Euro Truck Simulator 2's next DLC, which will let you sweep through Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, will be out on November 29, developer SCS Software has announced.

The Beyond the Baltic Sea expansion will also introduce parts of Southern Finland and Western Russia. In total, it adds more than 13,000 km of new roads to the trucking sim along with 24 new major cities, including Saint Petersburg.

It doesn't add much in the way of new vehicles—just a Finland-only tractor plus two long trailers, but there will be plenty of new landmarks, towns, trains, trams, docks and industrial buildings to watch out of your window. 

Euro Truck Simulator 2 may be six years old, but it's still one of the best PC games you can play right now. It's polished, relaxing, and deeply atmospheric. 

Beyond the Baltic Sea will cost £13.49/$18. It's on Steam, and it will also be available on the Humble Store.

Thanks, RPS.

For a constantly updated list of our favorite games on PC, check out our list of the best PC games right now. 

Every year, the PC Gamer team embarks on an epic quest to choose the top 100 PC games. Where previously we voted for our favourite games, this year we talked: discussing each of our nominations and deciding which games should make the list. The result is a more honest, considered reflection of our conflicting tastes and opinions as PC gamers.

This list represents what we think are the greatest PC games you can play today. We wanted to celebrate the breadth and variety of PC gaming, and so, for the most part, have restricted ourselves to one game per series. You'll also find a selection of personal picks: games we individually love that didn't quite make the cut. Enjoy!

If you're looking for a list of the games that helped shape PC gaming as we know it, try the 50 most important PC games of all time.

100. Path of Exile

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION New entry

Steven Messner: Path of Exile has quietly become one of the best action RPGs around thanks to its almost incomprehensible depth and wildly different seasonal leagues, where whole new systems are introduced. But the best part is its character customisation and spell crafting system. Path of Exile encourages players to make marauders who let spell totems do all the killing for them, witches who melt hordes with a fiery beam, or duelists that cover every inch of the map in a deadly rain of arrows.

99. Twisted Insurrection

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION New entry

John Strike: Tiberian Sun's best mod brazenly shames the original Firestorm expansion in almost every way. It’s bigger and bolder, offering new buildings, a whole fleet of new units and even a new faction. There’s a completely new musical score and dozens of single player missions, some of which are based on the original Command & Conquer. Not only are new missions and units still being added, but, as a standalone free download, it's the most accessible way to play one of C&C's greats.

98. Killing Floor 2

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 81

Evan Lahti: There are disturbingly few places in video games where I can cut an evil clown in half with a quad-barrelled shotgun. Killing Floor 2 is the world’s greatest gore effects system laid atop an enjoyable skeleton. Hordes of monsters trickle into the map, magnetized to your position, and you mulch them with buzzsaw-spitters, incendiary shotguns, rocket launchers, or a microwave cannon that heats enemies from the inside until they burst. The dynamic slow-mo system adds so much, dampening the chaos just enough—granting extra moments to take aim or take in the sight of an intestine flying across the screen. Tripwire is a skilled digital gunsmith, and the detail lent to particle effects and reload animations holds up wonderfully even under the scrutiny of these plentiful, slowed-down sequences. I also love that KF2 doesn’t simply make these mutants into bullet sponges. On higher difficulties, enemies adopt different behavioral triggers that make them genuinely harder to handle.

Wes Fenlon: The precision and teamwork it takes to play Killing Floor 2 at higher difficulties is especially thrilling. Also, I once played a community map that was monochrome purple and themed after Game Boy-era Pokémon. It was pretty bad, but I appreciated the option.

97. Night in the Woods

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New entry

Phil Savage: A coming-of-age platformer starring an anthropomorphic cat returning home to a dead-end town after dropping out of college. On paper, Night in the Woods sounds like it could be intolerable, but its relationships are so well developed—so warm and fraught and human—that it’s impossible not to get drawn into Mae's world, and to want the best for her and her friends. I particularly love the frequent use of minigames as a way to highlight the need to escape the monotony of day-to-day responsibility.

Andy Kelly: A beautiful, heartfelt story brought to life by flawed, nuanced characters who just happen to be talking animals. It says something about life, but always knows when to crack a joke—and always with perfect timing—when things get too heavy.

96. Deadly Premonition: The Director's Cut

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION New entry

Philippa Warr: Deadly Premonition is always a gamble of a recommendation. It's a gamble worth taking, though, because if you get on with its strangeness and its idiosyncrasies, it rewards you with a weird and beautiful experience of a kind you don't often get in gaming. Yes, the cars handle horribly. Yes, the PC version has crashed on me extensively. Yes, it starts off more as an irritating pastiche of Twin Peaks. Yes, it has frustrating quicktime events. And yes, some reveals draw uncomfortably on lazy tropes. But within that is a supernatural-tinged mystery that alternates between survival horror third-person shooter and a horror comedy investigation. None of the game's shortcomings were dealbreakers for me and several of the characters I encountered as I hunted for the Raincoat Killer have stayed with me for the best part of a decade.

Wes: The jank may be part of the charm, but at least make sure you install Durante's DPFix, which lets you select resolutions above 720p and fixes many minor graphical issues—mitigating some of the PC port’s shortcomings.

95. Stick Shift

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: Stick Shift is my go-to example of a game which invokes complex subject matter while also being really fun to play. As per developer Robert Yang's description: "Stick Shift is an autoerotic night-driving game about pleasuring a gay car." It's part of a trilogy alongside Hurt Me Plenty and Succulent, and together they explore aspects of eroticism, consent, arousal, politics and more. It's also a game where you move your mouse rhythmically, working your car to a climax.

94. Elite Dangerous

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION New entry

Phil: Frontier's galactic sandbox treads a fine line between excitement and tedium. Aliens! Dogfights! Smuggling! Interdictions! Ferrying pesticides to an outpost six lightyears away! However you decide to play, though—whatever amount of excitement you desire—Elite is still a masterfully crafted spaceship simulator. I love the design and feel of its ships, particularly the holographic UI and peerless sci-fi sound design. The thrill of warping to another solar system is never entirely diminished, meaning Elite remains entertaining even if you’ve chosen the life of a glorified space trucker.

Andy: Whether it's a chunky cargo hauler or a nimble fighter, every starship in Elite has its own distinct personality. They're all a delight to fly. Even the most mundane task feels wonderfully tactile.

93. Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom

RELEASED 2018 | LAST POSITION New entry

Andy: While the original Ni no Kuni was co-designed by Spirited Away creator Studio Ghibli, it wasn't involved in this sequel. But developer Level-5 has done fine on its own, creating a rich fantasy world with a cast of vivid characters worthy of the Ghibli name. This is a sweeping JRPG about an usurped boy king on a quest to rebuild his kingdom and reclaim his throne. It's also one of the most colourful, vibrant games on PC.

Wes: The cutscenes are remarkably Ghibli and full of pep and puns, but what really made me fall for Ni No Kuni 2 is just how many systems it layers atop systems, like a big-budget JRPG of old. The sprawling kingdom builder is the centerpiece, with characters to recruit and buildings to construct and upgrade.

92. Mu Cartographer

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: Mu Cartographer is initially obtuse. You'll probably feel utterly lost as to what you’re supposed to do for a while. But once you start tinkering with all the different buttons and dials on the interface you begin to see how to explore the strange map. The peaks and troughs of digital noise on your display suddenly turn into recognisable shapes as you tweak the settings and find the sweet spot. Stepped pyramids rise up where seconds ago all you could see was a fuzzy mess.

91. Guild Wars 2

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 86

Phil: Guild Wars 2 is full of clever quality-of-life features—it's still one of the few MMOs that's figured out how to let you easily play with friends of a different level. The flow and pace of its maps are a thing of beauty, too. Groups expand and contract naturally, as people wander off to explore on their own, before coming together for a small-scale event or organising to complete a single map-wide objective. You get all the joy of cooperation without the need to commit a significant amount of your time. Just turn up and play. Then, when you eventually get tired, go off and do something else. There's also no subscription, and none of the expansions have raised the level cap, so you're free to come and go as you please, playing at your own pace without ever worrying that you're falling behind. You can play for hours every week if you want—ticking off the hardest achievements and earning the rarest loot—but I'm happy to log back in every six months or so, safe in the knowledge that I'm ready for whatever's next.

Tom: I have fought huge dragon bosses and a marionette the size of a skyscraper, and I didn't need to grind for 200 hours for the privilege. Guild Wars 2 earnestly tries to reinvent the MMO by reshaping the bullshit grinding and levelling systems that had become rote in the genre.

90. Super Mega Baseball 2

RELEASED 2018 | LAST POSITION New entry

Wes: I'm about as bad at this surprisingly deep baseball game as I am at real baseball, but as a lapsed fan of America's pastime I appreciate how good this rendition is. It walks the line between a hyper-detailed sports sim and an arcadey NBA Jam-like, with simple controls but tons of nuance in pitching and hitting.

Chris Livingston: The customization is great, letting you change everything from player abilities to team logos, and its Pennant Race mode makes every online game feel important.

89. The Stanley Parable

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION New entry

Samuel Roberts: You start in an abandoned office with a narrator telling you what you're supposed to do next. If you obey his instructions it will lead you to an ending. But if you don't, you'll discover many more fascinating, exciting little stories.

Phil: An antagonistic dialogue between a man with no body and another with no voice. Weird, funny and full of ideas.

Pip: Games often struggle with comedy. The Stanley Parable manages to be consistently funny as well as whip smart.

88. Drawful 2

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New entry

Wes: A chill, surprisingly hilarious party game I can play for hours. Everyone joins in on a smartphone and gets a phrase to draw on the touchscreen, then writes their own descriptions of everyone else's drawing to trick the crowd or simply get the most laughs. It's like millennial Pictionary, so inevitably people draw a lot more dicks.

87. Nidhogg 2

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New entry

James Davenport: The back-and-forth struggles of Nidhogg were already unpredictable, but bows, axes, swords, and daggers transform simple fencing standoffs into tense, sweaty battles for control. Nidhogg 2 is an excellent way to graft friends to the couch. 

Evan: A see-sawing melee mess. No PC game produces more smile-yelling than Nidhogg 2.

86. Stephen's Sausage Roll

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: Stephen's Sausage Roll and I are on a break. I can't remember exactly why, but I know that I definitely rage-quit the sausage-grilling puzzler a while ago and haven't become sufficiently not angry to go back. That isn't a criticism, though; this is the puzzle game I recommend to the friends who want a real challenge.

Phil: I managed one level.

85. Battletech

RELEASED 2018 | LAST POSITION New entry

Evan: It's turn-based MMA with walking tanks. Unlike XCOM 2, the durability and modular design of mechs makes for drawn out, back-and-forth exchanges that become micro-stories of attrition and mettle. You trade blows with an Atlas, weave and evade it, it cleaves off one of your body segments, you circle around, knock it down and KO it with a face stomp. I love BattleTech's degrees of failure. You might complete all objectives but lose your rare, damage-boosted PPC, put a pilot in a two-month coma, or have to spend every nickel you just earned fixing up your battered Highlander. The campaign wrapped around BattleTech's granular combat is a bottomless well of procedurally generated missions with a heartwarming story of underdog regal revenge at its nucleus.

84. Football Manager 2018

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New entry

Joe Donnelly: Following some less comprehensive annual instalments, Football Manager 2018 gives us the most sophisticated soccer management simulation yet, where success is no longer determined by match performance alone. Piss off the wrong combination of players, and you'll risk a dressing room revolt. Suck up to the most popular, and you'll isolate your fringe stars. You need to balance influence and social standings to prevent the beautiful game from turning ugly.

83. Thumper

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 34

Pip: I don't think many people can consciously identify a 'fast-moving rhythm action space beetle combat game with a heady metal album aesthetic' void in their lives. But it exists and Thumper can fix it.

Phil: The dark, grungy synths and unusual time signatures create a fascinatingly ominous soundscape that draws you into the claustrophobic, reactive action. Thumper offers a mesmerising blend of palpable dread and empowering mastery—at least it did for me until the later levels, which required a degree of dexterity I'm not sure I possess.

James: That scarab scrapes down the interdimensional highway at the centre of Thumper with so much speed and ferocity that the game almost literally breaks apart by the end. Nod your head to dull the pain. 

82. Euro Truck Simulator 2

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 89

Andy: The problem with simulators is that they're often badly designed, technically janky or both. But Euro Truck Simulator 2 is neither of these things. This is a deep, polished, and immensely playable driving game set in a vast, mostly accurate replica of Europe. You can drive seamlessly between countries, and there's an understated beauty to the scenery that passes you by. It's also incredibly atmospheric, especially at night or in the rain. There's no better game to play while listening to music or catching up on podcasts, and it's deeply customisable too, meaning you can make each road trip as realistic or accessible as you like, depending on how deep you want the simulation to be.

Phil: In many ways I prefer American Truck Simulator. That's not because I love weigh stations—they're fine, if that's your thing—but because America's vast, terrifying emptiness feels more isolated, more epic, and, dare I say, more romantic. Euro Truck Simulator 2, on the other hand, is dense and busy, but also muted—it's altogether greyer and more moodily atmospheric. Both games are fantastic, and which one you prefer is likely a matter of which style of road trip speaks more to your personality. How many simulation games can you say that of?

81. FTL: Faster Than Light 

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 21

Samuel: It turns out being the captain of your own spaceship is stressful as hell, but you'll take part in some great stories along the way. FTL is a superior mix of roguelike and strategy. While Into The Breach is taking its place in my life, this is still one of the best space-set games around. 

Wes: It can make for a great party game, too. Put someone in the driver's seat and let the crowd make choices. Suddenly half your ship is on fire and you've accidentally vented one of your crew into space.

80. Stalker: Call of Pripyat

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION 41

Chris: This grim and unforgiving open world FPS never turns you into an invincible superhero. No matter how much gear and weaponry you scrounge from the irradiated exclusion zone, you're still mortal and fragile, alone in a terrifying world of mutants, monsters, and roaming factions of AI-controlled humans. This lends Stalker an unending tension and fills every encounter with dread. From start to finish, there's a sense that at any moment you could meet your unceremonious end.

79. Doom 2

RELEASED 1994 | LAST POSITION 76

Wes: People are making mods and maps for this game like it was released a year ago. That's awesome. But what really strikes me about Doom 2 is how fun it still is, and how different it feels from decades more advanced shooters. There's a purity in how it moves, how it sounds and the minimum frames of animation it takes to sell firing the super shotgun.

78. Grim Fandango Remastered

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 96

Pip: Twenty years after its initial release it's still a real pleasure to revisit the film noir world of Manny Calavera, travel agent of the afterlife. Nowadays I play purely for the story so I keep online hints at hand for when progress stalls.

Tom Senior: Shout out here to Glottis, the giant orange demon who's too big and happy to quite fit into the world he’s in.

77. Warhammer: Vermintide 2

RELEASED 2018 | LAST POSITION New entry

Samuel: There's a long tail to Vermintide 2 if you're willing to stick with this four-player Left 4 Dead-alike set in the Warhammer universe. It looks prettier than the first game, offers more in-depth character progression, and has much better combat.

Phil: It feels really good to stab up a rat, and if that's not worth a spot on this list, I'd love to know what is.

76. Oxenfree

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New entry

Samuel: This spooky adventure game has a group of young friends inadvertently unlock a supernatural force on a haunted island. The relationships and various tensions between all the characters feel very real, and the dialogue is funny and poignant. These characters feel like they could've been people I went to school with.

Phil: The snappy, fun dialogue makes Oxenfree feel more theatrical than realistic, but that fits perfectly with the eerie mystery and interpersonal drama.

75. Regency Solitaire

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: I added Grey Alien's card-game-slash-Regency-romance to our Top 100 discussion list, then reinstalled the game and spent three hours of the Top 100 discussion playing this in the background. I'm fighting the urge to play it again now instead of finishing this incredibly short paragraph about why it's good. The solitaire aspect is really strong, it's super easy to play just one more round, and the story is light but charming. Are we done? Can I boot it up again?

74. Metro: Last Light Redux

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION 95

Tom: Not many shooters have you frantically pumping up a pneumatic gun before you can fire it, but that’s Metro for you. These ramshackle weapons carry you through a filthy, atmospheric corridor shooter set in the depths of the Moscow undercity. The tunnels hide mutant creatures and nests of horrible spidery things, but the most dangerous enemies are the human clans trying to scrape out a living in the post-apocalypse.

Samuel: A beautiful and grim FPS that's refreshingly bleak for a modern triple-A game. The world building in Metro: Last Light is dazzling to me—the little snapshots of human civilisation that show how there are children in these underground settlements who never knew the world before it got into this bleak, decrepit state. And the story features some unforgettable moments, such as an early flashback that shows—from the perspective of the pilots—how a passenger plane was destroyed in the nuclear blast. It's a chilling world that's hard work just to exist in, but I love that it's a post-apocalyptic setting that doesn’t succumb to the desire to over-stylise anything. It commits to showing the horrors of what a nuclear war would do to the modern world, and I'd recommend it to absolutely anyone.

73. Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION 40

Steven: Square Enix's from-the-ashes MMO enjoyed another stellar year following the release of Stormblood, a revolution-themed expansion that whisks players across the sea to Eastern-inspired worlds that add much richness to an already great story. Though its endgame has become a predictable grind at this point, Final Fantasy 14 is still able to keep things exciting thanks to the steady pace of new bosses, dungeons, and raids to clear. Each one is just as memorable as the last thanks to a stunning soundtrack and beautiful world design.

72. The Norwood Suite 

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: Cosmo D's first-person jazz hotel exploration has you poking around a converted mansion and uncovering the secrets of its former owner, celebrated pianist, Peter Norwood. Musicality shapes the whole experience, warping the space and affecting the denizens. As you dig around you'll also discover the game's sense of humour via visual gags and surreal chats with guests and visitors. For a related experience you should also check out the developer’s free game, Off-Peak.

71. Mount & Blade: Warband

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION New entry

Evan: Mount & Blade: Warband is what we so often clamour for: an RPG where you're not an intergalactic savior or chosen one, but just some dude leading a small army on a sprawling, simulated map filled with other dudes leading other armies. It's sandbox in the truest sense, and the feeling of loosing an arrow into a line of galloping cavalry still holds up.

Phil: You start with nothing: left for dead in a town with few weapons, no supplies and barely any gold. From such inauspicious beginnings, you're free to do just about anything. Hunt bandits, befriend lords, rob pretty much anyone. Or, if you don't fancy leading hundreds of soldiers, just go fight for prestige in the arena. We've been waiting years for Mount & Blade 2, but Warband still has much to offer.

