approachable, more prickly game. You can still soft lock yourself on the critical path. Its RPG system is just Kinda Weird. The ‘Shock 1 remake is no less complex or deep, but far less obtuse. Love ’em both, though.
71. Dispatch
Released: October 22, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 228.00
Fraser Brown: A brilliant evolution of the Telltale-style adventure game, Dispatch strips out a lot of the point-and-click holdovers that never quite fit the format, leaving behind incredibly tight storytelling with impressive production values. This is one of the best superhero cartoons ever made, essentially.
Jody Macgregor: I enjoyed the dispatching minigame, where you choose which problems to assign your B-list heroes and pray sending the guy with fire powers to put out a fire isn’t a dumb idea, but I’m not sure it’s essential to the game’s success. Dispatch is proof Telltale was right. Big decisions, quicktime events, engaging writing, and solid performances are enough to make a brilliant videogame on their own. (And a reliable release schedule that made its episodes part of the conversation rather than a reason to wait.)
Jake Tucker: Dispatch is one of the rare games where the comedy actually makes me laugh.
Harvey Randall: Dispatch is just so good—it feels like the platonic ideal of what a classic-style Telltale game was always going for. A playable TV show. And it’s helped by the fact that there’s actually a pretty solid videogame inside all of that! One which I wish had more impact on the central yarn itself, but hey.
Mecha-Man is also just a really good and appealing superhero. Everything about Robert’s characterisation is spot-on, from his sad, crappy little apartment with a plastic chair in the middle of it to his biting wit. Dispatch is a spectacularly-written story that manages to be hilarious without getting overly quippy or irreverent about its own genre.
Jacob Ridley: One of the best new games to play on Steam Deck, or a handheld gaming PC of your choosing. Also, there is a clear wrong choice for romance in this game, but you can tell how broken we all are by how many of us make it.
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70. Thief Gold
Released: November 30, 1998 | Top 100 Score: 228.15
Jody Macgregor: Variety made Thief the ultimate stealth game. The Gold edition gives you 15 missions covering burglary, jailbreak, and a trip through another dimension to rob a god. Your opponents might be simple guards, terrifying undead, or lizards burping toxic gas.
Later stealth games focused on a more manageable number of levels and guard types, but constantly having to alter your tactics made Thief a fascinating puzzlebox. You were never sure whether you’d be dealing with an angry wizard or some drunk in a lopsided helmet.
Andy Chalk: Some say Thief 2 is the better game but for my money Looking Glass got it right the first time: Gold is where it’s at. Garrett’s adventures take him everywhere (and the more fantasy-flavored monster missions are great, dammit), but the game’s singular focus on stealth never changes, and that’s what makes it so brilliant: You really are a thief. It took me a few frustrating tries before I finally clicked with what Thief was doing, but once I did I never looked back.
Ted Litchfield: If you’ve gone almost 30 years without playing Thief, it actually won’t hurt you to wait a little bit longer at this point: Nightdive’s upcoming remaster is currently my single most anticipated game (see also entry 72, the System Shock 2 remaster).
Joshua Wolens: I have been stuck in the Downwind Thieves’ Guild tunnels for 4,679 days. Send aid.
Ted Litchfield: You just gotta go left, then right, then left again. Past the whistling guard. Ignore the underground hut. Play a game of roulette. Collect the Royal Crescent. Backtrack all the way back to the beginning of the level. You should be good.
69. Satisfactory
Released: September 10, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 228.17
Jake Tucker: Satisfactory is the perfect co-op game. Exploring its alien landscapes, discovering new resources and slowly turning a messy outpost into a perfectly tuned factory is endlessly satisfying. With friends or alone even gargantuan projects become a series of tiny tasks, and the joy comes from those small breakthroughs, whether finding a better route for your conveyor belts or shaving seconds off production. It’s a game about creativity and curiosity and it rewards both. It’s also a game about making your friends do the stuff you don’t want to do so you can spend hours optimising a power grid.
68. Slay the Spire 2
Released: March 5, 2026 | Top 100 Score: 228.67
Evan Lahti: Like styles of dance, each of Slay the Spire 2’s five characters has a rhythm. The Silent feels like speedy tap: high-volume, lower-damage tiny knives and an emphasis on deck turnover. The Regent loads stars methodically like cosmic cartridges, then expends them in dramatic flourishes. Ironclad is reckless and brutal, shrugging off self-injury if it means pulling off a coup de grâce. The Necrobinder stores block like blubber on their bony hand. Each run is a set of dance steps you haven’t seen before, a blend of improvisation and routine.
Harvey Randall: Slay the Spire 2 is just broadly better than its predecessor, which is a hard thing to do when you’re trying to one-up the videogame that made the roguelike deckbuilder (a genre so ubiquitous it’s become exhausting) a thing. I especially love the improvement from boss relics to Ancient Relics, which have gone from “pick whatever gives you energy” to a legitimately interesting set of choices. Vaaku take the wheel!
67. Cyberpunk 2077
Released: December 10, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 229.01
Sean Martin: It’s funny to think a mere six years ago, one of the most anticipated RPGs ever, Cyberpunk 2077, launched as a buggy, undercooked mess, revealing its gameplay trailers were effectively lies. It’s come a long way since then. With the 2.0 update and its impeccable Phantom Liberty DLC, Cyberpunk completed its comeback arc in 2023, cementing itself as another CDPR classic.
Morgan Park: While The Witcher will always be closer to my heart, Cyberpunk 2077 has grown into my favorite CDPR game. This is what I always wished Grand Theft Auto was like.
Harvey Randall: I came to Cyberpunk 2077 very late, and rather than being punished for my tardiness, I was rewarded with what has become one of the best open-world RPGs out there. It might not’ve started that way, but it certainly ended up there, so let this be a lesson: Always procrastinate. Yep, that’s definitely the takeaway.
Issy van der Velde: If CDPR could just fix that one visual bug that keeps the ballistic coprocessor augment showing in first-person though that’d be great.
Joshua Wolens: Jonathan Silverhand is my best friend. Oh, he nuked a city? He nuked a city, did he? Whatever. Like you’re perfect.
Andy Chalk: I’m like the Harv: I didn’t touch Cyberpunk 2077 until 2024, after the release of Phantom Liberty, so I missed all the early-day shenanigans. What I got instead was a city I could believe in, filled with people I cared about and impossible choices I’ll never be fully sure of. I betrayed an honourable man for a murderous fanatic—and worse, I’d probably do it again.
Ted Litchfield: I liked it in 2020 when everybody was still really weird and mean about it, beyond reasonable critiques of the glitches and stuff. I saw some very earnest, heated discussion on Twitter about whether it was anticapitalist enough. Pepperidge Farms remembers.
66. StarCraft 2
Released: July 27, 2010 | Top 100 Score: 229.33
Jake Tucker: The gold standard of RTS games, Starcraft 2 is a tightly balanced competitive strategy game that nothing else in the genre has ever quite matched. It’s a game where every split-second decision matters, with the three completely different factions coming together to offer a competitive depth that felt unreal at the time. Whether you’re executing a flawless build order, surviving a desperate defence or outthinking an opponent in the late game, every victory feels earned. Starcraft 2 feels like Chess except all of the pieces are blowing each other up.
65. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
Released: September 17, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 229.50
Rory Norris: I love Vampire Survivors, but Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has perfected the genre with its infusion of the dwarves. Crucially, it avoids the mindlessness of most auto-shooter Survivor-likes once you become reasonably equipped—that novelty wears thin fast. In spite of stages being procedurally generated, they escape becoming a forgettable backdrop thanks to your ability to mine the environment, creating escape routes or kill zones on the fly.
Likewise, borrowing the main game’s creative enemies makes each one a fun hazard to untangle while you’re running around passively firing lasers, shotgun blasts, and lobbing grenades every half second.
Then there’s the dwarves themselves, who have maintained their wit and unique kits in the transition. There’s even a brand-new dwarve who rides a drill equipped with flame-throwing exhausts, mines, and more. That’s rad.
Jake Tucker: This game has, since it launched into early access, been the reason I take my Steam Deck on every work trip and holiday. It’s truly incredible and the addition of weapon customisation and mining creates a smart twist on the usual Survivors-like formula.
64. Spelunky 2
Released: September 29, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 229.61
Evan Lahti: Criminally underplayed, Spelunky 2 rewards two types of platformer player. First, it’s a rich 2D game about falling, jumping, and avoiding teleporting Egyptian crocmen. The slipperiness and inertia of the physics system is grounded and simulation-y, but promotes uncertainty, timing, and movement tech. Second, it’s a roguelike that rewards replay and discovery: you can beat Spelunky 2 a dozen different official and unofficial ways, from finding the backdoor into the City of Gold to escorting a fragile purple eggplant past multiple angry deities, or by completing every stage of “The Chain,” an 8-step scavenger hunt across the game for special artifacts that unlock a 94-level, cosmic post-finale-finale. But equally it’s a game you can play with your kid, ignoring all of that eternity nonsense, teaming up in co-op to rob the shopkeeper so you can become jetpacking Indiana Jones.
Issy van der Velde: I watched my housemate do all of the above because I was too rubbish at the game to do it all myself.
63. Alan Wake 2
Released: October 27, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 230.27
Elie Gould: This sets a high bar for horror games. Not because it’s massively scary or contains particularly icky monsters but because it boldly expanded on what a horror game is. It stepped out of the usual bounds of the genre to give us rock opera, a mind-bending interactive plot, and the talkshow host Mr. Door alongside a brilliant example of crime fiction. Horror games can sometimes fall victim to cliché—Alan Wake 2 does not, which is why it’s one of the best.
Rory Norris: It’s one of the most creative, artistically literate games I’ve ever played, horror or otherwise. It’s bold, both in its intertwining narrative between a tortured writer and a troubled detective, and in how it presents it to us—stunning sets, live-action cutscenes or, as Elie mentions, a sudden dance break.
62. Vampire Survivors
Released: October 20, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 230.40
Elie Gould: I don’t know what poncle baked into Vampire Survivors because once you start up a run it’s almost impossible to put down. It may have something to do with its perfect roguelike loop, amazing soundtrack, and perhaps my own hubris that all I need is one more run to finally best The Director. What’s more, we’ve also got the even more impressive Ode to Castlevania DLC, which adds 40 new weapons and a monstrous map that I almost always get lost in.
Fraser Brown: Vampire Survivors singlehandedly justified my purchase of a Steam Deck, and then proceeded to keep me awake night after night. Other bullet heavens have come along with fancy new ideas, but the OG is undefeated.
61. Stalker: Call of Prypiat – Enhanced Edition
Released: May 20, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 230.55
Joshua Wolens: I reckon 2027 might finally be Stalker 2’s year, but for now, you still can’t do much better than Call of Prypiat—the first game in the series that felt like it actually came together as a game. Shadow of Chornobyl is an ambitious Eurojank classic and Clear Sky has its charm, but it took until CoP for all Stalker’s systems, from factions to sidequests to mods to artifacts, to mesh into the shooter-RPG-horror hybrid we all know and love. And it’s still janky, thank god.