70. StarCraft 2

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION New entry

Andy: Across its three campaigns, StarCraft 2 boasts some of the best, most cinematic single-player RTS missions on PC. New challenges are constantly being thrown at you, forcing you to try new units and tactics, and the story isn't bad either. When you're done with all that, you can take your newfound skills online, which still has a huge and dedicated following. There's a bottomless pit of tips, tutorials, and strategies online, meaning new players have a decent chance of catching up.

69. Galactic Civilizations 2

RELEASED 2011 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tom: Maybe a game like Stellaris will knock this classic spacebound 4X strategy game out of the Top 100, but not this year. It's hard to beat a game that's so smart and complete, and that can generate so much strategic intrigue with every campaign. The AI is so cunning that former PC Gamer staffer-turned-developer Tom Francis once wrote an entire book about one of his attempts to thwart it. Singleplayer games don't get much deeper than this.

68. Prison Architect

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Chris: There's an engrossing amount of depth to the management simulation of Prison Architect, where building a workshop for inmates to make license plates doesn't mean they'll just walk in and begin working. First they'll need training, which requires classrooms, which require instructors, who require work and class schedules and their own facilities. Oh, and metal detectors to make sure the inmates don't smuggle out tools to use as weapons against guards or other inmates, or to tunnel under the walls of your prison. It's not easy building and managing a small city where most of the population is plotting escape.

Andy: I love it when things go to shit in management sims, and Prison Architect is enormously fun to watch (and manage) when disaster inevitably strikes. A streak of black comedy runs through the game, and there's something darkly hilarious about a riot erupting—these cartoonish little characters shivving each other, starting fires and beating up guards. Something as simple as a fight in the canteen can be the flashpoint for a full-scale riot, and trying to suppress it safely and quickly is a real test of skill. But that doesn't mean you can't have some fun observing the chaos before rolling your sleeves up and stepping in to deal with it.

67. Ori and the Blind Forest

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 62

Pip: An adorable Ghibli-esque aesthetic—particularly the opening cutscene—gives way to a rock hard Metroidvania platformer. Your eyes are as likely to tear up with emotion as they are with absolute fury if you fail a boss one too many times. 

Tom: It looks like sugar but tastes like salt. Ori is not the moonlit animal paradise it appears to be at first glance. It’s a game about loss, revenge, and bastard-hard jumping challenges. The art is absolutely gorgeous. It's a hazy, dreamlike world of artfully twisted overgrowth and spike pits. The movement is so quick, precise and responsive I just want to squeeze it, even as it stabs me repeatedly in the heart. Approach with caution and keep some hankies and a swear jar within reach.

66. Frostpunk

RELEASED 2018 | LAST POSITION New entry

Chris: A survival and crisis management sim about building and sustaining city in a frozen world. In addition to providing food, warmth, and shelter to your citizens, you have to provide them something much trickier: hope for the future. That's immensely difficult when people are starving, freezing, and working themselves to death under your direction, and the choices you face are grim ones that never leave you feeling like a hero, even when things work out. Frostpunk is a game that asks two questions: 'How far are you willing to go to save lives?' And, 'No, really, how far are you willing to go?' It's a masterful exploration of the burden of leadership, the true costs of survival, and the balancing act between guiding your citizens and controlling them.

65. Diablo 3

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 30

Tom: 'Maybe I should start another Crusader run': seven words that could take up 60 hours of my life. Diablo 3 is still a stellar action RPG that has only become more generous year on year after its unsteady and controversial launch. The necromancer is a fantastic addition that calls back to Diablo 2 without nostalgically retreading the same ground. If you want to smash up thousands of monsters for gold and loot, there aren't many games that do it as well as Diablo 3.

64. Bayonetta

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION 32

Samuel: A superb hack-and-slash game that rewards mastery with feeling like a badass. It's pretty much the first place I'd send anyone new to this genre of game that has its modern roots in Capcom's Devil May Cry series. This, from that game's creator, is funny, stylish and satisfying to learn. Its sequel, which Nintendo published, doesn't come close to matching the original. The range of weapons here fits together perfectly.

Phil: The fast-paced combat is yet to be bettered, and the world and story are equal parts stylish and absurd.

63. Crypt of the Necrodancer

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: The rhythm combat in this game is so polished that I love it even when it's at its most stressful. You have to move on every beat or risk losing your cash multiplier, which means there's no downtime to plan your next move. Is a multiplier all that important, you ask? "Oh," I reply, "Only if you want to keep being able to afford new items at the shop where the amazingly catchy soundtrack is suddenly given an EVEN MORE AMAZING operatic flavour thanks to a singing shopkeeper called Freddie Merchantry."

Wes: This would be a great roguelike in its own right, but it's almost unfair how cleverly the musical element is threaded through exploration and combat. Try dungeon dancing to your own music for a new challenge.

62. Sunless Sea

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 75

Pip: I bounced off Sunless Sea so hard when it first came out—I remember clunky combat and irritating resource grind as core objections. Returning to the game with the Zubmariner DLC I found myself well and truly suckered in—devoting hours to pottering away in the Unterzee, drinking in Failbetter's expert prose and luxuriating in the art style. Sunless Skies is shaping up to be another step forward so I'm singing Sunless Sea's praises now, lest seas be eclipsed by skies in the near future!

61. Baldur's Gate 2: Enhanced Edition

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 48

Tom: Baldur's Gate 2 is still a magnificent achievement. Few RPGs since have been as broad, deep or fully featured as this sprawling classic. Pillars of Eternity and other games are steadily bringing the classic RPG back to prominence, but Baldur's Gate 2 is still very much worth playing today, and is still one of the most faithful videogame interpretations of D&D's Forgotten Realms setting. It's a great party RPG too. Few modern games would be brave enough to implement a morality system that causes party members to fall out with you and leave the party—the closest you might get is Wrex's rebellion in Mass Effect. While we all remember Minsc and his space hamster companion Boo, the roster went much deeper and accurately reflected the spread of D&D classes, from lawful good paladins to chaotic neutral thieves.

Phil: After the slightly too long tutorial dungeon, Baldur's Gate II hits the ground running, setting you loose in the massive city of Athkatla to earn money to fund the next leg of your journey. It’s a great way to encourage you to explore the city, seeking out its stories and adventures.

60. Fez

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 67

Phil: A vast, beautiful mystery that's equal parts intriguing and relaxing, Fez is a puzzle-platformer that forgoes enemies and peril, instead offering a pleasant adventure about a strange world full of questions to answer. At its most basic, you rotate between four 2D planes, shifting the world in order to create a path to the next door. But over the course of the game, you'll solve riddles, uncover secrets, and even decode languages. Fez is a tantalising puzzle box just waiting to be unlocked.

59. 80 Days

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 37

Samuel: Take a journey around a steampunk-infused world as Passepartout, Phileas Fogg's indispensable assistant. Then, whether you succeed or fail, take the journey again and again, and see all the places and stories you missed the first time around. 80 Days is almost entirely dependent on great writing and little bits of art, and it's enough to bring the entire world to life. While it feels made for mobile, you should definitely pick it up on desktop if you've never played it. 

58. Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age

RELEASED 2018 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tom: This feels like the most PC-friendly Final Fantasy to me. Like the rest of the games in the series, it's a beautiful big RPG with a cast of characters that span from annoying (Vaan) to awesome (Balthier). This entry is the only one with the excellent gambit tactics system, which lets you program your party's AI to blitz dungeons and bosses with satisfying efficiency.

Samuel: You can fast-forward this version of the game, too, giving the combat the pace and catharsis it desperately needed back when it came out on PS2. 

57. Hexcells Infinite

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: This is the third game in Matthew Brown's hex-grid logic puzzler series, and it's the best of the bunch. The 'infinite' part of the title refers to the fact that it can generate infinite puzzles if you want to keep playing. But the real joy, and the reason I keep replaying it, is the set which Brown has hand-crafted. Absolute puzzle bliss.

56. Homeworld Remastered Collection

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tom: The saddest spaceships in games must travel the galaxy looking for a new home in Relic's classic RTS. If you love brain-scrambling 3D battles then this is the only strategy game that really delivers. Deserts of Kharak is excellent too, but I'd sooner play a game bold enough to deploy Adagio for Strings in a scrap.

55. Dota 2

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 54

Pip: I have spent north of 2,000 hours in this game. You do not need to know how much money I have spent in this game. But that investment, both temporal and financial, was because this MOBA continued to reward me. There's a rich esports scene, a daft and creative community, the ability for friendships to blossom and for groups of players to cross pollinate as friends of friends move in and out of your teammate invite list. I only stop by occasionally now, but Valve continues to offer interesting updates. Turbo mode is my favourite addition in recent times, not least because it affords newbies a space where they can try characters out without as much pressure as a normal match.

54. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION 25

Samuel: It's a phenomenon I'd recommend trying to anyone who plays on PC, even if they bounce off it. That tension of landing in this world and seeing what plays out is an experience everyone should have. Evan put it best last year, so allow me to repeat it here: "it compresses the time and space that survival games like DayZ give you, forcing you into contact with other players and out of your comfort zone."

Andy: I play PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds as a stealth game, moving carefully between cover, keeping out of sight, biding my time. But the thrill here is that the 'guards' are real people, which makes sneaking under their noses even more exhilarating.

53. Deus Ex

RELEASED 2000 | LAST POSITION 23

Tom: This one has slipped down the list this year, largely because in recent times we've seen developers pick up the immersive sim baton and run with it—see entry number two in this list for the results. Deus Ex is still a classic, though. Even though the visuals, UI, dialogue and sound design seem more creaky each year, the scope for experimentation and emergent player-authored action is still impressive. 

Phil: It's creaky for sure, but Deus Ex's freedom still feels remarkable, as does its level of respect for the player. Most games feel compelled to clearly flag when you’re about to make a narrative choice that might have a consequence. But Deus Ex thrusts you into a paranoid world where everyone has an agenda and every command should be questioned.

52. Fallout 4

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Samuel: I'd recommend all of the modern Fallout games to someone who’s never played them for various reasons, and this, in essence, represents that entire era of the series on our list (we were very close to including the original Fallout, too, but ultimately stuck with our one per series rule). New Vegas is the best for reactive storytelling, Fallout 3 has my favourite side quests, and Fallout 4 feels the most refined when it comes to combat, presentation and world design. Even if the choices towards the end didn't produce outcomes I was happy with, I loved journeying around that world with Nick Valentine and Piper. And taking on the role of pulp-style hero The Silver Shroud represents my favourite superhero experience in any game. 

Evan: There's nothing quite like Fallout's setting. Its cynical, post-apocalyptic, Atomic Age sci-fi is dripping with black humour and absurdity. I'm grateful that something so esoteric continues to get the big-budget treatment.

Phil: We're big fans of immersive sims at PC Gamer, and yet I love Bethesda's RPGs for being practically the opposite. Fallout 4 lets you be a silent stealth killer who wears a giant suit of power armour—not because it makes sense within the world, but because it makes sense within the underlying systems. It's an anti-immersive sim, offering satisfying freedom in how you build your wasteland wanderer.  

51. Stardew Valley

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 22

Andy: A miserable office worker inherits a farm and starts a new life in the idyllic Stardew Valley. This Harvest Moon-inspired farming sim is pleasantly freeform and lets you live the way you want to, whether that's just lazily growing a few crops here and there, or starting a ruthlessly efficient mayonnaise empire.

Bo: Stardew Valley is everything I ever wanted out of Harvest Moon, but unchained from Nintendo's puritanical approach to content.

50. EVE Online

RELEASED 2003 | LAST POSITION 44

Tom: It's obtuse, and it takes a lot of time and effort to become properly mixed up in the corporations that drive EVE Online's greatest dramas, but I have taken a lot of pleasure in hopping into a vessel and mining for a few hours, quietly turning in a small profit and enjoying the vibe of EVE's cosmos. It looks beautiful stretched across two monitors, and if I do find myself yearning for the grand stories of war and betrayal, I can always read about them later in PC Gamer.

49. BioShock

RELEASED 2007 | LAST POSITION 17

Samuel: While as a shooter it's far from best-in-class these days, exploring the different parts of this underwater world and learning its story is an experience no other game has matched for me.

Andy: Rapture is still one of the most atmospheric settings on PC, letting you explore a bizarre, broken society in a state of fascinating decay.

48. Warframe

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION New entry

Steven: Digital Extremes' cooperative loot shooter quietly became one of the best free-to-play games and people are only just now catching on. In the years since its rocky release, Warframe has grown into a deeply satisfying and complex online game with thousands of hours worth of quests to complete and gear to farm.

47. Darkest Dungeon

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 83

Evan: Even as DLC has made it a bigger experience, I continue to value Darkest Dungeon's focus. It's an intimidating game for all the right reasons: difficulty, uncertainty, risk and reward. The audio and combat camera effects deserve an award for how they make fights between illustrated paper characters feel like Eldritch kung fu.

46. Opus Magnum

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tyler: Solving an Opus Magnum puzzle isn't satisfying the first time. You build an alchemy machine with tracks, rotating arms and flowchart instructions—producing gold from lead, for instance. Your sloppy contraption may look beautiful in motion, but how could you move on to the next challenge when your friend solved the same problem more elegantly? That quest for perfection is deviously engrossing. Few puzzle games feel so good to finally master.

45. Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION 60

Andy: The Enhanced Edition of Torment is currently the best way to play this supremely weird RPG on modern PCs. You play as an immortal being with amnesia, trying to piece his past together. The writing is the star here, bringing Dungeons & Dragons' Planescape setting to life in exquisite, wordy detail. Think of any RPG convention and Torment will subvert or twist it in some fascinating way, and the characters who join your party along the way are truly strange.

44. Civilization 5

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tyler: I vacillate between them, but even though I like Civ 6's city districts, Civilization 5 with all the expansions is still the evening destroyer I'd recommend. I wish the series would reexamine its assumptions about the world and make more radical changes in the future, but for now, Civ 5 is still the standard bearer for turn-based empire building: complex enough not to become too rote, but accessible enough for just about anyone who enjoys rewriting history.

Evan: I prefer Civ 6—it's shallow, but I need my 1440p boardgames to look as pretty as possible, and the expressive, animated leaders of Civ 6 add a lot. But the fact that there's still a debate between the two is an endorsement of Firaxis' approach to putting meaningful new spins on one of PC gaming's longest-standing, most celebrated genres.

Andy: In all the time I've played Civ 5, I've never actually won a game. And so it's a testament to just how compelling and accessible its strategy is that I keep coming back, trying new tactics and shaping my civilisation in new and interesting ways. It's the journey—taking my people from humble beginnings to advanced empires—that I really enjoy. The destination ultimately isn't that important.

43. Invisible, Inc.

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 50

Tom: This turn-based tactics game has you controlling a squad of superspies in missions to knock out guards and steal data before the alarms detect you. I love Klei's angular art, and it's miraculous that the team were able to build such a tight and nuanced tactics game with procedurally generated offices. As with Into the Breach, Invisible, Inc. gives you tons of information about what's going on with enemies. You can see their sight lines clearly and judge their intentions. Your main decisions come down to your use of power points to hack systems. You can disable alarms or unlock doors to access tantalisingly placed upgrade terminals. Do you grab your objective and flee before security arrives, or take a gamble for an upgrade that might make future missions a lot easier?

42. Overcooked

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 77

Evan: Pure co-op calamity with a deceptively cheerful art style. You will never yell "I need lettuce!" with more anger and urgency. 

Samuel: So enjoyable to pick up, then appallingly difficult to master as you chase those three star ratings. If only I could take it less seriously—me and my partner had to stop playing because I was treating it like a part-time kitchen job. "Plates, plates, PLATES!"

Phil: It's like if the TV show Hell's Kitchen was a game—swearing and all.

41. Super Hexagon

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION New entry

Jody Macgregor: Terry Cavanagh of VVVVVV fame's twitchiest game, Super Hexagon makes you a triangle trapped in pulsing, multicoloured hexagons, dodging through gaps in spinning walls at high speed. It's the definition of easy to learn and bloody impossible to master. I used to think hexagons were fine. Perfectly respectable shapes. Maybe not as fun as parallelograms, which are basically drunk rectangles, but pretty good overall. Now I've played Super Hexagon I hate them. They give me a rash. Terrible shapes. To hell with hexagons.

Phil: Before writing this paragraph I fired up Super Hexagon for the first time in five years, and after only a few tries I was already pushing up near my best times. This is the kind of game that sears itself into your subconscious; burrowing deep down into your muscle memory just waiting for you to return. As a shortform arcade game it's practically perfect—a pulsating, rotating, constantly shifting assault of shapes and sounds with an instant restart that has you back in the action before the voiceover can finish saying "game over".

40. Mass Effect 2

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION 7

Samuel: The facial animations really date BioWare games, but Mass Effect 2 is still the best at showing darker, more interesting sides to its dense sci-fi universe. Plus it still has my favourite party of characters from a modern BioWare RPG. Maybe it's time for another trilogy replay.

Andy: The greatest ensemble cast in RPG history. The idea of recruiting the galaxy's most notorious warriors and criminals is a brilliant excuse to gather up a motley crew of weird, flawed, interesting people, and I cared about all of them.

39. Hearthstone

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION 45

Tim: Hearthstone is in a funny spot. It's as gigantic as it's ever been, but with the departure of game director Ben Brode and the looming threat of Valve's Artifact, now would be a good time for Blizzard’s CCG to shake things up a little. The arrival of a tournament mode later this year may do that, but despite an atypically diverse meta, I've felt my desire to grind the ladder wane. Regardless, for now Hearthstone remains peerless in terms of the quality and polish of the experience.

38. Grand Theft Auto 5

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 12

Andy: GTA 5 is one of the most lavish singleplayer experiences you can have on PC, with impeccable production values, superb mission variety, and a wonderfully vibrant city. It's massive, but I've finished it three times—that's how much I love being in Los Santos. For me, Michael is Rockstar's best protagonist: a weary, slightly pathetic crook past his prime trying to make it in a world that’s left him behind.

Samuel: I change my mind about GTA Online every few months, but the fidelity of the world is unbeaten. I adore the original heists, and I've had a lot of fun playing the game with other people. I've seen those streets so many times now, though, and am desperate to play whatever comes next in the series. Or, you know, they could bring Red Dead to PC.

Phil: Whatever you think about GTA Online (relationship status: it's complicated), that first set of multiplayer heists are among the best co-op experiences you can have on PC. The way they divide your team of four into smaller groups, each performing a specific task that slowly draws everyone together for a single, action packed finale is—when you successfully pull it off—tense, exciting and memorable.

Joe: GTA Online is a shop window, and few games let you observe other players' wares with such impact. Seeing that new car, aircraft or chopper hurtling towards you makes you want it—which makes grinding to get it less of a chore.

37. Company of Heroes 

RELEASED 2006 | LAST POSITION 56

Tom: It's Relic's best game and frankly still one of the best real-time strategy games ever made. Jumping into a skirmish against the AI, it holds up today as well as it did at launch, which is a testament to the quality of the art and sound direction, and the success of Relic's squad-based take on unit control. The expansions are decent, but I still relish the purity of Company of Heroes' asymmetrical core matchup. The US has a slight numbers advantage in the early infantry stages of a battle but the Axis forces can bring halftracks to the mid-game and elite tanks into the endgame. A few games have tried to imitate Company of Heroes over the years, but none have really come close.

36. Half-Life 2

RELEASED 2004 | LAST POSITION 11

Andy: Gordon Freeman awakes from stasis to find Earth transformed into a dystopian hellscape by an invading alien force. Valve's influential FPS is still fantastic, particularly its eerie, understated atmosphere. The Combine are genuinely unnerving antagonists, but they didn't anticipate going up against a mute physicist who can yank radiators off the wall and launch them at high speeds.

Chris: A linear FPS but one that makes you feel as if you're finding your own path through it, rather than being shoved along rails by the developers. And the gravity gun is still the most enjoyable multitool in games: perfect for solving physics puzzles, playing catch with Dog, using a metal door as a shield, or flinging a toilet into a Metrocop's head.

35. Devil Daggers

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New entry

Jody: FPS design often copies the Halo idea of a single, repeatable loop of fun, but Devil Daggers really boils it down. Here the loop is backpedalling in an arc while shooting daggers at nearby enemies, clearing enough room to aim at the weak spot of a distant, tougher enemy, then spinning around to take out the skull-face jerk sneaking up behind you. It's just you and infinite bastards to shoot. Perfect.

Evan: If you die and don't go to heaven or hell, you play Devil Daggers until you win.

34. Forza Horizon 3

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 29

Phil: A gloriously silly arcade playground that takes the Forza Motorsport series' deep love of cars and customisation and transports it into a vibrant, luscious world full of ridiculous races and entertaining off-road mayhem. Forza Horizon 3's best feature is the skill chain system, which transforms an otherwise basic drive between events into a challenge to string together stunts without crashing.

Andy: Driving pretend cars doesn't get any better than the Forza series, and Horizon brilliantly softens the simulation while still maintaining a feeling of weight and realism.

Evan: All racers should be set in Australia.

33. The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

RELEASED 2011 | LAST POSITION 26

Andy: Skyrim remains one of the most evocative settings on PC. It's not as big as some game worlds, but the varied biomes—from the bubbling hot springs of Eastmarch to the snow-battered coastline of Winterhold—make it feel much bigger than it is. The role-playing is shallow and the writing isn't great, but the sense of place and feeling of freedom make up for it. Picking a direction, going for a wander, and seeing what you'll find out there among the snow and ice is The Elder Scrolls at its most captivating.

Chris: You can finish (or completely ignore) the main story and still have a couple hundred hours of self-guided fun—especially by adding mods to the mix. Skyrim gives you a special kind of freedom seen in few RPGs.

32. Proteus

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: If this was Pip's Top 100 Proteus would be in the number one spot. It's a contemplative experience where you wander a procedurally generated island, delighting in what you find. I often find myself drifting back to it in moments of stress, treating myself to a short digital holiday. One time I forgot I'd tweaked the game files and accidentally turned everything red, so that was a surprise. Seas of blood. But if you don’t make seas of blood it's gloriously restful!

31. Crusader Kings 2

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 52

Phil: Crusader Kings 2 isn't just a grand strategy about medieval kingdoms. It's a grand strategy about the people in charge of those kingdoms. You're not the abstract concept of the country of France; you're the King of France, a 60-year-old man who, after a protracted battle against the rebellious Duke of Burgundy, is now on his deathbed, about to leave the fate of his dynasty to an idiot son. You're not the ever-expanding territory of the Holy Roman Empire; you're an increasingly deranged emperor who people think has been possessed by the devil. By generating stories about people, Crusader Kings II is an endlessly fascinating soap opera that's different every time. In my last campaign, I didn't even play. I used the command console to simply observe the action, watching as an epic period drama played out across the map.

Chris: What's most interesting is how your relationships change when you die and continue playing as your heir. Those three children you had don't seem so wonderful once you've assumed the role of the eldest. The other two, while devoted to their father, now hate you and may plot against you. Your entire view of the world changes regularly, not just because the players change but because you yourself do, by dying and playing as someone new.

30. Portal 2

RELEASED 2011 | LAST POSITION 5

Chris: It should have been impossible to top the near-perfect Portal in comedy, storytelling, and physics-bending first-person puzzles, but Portal 2 somehow manages it, and even throws in some fantastic multiplayer on top. 

Andy: Portal 2 brings a funny and sometimes disarmingly poignant story to its mind-bending puzzles, and the results are exceptional. Your journey through the various eras of Aperture Science make the game a constant delight.

29. World of Warcraft

RELEASED 2004 | LAST POSITION 59

Andy: Blizzard's long-running MMORPG simply refuses to die, and in fact seems to be getting better with every expansion. The most recent, 2016's Legion, brought in a swathe of quality-of-life improvements and some of the best questing in World of Warcraft's nearly 14-year history, making it worth playing all over again. It's still pretty grindy, especially compared to the more streamlined Guild Wars 2, but there are few online worlds this rich and storied to spend time in.

Don't miss Steven's Battle For Azeroth review for some more recent WoW words.

28. Undertale

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 61

Tyler: Undertale subverts RPG cliches with constant self-reference, but unlike many 'parody games', it's not cynical or derivative. It plays on expectations without succumbing to them, with characters we’d love even without the metacommentary on game design, fandom, and authorship. Undertale is a great RPG even if you don't get every reference.

27. Fortnite Battle Royale

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New entry

James: Fortnite's battle royale mode started as a weak PUBG imitation, but an unprecedented update cycle has made it not just the best battle royale game, but one of the most fascinating games in development today. With map changes, new items, and one-off world events almost every week, Fortnite is endlessly entertaining to live in.

26. League of Legends

RELEASED 2009 | LAST POSITION New entry

Wes: Regular changes to the meta have kept League alive and on top for years. It’s still the best entry point for the MOBA genre.

Pip: I favour ARAM—a five-vs-five battle where randomly assigned characters let spells and punches fly across a single lane. I visit the pressure of the three lane Summoner’s Rift from a safe distance—as an esports spectator.

25. Cities: Skylines

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 82

Andy: While the most recent SimCity did everything it could to stifle creativity, Cities: Skylines gave players the power to make anything they want—in part thanks to the deep mod support. The result is the best city-builder around.

Samuel: The best game of its kind in a genre that people have enjoyed and will play forever, well supported by compelling expansions. Plus, you can destroy your city with meteors if you're having a dark day—like I did when I was mayor of Pipville several months ago.

24. Arma 3

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 55

Evan: Arma 3 stands alone as the highest-fidelity FPS, the best multiplayer story generator, and a bottomless trough of community missions and mods. You can play it with the utmost seriousness, with an add-on that lets you administer simulated CPR on injured comrades, or as a silly military take on Black & White with its Zeus DLC. It's no coincidence that Arma was the fertile terrain that produced the last two biggest trends in PC gaming: battle royale and survival games.

23. Her Story 

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 19

Phil: You start with a police database open and the word 'MURDER' entered into its search field. Hit enter and you’re given four short video clips from a police interview. In one, the woman being interviewed says, "I didn't murder Simon." OK, let's search 'SIMON'. More video clips—more hints at a tantalising mystery that twists and changes as you unlock more of its parts.

Samuel: Probably the best mystery game ever made, because Her Story is over when you feel you've found the answer (or when you've discovered all the clips, depending on the type of player you are). It truly puts the drama of uncovering the truth in your hands, which is so hard for a game to do in any meaningful way. One of those games I would recommend to someone who has never played games. 

Tyler: A fantastic performance that made FMV, for once, not cheesy.

Andy: A narrative game that really makes use of the medium. The mystery unfolds differently for everyone who plays it, which is a wonderfully original way of telling a story. What you think happened might be different to someone else’s interpretation, turning us all into unreliable narrators.

22. Total War: Warhammer 2

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tom: Total War is a complex grand strategy series that fuses turn-based 4X-style empire-building with vast real-time battles. So far we've mostly seen the format used to explore historical scenarios, but it turns out the Warhammer universe is a perfect fit. For fans of the setting it's a joy to see each faction rendered so vividly, but I would recommend Total War: Warhammer 2 to any strategy fan regardless of your Warhammer knowledge. If you want to command a traditional army, the Empire is there for you. If you want something more adventurous, you don't need to know much about the undead Tomb Kings to enjoy sending hordes of skeletons after magical relics. The sequel's campaign is brilliant. Four factions fight for control of a big magic vortex in the middle of the map, which keeps the campaign interesting all the way into the endgame.

Jody: Replay that campaign and eventually you'll see behind the curtain, but what makes it worth replaying is the factions. Warhammer 2 gets its factions right in ways that should please all but the fussiest fans, even though they're a diverse collection of uptight magic elves, dinosaur-riding lizards, sneaky rat bastards, and "we're really into leather" sex dungeon kink elves. That's no easy feat.

21. The Sims 4

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: The latest instalment of the long-running life sim has absorbed many hours of my life as I generate idiotic stories starring my beloved cast of citizens. Four years after release it's at the point where features missing at launch have been patched in (toddlers! pools!) and you can use the glut of expansions, game packs and stuff packs to tailor the game to your playstyle. I'd like to see the pricing model better support people who dip in and out, but overall there's still no other game like it. 

20. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 49

Evan: Valve's half-hearted updates dented its ranking this year, but CS:GO remains the purest team FPS on the planet. Every round is a joust of plays, counters, and outmaneuvering, where a smart flash or reflex AWP pick shifts the balance. You can spend a lifetime improving your grenade technique, your de_inferno mid push, your eco round playcalling. It'll never be enough. Each gun is a wild animal with its own unique spray pattern and tendencies that can take dozens of hours to learn.

19. Rocket League

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 16

Tyler: I've hit a skill plateau in the best and only rocket car soccer game (I play the hockey variant), but I just have to find the next slope. I don't think one can ever stop getting better at Rocket League. There's always a better position I could've been in, an aerial I shouldn't have botched. It hasn't changed much over the years, but I feel like I could play it forever.

18. Hitman

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 14

Phil: This stealth sandbox about a bald assassin features six huge, absurdly detailed maps, each filled with interesting ways to bump off your targets. Hitman's social stealth systems—where disguises are more important than not being seen—gives you the time to plan, experiment and refine your approach. It's now the best game in the series.

17. Kerbal Space Program

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 39

Phil: Build a rocket, launch a rocket, fly a rocket, crash a rocket. And then do it all again—tweaking and experimenting until your design is bona fide spacefaring craft, able to maintain orbit or visit nearby celestial bodies. Kerbal Space Program is a sublime mix of physics and slapstick that makes for the perfect playground for space exploration.

16. Spelunky

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 10

Wes: No one's topped the way Spelunky's pieces play off one another to make its world feel deeply knowable and random at the same time. It's a game you play for hundreds of hours, until getting the key to unlock the chest to find the Udjat Eye to reach the black market to buy the ankh to die and come back to life to fight Anubis to take his sceptre to unlock the City of Gold to find the Book of the Dead to journey through Hell to fight King Yama just feels like another day playing Spelunky.

15. Alien: Isolation 

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION 8

Andy: The best horror game on PC, because the thing chasing you has a mind of its own. There's no pattern to predict, no patrol route you can exploit. The alien is intelligent. It will learn your habits and it will fuck with you, and that is terrifying.

Samuel: I replayed it this year, and it's amazing how much mileage they get out of the same two repeated enemies by making clever use of set pieces and different types of environments. Probably the best horror game ever.

14. Overwatch

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 13

Andy: I love Overwatch because, as someone lacking the skill to play most other online shooters competently, I can still make a difference in a match. The sheer variety of brilliantly-designed characters and their wildly varied toolsets means there's something for every kind of player, even if they can't pull off a decent headshot. It's also impressively accessible, cleverly explaining the intricacies of its heroes' abilities without overloading you with information.

Bo: A year ago, Blizzard told me they had "barely scratched the surface" of abilities and character archetypes they'd like to explore in Overwatch. With the newest hero being a giant hamster ball mech with a Spider-Man-style grappling hook piloted by a literal hamster, I'm finally inclined to believe them. Overwatch continues to be one of the most unique and accessible shooters. And on the esports front, the Overwatch League's adoption of a city-based team model has ignited local enthusiasm in a way that no other game, tournament, or organization has been able to thus far.

Phil: We decided this list's order before Wrecking Ball was announced. I'll leave you to speculate whether he would have raised or lowered Overwatch's position.

13. Life is Strange

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: Dontnod's episodic, time-rewinding teen drama develops (Look! A photography pun! Because the lead character is into photography!) from a gawky, awkward-but-sweet first episode with slightly clunky dialogue into a story capable of delivering real emotional sucker punches. It's not perfect—some puzzle segments outstay their welcome and the plot often throws subtlety out of the window—but OH MY! The cast of characters and the strength of their relationships elevate the whole thing, and the Instagrammy aesthetic bolsters the teenage intensity. 

Phil: It also features probably the best use of mid-'00s indie boys playing sad acoustic songs about relationships and feelings in all of gaming. Max listening to José González while riding a bus across Arcadia Bay is a beautiful, understated sequence that gives us the time to empathise with the character and her feelings about the town she's returned to.

12. Hollow Knight

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION 46

Wes: The best Metroidvania since Super Metroid. Hollow Knight is open-ended almost to a fault, giving you a massive, decaying, interconnected bug kingdom to explore and frequently find yourself lost in. It can be overwhelming at first, but the feeling of discovery ends up being immensely rewarding as a result. The super responsive platforming and combat keep backtracking from ever feeling like a chore, something similar games have struggled with.

11. Doom

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 9

Tom: A modernisation of Doom that puts the focus firmly on speed and sweet guns. The DOOM reboot resists decades of shooter trends that either ape Call of Duty or try to crossbreed the FPS with other genres. There's nothing wrong with that sort of experimentation, but it's so refreshing to boot this game up and blow gooey chunks out of the forces of hell. Bring on the next one, id.

Samuel: The best single-player FPS there is in 2018. A clever update of Doom that turns fights into melee-heavy duels, with a not-overly-serious tone that hits just the right spot.

Wes: And the levels are actually intricate mazes full of secrets, just like classic Doom! I expected good shooting in bland corridors, but this is so much more.

10. Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 6

Tom: I loaded back into my MGS5 save a month ago to find Snake decked out head-to-toe in a leopard skin combat suit. I forgot that my dog had a knife and my horse had a face shield, and I forgot that I named my squad TACTICAL OCTOPUS. It’s a terrific open world stealth game, but its quirky sense of fun makes the supernatural military nonsense bearable. 

Samuel: My favourite stealth action game ever, that sits somewhere between immersive sim and Metal Gear of old.

9. Dark Souls Remastered

RELEASED 2018 | LAST POSITION 2 (Prepare to Die Edition)

Tom: Have you met Gravelord Nito? He's a roiling mass of skeletons shrouded in a cape of souls. He lives deep in Dark Souls nightmarish catacombs, and he's just one example of the game's extraordinary art direction, and powerful sense of dark fantasy horror. People go on about Dark Souls' bottomless lore with good reason, but underneath the theatrics it's actually a very simple game. You raid dungeons, chop up monsters, loot chests and level up. Without strong, enduring combat fundamentals I wouldn't have kept playing long enough to uncover the gods' tragic stories.

8. Subnautica

RELEASED 2018 | LAST POSITION New entry

Pip: Subnautica is my game of 2018 so far. I usually tap out pretty fast when it comes to survival games but this one takes place in a gorgeous underwater world, involves a compelling plot, AND I adore tinkering with my little underwater base. It also lets me choose how much survival-ing I care to have as part of the game experience, meaning I can switch off thirst. It's not exactly better down where it’s wetter given the wealth of creatures and situations which can kill you, but it's exactly where I want to be.

Andy: Exploring is genuinely rewarding, both in terms of finding resources to build cooler submarines and environmental detail. It's a world with a story to tell, and it tells it brilliantly.

7. XCOM 2

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 4

Tom: Strategy games are good at making me care about numbers and systems, but XCOM 2 is one of the few I can name that translate the numberwang into emotional investment. Losing a squad member can feel devastating. You nurture them between fights, gradually upgrading their gear and unlocking sweet new skills, only for an alien to cruelly blast them in a routine mission. When things go wrong in XCOM, they go very wrong indeed, which is all part of the drama in a game that casts humanity as the underdog.

Evan: XCOM's art direction is ridiculously underrated. Its maps are believable, colorful dioramas that shatter into pieces under the heat and intensity of your insurgent combat. 

6. Rainbow Six Siege

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 15

Evan: Sure, you can play Siege as if it's Counter-Strike, pre-firing and out-angling your opponents with snap marksmanship. But the real joy is in outsmarting the other team by poking clever holes in the maps, placing your gadgets in unexpected positions, and careful drone scouting. I also love Siege's tempo: this is a shooter that gives you time and a canvas of breakable space to stop, strategize, and execute a dumb plan with absurd gadgets like an eyeball turret that shoots lasers, invisible poison mines, and a drone that shoots concussions. Ubisoft remains devoted to supporting Siege with meaningful systems renovations and with four annual updates that add new characters and maps.

5. What Remains of Edith Finch

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION 27

Samuel: This first-person narrative game is constantly inventive. Edith Finch ventures into the home where her family used to live, before they all died in various tragic circumstances and their rooms were sealed up. You uncover each of their stories. It's the high point of this genre.

Andy: Exploring the abandoned home of the eccentric Finch family and uncovering their history is one of the most satisfying storytelling experiences a game has ever given me. But it's a game I'll never play again, simply because one scene in particular was so emotionally-charged that I can't face it. Any piece of media that holds that kind of power has to be special.

4. Into the Breach

RELEASED 2018 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tom: Into the Breach is a game about quick turn-based battles between mechs and kaiju-sized bugs, and it's almost perfect. Unlike many turn-based strategy games, Into the Breach doesn't use chance to inject battles with tension—the UI tells you pretty much everything that's going to happen next turn. The pleasure comes from solving the next turn state as efficiently as you can. It's a small game—battles only last a few turns on an eight-by-eight grid—but the varied mech teams and increasingly nefarious bug types create a huge amount of tactical variation. It shows that strategy games don’t have to be long and laborious.