Andy Chalk: My heart will always belong to Shadow of Chornobyl—being the first always carries extra weight with me—but yeah, if you’re going to play any one game from the OG Stalker trilogy (and you should, GSC’s ambition was virtually boundless and that they were basically able to realize it is nothing short of remarkable), Call of Prypiat is it: Weird, wild, and janky enough to give you the full ride without forcing you to look up config file tweaks on GameFAQs.
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60. Kerbal Space Program
Released: April 27, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 230.80
Phil Savage: Whether or not you think Kerbal Space Program is the best PC game, a good argument can be made for it being the most PC game. It’s a bit nerdy, a bit janky, and it does something that no big-budget, triple-A videogame can match. Its vision of space shuttle tinkering is inherently satisfying and absurdly deep. And, of course, it has built a dedicated community covering everything from tutorials to modding—letting you define exactly the experience you want. A true win for the spirit of PC gaming.
Lincoln Carpenter: There truly is no kind of gaming pride that’s comparable to completing a successful Kerbal moon landing and return flight, knowing that all the complicated vehicle stages, flight plans, and delta burns were designed and executed by you and you alone. Great way to give yourself lasting delusions about how much you could contribute to an actual space program.
59. Caves of Qud
Released: December 5, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 230.86
Lincoln Carpenter: We toss the word “fever dream” around a lot, but the warped, time-wracked world of Caves of Qud’s retrofuturist science fantasy is perhaps the term’s most deserving use case. Qud’s systems and simulational mechanics are as dense and arcane as its deliciously indulgent prose, which together create a brain-boiling sense that—across the long expanse of time—the idea of something as mundane as a chair has become as mutated and malleable as your many-limbed ape-man or cyborg gunslinger will prove to be by the end of a run. Live and drink.
Wes Fenlon: It turns out that mixing the primordial essence of computer games—deeply systemic roguelikes like Rogue and NetHack—with writing that channels verbose sci-fi lit and ’70s tabletop RPGs was a potent combination nobody had dared dream of before. Maybe because pulling it off would take, like, 15 years. These guys were just crazy enough to do it.
58. Hades
Released: September 17, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 231.60
Jody Macgregor: Hades does lots of things right. Responsive controls, cleverly tweaked Greek mythology, outstanding music, writing and performances both on point—but none of that wouldn’t matter if it weren’t for God Mode.
This simple toggle enables 20% damage reduction, which goes up by 2% each time you die so it naturally plateaus at your skill level. That one little option is the reason Hades is the roguelite everyone’s partners and kids got into, and got to see all the other stuff it does so well.
Harvey Randall: Gorgeous artwork, solid roguelike design, some legitimately impressive narrative witchcraft—and let us not forget, Darren Freaking (note: not his actual middle name) Korb on the soundtrack. Supergiant Games just makes some of the prettiest, nicest-sounding mastercrafts in the business. And while I’ve tried to get Hades 2 on this goddamn list for ages (tried, and failed) I’m glad that Hades 1 still gets its day.
57. Stellaris
Released: May 9, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 231.75
Fraser Brown: Stellaris is all the sci-fi games rolled into one elaborate 4X. Robot uprisings, planet-consuming parasitic aliens, weird cosmic deities, clone armies—every base is covered. And all this amounts to a lot more than set dressing, with each sci-fi trope capable of dramatically changing the strategies you have available to you, along with the challenges you’ll face. There’s potentially thousands of hours of game in here, especially if you start delving into the overhaul mods, turning it into, for example, the best Star Trek 4X.
Sean Martin: Whenever my cravings for sci-fi 4X see my reinstall Stellaris, I almost always find myself putting in another 30 or more hours—it’s genuinely terrifying how expansive it is, a vast universe of content beckoning me to click that end turn button just one more time.
56. Nier: Automata
Released: March 17, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 232.00
Phil Savage: Existential philosophy, bullet-hell infused action-RPG combat, and hot androids, all wrapped up in a beautifully melancholy package. Nier: Automata is a singular thing, weird and Japanese in a way that ensures it sticks in the memory long after its credits roll… And then roll… And then roll again a few more times. Each of its playthroughs gives you a new part of the story—a new piece of the puzzle, letting you hop between protagonists on a lasting journey towards tragedy, heartbreak and, ultimately, hope.
Wes Fenlon: Now that there’s a complete mod for inserting the superior Papa Nier into Automata’s predecessor, Nier Gestalt, I recommend playing it too; you can see all the ideas creator Yoko Taro was playing with in terms of multiple endings and genre-hopping in a rougher, but still very compelling, form. And the music’s even better.
55. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
Released: December 1, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 232.00
Morgan Park: Rainbow Six Siege is firmly an elderly live service game at this point, but it’s still the crunchiest, most dynamic competitive FPS around. It’s a game of quirks—granular destruction, complex gadget interactions, and unforgiving lethality—but that’s exactly why nobody has managed to usurp it in almost 11 years. I don’t play as much as I used to, but that has more to do with my mental health than its strength as a shooter.
Rory Norris: Nothing compares to miraculously winning a 1v5 while your team chants ‘clutch or kick’ down the mic.
Jake Tucker: I’ve resigned my Rainbow Six commission and slunk off to the retirement home at this point, but Siege is the rare live service game that’s managed to keep the original spirit alive even after all of these years. The destruction adds a fun element that I don’t think any other shooter has quite reached.
54. Prey
Released: May 4, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 232.08
Jody Macgregor: Playing System Shock we dreamed of a game like it but more fully realized, a complete space you could explore inside and out. Prey is that, complete with zero-gravity walks outside its spooky half-abandoned space station.
It’s also complete in that every single member of its crew can be found, even if a lot of them are dead. You look them up in the database, find their tracking signal, then hunt them down somewhere in its expanse. They may well have been killed by shapeshifting shadow aliens, but they’ll be there, and that sense of a real lived-in place you just get to roam about is amazing. You can even find the character sheets from the crew’s D&D game.
Also you can learn alien powers then use them to transform into a mug.
Andy Chalk: It bothers me a little bit that we’ve ranked Prey higher than System Shock 2, even though I mostly agree with it. It’s exactly as Jody said: System Shock but newer, deeper, smarter, and hotter. So what went wrong? Why wasn’t it a smash hit? Why isn’t Arkane flying high with unlimited budgets and creative freedom? I will never understand: Bethesda saddling it with the title of a mid shooter from a decade earlier was baffling and idiotic, sure, but bad branding can’t be the whole story.
It’s all academic now, I suppose. But while it’s too late for Prey or Arkane, it’s not too late for you: This is a phenomenal game, a true spiritual successor done right, and you should play it.
53. Hunt: Showdown 1896
Released: August 27, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 232.11
Evan Lahti: A cerebral shooter that rewards underappreciated skills: spatial thinking, interpreting NPC body language, listening, deception. This sort of thing happened every night when I mainlined Hunt from 2021-2023: you watch your opponent vanish into a field of 10-foot-high corn stalks. Your mind flashes with a minor algebraic epiphany like that A Beautiful Mind meme, and you blind fire your Berthier 1892 bolt action into the corn. From the husks, a “AHHHH-UHHH” death cry reminds you that having instincts is three times more badass than having aim.
52. Sid Meier’s Civilization 5
Released: September 23, 2010 | Top 100 Score: 233.14
Tyler Wilde: Civ 5 and Civ 6 are genuinely neck-and-neck for me. I enjoy the creative opportunities of Civ 6’s more elaborate city building, but Civ 5’s more wargamey art gives it a weight that the later, more cheerful games are wanting.
Jake Tucker: “What’s your favourite Civilization” is a question up there with “do you prefer Alien or Aliens,” but for my money the best is 5, which makes combat more strategic but shuns a lot of the complexity of 6.
Fraser Brown: If we must pick a Civ, we could do worse than Civ 5. But the series feels like it ran out of steam a long time ago. Firaxis 4Xs really peaked with Alpha Centauri, possibly the greatest 4X of all time.
51. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2
Released: February 8, 2005 | Top 100 Score: 233.41
Ted Litchfield: Before a recent replay, I was worried KotOR 2 might not hold up, that my memories were sweeter than the actual game. Nah, it still whips. Best Star Wars game 22 years running. Unbeatable sci-fi atmosphere distinct to anything else in Star Wars, while still being very Star Wars. Everyone praises the characters and story—shout out to women’s wrongs queen, Kreia—but KotOR 2 has surprisingly fun buildcrafting. It’s an uneven, easy RPG combat-wise, but a fun one with way more depth than it gets credit for.
Sean Martin: KotOR 2 is required reading from my perspective. If you want to understand BioWare and where Mass Effect came from, you play KotOR, but if you want to know about Obsidian and see the seeds of Fallout: New Vegas’s brilliance, you play The Sith Lords. It’s the quintessential Empire Strikes Back of gaming, because it’s Star Wars, yes, but also because it’s the better, darker second instalment.
Fraser Brown: KotOR 2 is a philosophy class where you occasionally get to muck around with lightsabers and gaslight your companions. It rules.
Joshua Wolens: I fear I will never again love an RPG companion as much as I love my effective altruist grandma.
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50. What Remains of Edith Finch
Released: April 25, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 233.83
Andy Chalk: What Remains of Edith Finch is a walking simulator about family, loss, and understanding that will rip your heart out of your chest and make you look at it, at least twice. Maybe that sounds like the kind of experience you’re not interested in, and that’s fair: Nearly 10 years after I awarded it a 91% review score, I still feel it in my gut. Do you want that? Edith Finch will give it to you. I get it if you don’t. But man, what a story. What an experience.
Harvey Randall: One of the only games that launched a thousand video essays to well and truly deserve that level of introspection. I’m a touch down on “walking simulators”, but I think Edith Finch does enough interesting stuff with interactivity to warrant mercy from me. Videogames can tell such powerful stories because of how we interact with them.
49. Persona 5 Royal
Released: October 21, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 233.84
Phil Savage: Achingly stylish from head to toe, Persona 5 propelled Atlus to JRPG superstardom. And for good reason: it looks and plays like nothing else around, its UI coming from an alternate dimension where form and function aren’t enemies. As much as I love Persona 4’s rural vibes and Metaphor: ReFantazio’s bold, nuanced story, Persona 5 is Atlus at the height of its powers, everything from combat to dungeon design to characters to soundtrack coming together to create an aesthetic marvel. If you only have 100+ hours to dedicate to one JRPG, make it this one.
Andrea Shearon: That’s cool and all, but I still think Metaphor eats its lunch.
Sean Martin: I feel like Metaphor has most of the same problems Persona 5 does: repetitive dungeons and samey weakness-based combat, though its battle music does have a monk chant-rapping in esperanto, which is definitely a point in its favour. Oh, and Hulkenberg of course.
Joshua Wolens: By Hulkenberg he means Heismay.
Sean Martin: Heismay, too. I love my bat shinobi.
48. Return of the Obra Dinn
Released: October 18, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 234.00
Sean Martin: It’s easy to forget information games (also wonderfully known as ‘Metroidbrainias’) exist, but they account for three entries in our Top 100 this year: Outer Wilds, Blue Prince, and one of the genre’s progenitors, Return of the Obra Dinn. This short shipboard detective game sees you exploring a mysteriously empty vessel and accounting for the grizzly fates of its 51 missing souls. Obra Dinn’s greatest trick, besides its memorable atmosphere, is its information sandbox, letting you form your own deductions free from any tiresome railroading.
Phil Savage: I had never heard the term ‘Metroidbrainia’ before and I immediately hate it. I’m adding it to the list of banned terms in PC Gamer’s style guide immediately. Still, Obra Dinn rules, whatever terrible genre name you decide to saddle it with.
Wes Fenlon: Borderline criminal Obra Dinn has slipped this far down the list, but compared to many of the other games in the Top 100 it’s an experience that you can really only have once. The 1-bit presentation is so striking, and the process of assembling scraps of knowledge into a complete portrait of the vessel’s doom, will be with me forever.
47. Abiotic Factor
Released: July 22, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 234.00
Evan Lahti: It’s Half-Life 1 but you and your buddies craft varieties of alien soup that you pour into each other’s mouths. Despite this inspiration it’s one of the most original survival games in years, a portal-hopping sci-fi adventure where you break desktop computers for crafting materials. Why aren’t 40 million people playing this?
Phil Savage: I’m a survival game sceptic, but Abiotic Factor won me over effortlessly. It’s got all the standard crafting and survival tropes, but centres them perfectly around its mad science theme. Portals to alien worlds, incredibly weird tech, an extradimensional entity that takes the form of a crawling office worker, asking you to put coffee in his coffee hole. It’s all here.
Andrea Shearon: I’m a survival crafting sicko—name it and I’ve played it—but nothing hits like Abiotic Factor. It’s such a good homage to Half-Life, and I’m still impressed by its effortless transitions between goofy, slapstick predicaments to white-knuckle horror. I’ll never forget my first encounter with the Leyak. Oh how quickly “hey, do you see that thing?” turned into frantic screaming.
46. Undertale
Released: September 15, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 234.05
Ted Litchfield: Buried under calcified strata of memes and “fandom” lies a brilliant little gem of a game, one that would mess around with your save files to break the fourth wall before it was cool. Undertale built an entire battle system only to make you feel like a monster for using it. It has a wonderfully heartfelt story and memorable cast that only become more meaningful, more dear with the possibility of an evil playthrough leaving it permanently sullied. I should finally figure out Deltarune’s whole deal.
Harvey Randall: Undertale (and Deltarune, which Ted you absolutely need to play, you’d love it) is a videogame that enjoys a rare combination of both a rabid, overbearing fanbase and the actual quality to back said fanbase up. Toby Fox not only produces bangers—Megalovania slaps, I don’t care what you say—but also heartfelt, imaginative, and funny videogames that’ll have you attached to a talking skeleton in slippers.
Issy van der Velde: Undertale made me feel bad for playing it, which is a bold choice. I wish more videogames were brave enough to cause active discomfort while playing them. I didn’t like how many tiny text boxes I had to click through, and that made it all the more difficult to bottle up my frustration and not kill every monster I stumbled across.
Ted Litchfield: Harvey, Megalovania is still on my workout playlist.
45. Resident Evil Requiem
Released: February 27, 2026 | Top 100 Score: 234.20
Elie Gould: Requiem has RE4’s action, RE7’s scares, and nails RE2’s survival-horror, need I say more?
Rory Norris: I love Leon Kennedy, and we get a good dose of him here—corny jokes and silly combat included. But he’s older, wiser, and more worn out returning to Raccoon City all these years later. Despite these developments, I was more impressed with newcomer Grace Ashcroft. It’s where most of the RE7 and RE2 DNA is found, and actor Angela Sant’Albano steals the show. I’d love to see the two reunite someday.
Sean Martin: I do kind of wish Resident Evil Requiem had stuck around the hospital longer, though. Some of the Raccoon City sections left me a bit cold, trading the puzzles and spooky mansion-vibes for a barren and much more boring zombie cityscape, though the facility is cool.
Joshua Wolens: Sometimes I see people making fun of Grace online, and to those people I say: I will find you and I will d-d-d-destroy you.
44. Into the Breach
Released: February 27, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 234.60
Sean Martin: It’s funny that one of the best mech games ever made isn’t some bombastic Armored Core-style pilot sim, but is about looping turn-based tactics, as your time-traveling mech squad tries to save humanity from giant insects. Into the Breach is fantastically replayable thanks to inventive mechs, pilots, and gadgets, giving you a toolkit to tackle its random scenarios. But each battle is also a compromise that can see you sacrifice civilians, or even a pilot, for the greater good—it makes me feel like I’m slapbang in the middle of one of Gundam’s darker spinoffs.
Issy van der Velde: If you like Into the Breach, try the far superior FTL: Faster Than Light. It’s a game so nice they had to name it twice. They’re very different in terms of setting and combat (real-time as opposed to turn-based), but the moment-to-moment decision making is just as tense and thrilling.
43. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
Released: November 16, 2004 | Top 100 Score: 234.67
Jody Macgregor: Night-time cities are excellent videogame locations. Think the Arkham series, almost every cyberpunk game, and most of Thief. My fondest memory of Vice City is delivering pizza listening to Wave 103 all night long.
Bloodlines is the ultimate “cut loose in a city at night” game. You’re a vampire, of course you only come out when it’s dark, but more than that you feel like you own the night. Every alley and nightclub is a place you belong. The ultimate videogame power fantasy? Feeling safe in LA at 2 am.
Andy Chalk: “What if Bauhaus was a videogame” is the sort of idea that elicits confused stares, but here we are 20-some years later still talking about its brilliance. It’s also why I think we have to give up on the idea of a sequel: Bloodlines is maybe the ultimate distillation of a very specific time and place, and efforts to recapture that, but different, are doomed to fail because that incredibly powerful sense of place is so essential to the experience.
Fraser Brown: Like I said in last year’s Top 100, Bloodlines is one of my favourite RPGs, but I would never, ever recommend it to any sane person in 2026. The story is killer and the writing is still incredibly potent, but it’s just not fun to play. It’s a mess and even with all the mods and fixes the combat still sucks. Nostalgia is just a helluva drug.
Joshua Wolens: I would recommend it to any sane person in 2026. You’ve all gone soft. Toughen your hides on its 46-hour sewer level.
Ted Litchfield: This is one of the finest RPGs ever made, and the evolutionary missing link between 2D Fallout and New Vegas. The next time I hear someone complain about it being crusty and unapproachable, I’m kidnapping them and making them do the whole Clockwork Orange routine, but with a blind tech/gunslinger playthrough of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
Phil Savage: Yeah, I played it for the first time a few years back and it holds up incredibly well as long as you’ve got the constitution for some jank in your diet. Get the Unofficial Patch that lets you skip the sewer level (among other, less important fixes) and you’re all set.
42. Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon
Released: August 24, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 235.50
Lincoln Carpenter: Armored Core 6 is FromSoft at its most bleak—and its most brutal. There’s a terrifying sense of momentum to its mecha combat, translating the sheer mass of the machines and their munitions into a sort of apocalyptic lethality. Once you’re comfortable with an AC customized to your liking, carving through a mission’s hapless enemies can make it feel like an unforgivable cruelty that your targets had ever been allowed to enter your effective range.
But that’s only half as cruel as FromSoft’s lack of a follow-up. Still waiting.
Issy van der Velde: AC6 is also a testament to FromSoft’s incredible writing. I can’t believe I cried over a faceless mech pilot calling me ‘buddy’.
Harvey Randall: The words “I won’t miss.” have been engrained into my brain matter as one of the coolest (and in my personal opinion, sexiest) lines ever spoken in videogame history. AC6 is rule of cool incarnate and, most importantly, has a really in-depth emblem creator where you can plaster the words “I have a tummy ache and I’m being very brave about it” on your mecha.
Ted Litchfield: Standing in a cold place / Let me know / My steel core peeling away / All my blood / Let me rise / Rusted pride / Let me rise / (Uh uh uh..) / High and dry / I fly high / Watch the sun rise in the dawn / Rust away / Lost to the wind / Watch the sun rise in the dawn / I fly high / I fly high
41. Papers, Please
Released: August 8, 2013 | Top 100 Score: 235.66
Elie Gould: I went into Papers, Please with the intention of passing the time with a short game that could test my cognitive and management skills and came out even more radicalised than before. It’s a wonderful case of intelligent storytelling as it demonstrates just how absurd, evil, and invasive nationalism and fascism are by making you x-ray old ladies and keep on top of a rapidly growing list of nonsensical reasons to turn people away and lock them up.
Jake Tucker: In my playthrough I missed nearly all of the story while trying to earn enough money to provide for my family. Sorry rebellion, I’ve got kids to feed.
Phil Savage: It’s been a decade since I last played this, and the ominous, nationalistic bwarps and bworps of its main theme still live rent free in my head.
Harvey Randall: Papers, Please was one of the first videogames that showed me the intersection between mechanics and story—you’ve a task you can win, a job you can do, and you start wanting to become good at it so you have more opportunities to fail on purpose, later.
It’s sort of the embodiment of The Simple Sabotage Field Manual, a document designed by the US to help train saboteurs in WW2 to gum up the works without risk to themselves. Except you’ve got no manual or greater power backing you up, just your own moral code and the lives of innocent people in your bureaucratic hands.
Joshua Wolens: A lot of people sounding awfully counter-revolutionary in here.
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40. Counter-Strike 2
Released: August 21, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 236.17
Evan Lahti: What football is to the international world, Counter-Strike is to PC gaming: romanticized, elemental, enduring. Its competitive scene has persisted as esports has waned significantly in the last five years. Last month it was played for 627 million hours. The relationship between the AK and the M4 is the closest thing PC gaming has to a perfect yin and yang.
Jacob Fox: You can spend one round holding an angle for a minute straight and the next one speeding into a bomb site. That variance is part of what makes Counter-Strike so exciting, but so too is its sheer simplicity. One of the biggest updates we’ve had changes how smoke physics works, which might sound ridiculous but is a testament to some incredibly solid, competitive mechanics that everyone’s happy to leave alone.
Jake Tucker: I’m still terrible at Counter-Strike 2, but like the xenomorph I have to admire the purity on show here. It’s the cleanest “shoot the enemy team before they shoot you” competitive shooter out there.
Joshua Wolens: My memory of the time I played Counter-Strike 2 is a Russian teenager screaming “APTS!!!!!” at me on voice in between exotic swear words. So it’s the greatest game ever made, is what I’m saying.
39. Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Released: May 14, 2021 | Top 100 Score: 236.33
Jody Macgregor: A huge amount of what’s now considered standard in narrative RPGs was formalised across the Mass Effect trilogy. The structure of companion quests, romance arcs, and homebase hubs was combined by this ultimate spaceship captain simulator, all the existing elements of the alignment-shifting decide ’em up brought together so tautly other games will still be riffing on it for years to come—if they know what’s good for them.
And here’s the whole trilogy in a package that’s frequently on sale for 90% off? Wild.
Sean Martin: It’s exceptional value. For my money, Mass Effect Legendary Edition, from start to finish, is the best experience in RPG gaming there is. The investment, cumulative weight of decisions, and the payoff are quite unlike anything else, especially when it heavily remasters the first game to make it less of a slog. I replayed all three in a single week and it was heaven.