Wes: There's so little randomness that random moments have immense impact. In one run, I had two buildings resist damage at a pivotal point. I've never done a more exaggerated fist pump.

3. Divinity: Original Sin 2

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tyler: Divinity: Original Sin 2 feels less stodgy than other classic RPG revivals while heightening their best qualities: turn-based combat (I hate real-time, sorry) with physics-based spells and exploding barrels (necessary), great characters, and a commitment to letting players do what they want, even if it breaks everything.

Wes: It offers you an intricate RPG sandbox to play in, and it invites you to break the rules in as many ways as you can imagine. The first game did that, too, but this one marries that freedom with across-the-board great writing and genuinely thoughtful roleplaying. It walks the walk and talks the talk.

2. Dishonored 2

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 3

Samuel: This is the best stealth game there has ever been. While the high-concept levels like A Crack in the Slab and Clockwork Mansion get a lot of attention for their clever one-off twists, more traditional stages like Royal Conservatory and Dust District are so detailed and fun to explore. There's no sense of repetition, and each level feels like a huge event. It's the precision of Dishonored 2 I love. Every successful takedown or evasion feels like something you've earned. 

Andy: Dishonored 2 has some of the best level design on PC, both in terms of the architecture and aesthetic, and in how the environments are rich playgrounds that let you really flex your creativity. Every location has something interesting about it, whether it's the time-hopping of A Crack in the Slab or the intricate house-sized puzzle box that is the magnificent Clockwork Mansion. And the sheer volume of ways to navigate the levels and complete your objectives really captures the spirit of PC gaming.

Tom: I want to savour every moment in Karnaca, because those levels are so dense and fun to explore. Immersive sims have always been good at creating broad levels like these, full of sandbox opportunity, but I really value that simple acts of moving, shooting and fighting feel great in Dishonored 2. Your regenerating mana bar gives you license to use your traversal powers freely, and I love blink and Emily’s tentacle leap. The introduction of Emily just broadens your toolset further. Domino, which lets you chain NPCs fates together so that one attack affects them all, is an inspired ability, and it's emblematic of the way Dishonored 2 builds on the tenets of immersive sims like Deus Ex, and spins them out in spectacular new ways. Augmented special forces dudes are cool, but warlock assassins are even cooler.

Phil: For me it's the reactivity of the world. Yes, the combat is fluid and satisfying, the level design is intricate and beautifully balanced, and the abilities perfectly tailored for absurd displays of skill and problem solving. But what ties it all together is the lengths Arkane has gone to make it all feel believable and real. Immersive sim is, I will admit, a clunky term, but it’s a useful way to encapsulate a core philosophy: that a game’s systems must work to make you believe in a world, even if that world features magical parkour assassins. I believe in Dishonored 2's world because throughout I encountered ways Arkane had anticipated player behaviour. The most extreme example is found in the standout mission A Crack in the Slab, which features an alternate timeline that only occurs if you do something that’s never asked of you—that most people will probably never try. Arkane knew someone would try, and so made a response. That's amazing dedication to the craft.

1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 1

Tom: It's a great execution of the ronin fantasy set in one of the most beautiful worlds on PC. The craggy Skellige isle might be one of my favourite places in games, or is it Novigrad, or the sunlit vineyards of Toussaint? Even the dripping bogs in the early areas are pretty, in their own miserable way. Within these gorgeous places you meet people with interesting problems. Maybe their local well is haunted. Maybe their spouse is haunted. Usually something is haunted, or cursed, or being pursued by a hideous mythical beast. I treated the sidequests as the main quest, to be honest, roleplaying a mutant outcast on a mission to make the world a slightly better place. Oh, and let's not forget Gwent, one of the best games-within-a-game since Final Fantasy VIII's Triple Triad. 

Jody: The fact you play a character with his own place in the world, including allies, enemies, and ex-girlfriends, is a definite strength of The Witcher 3. But it wasn't always this way. In the first Witcher game Geralt was an amnesiac sleazebag and honestly a bit of a tool. He wasn't a fun person to be around, let alone to be. But by The Witcher 3, Geralt's a caring father figure with a heart of gold beneath layers of beard and gruff, and more than that he feels like someone you personalise. How much he cares about getting paid, who he loves, how seriously he takes his creed, that’s all you. The Witcher 3's version of Geralt is the perfect videogame protagonist not because he's more integrated into his world than a character you make from scratch, but because he's a solid outline with room to manoeuvre inside that. He contains multitudes—but not too many. He has well-defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.

Wes: "Place" really is what makes The Witcher 3 so spectacular, and like no other game I've played. It's not just that the world is gorgeous and detailed, though it is both of those things. The Witcher 3 has this unparalleled combination of artistry and technology that makes its locations and characters feel authentic. Accents and architecture differ between the mainland and Skellige. The characters you encounter out in the world have quests that involve their families or monsters native to their region, and the more of these quests you take, the more you appreciate how natural and human they seem. No one's asking you to go out and slay five wolves because that's a good way to spend ten minutes in an RPG. If you're killing beasts, it’s probably to save a village's flock or get revenge for a grieving father, and even straightforward quests often end with surprising deviations. Depending on how you play Geralt, you can be a mercenary in search of coin, or calmly talk someone out of a decision you know they'll regret. You can haggle with assholes who don't respect the value of a witcher's work, and you’ll have to decide what to do when a poor farmer doesn't actually have the money he promised you. Those touches, along with the motion capture, the voice acting and the wind on a blustery night in Velen, make the whole thing come alive. What a world.

Phil: A thing I hate about most RPG writing is that something as simple as asking to be rewarded for your time and effort is treated as the most evil thing a protagonist can do. But in The Witcher 3, Geralt is a professional doing his job. His haggling with clients over money isn't a deviance or a crime, but the expected cost of hiring a man who is good at what he does for a living. 

Andy: I love The Witcher 3 because it’s a game where almost everything is meaningful. When you pick up a quest, it isn't just some thinly-written excuse to get you to go kill a monster. There's a backstory, a motivation, and often a twist. Quests can spiral, turning an encounter with a peasant in a tavern into a sprawling epic that ends with you fighting some great, mythical beast atop a crumbling tower in a raging storm. The game is heaving with interesting characters and worthwhile things to do, and Geralt is the foundation of it all: a complex lead who makes other videogame characters look like cardboard cutouts.

Personal picks

We love many more games than we can fit onto one list, so here the PC Gamer team has spotlighted a few of their favorites that didn't make the cut. 

Philippa Warr: Cradle

Cradle, like Deadly Premonition, is wonky but fascinating and stays with you for years. It's a transhumanist puzzler where you try to repair a mechanical girl who is also a vase in a yurt on the Mongolian steppe next to an abandoned theme park which dispenses block-based minigames.

Joe Donnelly: Kentucky Route Zero

Kentucky Route Zero is wonderful. Its storylines are weird and interesting. Its minimalist art style is gorgeous. Its sprawling open road and Mark Twain-esque Echo River are a joy to explore. Its cast of characters are quirky and often funny. And it's not even finished. Look for its final act this year.

Bo Moore: Prey

The first 20 minutes of Prey form one of the most inspired sci-fi set pieces of recent memory. An immersive sim that offers fantastic problem solving, enjoyable enough combat (even if the enemies are a bit uninspired), and, true to its pedigree, a level of environmental storytelling that rivals Rapture.

Steven Messner: Slay the Spire

This deckbuilding roguelike isn't out of Early Access and already I've sunk more hours into it than I’d care to admit. It's a deceptively simple game that anyone can easily pick up and play, but learning to build the perfect deck—and getting all the lucky drops to pull it off—can make hours vanish.

Tyler Wilde: Chess Ultra

For online chess, I recommend Chess.com. But if you want to relax with a few AI games, Chess Ultra has many of the features of pro chess software without the complexity. It's for people who just want to play chess, and it works wonderfully. The Twitch integration and VR support are cool, too.

Chris Livingston: Duskers

Issue text commands to drones to steer them around abandoned space stations where terrifying aliens lurk. You can only see what your drones see, giving Duskers a spooky found-footage feel. It's a scary and surprising roguelike where everything going wrong is as much fun as everything going right.

Tom Senior: Thief Gold

It's surprising how well 1998's Thief still holds up. It's tense and atmospheric, and the labyrinthine levels feel huge, substantial and ambitious even today. It's punishing, and the spindly NPCs look kind of ridiculous now, but I still get the fear when I snipe out a torch with a water arrow, hoping that nobody sees it.

Phil Savage: Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

A stealth puzzler that's not afraid to make you wait. You embark on missions throughout Edo period Japan, silently breaking into well-guarded strongholds using wits, patience and an adorable raccoon dog. Deep, tactical and rewardingly tricky.

Andy Kelly: Else Heart.Break()

In a digitised world, anything can be hacked. That’s the premise of else Heart.Break(), a unique game about love, freedom, and cybercrime. You can hack objects to change how they behave. Hero Sebastian uses his newfound coding skills to join a gang of hacktivists.

Evan Lahti: Oxygen Not Included

The intricate systems-maths of a sim wrapped in the handmade charm of a Klei game. Within hours of starting a new colony, you're optimizing airflow and figuring out the right number of toilets to fertilize your plants. It's still in Early Access, but this is already my favorite ant farm on PC.

Samuel Roberts: Assassin's Creed Origins

I'm not traditionally a fan of Ubisoft’s series, but almost everything here, from world layout to combat to quest structure, has been revamped. I think everyone should see this open world before they die. It's a staggering creation.

James Davenport: Stories Untold

Using a computer shouldn't be scary, but Stories Untold makes it so. The fidelity of the keys and knobs draws you into its world. Sitting at your computer while the protagonists are tormented by their own makes the events of these four short stories feel more real and unnerving. 

What's your favorite non-violent PC game? That's what we've asked the writers of the global PC Gamer team today. As with every edition of our regular PC Gamer Q&A, which is published on Saturdays, we love to read your responses to the same question in the comments thread below too. 

When it comes to our choices, expect a cool mix of trucking, underwater exploration, floating through space, a space station, puzzle games, old-fashioned physical comedy and even a quiz series. You'll also find a couple of responses below from members of the PC Gamer Club.

Samuel Roberts: Jazzpunk

I don't think Jazzpunk is strictly non-violent, since it features a joke deathmatch mode called Wedding Qake where you fire cake at each other, but the main game is pretty tame. It's basically a Naked Gun-style comedy adventure, where you prod different parts of the environment or characters to make jokes happen, and it's extremely enjoyable. 

This from the game's Wikipedia page also confirms it's not completely non-violent, but damn, I'd download any game that includes this: "a version of Duck Hunt in which the player pelts cardboard ducks with slices of bread from a toaster, [features] prominently in the game's storyline." I don't remember that bit, to be honest, but play Jazzpunk. It'll make you laugh. 

Andy Kelly: Euro Truck Simulator 2

Regular readers will know that I'm forever banging on about this game, but it really is one of the best on PC—and notable for its complete lack of violence. I mean, sometimes I'll get frustrated and ram my HGV into a slow-moving motorist, but mostly I just trundle peacefully along the motorway listening to German rock radio stations.

American Truck Simulator is a nice alternative. Although I prefer the European scenery, particularly the Scandinavia expansion, the deserts of the western United States make for some atmospheric driving too. Both games are some of the most relaxing experiences you can have on PC, like a lovely screensaver for your brain, and I can't recommend them enough.

Tom Senior: EVE Online

EVE Online isn't a non-violent game exactly, but if you keep your head down you can coast around in high-sec space admiring nebulae and bathing in the sweeping synth soundtrack. EVE's asteroid fields have given me the most peaceful moments in games. I don't have time to join a corp and get the full EVE experience, but I drop in occasionally and stretch the game across two monitors to make the cosmos feel as huge as possible. Then I just sit back and watch the little mining lasers suck ore out of unsuspecting rocks.

Speaking about non-violent spaces in games, I recently started following The Safe Room on Twitter. It highlights areas designed to give players respite in tense games. The pictures remind me of the sense of relief you get when a game puts the brakes on. Even violent games can deliver moments of reflection.

James Davenport: Proteus

I play Proteus a few times a year now. Something about a pixelated rabbit that makes plinking sounds with each hop gets to me. But it's not just the rabbits—everything emote and dances and boops and beeps when you walk by on whatever procedurally generated landscape you washed up on this time. Everything from flowers to bees to gravestones has something to say, and they sing it in accordance with the tune of each season. You'll rotate through them all in Proteus, while the song and its natural instruments change mood with the little deaths of autumn and the vibrant renewal of spring. Proteus only takes an hour or so to finish, and its lack of a clear goal will bother some, but it's a complete emotional circuit. If you're looking to contemplate life, death, transcendence, and plinky rabbits without ever pulling a trigger or bashing dragur over the head with an axe, it's a must play.  

Jody Macgregor: Bernbrand

Bernband is an entire alien city right out of a Star Wars movie compacted down to an 11 MB download. Bug-eyed aliens bobble around the streets, flying cars vroom past the walkways, and banging music comes out of every third building. It's a game about walking around and finding cool spots—the dudes listening to hip-hop in the car park, the aquarium where you can get inside the glass—and that's enough for me. Your alien feet clip-clop as you walk past glowing buildings, passing from noisy spaces like bars and thoroughfares to quiet alleys and back again, and the contrast makes it feels just like being lost in a real city.

Bernband is free on Gamejolt, and is all the work of Tom van den Boogaart. He's currently working on an expanded, paid version, and has been posting gifs of the work-in-progress on Twitter.

Chris Livingston: You Don't Know Jack

I still play You Don't Know Jack every now and then. It's still a fun, fast, and silly trivia series after all these years (the first YDKJ game was way the hell back in 1995). It's one of the few games I stream to the TV using the Steam Link, and party play lets you use your phone as a controller, perfect since my phone is almost always in my hand anyway.

I just looked it up and apparently there's yet another volume coming out later this year, which makes me happy—though in terms of non-violence I should say some of Cookie's jokes and puns can be almost physically painful.

Tim Clark: Dear Esther and Lumines

I suppose the expected answer is some sort of elegiac stroll-'em-up, of which my favourite would be the none-more-poetic Dear Esther, which is the right sort of pretentious. But really there's a ton of stuff I could choose. Pro Evolution Soccer during its glory days, though my last ditch tackling might disqualify it. And how about puzzle games? A remastered version of Lumines is coming out later this month, and the original is on Steam already. It's super peaceful in a trancey, high energy sort of way. You know what I'm saying. 

Bo Moore: Stardew Valley

I've put more than 200 hours into Stardew Valley now. It's the game I've gone back to the most in the last few years. I don't do so in short little bursts, though. Every time I return it sucks me in for a good long while. At this point it almost feels like I'm speedrunning it as I try to min/max my first few seasons, rapidly upgrade my tools, and get my winery operation up and running as quick as possible. I get burned out quicker each subsequent return, and yet I keep going back. 

The PC Gamer Club: Subnautica, Abzu and The Talos Principle

We asked the members of the PC Gamer Club to suggest an entry this week through our Discord channel, and we got a couple of great responses. User Mildoze picked both Subnautica and Abzu, noting the former has a little bit of violence. "Subnautica is an amazing story game that forces the player to think for themselves and does it without ever turning you into a powerhouse. You're always vulnerable (even 40 hrs in), never given offensive tools, and forced to go ever deeper into more dangerous waters. The best choice in every confrontation is to flee, but you can't always do that when you're panicking in a cavern 1000m below the ocean without any weapons or enough oxygen to make it to safety."

And on Abzu: "It's like playing a living aquarium. So peaceful and beautiful under the sea. It's a game where there is no threat of dying, no enemies or hostility of any kind. It's easy to relax and reach a Zen-like state of mind playing Abzu  I've never fallen asleep playing a game until Abzu. Yet for a couple weeks every night I would turn it on, fighting off the sandman as I made my way to the end of this amazing exploration game." 

Fellow Discord member Ronder opts for The Talos Principle. "For me it would have to be The Talos Principle. Aside from the excellent puzzle setups, the main conflict in the game is generated by the questioning terminals you meet. As they gently prod you and question your sense self-identity as well as your responses to that, the AI unit you pilot vicariously comes to self-awareness through you. This form of intellectual combat is stimulating, especially given the scope of the game, and gifts you subtle questions to ponder long after the closing credits. It's hard to see how potentially erasing your sense of personhood could be non-violent, but the game achieves that masterfully."

But what about you, reader? Let us know your choices in the comments. 

Euro Truck Simulator 2's next expansion will let you ease around the bends of the Baltic states, developer SCS Software has revealed. The DLC will include the whole of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, parts of southern Finland and a section of western Russia, including Saint Petersburg.

The team did not mention a release date for the expansion, provisionally named Beyond the Baltic Sea, so I wouldn't expect it imminently. They have "quite a lot of ground to cover" and the DLC will end up feeling "very different from the rest of the world we have so far", SCS said in a blog post. 

You can see a map of the region that the expansion will add below—it's the purple bit.

Saint Petersburg is a particularly beautiful city, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the team handles its extravagant architecture. A lot of the expansion will be hours and hours of countryside, however, and you can see some screens of that below. 

The game is slowly building up its reconstruction of Europe, having added the cities of northern Italy in December.

In the PC Gamer Q&A, we ask our panel of writers a question about games. This week, the theme is neglecting loved ones. Which game have you snuck off from family to play during the holidays? Let us know your suggestions in the comments. 

Jody Macgregor: Terminal Velocity 

Terminal Velocity was one of the only shareware games I owned the full version of, thanks to a rich uncle who was my main source of videogames. (He also gave me a copy of the original Warcraft, which I still have in a jewel case somewhere.) It was a flight sim that played like a first-person shooter, similar to Descent but with more open levels where you flew through the sky over alien planets. After I unwrapped Terminal Velocity I spent the rest of the holiday ignoring the rellies to play it, and I still remember the way trees popped into sight before the ground they sat on, the way Target Destroyed appeared up in big white letters every time you turned an installation into a blocky explosion, and the sections where you flew inside the planet through hexagonal tunnels and I always hit the sides.I tracked down a digital copy a while back but still haven't played it again. It's enough to know that it's there in case I ever feel the need to get away from everyone. I bet I'll still get crushed by the steel doors that iris shut in the tunnels.

Andy Kelly: Euro Truck Simulator 2

Spending time with family and all that other holiday stuff is fine, sure, for a bit. But sometimes I get the urge. The urge to truck. This festive period I'll be enjoying a bit of Euro Truck Simulator 2, which has recently been expanded to include Italy. So while people are watching films they already own on DVD on the telly, peppered with adverts for January sofa sales, I'll be delivering 16 tonnes of ice-cream from Rome to Milan. But because it's the holidays I'll be doing it accompanied by rich chocolates and luxury ales. Keep on truckin'? I never stop, mate.