Joshua Wolens: It’s an odd series for me. If I think ‘Mass Effect,’ my mind buzzes with criticisms—choices BioWare made in both plot and gameplay that I simply would not have done, and a frustration at how blithely the studio jettisoned almost everything that made ME1 great in its quest to convert the franchise into a character-driven action romp from ME2 onwards.
And yet? I find that I love it anyway, like an old friend. The flaws, the mistakes, and the wayward choices don’t really enter into that calculation. The heart wants what it wants (and what it wants is Urdnot Wrex).
Harvey Randall: I’m Commander Randall, and this is my 39th favourite videogame on the citadel.
Andy Chalk: The ending is fine, banging your subordinates is not, and sacrificing an elite operative with years of extremely expensive training and experience to save a run-of-the-mill grunt (so you can bang her) does not reflect well on your aptitude for command, Shepard. But even though I don’t think Mass Effect has aged particularly well, there’s no denying it’s a hell of a ride, and like Jody said, having the whole thing bundled up in a massive trilogy that you can frequently pick up for 20 bucks or less makes the Legendary Edition a must-play for anyone with even just a passing interest in BioWare RPGs.
Ted Litchfield: I want to start some fights: Mass Effect 1 is the best game in the series. The Uncharted Worlds are better than they have any right to be. Mass Effect 3 had a weak narrative even before the ending—it failed to pay off on a ton of storylines from the first two, while its best moments felt like layups right under the hoop where ME1 and 2 did all the work.
I can barely stand the Leviathan DLC. Mass Effect 3 multiplayer was a world historically good co-op survival experience hamstrung by EA’s insane gacha monetization—why am I being asked to buy booster packs of characters for a $60 retail game?
38. Helldivers 2
Released: February 8, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 236.55
Morgan Park: The only co-op shooter that never leaves my SSD. Helldivers 2 is doing live service better than any game like it, bumps in the road be damned. It has the best third-person shooting I’ve ever seen, dozens of hours of progression in the base game, memorable weapons (bless you, Autocannon) and a rare command of slapstick comedy. A genuine one-of-one that’s getting better with every major update. Earlier this year, Super Earth blew up bug caves and raided the Automaton homeworld. I can’t wait to see what happens next.
Harvey Randall: Physical comedy is an under-appreciated part of any good multiplayer shooter, and one that Helldivers 2 manages to pull off by sheer virtue of its existence. One moment, you’re a competent military powerhouse, ripping into the enemies of Super Earth with accuracy and fervor.
The next, you’re getting ragdolled about like a chew toy by your alien foes, and reminded of the very real fact you’re an expendable arm of an oppressive, war-hungry dictatorship masquerading as a democracy. It’s an absolute blast even today. As Morgan Says—pure, distilled slapstick.
Sean Martin: What other game lets you do a Miku beam with an Orbital Laser?
37. Rimworld
Released: October 17, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 236.57
Issy van der Velde: Setting granular priorities to ensure crops are tended, animals hunted, the sick treated, and bases built lulls you into a false belief that nothing can go wrong. But then your only doctor goes on a pet killing spree because they were rebuffed by their crush one too many times, and suddenly there’s no one around to patch the pawns up after a raid.
And that’s just the base game. A plethora of DLC have only made Rimworld more replayable over the years. It’s always a good time to jump into its weird world.
36. Blue Prince
Released: April 10, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 236.80
Lincoln Carpenter: Blue Prince is a marvel. The core game of drafting rooms to proceed through your great-uncle’s magical mystery mansion is a satisfying enough puzzle to crack on its own—until the awareness sets in that the entire time you’ve been playing, you’ve been staring unaware at more puzzles than you could have imagined. It’s a game that continually blooms with deepening mysteries that will have you wondering whether every framed image and handwritten word has some hidden significance waiting to be realized. An all-timer.
Issy van der Velde: Blue Prince is a world-class puzzle game that boldly dares to shut its doors on anyone not clever or determined enough to progress. I got to the 46th room, but that was just the tip of the iceberg, and I couldn’t uncover all its extra secrets, I’m just too dumb. It’s one of the unique quirks of videogames as a medium—skillchecks.
Wes Fenlon: I got literally dozens of hours deeper than that, and there are still multiple overarching mysteries in Blue Prince I haven’t solved. If you struggle to get into it because of the “randomness,” I implore you to stick with it—pay attention, and before long you’ll be able to exert far more control over the mansion than you may initially expect.
Phil Savage: I got as deep as you can get—just shy of 80 hours of puzzling all told. And while the final layer of its post-game is frankly a bit of a chore, everything before that point is a wonderfully crafted delight.
35. The Sims 2
Released: September 14, 2004 | Top 100 Score: 237.00
Lauren Morton: After years of Top 100 tactical errors on my part, I’ve gotten the superior Sims game onto the list. Now that the Legacy Collection releases allow me to play the mainline series back to back, The Sims 2 stands out as the high point in strategy lite dollhouse-core life simulation. This is where the pure joy of life simming is clearest. There are so many detailed, specific character animations, entire cutscenes for big life moments like WooHooing for the first time (just like real life!), jobs for dogs, and genuinely difficult needs meter management. The Sims series has done a lot to become an excellent life toy for digital dolls and houses but The Sims 2 may be the last time it was an excellent computer game.
Harvey Randall: A core gaming memory of mine: Accidentally drowning my family’s patriarch by not giving them the correct ladder in the pool.
Issy van der Velde: The Sims 2 Castaway ruled and I wish more games did island adventure spin offs.
34. Final Fantasy 14
Released: August 27, 2013 | Top 100 Score: 238.07
Andrea Shearon: Final Fantasy 14 lost its spot in our Top 100 last year, and though I fought for it, I understood the cut. It was in a weird spot, but as it wraps up its Dawntrail-era patches, I can’t help but think this is the best the endgame has ever been.
It’s hard to believe I first made my cat girl sitting in my college dorm, and over 13 years later, I’m still regularly logging in from my house with a big girl job. It’s been with me through everything, and you better believe I’ll see y’all in Evercold.
Harvey Randall: Dawntrail, like a lot of Final Fantasy 14 expansions, wound up being pretty good after a couple of years, hitting escape velocity from its often content-dry launch content. Its patch stories have somewhat restored my confidence in its scriptwriting (eventually. We don’t talk about Koana’s exposition merchant). I’ve enjoyed Beastmaster, the Pilgrim’s Traverse, and the Occult Crescent, and Evercold’s promised changes have me enthusiastic for a much-needed overhaul of its otherwise stale formula.
I can’t speak to the endgame raiding scene. I did one savage tier (Pandaemonium’s first one), got my bird mount, and decided that I didn’t have time to PUG my way through that nightmare ever again.
33. Diablo 2
Released: June 28, 2000 | Top 100 Score: 238.20
Tyler Wilde: Diablo 2’s sound design rules. I particularly love the little blurble you hear when you drink a potion, and can imagine it as easily as I can the boom of Doom’s Super Shotgun. Blizzard has consistently been great at building worlds and interfaces that feel like one unified thing, and that are so inherently satisfying to interact with that it isn’t entirely clear how much of the fun comes from overcoming challenges, and how much manifests purely from the joy of clicking on things that plop sparkling gold coins on the ground. (This is really where the clicker genre began.)
Diablo 2 is in good shape despite being 26 years old: The recent remake, Diablo 2: Resurrected, looks great and includes the option to play with the original graphics, and earlier this year Blizzard added a surprise new Warlock class.
Jody Macgregor: The only downside to playing a Warlock is you can’t toggle the graphics back and forth between the remaster and the chunky original. But that just gave me a reason to make another character, which is one of my favorite things about Diablo 2: rolling up to the Blood Moor fresh out of Hero School, full of promise and hit points. Some day I’ll go back to my Warlock and actually finish act five, but in the meantime it’s a blast revisiting Diablo 2’s dark heaths and fens with every other class.
Joshua Wolens: When Tyler wrote blurble I heard it. I literally heard it in my head.
32. Team Fortress 2
Released: October 10, 2007 | Top 100 Score: 238.71
Morgan Park: Valve has long moved on from Team Fortress 2, but its community sure hasn’t. I got back into TF2 last year with my fiance and dumped dozens more hours into community servers. I’m still trash at Soldier, but I was reminded that this is still one of the best times you can have with a multiplayer FPS, and how good we had it when community servers and mod support was the norm.
Rory Norris: It would later inspire the hero shooter genre for good reason.
Andy Chalk: I put so many hours into TF2, so many years ago, almost exclusively as a Sniper: I’m not very good at PvP shooters, but I do like annoying people on the internet.
31. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe
Released: April 27, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 239.29
Christopher Livingston: Still the high-water mark of meta commentary about games and player choice, this is more than just a remaster of the fourth wall-breaking first-person adventure. There’s tons of new content (it’s conveniently behind a door labeled “new content”) and it continues the original’s almost spooky ability to anticipate what you’re going to do, or not do, and making sure there’s a reward for doing it, or not doing it, even if it’s something as simple as pressing (or not pressing) the number 3 on your keyboard.
Harvey Randall: This is such a bloody funny videogame. Very few, even in its irreverent, self-referential genre, manage to milk a bit with such tremendous joy as The Stanley Parable—Thank Goodness You’re Here! Is the only other game to even come close.
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30. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice
Released: March 21, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 239.40
Sean Martin: You ever wonder why every Soulslike has a deflection mechanic now? You can thank Sekiro for that. This iconic FromSoft action game about a lone ninja infiltrating the mythical domain of Ashina is wildly influential—Black Myth Wukong, Lies of P, Nine Sols, and many others, owe the game much in mechanical terms.
Joshua Wolens: My favourite FromSoft. You will never feel more powerful than pulling off a series of perfect parries. You will never feel worse than mucking up and getting pancaked by a large man’s hammer.
Harvey Randall: I knew Josh had good taste—yes, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is probably the best of FromSoftware’s catalogue because, in my humble opinion, it’s the most focused. Having a limited toolkit means that the studio’s boss designers were able to go absolutely wild with direct challenges to your mechanical skill.
And while other games in FromSoft’s discography do have some bosses I like, the vast majority of my personal rankings come from Sekiro for a reason. I’ll never forget the first time I redirected lightning on the top of Ashina Castle. I did get pancaked afterwards but, y’know, I still won’t forget it.
Issy van der Velde: Sekiro is FromSoftware’s most focused game, but that also makes it the hardest. In all the others, if you’re stuck, you can just grind and level up some more. But here, you have no choice but to git gud. Learn how to parry, learn the boss’s attack patterns, learn the dance.
29. Hitman World of Assassination
Released: January 20, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 239.63
Lauren Morton: The Hitman trilogy isn’t just a stealth game, it’s a puzzle experience. Casing night clubs and castles as Agent 47 has the same satisfaction as picking apart a tangled necklace. I don’t need epic knife stabbing assassination, I thrive on hiding a body in a locker to steal an outfit to get into a restricted staff stairwell to bluff past the maid service and poison a cocktail assassination. Hitman has forever altered my brain chemistry so that I see every multi-layered public space through the lens of Agent 47 cracking it.
Lincoln Carpenter: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The fact that—in a game about lethality and precision—whipping a can of pasta sauce at somebody’s head is one of the most reliably successful methods for neutralizing a threat is an achievement of game design. Hitman wouldn’t be half the joy it is without IO’s straightfaced sense of humor and physical comedy.