Philippa Warr: Dota 2

Let me tell you about a small, obscure game you may not have heard of: Dota 2. A few years ago it was a far bigger part of my life. Writing about it as a freelancer helped me pay my bills and playing it with a regular crew helped me build up a framework of friendships, new and old, after a horribly drawn-out breakup. As a result it ended up as part of my new routine and I leant on it during newly solitary holiday periods. Playing Dota 2 on my terrible laptop over Christmas in 2012 during an in-game event called The Greeviling is one of my fondest memories in gaming. It was daft, it was funny and it was time with people I love.

Tim Clark: Metroid Prime

Will anyone mind if I answer a console game? Probably, but on we go regardless. One Christmas I received Metroid Prime for the GameCube, and managed to make it to the first boss just as Christmas lunch was being served. Without being able to save before the boss, I refused to sit down and eat (bear in mind I would have been 26 at the time) until the fight was done. Somehow, despite the stress induced by my mother's obvious fury, I managed to down the boss with only a sliver of health to spare. But as soon as I entered the corridor leading from the boss room to the save point a small bat flew into my head and killed me. With it went several hours of progress. I sat silent for the most of the meal, cheeks burning with a mix of shame and resentment. The most magical time of the year. 

Samuel Roberts: Assassin's Creed Brotherhood

A few Christmases ago, instead of politely talking to my parents while they were making dinner, I sat in my room and played the challenge rooms of Assassin's Creed Brotherhood over and over again. First, it taught me that this game has some amazing kill animations, and secondly, I learned that Assassin's Creed's combat really isn't the best match for score attack modes. Still, I appreciate that they tried. 

Back in August, Euro Truck Simulator 2 developer SCS Software revealed its next slice of inter-continental DLC was heading for Italy. Now, it's got a new trailer and a launch date: December 5, 2017. 

That's next week, but first let's look at those new moving pictures:

Before now, ETS2 players have been able to cruise around certain parts of northern Italy, however the incoming expansion opens up the rest of the picturesque Lo Stivale. That can be seen above, however SCS notes that it plans to apply "cosmetic touches" between now and next week's release. 

In doing so, the developer hopes to capture Italy's "rich history, modern industry, traditional architecture, and diverse natural environments" across 11,500 kilometres of new in-game roads. New cities—of which there are 19 in total—include Rome, Napoli and Palermo, and tourists can expect to happen upon familiar landmarks along the way.   

"The geography and shape of Italy have led to a comparatively high concentration of cities in the Italia map expansion," so reads the game's Steam page blurb. "Local industries contain, among others, famous places like Carrara marble quarries and Europe‘s largest Steelworks in Taranto."

Euro Truck Simulator 2's Italia map expansion is due December 5, and will cost $17.99/£13.49. 

For a more frequently-updated list of our favorite new games, check out our list of the best PC games right now. 

Every year, the team compiles a list of the 100 best PC games you can play today. Our process is deliberately subjective: each participant picks their personal top 15 games, and then the team gathers to narrow that list. We only allow one entry per series, with a couple of notable exceptions. You’ll also find some of our personal picks thrown in—games that we individually love, but which didn't get enough votes to make the list. 

For a celebration of those vital historical games that pushed PC gaming forward, read our list of the 50 most important PC games of all time.

100. Dwarf Fortress

RELEASED 2006 | LAST POSITION New entry

Wes Fenlon: In Dwarf Fortress I’ve seen the circle of death and rebirth. It’s less of a game, more of an ambitious simulation, representing the complexities of existence in ASCII. Eventually you’ll feel like Neo, seeing the truth behind the symbols. Just remember: losing is fun.

Shaun Prescott: You don’t even need to play Dwarf Fortress to marvel at its achievement. Hell, the patch notes are a marvel of their own.

99. Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New entry

Fraser Brown: In Shadow Tactics, every infiltration of an enemy palace or compound is a puzzle overflowing with obstacles. Being sneaky is fun. Being murderous is better. Planning the demise of the game’s guards is a singular delight. I’m a fan of the ol’ tanuki distraction method—the little critter distracts a guard by being adorable while one of my ninjas pounces on him from a roof.

98. Shadowrun: Dragonfall

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Jody Macgregor: It’s funny that one of the few games to get cyberpunk right is also one with elves in it, but Shadowrun reduces fantasy and cyberpunk to their essentials while emphasising what’s best about both. Dragonfall is basically Baldur’s Gate 2 with turn-based combat set in near-future Berlin, where hackers and samurai raid corporations and watch a talk show hosted by a dragon. It’s as great as it sounds.

97. FEAR

RELEASED 2005 | LAST POSITION New entry

Andy Chalk: Combat in FEAR is magnificent chaos. Glass shatters, dust billows, and sparks, paper, and body parts fly in loud, explosive gunfights against some of the finest, most believably ‘real’ AI ever created for an FPS. Enemies flank, they take cover, they chatter and they toss grenades with infuriatingly good timing and accuracy. But what I love most about it is the way it weaves a genuinely horrific tale through all that action, breaking up the manic combat with intensely disturbing stretches of creepiness and a few moments worthy of any pure horror game.

Andy Kelly: I reinstall FEAR at least once a year just to experience that amazing shotgun again. Every shooter has its own unique shotgun, but there’s something immensely satisfying about the one in FEAR. How it violently kicks back when you fire it, and the exaggerated way enemies tumble when you shoot them in slow motion. I’m not usually one for fetishising weapons, but I’ll make an exception here.

Steven Messner: Speaking of fetishising guns, how can we not talk about the 10mm HV Penetrator, the gun that fires giant steel stakes and crucifies enemies against walls? I get that FEAR’s shotgun deserves a lot of praise, but to me the Penetrator is one of the greatest guns of all time. It’s the perfect weapon to use against FEAR’s ragdoll enemies. I used the gun so damn much that I feel like whoever had to go through after me and clean up all the dead bodies probably suffered some pretty severe trauma from seeing hundreds of people nailed to cubicle walls.

96. Grim Fandango Remastered

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tom Senior: Manny Calavera is one of the coolest heroes in PC gaming, and he happens to live in one of the coolest worlds in PC gaming. It’s a vibrant take on the afterlife, and a great place to set an epic noir love story. Even after all these years Grim Fandango is funny and is still worth everyone’s time. Play it and enjoy the jokes.

Andy K: I love it when you explore Rubacava in year two. Reading beat poetry at the Blue Casket, listening to Glottis play the piano in Manny’s casino. It’s like stepping into a classic film noir, albeit one populated by skeletons and giant bees.

95. Metro: Last Light

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION New entry

Shaun: It seems wrong to describe a FPS set in a decrepit metro network as ‘beautiful’, but Last Light manages it. Between the often-unforgiving combat and the light-but-rewarding survival elements, this sequel manages to tell an engrossing tale which isn’t at odds with the relentless violence involved.

Samuel Roberts: Probably my favourite apocalypse in games—it’s realistically dour, yet still gorgeous and unsettling. 

94. Spider & Web

RELEASED 1998 | LAST POSITION New entry

Jody: This is a free text adventure that begins as a story about a guileless tourist, then frames that as a cover invented by a spy under interrogation, then continues switching between the game you play and the interrogator interrupting to say, “That’s not what happened!” Each flashback gets closer to a truth you the player wants to learn, but you the protagonist want to hide. It’s clever, twisty, and explosive.

93. Nuclear Throne

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 74

Wes: Perhaps the greatest use of Early Access as a model for development, Nuclear Throne is a punchy top-down roguelike shooter honed over nearly 100 weekly updates. Like the best games of its type, what seems like a simple setup – collect powerful guns, survive randomly generated levels as you progress to a final boss fight – belies hidden stages and characters and secrets to give you the upper hand. The roster of heroes gives you so many different ways to play. I’m partial to the samurai Chicken, who can briefly survive without his head, and the noob-friendly Crystal, who can reflect bullets. But the real reason to play this over other roguelikes is how great the action feels. It nails that rhythm of explosive action, bullets and enemies flying towards you, with brief moments of respite as you inch towards whatever’s around the corner. Action anxiety perfected.

92. Nidhogg

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION New entry

Tyler Wilde: The best sickly-looking fencing game there is, Nidhogg speeds up the mind games and finesse of Street Fighter, chaining tiny, rapid duels between stabby pixel people into hilarious, constantly tense tug-of-war sessions.

Joe Donnelly: Don’t let appearances fool you: beneath the modest veneer lies a deep and engaging versus mode masterpiece. Be it tactful fencing, aerial karate kicking, sword javelin tossing, or turning tail and running—there’s a strategy for everyone as you push your stick-figured foe back one screen at a time, spawning at either side as you die and regenerate, regenerate and die. Nidhogg also comes with a less enjoyable singleplayer mode that can be wrapped up inside half an hour. Often hilarious, but equally known to bring out the competitive streak in any payer who enters the fray. Be prepared to lose friends over this one.  

91: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

RELEASED 2004 | LAST POSITION New entry

Fraser: Everything ‘Star Wars’ about it is subverted. The result is one of the most interesting yarns in the franchise, peeling back a lot of the fantastical elements of Star Wars and exploring them.

Samuel Roberts: As I watch the new films I feel like they’re not showing us anything we haven’t seen before. Perhaps that’s because I’ve been spoiled by KOTOR II, where there’s more nuance in the portrayal of the force and memorable characters. 

Wes: The buggiest game I’ve ever completed, even with the essential fan patches. Still worth it for Kreia.

90. Team Fortress 2

RELEASED 2007 | LAST POSITION 20

Evan Lahti: What began as a class-based FPS was transformed into a free-to-play platform for mapmaking, hats, and machinima with a horde mode, events, and a number of bird heads that you can unlock. Valve’s learnings from TF2 helped transform PC gaming at large.

Phil Savage: This is the lowest TF2 has placed on our list by some margin, but that a decade-old multiplayer FPS appears at all is downright heroic. TF2 is eternal.

89. Euro Truck Simulator 2

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 82

Andy K: This makes it into our top 100 every year, with good reason. On paper it sounds boring, but there’s something hypnotic about hauling goods across its beautiful recreation of Europe.

Phil: I slightly prefer American Truck Simulator’s vast, desolate atmosphere, but ETS2 remains the brighter star, thanks mostly to the size and variety of its continental recreation. This is a huge, relaxing world to travel through.

88. Resident Evil 7

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New

Tim Clark: Few series live long enough to reinvent themselves successfully once, let alone a second time. But that’s exactly the dark miracle Resi has pulled off—first with Resi 4, which redefined its predecessors’ clunky third-person exploration into frantic crowd control, and now with this, which has breathed terrifying new life into the haunted house schtick. The switch to first-person, though obvious given the success of indie shockers like Outlast and Amnesia, still feels bold and thrilling. Much of that is down to the unhinged Baker family, each of whom must be faced in their own grand encounter, the best of which are frontloaded towards the start of the game. The generic baddies and a undercooked final act let things down, but the sense is still of a series which has, again, found its feet, even if it’s still waist deep in oily viscera.

87. Kentucky Route Zero

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 100

Joe: The fact that Kentucky Route Zero has only launched four of its five chapters speaks volumes for its placing on this list. Here’s a game that’s yet to be finished, but rubs shoulders with the best PC gaming has to offer. Alongside its cast of idiosyncratic characters, it weaves themes of self-reflection, discovery and the supernatural into its world. Relatable vignettes and playful metaphors stand before a stylish art style. Whereas a sense of dread underpins Acts 1 through 3, KRZ’s penultimate entry eschews its wider picture to focus on the minutiae of each scenario—and its Twain-esque jaunt down the river hones in on the imperfections of your dysfunctional crew. The as-yet unannounced Act 5 will mark the end of the road for Kentucky Route Zero, yet what’s come before it is nothing short of wonderful.

86. Guild Wars 2

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 45

Phil: Guild Wars 2 is what happens when you take over a decade’s worth of MMO wisdom and decide to do something better. What if instead of looking for quest givers who ask you to kill ten boars, you collaborated with an entire map to complete objectives that build towards a big boss monster and a chest full of loot? What if instead of being inconvenienced by low-level friends, you were rewarded for partnering up and having a good time? What if instead of paying a subscription, the base game was free? This is one of the most generous MMOs around, and ArenaNet’s experimentation continues, even now. From rebuilding its central city from scratch, to releasing new story chapters, Guild Wars 2 is always building towards something new and exciting.

Tom S: Its dazzling world hosts some of the best combat in the genre. Attacks are template-based and dodging matters. I’ve had a blast taking on enormous bosses with my necromancer and dozens of other warriors. Its events are huge pile-ons that create amazing spectacles and a sense of community.

85. Rising Storm 

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 79

Evan: It blends fragility and power better than any FPS of its kind. As a Japanese soldier on Iwo Jima, I like to smuggle a MG behind my opponents, get prone and drop as many unaware attackers as I can. Real war is unfair, and Rising Storm manages to make a fun game out of its asymmetries.

Tyler: Life in Rising Storm is 90% war movie extra and 10% leading role.

84. Terraria

RELEASED 2011 | LAST POSITION 42

Tom Marks: Like the finest wine or the smelliest cheese, Terraria keeps on getting better with age. It’s staggering to look back at everything that’s been added since it launched—a stream of updates has introduced over 3,000 items, new biomes, bosses and countless other improvements. It’s dense with exciting things to do and discover, and there’s sure to be even more by this time next year.

83. Darkest Dungeon

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 53

Evan: As you lose men to madness, syphilis, heart attacks, vampiric blood thirst or other maladies, you’ll come to the realisation that you shouldn’t treat your adventurers as precious assets to be cared for, but as batteries in the shape of men. That gives the game a different emotional texture: you’re not a faithful commander, you’re a brutal middle-manager. I love its artistic cohesion and the genius use of a single, ominous narrator (Wayne June) throughout the game to set the mood and speak for the characters, enemies, and the dungeon-as-character.

82. Cities: Skylines

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 89

Fraser: Why is building roads so compelling? There’s a lot going on in Cities: Skylines, Colossal Order’s city builder, but getting the teeming masses to their destinations scratches an itch like nothing else. I’m diversifying into blimps now. Seeing my citizens politely queueing up in their thousands to take to the skies makes me a happy mayor. Sure, I had to bulldoze a school to make room for one of the stations, but now all the children are being educated by floating billboards.

Phil: Fraser’s populace is doing a lot better than the occupants of my last town, many of whom died after a sewage disaster. But when I’m not battling a tide of brown water, I love the degree of fine-tuning that Cities: Skylines supports. The zoning system is inspired—enabling experimentation by letting you earmark a part of your town for farming, nightlife or legal pot use.

81. Killing Floor 2

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Evan: Flick an RPG into a crowd of zeds and watch intestines, bile, and whole torsos vomit out the blast radius. It’s zombie bowling made by gun nerds, with gaming’s best slow-motion inviting you to savour every frame.

Hannah Dwan: Is there a game that makes tearing apart monstrosities as fun as Killing Floor 2? It’s the best and most surprisingly diverse horde mode anyone’s ever made.

80. Minecraft

RELEASED 2009 | LAST POSITION 20

Chris Livingston: The ultimate game for popping in for a few minutes and then looking around blearily when you realise a dozen hours have passed. Its world can be whatever you want it to be: a singleplayer crafting and exploration game, or a multiplayer sandbox experience. Throw in thousands of mods, custom games and speciality servers, and the near-infinite world of Minecraft gets even bigger.

79. Warhammer: End Times—Vermintide

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New

Matthew: This is more than Left 4 Dead with rat men—a characterful recreation of The Old World you’ll want to stop and explore (though the rats will devour you). Each character is a distillation of a Warhammer race, and watching them interact is a treat. The humour contrasts nicely with the hopelessness of it all. 

Evan: It’s a Warhammer B-movie in the best way possible.

78. Nethack

RELEASED 1987 | LAST POSITION New

Wes: Roguelike once literally meant ‘like the game Rogue’, the ASCII dungeon crawler made for ’80s mainframes. But most modern roguelikes owe more to its descendant NetHack, first released in 1987 (and still updated and actively played to this day). The simple graphics allow for a deep dungeon crawler compared to any other I’ve played. Why pick a lock when you can kick down a door? Why eat a pie when you can use it to blind an enemy? If you value mystery and discovery in games, nothing does them better than NetHack. Play online on nethack.alt.org to encounter the remains of other players who never made it out of the dungeon’s depths.

77. Overcooked

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Evan: The best same-screen co-op game on PC. This would be higher if it worked well as a singleplayer game.

Phil: Shamefully, I have watched a lot of Hell’s Kitchen USA. Overcooked is like if Ramsey’s competition was more cartoony and collaborative, with less swearing—most of the time. Success requires coordination of resources and time—which almost always results in glorious culinary chaos.

76. Doom II

RELEASED 1994 | LAST POSITION 69

Chris L: Rather than trying to reinvent the original, Doom II just gave us a heavier dose of everything we wanted: more monsters and bigger levels. It’s still an utter blast to play.

Phil: Doom II boasts incredible mod support. You can warp the campaign with over-the-top effects, or you can enjoy the many total conversions, from the The Adventures of Square, to the incredible WolfenDoom.

75. Sunless Sea

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New

Fraser: In Sunless Sea, you get a vulnerable ship and a sinister ocean to explore. There’s action, trading and permadeath, but what really defines Failbetter’s nautical romp is the exceptional writing. It jumps between whimsy and menace. One moment you’re solving a dispute between rats and guinea pigs, the next your crew are eating each other. It’s a game about crafting weird, tragic stories. The captain-turned-spy who made one too many enemies in the east. The explorer who risked everything to climb out of the Unterzee and back to the surface. There are countless paths, all leading to strange places.

Andy K: The mystery of what lies on each island is what keeps me pushing through the many hardships. A gruelling game, but worth enduring for the wonderful stories you’re told whenever you dock somewhere.

74. VVVVV

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION New

James Davenport: You flip gravity (by pressing the V key) to bounce up and down between the floor and ceiling avoiding spikes (they look like this: VVVVVV) while exploring a psychedelic 8-bit open world in pursuit of your friends, Violent, Vermillion, Victoria, Verdigris, and Vitellary. Developer Terry Cavanagh created VVVVVV as an experiment in level design – abilities never change, but how surfaces behave and the conditions of the world change constantly. In one stretch, thin lines throw you about like gravity-defying trampolines, and in another the level scrolls on its own, forcing you to think quickly. In one lonely corner of the map, a massive elephant cries. All you can do there is frown. But it’s hard to stay down with such a buoyant soundtrack. It’s one earworm after another, an assembly of upbeat, catchy chiptunes that still haunt me today. 

73. Ladykiller In A Bind

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Hannah: When I say Ladykiller in a Bind is a NSFW visual novel about horny teenagers, there’s probably a certain image people generally imagine: crude, poorly written, and often embarrassing, the gaming equivalent of that time you found an adult magazine in the local park. Ladykiller In A Bind goes against that with smart writing, enjoyable characters, and lifelike depictions of intimacy (or, the chaos of it). It’s aware of the stereotype, and so does its best to dismantle it by portraying those teenage years with the maturity of a game designed for those a little older.

72. Fallout 2

RELEASED 1998 | LAST POSITION New

Jody: The original Fallout nailed an atmosphere of black comedy, combining post-apocalyptic grit with goofy retrofuturism. It also nailed the RPG standard of having three solutions to a problem, but where other games went with ‘violent’, ‘sneaky’, and ‘magical’ solutions, Fallout replaced the third option with ‘diplomatic’. It’s as good a game about talking your way out of trouble as has ever been made.

71. Valkyria Chronicles

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION 49

Tom M: Even though it arrived on PC late, Valkyria Chronicles is still one the freshest takes on a strategy game I’ve seen. It’s a mix of turn-based strategy, third-person shooter and JRPG that, against all odds, comes together to form an cohesive whole. The art style and melodramatic story don’t scream ‘hardcore strategy’, but underneath all that is a one-of-a-kind tactics game that shouldn’t be overlooked. 

70. Bastion 

RELEASED 2011 | LAST POSITION New

Jody: Bastion is an action RPG with trimmings so wonderful we sometimes overlook the strong combat at its centre. You carry two weapons, and each is balanced for multiple situations. Control schemes can be tweaked, and the challenge shrines are a neat way of tweaking difficulty. Those trimmings are wonderful, though: the city that rebuilds itself, the narrator who responds to your actions, the perfect soundtrack and the story that reaches a genuinely affecting conclusion.

Phil: The worldbuilding is exceptional—and not just in the immediate sense, as levels tend to literally build themselves around you. The songs the characters sing are pulled from the history of the world Supergiant has created, and imbued with a deeper meaning that feeds back into the more immediate story. It really helps sell the emotions behind the drama that unfolds.

69. N++

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Shaun: Ah, the primal gaming pleasure of running and jumping to the end of a level. That’s essentially all you do in N++, but it’s incredible just how varied this platformer feels despite having over 1,500 levels and an artstyle as barebones as they come. The star attraction of the N series—which started off as a Flash game—has always been the floaty movement of its stick-figured ninja, who feels so good to direct that it barely matters how many thousands of times you’ll die. And while it’s true that ‘running’ and ‘jumping’ is basically all you do in N++, it’s the subtlety in the way these actions are executed that matters—momentum and timing is important, but crucially, luck never is. Add to all this a cooperative mode and a level editor, and it feels like N++ is just about the last twitch platformer we’ll ever need. Or, at least, it seems a tough task to top it.

68. System Shock 2

RELEASED 1999 | LAST POSITION New

Andy C: This has everything: guns, hacking, frightening enemies, a tale of betrayal, a pumping soundtrack, ambiance and a villain who makes the greatest videogame entrance ever. Throw on one of the updated texture packs and you’ve got a game that’s as brilliant now as it was in 1999.

Tom S: The enemy models aren’t chilling now, but the sense of struggle is intact. The Von Braun is still an interesting place to master, and the splicing of shooter/RPG systems just works. Games like Dishonored have since taken the formula to new heights, but even that game can’t match the tension of this ingenious original.

Phil: Part of what makes that so effective is the soundtrack is one of the great ’90s videogame scores. Sparse and creepy, it’s instrumental in defining System Shock 2’s style.

67. Fez

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 55

Phil: A relaxing platformer that’s filled with fiendish secrets. On the surface, Fez is a charming game about rotating a 2D world to complete puzzles and create new routes. But scratch beneath its surface, and Fez reveals its heart. You’ll translate languages, decode runes and break through the fourth wall. It’s meticulously constructed, and all set to a soundtrack that builds a lasting, memorable sense of place.

66. Plants Vs Zombies

RELEASED 2009 | LAST POSITION New

Chris L: Charming, challenging and endearing, defend your home from zombies with an army of deadly plants – like corn cannons, exploding cherries, and hypnotic mushrooms. It’s masterfully balanced, introducing new threats and defences at the perfect pace that brings what at times feels like a casual and colourful war to a nail-biting conclusion. PvZ is tower defence at its finest and funniest. 

65. Burnout Paradise 

RELEASED 2009 | LAST POSITION 66

Hannah: Which Burnout game is the best is a tricky topic, but I’m adamant it’s Burnout Paradise. A great variety of streets to race down, loads of cars to unlock and, oh baby, the destruction when a car gets wrecked. Wheels bend into the wrong directions, metal shards ping off, all in glorious slow motion. The regular obliteration of cars is the icing on the cake to the most well designed arcade driving game ever.

64. Pillars of Eternity

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 59

Joe: With a wonderful story that’s bolstered by an intuitive battle system, Pillars of Eternity echoes roleplaying stalwarts such as Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate and Fallout. A classic. 

Andy K: As someone who grew up with Infinity Engine RPGs, playing something that captures their distinctive magic, but with a modern sheen, was a delight. Deep, rich, and compelling, roleplaying on PC doesn’t get much better.

63. Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

RELEASED 2003 | LAST POSITION New

Samuel: There’s not a single cover shooter around that’s more fun than Remedy’s bullet time sequel, in my opinion (there’s perhaps an argument for Vanquish). Diving into every enemy-filled room with two pistols blazing is like a puzzle to solve, and the sound design and feedback of the guns is terrific. Its noir styling is at once ironic and sincere, and I still love it. You can pop Gears of War in the bin, thanks. 

62. Ori and the Blind Forest

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New

Katharine Byrne: The cute critters in Moon Studio’s platformer will make you go d’aww almost as often as the nails hard platforming makes you go arghhh. Its Studio Ghibli-esque animation and soaring soundtrack are both top of their class, and the ability to slingshot Ori off enemy attacks brings something genuinely new to the platforming table, making me very excited for its upcoming sequel. 

61. Undertale

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 92

Matthew: There’s something about Undertale’s subversive, retro take on the top-down RPG that sweeps you up and takes you back to a place that’s half nightmare, half adventure. It recalls the best and worst of fairy tales – a mix of excitement and understated menace – and it’s brought to life by a smart sense of humour that makes the whole thing strangely relatable. It’s particularly essential for anyone who’s skipped classic games for fear of standardised JRPG tropes – turn-based combat is tweaked with bullet hell minigames and you can bond with the monsters you face in battle instead of straight-up slaughtering them in cold blood. The sacred foundation stones of an entire genre are smashed and rebuilt into something genuinely unique, and the result is a game that anyone can engage with. It’s a strange, wonderful and curiously nostalgic experience: however old you are, playing Undertale will make you feel like a plucky youngster trying EarthBound for the first time.

Steven: I absolutely adore Undertale’s combat system. It’s often overshadowed by the story and characters but as someone who knows the pain of sitting through yet another turn-based fight with the same enemies, Undertale’s combat never feels like a slog. It’s a system on par with Super Mario RPG for the SNES, where every attack and block can double its efficacy by carefully timed button presses. But in Undertale, you move a little heart around bullet hell minigames, transforming the combat from a passive experience into an active one. Turn-based combat systems are historically all about rolling dice and thinking one step ahead, but again Undertale subverts expectations while still feeling true to the source material.

Tyler: It’s about fandom and death of the author, self-interested themes that could’ve made for an indulgent misery. But love for games flows through Undertale, and it instantly endeared itself to me. Run from almost every game that parodies games except for this one.

60. Planescape: Torment

RELEASED 1999 | LAST POSITION 34

Tyler: This should be higher. Maybe it will be, next year, after I launch a campaign to force everyone affiliated with PC Gamer to play the remastered version—which, thankfully, doesn’t tamper with a single line of dialogue. Torment is a witty, weird RPG that emphasises story and dialogue, and is filled with surprising events that feel like they could’ve been made up by a clever DM on the spot. I remember, early on, how you can let an embalmer who thinks you’re a zombie fill you with stitches—increasing your max HP. Every little thing matters, nothing is filler, no sidequest is boring.

59. World of Warcraft

RELEASED 2004 | LAST POSITION 68

Leif Johnson: WoW has some fantastic competition these days, but it remains the MMORPG in the mind of the public at large. And rightly so. Blizzard’s behemoth is a world not just in terms of space, but also in how successfully it’s evolved after weathering more than a decade of shifting tastes and audiences. Be it in dungeons, PVP, or thrashing Alliance in the Temple of Kotmogu, it’s still easy to find the fun.

58. Civilization VI

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Evan: Through its Districts system, Civ VI made city planning matter. I like having to think long-term about each tile placement. Hopefully religion and espionage will get deeper.

Tyler: When Civ V came out, everyone, including me, said that Civ IV is better. The same is happening with Civ VI and Civ V, but with full mod support and the city planning Evan mentioned, which I love, Civ VI is the one to play now.

57. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

RELEASED 2002 | LAST POSITION 44

Leif: It may be a fantasy RPG, but it shoves bearded wizards and stodgy castles aside in favour of an alien wonderland resembling fever dream during a mind meld of Frank Herbert and Frank Frazetta. But looks alone don’t secure its legacy, as funky as its mushroom towers and racist elves may be. Its greatness lies in how thoroughly it wrapped us in its weird world, forcing us to remember details from tomes and chats to see the saga to its end. 

Matthew: I’m still sad I can’t experience it all over again. For me, no other Elder Scrolls game has come close to delivering a story with the scale and nuance of Morrowind, and the setting is the most vivid. A dense, generous, deliriously compelling RPG (with the best giant mushrooms in gaming).

56. Company of Heroes

RELEASED 2006 | LAST POSITION 84

Tom S: A World War II RTS that distills the noise and fury of Saving Private Ryan into a clinical game of take and hold. The first Company of Heroes is still a design peak for Relic. The asymmetrical power curves of the Axis and Allied forces create an absorbing tug-of-war. In a long-fought game infantry armies give way to tank warfare, and the destructible maps are gradually levelled. There’s a sense of escalation to every fight, and the campaign features some of the best levels Relic has ever made. I keep coming back to it every year to see if it has faded yet, and it still hasn’t happened. It looks great for an 11-year-old game, and sounds incredible, too. The unit barks are baked into my mind, but the chatter still gives the battlefield a sense of life, and the ker-chunk discharge of a tank’s main weapon is as impactful today as ever.

55. ARMA 3

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 43

Evan: When I think of Arma, I think of the photos of soldiers goofing off inside their FOB, posing and pranking one another. They do it, I’d guess, to alleviate the tension that comes with fighting. Arma is authentic because it recreates that need for silliness to balance its seriousness. Its need for tactics and fidelity demand some amount of military lingo, compasses, maps and an eye for spotting enemies far away. But, inevitably, someone will do something stupid: barrel rolling their Little Bird, firing a Javelin at a sedan, shooting a heli with a sidearm. Somewhere within that balance of sim and silly is the cloth from which breakouts like Battlegrounds are cut. 

54. Dota 2

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 12

Chris Thursten: There are a lot of games that are superficially like Dota 2, but there’s only one game that actually is Dota 2. This is competitive Calvinball, macroeconomics with wizards, a game of high-stakes five-a-side with more rules than one person can ever know. What this complexity amounts to is a vibrant language shared by everybody who loves this mad game. Shame about all the angry internet men.

53. Tales from the Borderlands

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION New

Fraser: One of the rare spinoffs that’s better than its progenitor. It gives us a broader look at the anarchy of Pandora and its demented inhabitants, but more importantly it’s blessed with a trick that a lot of otherwise funny games don’t have: comedic timing. 

Phil: By avoiding the more wacky elements, Tales from the Borderlands is both funny and heartfelt. I’d argue it’s Telltale’s best work.

52. Crusader Kings II

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 31

Chris L: It’s unusual for a grand strategy game to be so personal. Rather than playing as a faceless leader, you’re an actual person with flaws and desires, and the people surrounding you are unique individuals with their own goals and needs. It makes for an engrossing blend of managing the big picture of world events, while dealing with the domestic soap opera of relationships and betrayals. There’s more character building and storytelling in Crusader Kings II than in most RPGs. Your character also has a realistic lifespan: even if you survive assassination attempts, battles, illnesses and other threats, you’re still going to die of old age, at which point you resume the game as an heir. The impermanence of your characters and the passing of the torch from generation to generation gives your dynasty a real history, and your choices and actions real meaning.

51. Left 4 Dead 2

RELEASED 2009 | LAST POSITION 25

Tom S: Left 4 Dead 2 has supplied me with the best co-op experiences of my life. It’s a fascinating experiment in automatic pacing, but the AI director that controls the zombie army would be useless without the beautifully designed levels. 

Evan: A guaranteed fun Friday night: download a bunch of dumb character and gun mods and play GoldenEye 4 Dead with your friends,—its a surprisingly inspired, zombie-filled recreation of the N64 classic shooter.

Wes: Left 4 Dead 2 is still the perfect co-op experience on PC. Moments of mindless zombie blasting give you time to chat, horde rushes and special infected send you yelping for help, and you can’t help but laugh at the chaos around you. Showdowns demand real teamwork if you want to make it out alive. And the Community maps can keep you going forever.

50. Invisible, Inc

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New

Chris T: Klei’s inability to make a bad game allowed it to flit from Mark of the Ninja to this: XCOM with cyberpunk secret agents. Invisible, Inc’s genius lies in its transparency—you always understand what the outcome of your decisions will be, and are left with the gratifying challenge of unpicking each turn-based stealth challenge as you encounter it. It gives the sense of being both punishing and fair, something that XCOM has traditionally struggled with.

Katharine: Klei’s developers are clever. The way this mixes Don’t Starve’s survival themes with Mark of the Ninja’s acrobatics gives us the ultimate heist sim: a world where you’re a cool badass until a single turn of fate triggers a desperate, but thrilling, scramble for life.

49. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 38

Evan: CS:GO doesn’t get enough credit for its asymmetry. In the most popular competitive FPS in the world, one team carries a gun that can kill with one shot (the AK-47), and the other doesn’t.

Andy K: The tense rhythm of a match is thrilling, stressful and exhilarating. It’s a game that demands careful tactical play, where every stupid mistake can mean defeat, which gives you no choice but to work at being a better player.

48. Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn

RELEASED 2000 | LAST POSITION 41

Andy K: The feeling of adventure when you emerge from Irenicus’s grim dungeon to find the city of Athkatla sprawling out before you is hard to beat, and the sheer freedom you have to shape your character is exhilarating.

Phil: The first Baldur’s Gate offered a slow journey to its titular city, but this gives up the goods immediately. It imbues Baldur’s Gate II with a welcome sense of sprawling adventure.

47. Titanfall 2

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

James: Both the most acrobatic modern FPS of the decade and the best big robot friend sim at once. Call of Duty meets Quake with mechs makes for a continually surprising campaign where every level is an experiment in something singular, whether it’s first-person parkour, mech combat, or time travel. Time travel? Time travel. Accompanied by a multiplayer suite growing fatter with regular free updates, Titanfall 2 is an easy recommendation.

Samuel: I enjoyed the campaign, but it’s no The New Order or Doom 2016, so it’s in the right place on this list.

46. Hollow Knight

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New

James: It’s time to put the dull term ‘Metroidvania’ to bed and start calling all 2D action exploration games ‘Hollow-likes’. Hollow Knight deserves the new useless crown. As a blank-faced bug armed with only a nail, you delve underground and tour a fallen kingdom while piecing together its story and your true purpose. Huge chunks of the map, entire levels with unique enemies and music, are hidden behind breakable walls and locked doors. 

With something like 20 bosses, a significant number of which are optional, it’s possible to breeze by hours of exploration and combat without a clue. But chances are you’ll find most of it, because Hollow Knight inspires curiosity. Environments are brimming with mystery, depicting fallen cities, abyssal nightmares and stinky dung piles. Animated in an adorable hand-drawn style and accompanied by a lovely soundtrack, Hollow Knight is an adventure that will play as well as it does today, forever. 

45. Hearthstone

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION 47

Tim: For all the memes about random cards generated by random cards and four-Mana 7/7s, the fact remains that Hearthstone is a helluva game. Whisper it, but right now Hearthstone is at its rudest health for a long time. A lot of that is down to the diversity ushered in by the brilliant Journey to Un’Goro expansion, but also the communication and leadership shown by Ben Brode, the game’s avuncular director.

44. EVE Online

RELEASED 2003 | LAST POSITION 14

Steven: As a sandbox where players can either vie for power by wielding the might of thousand-person armies or spend an evening drunk, shooting rocks for minerals, EVE Online is unparalleled in scope. At 14 years old you might think the stories of betrayals and epic battles would all have been told by now, but EVE always finds a new way to shock me—both via the ingenuity of its players and their relentless cruelty.

43. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

RELEASED 2000 | LAST POSITION New

Phil: The Command & Conquer series has never boasted the balance of, say, StarCraft: Brood War, but that’s not the point. Red Alert 2 is my favourite RTS because it combines a great campaign, varied units, and a silly sensibility, most evident during its amazing FMV cutscenes.

Samuel: It’s the peak of the series, I think—the unit types are daft but cool, and the campaign is probably the best one Westwood ever did. You can send Allied dolphins in to mess up Soviet squids. Which genius thought shutting Westwood was a good idea, again?

42. Vampire: The Masquerade—Bloodlines

RELEASED 2004 | LAST POSITION 65

Andy C: This is a perfect recreation of undead life in the glittering, grimy streets of late-night LA. It’s smart, frightening and layered with memorable characters, all of it filtered through the unique perspectives of the game’s seven playable clans. 

Phil: It’s the sidequests that I love. Can you kill a vampire hunter who’s working at a stripclub? Should you trick a reporter into returning to the den of a flesh-eating vampire? It’s a delightful mix of ancient vampire politics and petty LA powerplays.

41. Stalker: Call of Pripyat

RELEASED 2009 | LAST POSITION 35

Chris L: I’ve never experienced more tension and dread in a game than in Stalker. Each excursion into the Zone leaves me exhausted, jumpy, and shaken, and each return to one of Pripyat’s few safe zones is accompanied by a exhalation of breath and a slow unknotting of my neck and shoulder muscles. Bleak, grim and unrelenting, Call of Pripyat remains unmatched in atmosphere and horror.

40. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 54

Steven: This does something I’ve never experienced before in an MMO: it makes me care about the characters. Weaving MMO grinding with a story that rivals Final Fantasy’s best, XIV is one of the most vibrant and engrossing MMOs I’ve played. What’s better, the latest expansion, Stormblood, is the series’ best achievement. It tells a captivating story of war and rebellion that no Final Fantasy fan should miss.