28. Portal
Released: October 10, 2007 | Top 100 Score: 240.33
Christopher Livingston: I concede that Portal 2 is a bigger and better game but the original Portal is a perfect game. Valve’s first-person platformer would have worked great if it were just made of puzzles, but it’s also filled with huge laughs and deft world-building, not to mention the best villain and song ever written for a game. The final key to perfection is that it’s short enough to play in a single sitting, the best three hours a game has ever delivered. Why isn’t this number one?
Wes Fenlon: Because I was promised cake.
Harvey Randall: This was a triumph.
27. Titanfall 2
Released: October 28, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 240.43
Rory Norris: Titanfall 2 is the definitive movement shooter, blending Call of Duty’s tight gunplay with impeccably smooth wall-running and one of the best-feeling grappling hooks ever. Oh, and there are mechs to dynamically change the pace of matches.
Multiplayer was expectedly sublime, but the campaign was unexpectedly awesome thanks to a surprisingly touching story and some of the best level design in the genre.
It’s spawned an armada of imitators for good reason but none have come remotely close. Come on EA, we need Titanfall 3.
Jake Tucker: For my money, Titanfall 2 is the best FPS campaign ever made. Full of fascinating ideas, interesting weapons and a giant stompy robot, the fact this hasn’t had most of its ideas cribbed wholesale is bitterly disappointing.
Wes Fenlon: It’s only been a decade, yet thinking about Titanfall 2 now delivers a concentrated dose of “they don’t make ’em like they used to” wistfulness. That bit with the factory? That bit with the time stuff? Those bits with the mech throwing you really, really far? Maybe Titanfall 2 used up all the good shooter ideas and nobody’s had any new ones since.
26. World of Warcraft
Released: November 23, 2004 | Top 100 Score: 240.73
Lincoln Carpenter: My peak World of Warcraft years are long behind me, but that doesn’t stop me from resubscribing once or twice a year for an Azeroth homecoming. WoW’s history is a rollercoaster of “it’s never been more over” and “we’re so back,” but even when it’s squandering its potential for expansions at a time, it’s still got the sturdy bones of a game that understood the promise of a shared fantasy world so well that it remains the metric by which MMOs are judged 22 years later.
Harvey Randall: As Lincoln rightly points out, WoW’s position here isn’t a sign of its stability—Retail, for instance, seems a touch rickety, even if there have been lots of promising movements towards overall good. But when we talk about WoW we’re not just talking about retail, right?
We’re talkin’ Classic, we’re talkin’ the Remix events, we’re talkin’ experiments like Season of Discovery and—most promising—WoW: Forever, which I have been enjoying tremendously. Even if you don’t like the base game, there are so many different official variants on offer that there’ll be something you enjoy.
Joshua Wolens: After a lifetime of not being a WoW guy, Forever (and the influence of one Harvey Randall) have got me checking in with my Forsaken Warlock at minimum once a day. Somebody help.
25. Garry’s Mod
Released: November 29, 2006 | Top 100 Score: 241.10
Ted Litchfield: Roblox, but not evil. Garry’s Mod walked (digital universe of infinite whimsy and creativity) so Roblox could run (get kids addicted to fake money). Skibidi Toilet may fade, but Garry’s Mod is forever.
Lincoln Carpenter: Garry’s Mod wasn’t my first exposure to modding on PC, but it was the first time I truly appreciated that mods could be more than custom maps and putting lightsabers in Oblivion. It’s proof that, given the right tools and a space to use them, we can’t keep ourselves from building our own forms of fun.
Released: October 24, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 241.50
Ted Litchfield: Imagine the perfect 1990s thriller/action movie (I’m picturing The Fugitive but you do you). OK, now make it a game: That’s Metal Gear Solid 3. But wait: It’s also like, really smart and political.
I once heard a critic lay into Metal Gear over the charming, idealistic MGS3 cast going on to found The Patriots, the villainous organization driving the saga’s plot. He found it jarring and difficult to believe.
That’s kinda what happened in real life, though. The same men behind the Nazi-fighting OSS founded the CIA—check out the 1975 Church Committee report from my GOAT, Idaho Senator Frank Church, for why that might have been a bad thing. Hideo Kojima is like a storytelling drunken master: Every seeming fumble is a feint leaving you open to the secret truth of the universe. Sorry, he keeps getting away with it.
Joshua Wolens: We all love Big Hideo’s Big Ideas. We love when he sits us down to have a character (two, if you’ve been good) drone at us for anywhere from 15 to 90 minutes about the most recent Wikipedia hole he’s fallen down. We love all of it (and I do mean that, even if I am also making fun of it).
But goddamn, the tight, focused, and relatively simple interpersonal story of Naked Snake and The Boss is still my favourite thing Kojima’s ever given us. It’s a wonderful, well-executed tragedy. When the TV screen turns black to let the credits roll and Way To Fall starts playing, there’s your reflection staring back at you, tears glistening on your cheeks for a patriot who saved the world.
Wes Fenlon: I just love that ladder, man.
23. Fallout: New Vegas
Released: October 22, 2010 | Top 100 Score: 242.12
Ted Litchfield: I finally rolled credits recently after 300 hours over 15 years and I don’t know how many characters. Do you want to know a dirty secret? New Vegas doesn’t even need all those mods that people never shut up about. They can be fun, sure—next playthrough I’m gonna use project lead Josh Sawyer’s extra-hard jsawyer mod—but don’t let that intimidate you into spending three hours figuring out a cocktail of HD textures and custom gun animations only to not play the damn thing.
Jody Macgregor: I don’t know who these people are telling Ted that New Vegas needs mods other than the ones that stop it crashing. I’ve always been told your first experience of any Bethesda RPG should be without mods (even if it’s made by Obsidian), so you know what fixes to prioritize later.
I’ve been watching a YouTuber play New Vegas for the first time, and it’s delightful to see which parts of the experience are basically universal. Picking up too much junk and realizing you’re overencumbered at a vital moment? Trying to go north from Goodsprings and getting immediately devoured by radscorpions? These are mistakes most of us make.
But it’s also fascinating to see what hits different. Where I was suspicious of the NCR at first she’s immediately on board with them, laying mines in front of the Legion soldiers to take them out in Nipton. The factions color everything, and how you interact with them makes each playthrough personal.
Joshua Wolens: Independence or bust. Death to imperialism. Neither Shady Sands nor Flagstaff, but a free and equal New Vegas.
Lauren Morton: Do a Black Widow perk playthrough. That’s all.
22. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Released: February 4, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 242.19
Fraser Brown: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was our 2025 GOTY for a reason, combining PC Gamer’s love of chunky RPGs and weird immersive sims. It can be abrasive, daunting and sometimes janky, but god does it take big swings. And the quest design is second to none, constantly throwing surprises your way and making other RPGs look safe and dull in comparison.
Sean Martin: While modern RPGs often feel sanitized, KCD2 is an unapologetic evolution of the eurojank formula. ‘Abrasive, daunting, and sometimes janky’ is exactly why I love it.
Phil Savage: When a journalist says “janky”, they really mean “this game is packed so full of ideas and systems that sometimes everything breaks, and that is a trade-off worth celebrating”. I’ll take a million glitches and bugs if the result is this ambitious. Warhorse bottled the spirit of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, creating an immersive, systems-driven RPG of the kind that game studios just aren’t making any more.
21. Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Released: December 3, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 242.31
Morgan Park: A mature, essential package of some of the best shooters ever made. The Master Chief Collection bundles up the first six Halo games into a single frontend. It’s one of the finest examples of official preservation ever released, and I still dump hours into campaigns and multiplayer every year. The PC version is also the best way to play thanks to Steam Workshop support.
Elie Gould: It brought Reach, the best Halo game, to PC, and for that I owe it a debt of gratitude.
Joshua Wolens: I beat all these games on Legendary with a pal this year, and I’ll say this: There’s a unique kind of euphoria you attain as you launch yourself headfirst into a Halo 2 encounter you’ve already attempted 74 times. I don’t know if that’s a mark of quality, but it’s not an experience I’ve had in any other videogame.
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Released: November 11, 2011 | Top 100 Score: 243.04
Ted Litchfield: I unilaterally declare PC Gamer an anti-Bethesda revisionism publication. These games are special, and the studio still has the juice. I don’t care how many critical video essays you’ve fallen asleep to, all “ugh, it’s a big shallow ocean with no depth.” Skyrim’s persistent, simulated fantasy realm remains immersive in ways even the likes of CD Projekt have yet to crack, while Larian offers something far less open-ended.
Bethesda’s proprietary “physics objects you mess with will still be there 50 hours later” technology is a UNESCO-worthy piece of intangible world heritage.
Jody Macgregor: When Skyrim’s in the list people are mad, when it doesn’t make the cut they’re even madder. You can’t win. Except by ignoring everyone and just knuckling down to spend another 100 hours shouting people off mountains and slow-mo sniping bandits in the dark.
Fraser Brown: Skyrim is still great, but for anyone looking for something a bit fresher, I highly recommend Tainted Grail. It’s an Arthurian dark fantasy take on Bethesda RPGs, but with some fantastic ideas of its own. And unlike The Elder Scrolls, it’s actually pretty challenging.
Harvey Randall: I have never been able to commit to a single Skyrim playthrough, and have thoroughly decided it’s just not for me—but I have also decided that’s a matter of personal taste. I’m not pretentious enough to say that a game so popular Bethesda proceeded to re-release it for an entire decade is somehow bad. I am, however, pretentious enough to say that Oblivion is better. Sorry not sorry.
19. Deus Ex
Released: June 23, 2000 | Top 100 Score: 243.41
Jake Tucker: I think I can blame Deus Ex for my entire career in games. Launching in 2000, Ion Storm’s immersive sim put two things front and center: conspiracy theories and player freedom. From the very start, when you infiltrate a destroyed Statue of Liberty to fight some dastardly terrorists, you’re free to decide how you want to play it, whether that’s charging in with a rocket launcher or sneaking around while carrying a box in front of you. A superlative experience that hasn’t been superseded by the immersive sims that came later.
Andy Chalk: There’s a famous Deus Ex meme: Every time you mention it, someone will reinstall it. But there’s a lesser-known follow-up truth, which is that every time someone reinstalls it they discover, holy shit, it holds up so well! It looks bad and the voices are terrible, but it was like that when it was new. (Sorry, but it’s true.) And it makes up for that with freedom and flexibility that newer games can only marvel at. 26 years later, Deus Ex is still peak immersive sim.
And since we’re here anyway, let’s also take a moment to remember the Deus Ex remaster announced in 2025 that everyone got so mad about because it looked so god-awful. The OG may have been behind the eye-candy curve even when it was new, but here’s the secret the remaster brain trust clearly didn’t clue into: It’s supposed to look like that. Deus Ex is one of those rare cases when people say ‘graphics don’t matter as long as the gameplay is good’ and actually mean it, because the whole kicks so much more ass than the sum of its parts.
Joshua Wolens: God, I really hope Nightdive somehow got its hands on the remaster after the pillorying Aspyr’s first trailer got. No game, not one, deserves careful, respectful, and meaningful preservation more than Deus Ex.