39. Kerbal Space Program

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 11

Chris T: It marries the time-absorbing pull of construction with the challenge of a good puzzle while simulating just enough of real rocketry to make you feel like you’re learning something. Getting a rocket and its crew safely into orbit is a substantial challenge, something you’ll feel rightly proud of when you crack it—and the game only broadens from there, with each new goal stretching out organically ahead of you. If that doesn’t appeal to you, KSP is flexible: if you want to focus on building a giant rocket-powered robot, go for it.

Tyler: I shot a Kerbal into orbit and accidentally left him there. I’m afraid to reopen the game because he’s still floating there in orbit, and I feel like as long as KSP isn’t running he’s at least in stasis. I’d like to apologise to all of Kerbalkind for what I’ve done. Anyway, 10/10 for sure. Brilliant game.

38. Heroes of the Storm

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New

Steven: By stripping away so much of the complexity of MOBAs, Heroes of the Storm manages to be both accessible and still incredibly strategic. Similar to what Hearthstone did for Magic: The Gathering, Heroes of the Storm distills the drama of a MOBA into something that anyone can enjoy. It also has some of the zaniest hero designs I’ve ever seen. Two players each playing a separate head of a single ogre? Fantastic. If Heroes of the Storm has always been looked down upon as ‘baby’s first MOBA’ then to hell with it, being a kid is way more fun anyway. 

Hannah: I’m confident in saying it’s the most well-designed game of its genre. Perhaps the most impressive feature is its diverse strategy—with each map being unique, every niche strategy is catered to in some way, no character or playstyle ends up dying at the feet of a metagame.

37. 80 Days

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 76

Andy K: A colourful alternate history elevated by exquisite writing, and it’s endlessly replayable thanks to the multitude of routes you can take across the globe and the many choices you can make in its unpredictable story. Moving, funny, intelligent and surprisingly challenging, 80 Days is, and I don’t say this lightly, a masterpiece of interactive fiction. 

Samuel: Fantastic writing and scene-setting art bring this steampunky adventure to life. 

Katharine: Phileas Fogg may be a bossy asshat, but balancing the ticking clock of his wager against soaking up every last diversion is tremendous fun.

36. Zero Escape: The Nonary Games

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New

Katharine: Bundling together two of the best visual novels around, The Nonary Games drums up tension from the simple act of left-clicking text boxes. Both stories lock you in deadly games of trust, with story paths that shine new light on one another and allow for audacious twists. Add some fiendish ‘escape room’ puzzles to break up the (excellent) reams of text, and this feels like serious nourishment for the brain.

35. Total War: Warhammer

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Matthew: Everything you need to know is in the name, and Creative Assembly delivers brilliantly on the promise of vivid battles in the Warhammer world. If you’ve ever consumed army books or drybrushed a Beastman, there’s a joy in seeing it come to life in a game that rewrites the lore every time you play. Every race plays like a different game, but I’ll always be happy spending days rebuilding the Dwarf empire.

34. Thumper

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

James: Five minutes into the scarab’s journey down Thumper’s hell road, my hands lose color and a pool of sweat drips down into my lap. Tapping buttons and turning sharp corners to a beat with a bizarre time signature while lights strobe and impossible geometry blurs by isn’t easy. Thumper is, after all, a punishing rhythm game designed to make you feel uncomfortable. Through punishment and a drip feed of new rules, Thumper teaches as it tortures. Most will never master it, but that’s the point. The joy comes from stemming a hellish tide, from survival and syncopation with a daunting, dangerous force.

Phil: What if Audiosurf didn’t like you? That’s Thumper, a game that weaponises time signatures to create intense rhythm action.

Evan: Thumper is actually a documentary about the path you take to heaven or hell when you die.

33. Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 23

Tom M: Playing an 80-plus-hour RPG entirely co-op was a strangely intimate experience. A flurry of quick saves for the first 20 hours gave way to a rhythm of wordless and efficient combat. But as the game reached those last 20 hours, Divinity ramped the difficulty back up and the dialogue restarted—we moved methodically through each fight, formed fine-tuned strategies to safely take on Death Knights, and at one point even built an obstacle course out of chairs and boxes to slow down a hasted demon. Divinity: Original Sin rewards you for creative thinking, and isn’t afraid to beat you down until you understand that. And working through those challenges with the right partner is an RPG experience I haven’t found anywhere else. 

32. Bayonetta

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New

Samuel: I’m so glad this glorious hack-and-slash game finally came to PC, and that it’s the best version. Unlocking the extra weapons and perfecting the combat system means you can play Bayonetta for about 100 hours if you want to.

Katharine: PlatinumGames is a studio that cut its teeth at the arcade and made its living on console, but on a technical level PC feels like a more natural home for its action delights. Chief among them is Bayonetta, a take-no-prisoners workout for the fingers that has you slipping through cracks in attacks to slow time and unleash combos built from your own hair. Which other hero delivers damage by the megaton, can materialise a guillotine for a finisher or simply give an angel a good spanking? This. Is. Videogames.

Chris T: It’s a treat to have Bayonetta on PC at long last. This exuberant, outlandishly camp brawler from the creators of Devil May Cry is imaginative and deeply, deeply silly. It’s gaming’s own hyperviolent Rocky Horror Picture Show starring a fourth-wall-disregarding, leather-clad nun-witch with guns strapped to her stilettos who kills angels by turning her hair, which is also her clothes, into dragons and bondage devices. Games are rarely this free, fun or surprising.

Phil: It’s fun and campy, but don’t let that fool you: Bayonetta boasts the best combat around. The rhythm feels great, as you chain kicks and punches before topping it all off with a hair-based finisher that acts as the exclamation mark to a combo. But Bayonetta goes deeper still, with slow-mo evades and dodge offsets. You can get by with the basics, but take the time to master its high-level combat systems and Bayonetta feels unlike anything else.

31. Thief Gold

RELEASED 1998 | LAST POSITION New

Jody: ‘The first Thief game is the best’ is a hill I’ll die on. Thief has as much level variety as three other games, from wealthy mansions to tombs with zombies and deathtraps to straight-up horror. Where it’s arguably weak is the AI, but even that becomes a strength when guards go haywire and the story acknowledges it with running jokes about their drunkenness—notes of comedy to alleviate the tension.

30. Diablo III

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 32

Tom S: Help, I can’t stop playing this game. Every time I charge through a level in adventure mode with a new character, I like it even more. I just love blowing up hundreds of monsters with satisfying abilities. After years of updates, Diablo III is a beautifully fast and generous game that showers you with experience, legendary weapons and new ways to kill monsters. The best action RPG ever, for my money.

29. Forza Horizon 3

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Phil: A pitch-perfect sandbox that combines lighthearted race events with a fetishistic appreciation of cars. Horizon 3 is big, bombastic and beautiful—set in one of the most vibrant environments I’ve ever explored. The events are fun, but the real masterstroke is found in the skill system, which creates a thrilling tug-of-war between risk and reward. It makes time spent in its world a joy.

28. Fallout: New Vegas

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION 87

Joe: Contrary to popular opinion: the Mojave wasteland is the most interesting settings of all the Fallout games. Learning each survivor’s tale and how to play them against one another makes for some interesting morally grey decision making. 

Samuel: I really like New Vegas’s reactivity to your decisions in the story, but it’s the least exciting of the 3D Fallout games for exploration, for me, and that's what the 3D Fallout games are best at. 

27. What Remains of Edith Finch

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New entry

Andy K: Exploring the Finch residence and uncovering the lives of its residents is one of the most emotionally stirring experiences I’ve had in a videogame.

Evan: I was not expecting tentacles.

James: It has one bizarre scene after another made devastating by a bittersweet story about family and loss.

Phil: This is what you’d get if WarioWare was a cohesive tale about life, death and family.

26. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

RELEASED 2011 | LAST POSITION 10

Chris L: What it lacks in polish and looks it makes up for tenfold in the freedom it provides. Skyrim has a story, but more importantly it’s a place for players to create their own story, to build characters from the ground up and play the way they want. It’s also flexible, which has enabled modders to create hundreds of extra hours of content, meaning we’ll be playing Skyrim long after its sequel arrives.

25. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New

Evan: One: it compresses the time and space that survival games like DayZ give you, forcing you into contact with other players and out of your comfort zone. And two: it oscillates between serious and silly—you’re shouting compass bearings, then you’re backflipping a motorbike over your friends. 

Andy K: And for the solo player, Battlegrounds is just as thrilling. Playing it as a stealth game, with humans instead of AI guards, and ducking between cover is wonderfully tense. 

Steven: Solo is awesome, but co-op is where it really takes off. Having a buddy you can rely on really expands your strategic options. There’s rarely a decision made during a duo match that doesn’t feel meaningful.

Chris T: The magic of Battlegrounds is the way it makes every encounter feel meaningful. When only one can win and death comes quickly, every choice you make matters: getting the drop on an foe and stealing their stuff is great, but there’s catharsis to getting caught, too

24. Nier: Automata

RELEASED 2017 | LAST POSITION New

Leif: You could be forgiven for dismissing Nier: Automata as a generic Japanese RPG based on looks alone—in some ways it embraces those expectations in order to subvert them. But this is a science fiction masterwork; a richly imagined tale with a meaning that grows more bizarre with each playthrough as we see events through the eyes of different characters. Its also a blast to play, swapping between third-person action, shoot-’em-up and platformer genres effortlessly.

Phil: I prefer Bayonetta’s combat, but the world of Nier is a tragically beautiful space. Automata also offers what is sure to be 2017’s best soundtrack.

23. Deus Ex

RELEASED 2000 | LAST POSITION 13

Andy K: The visuals have aged horribly, to the point where it’s almost offensive to modern eyes, but get over that hump and Deus Ex is still one of the best, richest, most expansive immersive sims on PC. Vast levels filled with NPCs, alternate paths, and optional missions, a twisting, conspiracy-laden plot and a bleak, dystopian atmosphere make it an essential PC game, despite being almost 20 years old.

22. Stardew Valley

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 97

Phil: A farming RPG created by one person. It’s a heartwarming success story and a legitimately great version of a genre that was underrepresented on PC. The valley is packed with activities, from fishing to dungeon crawling, in addition to the day-to-day task of growing crops, milking cows, baking and refining your raw produce into more desirable materials. Gentrification has never been so entertaining.

21. FTL: Faster Than Light

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION 78

Samuel: At the last NYE party I went to, we played FTL as a group, and I found myself shouting tips for how to deal with slaver ships, mysterious signals and that crazy guy on the planet’s surface, who can either join your crew or do damage to your ship. I’d recommend it to sci-fi fans and strategy devotees equally—but it’s also a great introduction to strategy generally. 

Matthew: Failure, panic, and the quiet acceptance of death: these are the hallmarks of FTL, a space exploration game with roguelike elements which is far more fun than I’ve made it sound. It’s like experiencing your most beloved sci-fi reveries with a dose of relentless realism. Things will burn. People will suffocate. You probably won’t survive that heroic rescue. But when you do, it honestly feels amazing. Just don’t rename your crewmates after your friends.

20. Battlefield 1

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Evan: Who expected Battlefield to find its stride in WWI? The technological constraints of the nineteenteens inspired the series’ most interesting infantry gunplay. The Madsen MG is powerful, but its vertical magazine blocks your vision. The absence of plentiful armoured transport makes the 70-ton Char 2C supertank feel like a baby Godzilla when it hits the map. Gorgeous art and sound design don’t hurt.

Andy K: The shift from high-precision modern weapons provided the shot in the arm Battlefield needed. It’s a delight to return to the mud and rust of an older war. And enough licence is taken with the history to ensure it doesn’t feel like a cartoon depiction of WWI. The St Quentin Scar map is a highlight: a stretch of farmland dotted with interesting architecture to capture. Every minute feels chaotic and urgent.

19. Her Story

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 39

Samuel: I recently found myself in a position of recommending PC games to someone who normally plays on consoles, and the first thing I did was bring up Her Story. A fantastic, one-of-a-kind mystery game. 

Tim: I think at some point in the future we’re going to look back on this game as the herald of non-shit FMV games, but few of the flood that have followed so far have borne any comparison to Her Story. And that’s because Sam Barlow’s elegant concept, strong writing, and the standout performance by Viva Seifert all feel like bottled lightning levels of brilliant. A rare treat.

Hannah: Her Story is the bar for detective games. With the uniqueness of searching through a poorly-sorted database to piece together a mystery, you put together the threads of its story yourself. The FMV nature only adds to how unsettling it can become.

18. Wolfenstein: The New Order

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION New

Tom S: It’s a simple formula: put some Nazis in a level, give a player some massive guns and you’ve got a decent FPS. The New Order goes above and beyond regular shooters with great characters and a sense of humour, and stealth that works. It’s an intelligent update of a classic series that reflects on the inherent silliness of its setup, even as it invites you to indulge, ideally with a machine gun in each hand.

17. BioShock

RELEASED 2007 | LAST POSITION No change

Samuel: Still fantastic, and it’s aged beautifully. Before audiotapes were overdone as a narrative device, this perfected them—a brilliantly written and acted way to discover the story of this fallen city. 

Andy K: I still get goosebumps when screen drops to reveal the majesty of Rapture, and it only gets better as you delve deeper into Andrew Ryan’s fucked up metropolis.

16. Rocket League

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 8

Steven: Other multiplayer games, like shooters, rarely stop to let both you and your opponents soak in a critical moment of the match, but Rocket League forces you to relive every one. After each goal, you sit down and watch that amazing pass and aerial shot, basking in the glory of it. Or maybe you sit in shame and stew the horror of choking and missing the game-winning save. Either way, the spectrum of emotions of a match in Rocket League, like any real sport, is engrossing.

Samuel: I didn’t vote for Rocket League this year, that’s why it’s dropped a bit down the list. I had to stop playing it for my sanity, after seeing rocket cars in my dreams.

Joe: I love football and hate racing but, despite there being cars, balls and goals here, Psyonix’s ball-cage-car-’em-up is a different beast. It’s bloody good too and, as Samuel suggests, is pretty moreish. 

15. Rainbow Six Siege

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 27

Shaun: This tense tactical shooter has delivered some of the most stressful and memorable moments I’ve ever had in games. The destructible maps, coupled with the unique abilities of each operator, makes every match feel minty fresh. Many hands were wrung when Ubisoft announced this would be multiplayer only, but it has since become the most enduring PVP game in my library, and Ubisoft is giving it the care it deserves.

Evan: Honestly, Shaun, I think it’s a miracle that Siege’s devs were able to convince one of the biggest game makers in the world to make a multiplayer-only FPS in 2015. It’s Ubisoft’s Counter-Strike.

Steven: I love the way it teaches through example. You get shot and die but can’t understand how until you watch the replay and realise it was through a tiny murder-hole punched into a destructible wall. It then becomes your go-to tactic.

14. Hitman

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Andy K: After stumbling with Absolution, Io returned with its best Hitman yet. Every level is packed with fun, often-absurd ways to experiment with the game’s systems and kill your target. And the variety of gorgeously realised locations, from the streets of a sleepy Italian coastal town to an exclusive Japanese hospital in the mountains, keep things interesting.

Phil: Whatever the reason for the episodic release model, it worked. Over the course of its six episodes, IO displayed a mastery of level design, creating exceptional sandboxes full of fun and surprising ways to take out each target. Thematically, I don’t think it quite lives up to Blood Money, but in terms of entertaining sandbox play spaces, this is the biggest and best Hitman to date.

13. Overwatch

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 24

Phil: While Samuel will tell you that Overwatch is silly because it has a hyperintelligent gorilla, I will tell you that it’s good because his abilities, a) make sense for a hyperintelligent gorilla, and b) allow you to fill a necessary role. Hero shooters are insanely popular today, and Overwatch is the best of them. Its characters are fun, clever and cute as all hell, and its design supports a variety of playstyles. 

12. Grand Theft Auto V

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 9

Andy K: One of the finest playgrounds on PC. Production values don’t get higher, and the story is 30 hours of colourful fun, with few dips in quality. I’ve finished it three times now, and I rarely replay games all the way through.

Samuel: I wish I had the time to give GTA Online, but GTA V is still all about enjoying that world. It’s all I ever wanted: GTA IV’s detail with San Andreas’s scale.

11. Half-Life 2

RELEASED 2004 | LAST POSITION 3

Chris L: We waited for years for a game that could top 1998’s seminal FPS Half-Life, and it’s fitting that Valve would be the only ones who could deliver. Half-Life 2 shared the original’s creative level design and memorable scripted sequences that left us feeling like we were finding our own way through the world, despite it being a linear shooter. Gordon Freeman remains a beloved and enduring figure, despite never uttering a word or appearing as more than a pair of gloved hands, and his gravity gun is still the best tool/toy/weapon ever to grace a game.

10. Spelunky

RELEASED 2013 | LAST POSITION 15

Shaun: This is the roguelike every other roguelike aspires to topple. But they rarely achieve the intricacy of Spelunky, because even though most players know the secrets this game hides within, it still feels important to see them for yourself. I’ve never finished a hell run, but I’m still trying to do one. Every week.

Phil: My favourite moments in Spelunky are when I hear a distant explosion. It usually means I’ll be dead soon, but also that I get to reverse engineer the chaotic comedy of errors that is a Spelunky chain reaction. 

9. Doom

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Samuel: Between this and Wolfenstein, Bethesda has brought us the best shooters in years. Doom has the edge for me because its guns, and their overpowering mods, are terrific fun. The knockback/melee counter element gives it a unique rhythm, which is a hard thing to find in a genre as overcrowded as the FPS.

Phil: Between the chunky gunfeel, the multistorey arenas and the one-two punch of gun blast and melee finisher, Doom’s combat feels unlike anything else. I love its pace, and the contrast between the frenetic gunplay, and the methodical exploration of its arenas.

Evan: The soundtrack is a miracle sent from hell. Mick Gordon managed to show complete reverence for Bobby Prince’s MIDI tracks while adding his own style of throbbing, swirling metal.

8. Alien: Isolation

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION 16

Samuel: The best horror game ever. I would even argue its best moment involves no alien at all, as an eerie showroom filled with androids comes to life. A masterpiece.

Tom S: Isolation’s commitment to the source material is inspiring and horribly convincing. It is also a fascinating AI experiment. For years I’ve wanted more interesting, dynamic enemies, and few are better than Isolation’s Xenomorph.

7. Mass Effect 2

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION 4

Samuel: This is still the king of BioWare’s sci-fi RPG series. The best companions, the most exciting scenario and a real sense of being a cool bunch of outsiders in this galaxy.