18. Dishonored 2
Released: November 11, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 243.60
Joshua Wolens: Is anything more important to a great immersive sim than a palpable and coherent sense of place? I don’t think so, and that’s why Dishonored 2’s Karnaca—hot, sticky, stinking of meat and fruit, and filled with tempting little open windows for you to poke your nosy, wandering head into—still makes it one of the icons of the genre a decade on.
Fraser Brown: It’s the best thing Arkane’s ever made, and the closest a stealth game has come to perfection. This is what Thief was building towards.
Phil Savage: The Prey-likers and the Dishonored-likers on PC Gamer are locked in an endless cold war over which game gets higher placement in the list each year. Crucially neither faction would ever claim that the other shouldn’t be on the list. Both are fantastic—each feels like the culmination of a particular strand of immersive sim design—but my heart belongs to Dishonored 2. A decade later and it still hasn’t been beat.
17. Baldur’s Gate 2: Enhanced Edition
Released: September 21, 2000 | Top 100 Score: 243.93
Andy Chalk: Baldur’s Gate 2 is a very different sort of experience than Baldur’s Gate 3, much smaller and more constrained than Larian’s masterpiece but, for me, a purer D&D experience. There’s an artistry to it that Baldur’s Gate 3, for all its advances and refinements, simply doesn’t match. BG3 deserves its number one spot on this list, sure, but Baldur’s Gate 2 belongs in the mix every bit as much.
Ted Litchfield: If someone tries to tell you about “Kensai/Mage,” excise them from your life. Fighter/Thief or bust.
Phil Savage: After BG1’s traditional slow build to its eponymous city, Baldur’s Gate 2 almost immediately sets you loose in Athkatla—one of the greatest RPG cities in gaming. 26 years later and that still feels transgressive, like eating ice cream before you’ve had your dinner.
16. Balatro
Released: February 20, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 244.36
Issy van der Velde: As a poker player, Balatro infuriates me—almost as much as poker. But as a gamer, I can’t put it down. The way the cards jiggle and bounce as they’re activated adds a tactile quality I adore. Whether I’m chasing absurd antes on seeded runs or believing in the heart of the cards while trying to get that fabled Completionist++ achievement, I always have a good time when playing. Unless I’m losing. I guess it really is just like poker.
Phil Savage: Balatro essentially created a whole subgenre of score-based roguelike deckbuilders. It’s still head and shoulders the best of the bunch.
Harvey Randall: Every time I start playing Balatro again, I inevitably lose 40 hours over the course of the next week to it. It has a gravitational, inevitable pull. A glacial weight in my psyche. I look at it like Willem Dafoe looks at the green goblin mask on his armchair: Crawling towards it, knowing it’ll ruin my life the moment I put it on.
So yeah, probably a good videogame.
Released: May 2, 2002 | Top 100 Score: 244.80
Joshua Wolens: Every year, we get someone (understandably) asking why we have Skyrim and Morrowind on the same list. I’ll tell you why: they are two entirely different things that happen to share a series by a fluke of history. Skyrim is a ginormous tasting platter, filled with different things to sample. Morrowind is a rich, textured, and singular meal that you can’t get anywhere else, heavy on the mushrooms and redolent with exotic and alien spices—and you bet it’s still delicious as hell, even in 2026.
Andy Chalk: It makes me a little sad to know that Bethesda will never make another game like Morrowind, because Bethesda is now a cog in a machine whose primary function is safety. But in the early 2000s? Man, they were going for it. Sure would like a remaster of that.
Sean Martin: I love Morrowind as much as the next gamer—it was the first Elder Scrolls game I touched when I was but small and it had an effect much like cocaine on my young impressionable mind. But in the year of our lord 2026 are we finally going to admit the combat has aged horrendously?
Jody Macgregor: No one liked the combat even when Morrowind was new. We just didn’t care.
Joshua Wolens: The problem with kids today [Josh and Sean were born the same year –Ed] is they don’t want to struggle for anything. Is Morrowind’s combat a ceaseless, grinding nightmare in its early hours? Yes, but so is life. And then you get better, your numbers go up, and you begin to understand the systems, and the late-game highs that come with being able to make mincemeat of anyone and everyone with your ridiculously overpowered build are dizzying. It just wouldn’t be the same if you didn’t spend a few hours failing to hit anyone at first.
Sean Martin: You’re right. I blame our culture of instant gratification.
14. Dark Souls
Released: August 24, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 244.86
James Bentley: Dark Souls, FromSoft’s brooding fantasy RPG, has an impeccable tone, some wonderfully cyclical writing, and a soundtrack that nearly earns the spot by itself. Every now and then, I find myself thinking through the tragic story of Catarina, or Lautrec’s ring, or Solaire’s reason for pushing on despite the encroaching dark, and realise how deep this game has got its claws into my psyche. And I’m happily trapped in its abyss.
Sean Martin: Check out Dark Souls: Remastered if it’s your first time—though lackluster as remasters go, it’s still the best way to play.
Harvey Randall: A videogame so inescapable and impactful, the phrase “X is the Dark Souls of Y” became a meme. Dark Souls somehow managed to popularise difficult videogames—a task that, up until its release, seemed impossible. And for its success, we have so many excellent games to enjoy. Not just FromSoft’s core library, but all of the imitators and demi-soulslikes that’ve come since.
Issy van der Velde: Which ending I consider the “good” one changes as I do. Some years, I think carrying on no matter what is the way to go. Others, I believe ushering in a new age is better. Great art grows with you, which is why Dark Souls is so high in our ranking.
Wes Fenlon: The best interconnected map in gaming history and the freeform way in which you can explore it is what keeps Dark Souls near the top of the list year after year. Because let’s be honest: Armored Core 6 and Sekiro are way more fun to play moment-to-moment.
Shaun Prescott: Easily the best interconnected map in gaming history, Wes. I can explore it thoroughly in my mind and I’ve only played through the game twice. One of the most gorgeous and engrossing digital worlds I’ve ever inhabited and there’s no serious competition.
13. Red Dead Redemption 2
Released: December 5, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 245.13
Rory Norris: The tale of a gang scrambling to survive the last days of the Wild West is about as gripping and intense as you’d expect it to be—surprisingly funny at times, too. But the story could go absolutely nowhere and I’d still adore it. Arthur Morgan, John Marston, and Dutch van der Linde are the most realised, complex characters I’ve yet to see. The landscape is both vast and intricately detailed, ageing like fine wine in the nearly 10 years since launch. And blimey, the music is the cherry on top.
Issy van der Velde: Red Dead Online was also criminally underused by Rockstar. I spent dozens of hours escaping lockdown with a trip to the Wild West.
Lincoln Carpenter: Playing Red Dead Redemption 2 was the only time a videogame has made me cry over a horse. But it better not be the last.
Sean Martin: I was an avid Red Dead Online player, but I never really clicked with Arthur’s story. There’s just something so silly about him rocking up to camp, asking his compatriots if he’s a good man after gunning down 100 people, but it’s a disconnect between gameplay and narrative that’s pretty typical for Rockstar’s games.
12. Outer Wilds
Released: May 30, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 245.71
Sean Martin: Poignant yet playful, this cub scout sci-fi mystery sees you explore an endlessly looping solar system, uncovering the secrets of its quaint yet terrifying planetary dioramas as they fall to entropy around you. Imagine Majora’s Mask as a puzzle sandbox and you’ll come close to getting a picture, but it’s almost impossible to describe Outer Wilds’ tonal complexity, juxtaposing, as it does, cozy campfires with the end of all things. It’s a game you really need to play to understand, and you should play it.
Issy van der Velde: It sickens me that Outer Wilds is so good, because it’s a game I’ve only been able to fully enjoy on my first playthrough. Go in knowing as little as possible as that’s how you’ll get the most out of it.
Phil Savage: One of the rare few perfect videogames.
11. Divinity: Original Sin 2
Released: September 14, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 247.03
Jody Macgregor: The Kickstarter-backed CRPG revival gave us a bunch of enjoyably retro trips back to Top-Down Town like Pillars of Eternity, but Divinity: Original Sin 2 combined that nostalgia with actual forward momentum.
It mattered which of your companions you controlled while talking to NPCs, not just because of their score in the Persuasion skill but because of who they were and how they fit into the world. Plus, while almost everyone else was trying to revive realtime-with-pause combat, Larian found new space to evolve turn-based tactics and elemental damage types.
I can’t think of another game that says, sure, blood is wet, of course you can use it to put out fires and conduct electricity, and that’s going to matter once you figure out how to produce the stuff in truly industrial quantities.
Harvey Randall: I love DoS2, but boy am I glad that Larian decided to tone down the surfaces for Baldur’s Gate 3. And I am slightly worried we’ll be returning to the same screen-flooded environmental spam with the upcoming Divinity. But hey, setting an entire field of flammable ground into a scorching hellscape is a good time, and I’ve no qualms about DoS2 being here on this list.
Wes Fenlon: While Baldur’s Gate 3 feels like a straight improvement in so many ways, the origin stories in DoS2 are still incredibly strong. Even playing through it over the course of six months in a chaotic co-op group, my character Lohse’s story ended up one of my favorites in any RPG.
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10. Half-Life 2
Released: November 16, 2004 | Top 100 Score: 249.24
Phil Savage: Half-Life 2 is by no means the best shooter you can play on PC—although the Gravity Gun remains an ingenious tool for physics shenanigans. Half-Life 2 is still the best shooter campaign you can play on PC. There’s little else that even comes close to Valve’s masterful pacing; the ebb and flow of encounter design, and the playful variety that each chapter brings. A fool might tell you that this game is old fashioned, out of date, maybe even surpassed. I wish that was true, because here 22 years after its release, there’s still nothing else like it.
Sean Martin: You’re not really a PC gamer until you’ve killed a headcrab with a crowbar. I don’t make the rules!
9. Doom (1993)
Released: December 10, 1993 | Top 100 Score: 250.21
Andy Chalk: Doom is more than 30 years old, and in my heart of hearts I believe it still deserves a place on this list. Its importance and impact simply cannot be overstated, and beyond being a foundational FPS from the old times, it remains relevant to this day through ports, mods, and expansions. Doom matters in ways that even games like Half-Life 2 don’t, and the fact that you can still fire it up and see that significance for yourself is proof of its fundamental greatness.
Jody Macgregor: My favorite part of Doom is the early techbase levels, where the most complicated thing that is likely to happen is that you’ll see a tease of an outdoor area, only to arrive at it later on. Eventually the teleporters show up and it becomes a game of navigating labyrinths while flipping switches and juggling keys, but Doom at its best is pure and primal, a cave-painting of a videogame where the cavemen have only just discovered the color red.
Wes Fenlon: You guys heard of the new hotness, Doom 2? Why settle for a single shotgun when you can have both barrels?
Shaun Prescott: The super shotgun is overrated: it’s basically as powerful as the rocket launcher but uses two units of shotgun ammo, spreads too far, and doesn’t gib as spectacularly.
8. Crusader Kings 3
Released: September 1, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 250.29
Fraser Brown: Murder your cousin! Eat your uncle! Declare all the wars! I don’t know why I’m shouting! I can’t help but become irritatingly enthusiastic about Crusader Kings 3—the pinnacle of Paradox Development Studio’s experiments in combining grand strategy with roleplaying.
Lincoln Carpenter: CK3 is like participating in a multigenerational murder mystery dinner, but there’s at least as many additional murders in progress as there are participants, there’s a religious war for Bohemia going on upstairs, and the building’s going to catch on fire when the Holy Roman Empire collapses. But in a fun way.
Joshua Wolens: With repeated kidnappings, murder plots against family members, and myriad invasions, I once made a rival’s life such a living hell in CK3 that I began feeling genuinely bad about it in reality.
Released: February 4, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 251.90
Lincoln Carpenter: There’s an incomparable magic to taking a raw, untested recruit, giving him the name of one of your old high school friends, subjecting him to dozens of high-stakes anti-alien guerilla deployments with all the associated battlefield tragedies, devastating misfires, and trauma-bonded comrades they entail, and watching him gradually become the last, best hope of a subjugated humanity who just so happens to have a retroengineered xenotech shotgun that can punch a hole clean through whatever is the closest approximation the Advent have for God.
The mods are good, too.
Fraser Brown: Still the best tactics game, hands down. This year I grew to appreciate it even more thanks to Zero Company. It has all of the ingredients of XCOM 2, but it just did nothing for me. That’s because Firaxis worked some real magic with this one. It’s properly special. I have nothing bad to say about it, which is incredibly rare for me.
Harvey Randall: You know how people will often take their roombas in for repairs, rather than exchanging them for a new model, because they’ve become attached to them? That’s how I feel about my XCOM soldiers. Ostensibly, they’re just lines of code and a 3D model, with no unique dialogue to back them up. But I care about them, damnit. The emergent stories that crop up in the game’s many missions is a magic trick of anthropomorphism that I’ll never stop being fascinated by.
6. Stardew Valley
Released: February 26, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 252.83
Lauren Morton: The game that invented farm sims—just kidding, but “the game that reminded us how good Harvest Moon was” doesn’t really roll off the tongue. Stardew Valley led a renaissance for a niche subgenre to flourish and to this day has not been usurped by any of the hundreds of Stardew-likes it inspired. It’s still the platonic ideal of waking up at 6am to water tomatoes, go fishing, and save the town from stagnation. Apparently it won’t ever stop being updated by its incorrigible creator either.
Issy van der Velde: My girlfriend and her sister run our farm with the iron fist of a sweatshop owner. It’s not always a cosy game.
Harvey Randall: I, like Issy’s girlfriend, have never been able to engage with Stardew Valley as a cosy game. I always get too concerned with being efficient. Is there something fundamentally broken with me? Always chasing optimisation even when I have an idyllic and peaceful life? Is my fear that the years will flee from me, paradoxically, the only thing that ensures they will?
Music’s pretty good. I like that bit.
Shaun Prescott: My kids have played Stardew Valley for most of their childhood, so its soundtrack has flooded my house on Saturday and Sunday afternoons for years. It’s genuinely gorgeous stuff. That Eric Barone composed it all on his lonesome is endlessly impressive.
5. Minecraft
Released: November 18, 2011 | Top 100 Score: 253.90
Elie Gould: I frickin love this little blocky game. I only get the urge to play Minecraft every six months or so now, but those few weeks are always full of the best times—whether that be working on my expanding underground dwarven city or in my friend’s Skyblock server where I’m forced to farm dirt.
Rory Norris: While Minecraft is already a very competent, incredibly cosy sandbox—my only ask is furniture in a game about building things—it’s a totally different beast with mods. Eclipsing Skyrim, I’d say Minecraft is the most modded, transformable game ever. You can add furniture because Mojang oddly refuses too (I’m not mad), turn it into a Souls-inspired RPG, or make it a factory automation game. It’s timeless. Like Skyrim, I’ll always get the annual urge to return to it.
Harvey Randall: I somehow always become the guy who goes and mines stuff in my multiplayer servers. This probably says something about the nature of my soul.
Shaun Prescott: Creative mode is one of the best cosy, meditative experiences on PC.
4. Elden Ring
Released: February 24, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 254.90
Sean Martin: What if Dark Souls embraced the open world formula? It’s a simple concept, but Elden Ring stands testament to how successfully it was realised. Take FromSoft’s iconic combat, boss fights, and quests, then explode them into an enigmatic world you slowly explore and unravel. I have over 800 hours in Elden Ring (plus 500 in Nightreign) and I still started a new playthrough when Tarnished Edition released.
Andy Chalk: I don’t like Souls games but I loved Elden Ring, because it let me avoid the whole Souls thing: Instead of all that dodge-parry-slash nonsense (and no offense if that’s what you’re into, but brother, I am not), I just gave myself a big brain with a big stick, and melted everything. Some fans of the genre might say I deprived myself of the ‘real’ Souls experience, but I got to enjoy one of the most stunning fantasy worlds I’ve ever explored—something I’d have missed if the game hadn’t been willing to let me play it on my own terms.
Harvey Randall: I have played Elden Ring (and its expansion) exactly once, and I will admit, I’ve not had the stomach to do so a second time—the scope of these games is a touch overwhelming to me. But that one playthrough did utterly enthral and capture me, so I can’t complain too much. Besides, Sean plays enough Elden Ring for all of us.
Issy van der Velde: Elden Ring is the antithesis of the focus found in Sekiro, and it still rules. I love that Andy could have fun melting everyone while I got to enjoy shredding them with a big spikey wheel axe.
3. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Released: May 18, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 258.38
Ted Litchfield: I was late to the party (maybe not so much in the grand scheme) getting The Witcher 3 for Christmas in 2015. Velen is great, but things really clicked for me in Novigrad. One of my fondest gaming memories remains sitting on a beanbag in my parents’ basement over the break, my chunky, already-aging laptop plugged into the TV with its fans screaming. I was rocking a first gen, owl-faced Steam Controller, and I was so invested in the search for Sigi Reuven’s treasure that I pulled an all-nighter by accident.
11 years on, The Witcher 3 is still, somehow, one of the best-looking videogames out there, its balance of art direction and photorealism gracefully aging like a DILF-y Hollywood leading man. I think CDPR has managed to at least match the achievement of The Witcher 3 with Cyberpunk, but that’s hardly a universal opinion, and Geralt’s final(?) outing remains a triumph.
Jody Macregor: I do think The Witcher 3 has a magic Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t match. The way it’s structured incentivises pushing on in your search for Yennefer and then Ciri without feeling like you have such limited time you can’t engage with whichever of its many excellent sidequests catches your interest. There’s just enough impetus to keep up the momentum without making you feel like it’s out-of-character to have a little fun. And if you crank the difficulty up Geralt’s combat style (prep-heavy research-based battle herbalism) is actually great.
Andy Chalk: One of my favorite things about The Witcher 3 (and spoiler here, but it’s been a decade) is that when all is said and done—if you played your cards reasonably right—Geralt gets a happy ending. I like happy endings, and if any videogame guy deserves one, it’s Geralt. That dude powered through some shit, and as much as I’d like his adventures to continue, the send-off CD Projekt gave him with Blood and Wine left me far happier to call it done.
Joshua Wolens: Geralt of Rivia will return in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past, and so help me CDPR if you do anything bad to him I’m picketing your offices.
Andy Chalk: Yeah, just a little follow-up to my previous comment here: If CD Projekt does a Vesemir to Geralt, I am gonna be setting shit on fire.
2. Disco Elysium
Released: October 15, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 259.74
Ted Litchfield: Disco Elysium was the game that made me get serious about a career in games. It’s now one of the biggest bummers I have to deal with professionally. The IP ownership and financial allegations? Byzantine. The interpersonal strife among its developers? Distressing. The layoffs and lives upended in its wake? To quote my man Geralt of Rivia, Poland’s most soulful white boy from the previous entry on this list: It’s “the last bitter drop in a chalice of sorrow.”
And yet. Cut to the game underneath it all, and you’ll still find a potentially life-changing work of baffling, miraculous provenance. Punks don’t know how to make each other do the dishes without a struggle session. How the fuck did they make a game?
Six years on, it’s easy to take Disco’s design innovations for granted: Strip the so-so combat out of Planescape: Torment and replace it with a union of RPG and point ‘n click adventure. Dialogue windows in the bottom-center of the screen with walls of text suck, so hammer it into a much more parsable, right-oriented vertical feed instead. Have the skills you invest in not only open opportunities, but shift the tone of the experience with their distinctive, hallucinatory personalities.
Disco tells a story with heart and characters that feel real, set in a tiny slice of a world that blends alternate history with pure fantasy like the best 20th century sci-fi writers, your Le Guins, Herberts, and Dicks. Its authors were people of strong social and political conviction who nevertheless trusted players enough to let them disagree and take the story in wildly different directions without it feeling like a failure state.
As I grow older, I’ve become more partial to stories that end. But we didn’t get our fill of Elysium, and I still hope we can go back, someday.
Fraser Brown: A lot of the writing around Disco focuses on how weird it is, or how wonderful it is to have a videogame that’s actually funny, and all of those things are true. But what really sticks with me is how heartbreaking it is. It’s one of the only videogames to ever make my eyes get a bit leaky. Underneath all the high concept weirdness and political orienteering, it’s an incredibly human game that hits like a fucking truck. We’ll never see its like again.
Phil Savage: Heartbreaking, yes, but also hopeful. That’s the thing that I wasn’t expecting when I finally played it earlier this year. Not hopeful in an “everything’s going to be OK” kind of way, Disco’s optimism is both smaller and grander than that. Everything is not going to be OK, and maybe that’s OK. Maybe, if you work on yourself, you can find some meaning in that. Maybe the arthropods are in silent and meaningless awe of you.
Harvey Randall: While you’re distracted thinking about everything said above, I’m going to take this chance to go on record and say that I want to marry Kim Kitsuragi. That is all.
Issy van der Velde: I went into Disco Elysium with high expectations, but what I didn’t anticipate was the mirror it would hold up to me. It made me realise I’ll always be an addict at heart, but it also reaffirmed my desire to overcome that. I didn’t let Harry relapse even though he’s only pixels and words. I’m flesh and bone, so surely I deserve even better?
1. Baldur’s Gate 3
Released: August 3, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 270.30
Fraser Brown: Here we are again. Baldur’s Gate 3 is our number one game for another year, and let’s face it—it’s probably going to be taking this spot again in 2027. It’s just so damn impressive. There are few games I can say this about, but if you don’t get on with BG3, I don’t think we can be friends (just don’t tell my partner, who doesn’t remotely understand the hype). This is one of the best ever RPG studios firing on all cylinders, building on decades of experience and experiments. I hope RPGs haven’t peaked with BG3, but I’m struggling to imagine a future where this doesn’t continue to be my favourite game of all time.
Sean Martin: I don’t even like Dungeons & Dragons that much, and yet I’m one of only 3% of players who’ve completed the game in Honour Mode. I’m not even sure how that happened? Baldur’s Gate 3 is just so damn enchanting. The prospect of adventure, the wonderfully written characters, and the endless twists and turns your journey takes amount to a truly unique gaming experience. I still consider myself blessed that I got to see the orchestral concert in London where Andrew Wincott appeared and sang Raphael’s Final Act, because that song is an all-timer.