Andy K: I’ve never cared about a cast as much as the ragtag crew of the Normandy SR-2. As much as I enjoyed exploring an exciting, vividly realised galaxy, I just looked forward to returning to my ship and checking in with all my weird space pals.

Phil: Truly there has never been a better game about sexing up a badass lizard assassin. Mass Effect 2 cut a lot of its predecessor’s chaff. What remained was a competent shooter that underpinned a memorably characterful sci-fi adventure.

6. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION No change

Samuel: MGSV is pretty much a perfect systems-driven stealth-action game. Its upgrade tree constantly offers new and better ways to improve your tactics well after the game is finished. It took me about 90 hours to get the Fulton upgrade that can yank any object through a wormhole. Worth it. 

Tom S: Are there any other open world sandbox stealth games like this? If not, why not? Because this one is brilliant. You have to forgive it for the batty plotting and terrible boss enemies because the rest of the game is so huge and rich with possibility. That’s thanks to its mad gadgets, like the one Sam described, but I love the companions too. Do you go with the knife-wielding dog, the photosynthetic sniper or the miniature mech suit? These are the choices I want to be making in games.

Andy K: This has ruined stealth games for me. The sheer variety of entertaining ways to tackle a mission in MGSV makes almost everything else feel disappointingly shallow and unambitious in comparison. And the more daft gadgets and weapons you unlock, the more fun it gets, whether it’s a rocket fist or a wormhole generator. As a longtime MGS fan, the story is disappointing, but the richness of the sandbox makes up for it.

Phil: I told a horse to poop in the road, and my target drove over it and crashed. Metal Gear Solid V is the best game.

5. Portal 2

RELEASED 2011 | LAST POSITION 28

Andy K: A game so good you wonder how Valve pulled it off. Everything in Portal 2 is pitch perfect, from the design of the puzzles, to the voice acting, to the journey through the various periods of Aperture Science’s history. Stephen Merchant is superb as twitchy robot Wheatley, but it’s JK Simmons as Aperture founder Cave Johnson who gets the biggest laughs. However, as funny as it is, there’s also a dark streak, particularly the sinister backstory of how GLaDOS came to be. Portal 2 excels as a puzzle game, a comedy, and a piece of evocative science fiction, and represents Valve at the absolute peak of its craft.

Tom S: Funny games are so novel now, and Portal 2’s sense of humour has not grown old. I enjoyed the magic paint puzzles and flying through the air in Portal 2’s large testing chambers, but the puzzles never felt as new and exciting as the original. Those moments instead appeared in Portal 2’s superb co-op mode. GLaDOS’ taunts you and your partner and plays you off against each other in a hilarious struggle of power and wit.

Phil: The main story isn’t as pure a puzzle game as the original Portal, but it makes up for it with its comedy craft. I can’t say for sure, but I’m convinced that the achievement notification for ‘The Part Where He Kills You’ was fine-tuned to pop at the funniest possible moment. But even away from Valve’s mastery, Portal 2 is significant for its community contributions, and the thousands of new puzzles and campaigns available through the Steam Workshop.

4. XCOM 2

 RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION 19

Tom S: Turn-based strategy games are rarely capable of generating the drama of an XCOM 2 campaign. In fact, few games of any genre are. XCOM 2 recasts the XCOM project as a plucky resistance outfit, raising the stakes and bringing even more tension to the campaign. When you’re securing funds and personnel it feels like a survival game. When you’re ambushing aliens and clearing buildings in one violent turn, it feels like a power trip. Excellent soldier customisation and exciting upgrade trees mesh nicely with XCOM’s slightly cartoon presentation, but it’s the war stories that stand out – that time an alien murdered your star sniper or that time a ranger chopped their way to the extraction zone. XCOM 2’s soldiers really matter. That means the lows can be harrowing, but the highs are sensational.

Joe: I’ve sunk more hours into XCOM 2 than I care to admit, but let me tell you a secret: I’m not that good at it. Which speaks volumes for the game itself, as one which whips my backside yet has me continually coming back for more. 

3. Dishonored 2

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New

Andy K: I didn’t think Arkane could top the first game, but here we are. Dishonored 2 is one of the most beautifully designed stealth games on PC, with systems that allow for a huge amount of creative expression. Countless ways to combine your powers punctuate every moment of play with a feeling that you’re in control, making your own mark on the world, rather than playing how the developer wants you to. And Karnaca is a stunning setting, with an organic, hand-crafted feel that few games manage.

Joe: Mixing and matching melee skills, conventional weapons and supernatural abilities when offing enemies is where Dishonored 2 shines. Harder working players than me will tell you it’s best played in stealth mode, where you slide your way around its wonderful settings, but I prefer bloodshed. And little excites me more than having Emily match multiple foes with a four-link Domino blast, before taking her enemy troupe down simultaneously with one incendiary crossbolt bolt to the head. Nice.

Phil: As a sandbox of emergent systems, Dishonored 2 is without equal. That applies not just to the action, but also to how the world reacts in response to your choices within the story. Take, for instance, A Crack In The Slab. It’s a fantastic level with a clever time-skip gimmick, and it features a potential outcome that beautifully rewards your curiosity and initiative. Dishonored 2 is a frequent showcase of Arkane’s talent for anticipating a player’s actions.

2. Dark Souls

RELEASED 2012 | LAST POSITION No change

Joe: What can be said about FromSoftware’s infamous action roleplayer Dark Souls that hasn’t already been discussed? Probably nothing, which means you can add me to its loyal horde of sun-praising worshipers who get turned on by its difficulty, swear by its intricate and not-at-all ambiguous lore, and bend the ear of anyone who’ll still listen to us harping on about its really rather fantastic level design. I’ve genuinely lost count of the number of times I’ve returned to Lordran, and have steadily upped my trip tally to Dark Souls II’s Drangleic, and the series’ third (and supposedly final) entry’s Lothric since it landed last year. It’s been five years since the first Dark Souls debuted on PC, and you can bet your humanity it’ll be on this list five years from now.

James: Dark Souls is easier to recommend on PC than ever thanks to the tireless efforts of modders throughout the years. With DSfix you can play it at just about any resolution with high-res textures (or just Shrek on everything). Dark Souls Mouse Fix makes mouse-and-keyboard play a legitimate control method. Item location randomisers make it an infinitely replayable roguelike. And mods such as the Shovel Knight armour or the fidget spinner weapon skin show the game’s got a near infinite extended life after launch. Dark Souls’ reputation began as a difficult, punishing game. On the PC, it’s evolved to become whatever you want it to be.

Tom S: In terms of combat, weapons, enemies, Dark Souls III is a more consistent game. Yet I would still recommend the original Dark Souls over its sequels because the stories you tease out of the stonework and item descriptions are more powerful by far. A lot of games tell you that you’re a hero in a cursed worlds, but with every death and rebirth, Dark Souls does a fantastic job in making you feel it.

For all its brilliance Dark Souls is a thoroughly inaccessible game that is actively hostile to new players. For a long time I read the praise for Dark Souls with a degree of cynicism, assuming that membership of the exclusive Dark Souls lovers club was the main appeal. Now I am one of those members. It’s a gruelling and memorable combat roleplaying game that is has kept its singular identity, even as more and more games start to copy the formula. I could go on (and on), but perhaps the best praise I could give is to say that, all these years after release, Dark Souls is still worth wanking on about.

1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION No change

Andy K: No game makes me feel like I’m on an adventure as much as The Witcher 3. It’s when I’m riding my horse through the wilderness with no specific goal in mind, seeing what quests I stumble into, that I love it the most. Geralt as a wandering samurai, rather than someone trying to save the world. And it helps that almost every quest you find has something interesting about it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say every sidequest is meaningful, but it comes damn close. There’s always some nice little twist in the story, or a weird new monster to fight, and the writing is consistently excellent. I’ll never forget the first time I landed on Skellige and rode through those snowy mountains. It’s a breathtaking place, with its own rich history, culture, and politics, which you can choose to get involved in. Or you can just get on your horse and see where the freezing winds take you.

Phil: In some ways, The Witcher 3 is similar to those Ubisoft-style open worlds in which you clear a map of its hundreds and hundreds of icons. But while many open world games trade on emergent systems that support rote (albeit entertaining) interactions, The Witcher 3’s best icons lead to stories of interesting characters trying to make their way in a dark, gruelling world. Every main quest, every sidestory, every monster contract, every treasure hunt – they all help build up the richness and texture of this vast, fascinating world. It helps that you view all of this through the lens of Geralt, one of the most likeable protagonists around. He knows his place in this world, and guides you through it with a gruff, world-weary affability. Elsewhere on this list you’ll find games with better combat, or more intricate RPG systems, or even a more consistently gripping story. But there’s a reason The Witcher 3 has been named our best game for two years running. It works to create an unforgettable, unforgiving atmosphere, and casts you as a singularly capable problem solver – not good, not evil, just the right man for the job.

Tom S: When I started playing Baldur’s Gate and other RPGs I dreamed of the game that would let me live in the fantasy books I loved. The Witcher 3 comes closer than any other to delivering the scale and spectacle of a quality dark fantasy novel. It’s gritty and dark in places, like the swamp of Crookback Bog, but wide and open in others. It was a rush to take a little boat away from the mainland and see the mountains of Skellige grow on the horizon. Every island there has a story – a rogue giant here, a tormented werewolf there. It’s derivative in many ways, but in this case production values really matter, and The Witcher 3 is way ahead. Great characters, great stories and cool monsters.

Steven: One of the best aspects of The Witcher 3 has always been landscape. Velen, for example, is little more than rolling grasslands, forests, and swamps, and lesser RPGs would combine those biomes to make something functional but forgettable. But The Witcher 3 has an incredible grasp on how to design environments – the way a road winds through a copse of trees swaying in an evening breeze that you can almost feel. Books are brilliant because their worlds leap to life in our minds as we read them, but I don’t think I could ever imagine a world as vivid as the Northern Kingdoms.

Shaun: As a games enthusiast who vehemently mashes the skip button on cutscenes, The Witcher 3 stands as one of only a few games in which I play for the story. Even on a second and third playthrough, I’ve got an eye out for tiny nuances in the world’s characters that I might have missed previously. The Witcher 3 is remarkable for this reason, at least as far as I’m concerned: it’s able to transfix both a fantasy and videogame story naysayer. And I can’t even watchan episode of Game of Thrones without idly scrolling through the PC Gamer Discord channel.

Andy K: And we haven’t even mentioned the expansions! I think I love Blood and Wine even more than the main game, which thrusts Geralt into a world of pageantry, chivalry, and knightly pompousness. Placing the grizzled, weary Witcher into a colourful fairytale land is a great concept, and seeing evil creep into this idyllic setting makes for a fascinating contrast. It’s 20 hours of fantastic quests, more great writing, and an absolutely stunning setting. Toussaint is all golden fields, sleepy villages, and vineyards, with a gleaming white castle at the centre of it all, and it feels completely different to anywhere in the Northern Kingdoms. And while not as dramatic a change in tone, the other expansion, Hearts of Stone, is a superb chunk of new story with a strong villain and some memorable quests. So with the main game plus the expansions, you’re looking at hundreds of hours of the finest roleplaying on PC. CD Projekt Red has set a new benchmark for RPG design that other developers will have to work extremely hard to beat.

Personal Picks

These games didn't get enough votes to make the main list, but our writers love them nonetheless. 

Samuel Roberts: Jazzpunk

A funny and weird first-person game that I’ve recommended to people a lot over the years. It’s got loads in common with Naked Gun and Airplane, in replicating that rapid-fire, sketch-style humour, which is a hard thing to do successfully in a game. It’s a true original. I love it.

Evan Lahti: Papers, Please

Wielding a rubber stamp, the lowly government drone is cruel or martyrish. Taking bureaucratic paperwork and making it tough, fun, and intensely meaningful is a big achievement. It’s as relevant and valuable as ever, in this time of border walls, visa restrictions, and immigration bans.

Tom Senior: Empire: Total War

It has its issues, but of all the historical Total War games this is the one that captures the series’ aim: to deliver the ultimate grand strategy game. Whether you’re protecting trade routes or rushing cannons to your frontlines, the campaign has an unmatched sense of scale.

Chris Livingston: Garry's Mod

Part-sandbox and part-toybox, this is a goofy physics playground for building, destroying, inventing, and collaborating. There are a million things to do and, thanks to hundreds of thousands of custom creations from the community, you’ll never run out of entertainment.

Tim Clark: Don't Starve

I don’t play Klei’s Goth whimsy survive-’em-up nearly as much as I used to, but I’m not sure I’ll ever feel as attached to anything as I did to my 300-day-old dream camp. Before the Meat Effigy catastrophe ended it all. The expansions add plenty of value, too.

Jody Macgregor: The Walking Dead

I gave up on the comic, don’t watch the show, and I’m fussy about adventure games. But I love The Walking Dead because it replaces puzzles with choices and lets me make altruistic, hopeful ones in contrast to most zombie fiction’s cynicism. Also, I cried at the end.

Fraser Brown: Black Desert Online

This is an MMO, so I should be in a cave murdering things, but instead I’m spending my days bossing my workers about, taking jaunts across the world with my loaded cart and selling booze. Murdering monsters and helping NPCs are only side jobs. It’s wonderful.

Katharine Byrne: SteamWorld Heist

SteamWorld Heist is a true masterstroke. While its wily cast of robotic space pirates do much of the heavy lifting, the ability to aim and fire in real-time, pulling off trickshots, elevates this above the competition. Did we mention there were also collectible hats?

Hannah Dwan: TIS-100

Zachtronics designs the most impressive puzzle games around – TIS-100 is its greatest success. Design algorithms using logic and computing to fit a solution: it’s smart in a way that can only work with plain logic puzzles. It also pushed me towards learning about actual computing!

Andy Kelly: Hacknet

One of the best sims of ‘movie hacking’ on PC. An elegant command line interface and imaginative mission design makes cracking into these systems a joy. One minute you’re stealing a recipe from a restaurant chain, the next you’re battling a rival hacker for control of your system.

Chris Thursten: Prey

This love letter to the likes of System Shock deserves praise for the way it lets you chart your own course through a believably simulated space station. Not all of its ideas come off—the Nightmare creature is a bit of a dud—but Prey is a victory for player-respecting design nonetheless.

Tyler Wilde: Defcon

A simple game of mutually-assured destruction. Build your airfields, silos, and naval fleets and then pointlessly defend your state by exchanging nukes with the world—kill more than the enemy, lose fewer than the enemy. It’s more challenging than it sounds, even though no one actually wins. 

Phil Savage: Life Is Strange

A beautiful time travel adventure that builds upon and surpasses Telltale’s template. Whatever you might think about the hella dated dialogue, Dontnod should be commended for crafting a memorable tale that makes you care about what happens to its two main characters.

Tom Marks: Warframe

You can play Warframe for 100 hours and only scratch its surface. It’s a game that’s perfected grind, making the simple act of moving through its procedural levels and smashing into enemies a high-flying joy. Few games feel as empowering, and next to none are updated as often.

Steven Messner: Night in the Woods

Adventure games tend to bore me, but when they capture the emotions of being a cocksure teen trying to find their place in an adult world, it’s hard not to be engrossed. Night in the Woods is part-ghost story and part-coming of age story and it’s touching, evocative and hilarious.

Andy Chalk: Legend of Grimrock II

It expands on its predecessor in every way, with multiple multilevel dungeons, outdoor environments, new monsters and secrets galore. The genre is too niche to ever allow for major mainstream success, but for fans of that old-school style (like me!), this is as good as it gets. 

James Davenport: Little Nightmares

I’ve never been so deeply unnerved while running from left to right. A simple sidescroller with a disgusting aesthetic, filled with gruesome creatures that look like they’re moulded from pig grease. It’s short, but its images hit close to home and linger long after the credits roll. 

Leif Johnson: The Long Dark

The survival genre in its purest form. No zombies or rideable dinosaurs cross your path here; instead, it’s just you, your calories and some scattered junk against the cruel menace of the deep Canadian winter. Quiet, beautiful and contemplative, it reminds us there’s poetry in despair.

Matthew Elliott: Friday the 13th

Right now, Friday the 13th is the only thing I want to play. I’ll admit that it’s hilariously shabby, but with the right group of people it’s impossible to stop playing. Every failed escape attempt keeps me coming back, and every game is different. It’s an enthralling and violent game of hide-and-seek.

Joe Donnelly: Football Manager 2017

I’ve played Football Manager on and off for close to 20 years now and I enjoy it more with each iteration. FM is the quintessential football simulator that’s as much about multilayered micromanagement as it is about winning trophies and signing your boy or girlhood heroes. 

Did we miss your favourite game? Hopefully this sheet will cover it. 

Originally published on the back page of the UK and US magazine, we thought you might enjoy this in case we missed any obvious classics. 

Point the wheels of your Renault Magnum in the direction of the Amalfi Coast: Euro Truck Simulator 2 is heading for the curves of Italy in its next DLC, which is due before the end of the year. 

You can already truck through parts of northern Italy in the game but the map expansion, called Italia, will open up the rest of the country. There's no price yet but the previous map expansion (in France) cost £13.50/$19.

Alongside the DLC developer SCS Software will release a free update that gives "an extra layer of polish" to existing Italian locations, so even those not willing to shell out will benefit. 

Judging by SCS's blog post announcing the DLC we can expect a map that's heavy on both industry and cities, with mountains, farmland and sea views between.

"Our map designers have fallen in love with the new region right from the research stages. From tall mountains to the shores of the seas, from manicured farmland to wilder and more arid places, it was clear that we are looking at quite a challenging and demanding task," it said.

"We tried our best to depict the typical features of Italy from behind the wheel, like roads leading through the Apennines, where tunnels and bridges alternate with scenic vistas and curvy segments, opening the view to distant horizons."

Sounds good to me. And how bella does that Scania R look swishing past that villa in the Italian hills, eh?

I'll readily admit to not being heavily invested in Euro Truck Simulator 2, and nor have I ever been active in its fan community. But reading between the lines of SCS Software's latest blogpost, it seems that double-trailer trucks have been a long requested feature in the series. And it's not hard to understand why: not only would it be very cool to drive a truck with two trailers, but it would no doubt add a new layer of realism to the roadtrip simulator.

So it's nice that, after a seemingly long period spent nutting out the finer details of the addition, SCS Software is almost ready to implement it. "After quite some years of internal discussions and frankly some frustrations and struggles to have the gameplay as well as technical side of multi-trailer physics support ironed out, we finally feel ready to reveal fresh info about our progress on doubles," the studio writes.

The addition of double trailers will come as part of a forthcoming update to both