Jody Macgregor: The Forgotten Realms isn’t always an interesting backdrop for roleplaying, and I say that as someone who has run multiple campaigns there. Larian turned it into one by making the obligatory Realms stuff a delight—Volo the travelling disaster, Elminster the cheese freak—and pulling in cool bits from other D&D settings like githyanki and illithids so the world feels slightly alien and part of a larger cosmology. BG3 is a fantasy RPG through and through, but one that restores some of the genre’s sense of wonder.
The thing that really makes it special is the reactivity. Act 3 is constantly referencing stuff you did in Act 1, and I only just found out if you take over the newspaper you can print your own stories, changing the city folk’s ambient dialogue. Everything you do feels like it matters.
Ted Litchfield: 2023, ’24, and much of ’25 were dominated by BG3 for me, and it’s been a second since I fired it up. I’ve been on a real Owlcat kick (we’ll get Wrath of the Righteous or Rogue Trader on this list next year, prayer warriors), and when my favorite game is no longer right in front of me, my feckless heart can drift. Was it really that good?
Yes. Unequivocally. Universal heavyweight champion of the world. Just thinking about it for this write up has me wanting to roll a new guy—I’ve never uninstalled, and I don’t think I ever will barring force majeure. Larian simultaneously raised the bar on cinematic RPG storytelling while matching the crunchiest classics in depth and complexity. Common sense previously dictated that the two were mutually exclusive, and it feels like CRPGs can finally look forward, not back.
Harvey Randall: I have about 380 hours in this thing. I’ve completed it twice, once on honour mode, and I got another two extra honour mode playthroughs to Act 3 before I got distracted and left them in the dirt.
I can confidently call it one of the best RPGs that will perhaps ever be made. There’s something about the sheer scope of it, the mixture of immersive sim style branching narratives and CRPG goodness that mashes up with professional, glossy production value and fully motion-captured cutscenes.
And while the TTRPG rules lover in me balks at Larian’s irreverently-designed magic items which, let’s be clear, grab D&D 5e’s intended balance and snap it mercilessly over its knee… I’m still very glad they’re there. They make the game a min-maxxer’s delight.
Currently, I’ve been roped into an Honor Mode playthrough with Josh, Sean, and Ted, and my Cleric has stumbled onto a build that debuffs everybody just by standing around her. They can attest that I have made some utterly disgusting laugh-noises whenever I knock someone prone with Reverberation just for looking at me funny.
Personal Picks
Surprise! There are more than 100 good videogames. Below you’ll find a selection of individual recommendations—each a game that a member of the PC Gamer team thinks you should play.
Rocket League
Tyler Wilde, US Editor-in-Chief: Rocket League hasn’t evolved much since 2015, but that’s because it was already a perfectly-designed competitive team game which no one has yet improved upon. Playing soccer with rocket-powered cars has a high skill ceiling, but great teamwork can trump individual skill, which has led to some of the most exciting underdog wins of my gaming career. I’ll be playing when I’m 80 if they don’t turn the servers off before then.
Thank Goodness You’re Here!
John Strike, Senior Art Editor: Big pies. Flat beer. Crazy northeners. Drunk cows. Thank Goodness You’re Here! has it all and then some. This beautiful cartoon-style slapstick romp around the fictional and truly bizarre Yorkshire town of Barnsworth is a must-play for anyone with a soft spot for northern ways. Put your trousers on, grab your net and go and catch those spirit level bubbles!
Silent Hill f
Elie Gould, News Writer: Oh my god, I forgot to put Silent Hill f on the voting list. This is unforgivable considering how amazing it is and how well it managed to pave the way for the new kind of Silent Hill we’re now seeing unfold. Its setting is chilling, mysterious, and cool as all hell, it gives us the best female protagonist I’ve seen in years, and we’re tested with some seriously tricky puzzles and grotesque monsters. It’s the whole package.
Sea of Thieves
Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: After a long absence I finally returned to Rare’s open world ocean sandbox this year, and yep, there’s still really no other game like it. The beauty of its world and water is still unmatched and there’s nowhere else I’ve found that shares its blend of chill hangout vibes (90%) and humbling PvP nightmare (10%). All you can bring into each session are your skills because there’s nothing else to give any pirate an advantage over another. One of a kind.
The Elder Scrolls Online
Rory Norris, Guides Writer: TESO is my most played game of all time, sitting at well over 2,000 hours in the decade since launch. It’s an Elder Scrolls game but multiplayer, and it’s been carrying the torch while the mainline series has been radio silent since Skyrim. You can explore almost all of Tamriel at this point, questing, doing world bosses, dungeons, and whatnot. And while it’s technically a bit of a mess, the large-scale PvP is truly a sight to behold.
Esoteric Ebb
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: This one was supposed to be on the list proper, sorry everyone. Deadlock, I love you sweetie, but you’re not finished. Step aside for what will be PCG’s 2025 RPG of the year barring a coup and my execution. Esoteric Ebb riffs on Disco Elysium, but meaningfully pushes the evolving subgenre forward with smart changes like 6 attributes instead of 24 skills, potentially even greater reactivity—especially in its handwritten turn-based battles—and a comedic, hopeful, tone to set its excellent story apart.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition
Jody Macgregor, Weekend Editor: I may be a turn-based lover who sometimes thinks we should add Jagged Alliance to the Top 100, but even I know there have been a couple of classic RTSes, chief among them Dawn of War. It’s got the best sense of scale of any game in the genre, a real feeling of ants versus bison as you build up to tanks and daemons, and the Definitive Edition lets you pull the camera back to appreciate it. Good luck, ants.
1000xResist
Joshua Wolens, News Writer: A 2024 narrative adventure that’s more or less a visual novel, 1000xResist is one of those games that make you realise how narratively unambitious most other videogames are. It’s about killing god, doing a revolution, inheriting trauma, inflicting trauma, the immigrant experience, the Hong Kong protests, original sin, noodles, and a lot else. It’s like a modern Planescape: Torment, in that it’s so tenderly and confidently written that it just makes all the other guys look bad.
Jagged Alliance 3
Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: If you’re an XCOM person with any affection for ’80s/’90s action movies, JA3 should be your next game. It’s campy, it’s tropical, and your mercenaries (through story or tactical decisions) can find themselves in no-win scenarios. But my favorite detail is the simmy ballistics: bullets aren’t just particle effects, they’re physical objects that can scatter randomly and catch collateral hits against enemies, friendlies, civs, or scenery. The campaign itself is delightfully tabletop in its combo of scripted stuff and freedom.
Transistor
Issy van der Velde, Deputy Editor, PC Gaming Show: Transistor has the best sci-fi love story I’ve ever experienced, and the combat is endlessly satisfying. Each ability can be used on its own, added to another to create a secondary effect, or held as a passive buff. It’s easy to see how Supergiant built on this to create the boons in Hades. Everyone should play this masterpiece for Ashley Barrett and Darren Korb’s soundtrack alone. There’s even a dedicated button that lets you hum along to the music.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: If you like the idea of Blue Prince, but don’t like the roguelike elements, then I have two things to tell you: 1) You are weak and need to fix yourself, and 2) you should play Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Simogo’s mystery box adventure is an absolute treat of puzzle design, cleverly laying out its challenges in cascading threads of discovery. It’s deeply satisfying to solve both the individual puzzles and the building mystery of its story. A genuine treat.
Plants vs. Zombies
Andy Chalk, US News Lead: The Plants vs. Zombies remaster that dropped in 2025 took some heat for technical shortcomings and allegations of AI art, but EA’s addressed most of the complaints and these days it stands as a really good remaster of an all-time classic. The original is still available too, and much cheaper, and it holds up remarkably well for its age. Either way, Plants vs. Zombies is a short, snappy, incredibly cute and easy-to-engage tower defense game that remains as great—and essential—as ever.
Total War: Three Kingdoms
Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: I’m unsure why my compatriots turned on Total War this year, but I’m here to remind you that Three Kingdoms is still incredible. Its quality is often overshadowed by its early demise, but it’s quite unlike anything Creative Assembly ever made, or will likely make again. It channels the courageous characters, political machinations, and endless scheming of China’s most culturally iconic period into a top-tier strategy game, achieving a harmonious balance between history and romance.
Enshrouded
Andrea Shearon, Evergreen Writer: I’ve been enjoying the survival crafting renaissance, and by that I mean playing the hell out of Abiotic Factor and Enshrouded. The unbelievably detailed, massive high-fantasy RPG has one of the best building systems I’ve ever seen, and I love rescuing new villagers and crafters to slowly grow my own town. My only complaint is that Embervale is so pretty that I spend dozens of hours whispering, “Oh, maybe I’ll settle down here,” without getting anything done.
Exo Rally Championship
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: A gritty, unforgiving rally racing sim set in outer space. Exo Rally takes an already challenging rally format and adds gravity and thrusters into the mix. You’ll tear your hair out trying to complete a singular turn on the moon, then ride the high of circumventing most of a track through well-timed thruster use. I haven’t played enough yet to make my case for on the list, but it’s turning me into a racing fan. A brilliant 2026 indie that’s flying too low under the radar.
Project Zomboid
Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: I’m 13 years late to the party, but Project Zomboid’s brutal, complex, and ridiculously moreish take on zombie survival has gripped me this year. It’s one of the most customisable sandbox games I’ve ever tinkered with, meaning you can go for an unforgiving post-apocalyptic landscape or fine-tune it into a cosy (if not slightly gritty and terrifying) zombified The Sims 1. One of the few games I’ve been happy to sink hundreds of hours into learning.
Valheim
Jacob Ridley, Managing Editor, Hardware: There are some games you can sink hour after hour into and not even realise it’s already morning. Valheim is one of those games. Jump in with a couple of friends and build a new homestead, trying to one-up each other with ever more elaborate creations (our Sistine Chapel are two rival towers on top of massive rocks). Or just go exploring and hunt for new lands, hoping to survive the treacherous ocean journey. Yeah, it’s a comfort game for me.
Crimson Desert
Andy Edser, Hardware Writer: Crimson Desert is not the ultimate action RPG, despite wearing the ambition proudly on its sleeve. But it’s also the most fun I’ve had in a fantasy open world in years. The map is gigantic, and stuffed with bizarre details to explore. The combat is fiddly, yet satisfying to master. It’s a game with obvious passion running underneath it, and a brilliant, bat-swinging attempt to make something with real scope and fresh ideas. More of this sort of thing, please.
Mina the Hollower
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Perhaps a bit of a late entrant to catch PC Gamer’s eye—which means I don’t resent its absence from our Top 100 list—but I absolutely loved Mina the Hollower. It’s a sprawling, satisfying Zelda-like with a bumping soundtrack and some of the best exploration I’ve had in a videogame. I was particularly impressed by how intuitive this game was. My experimentation-loving brain was constantly rewarded for putting its control scheme together in novel ways. Cute little mouse versus the eldritch horrors, what’s not to love.
Big Walk
Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Big Walk launched after we created the magazine version of the Top 100 this year, otherwise I know it would have been in the list. This is simply the perfect co-op game. A simple, joyful puzzler absent a single flaw. Some of the antics its puzzles inspired genuinely left my crying with laughter, and that ending? Wow. It’s a pure delight, start to finish. It’s easily going to be my GOTY for 2026.
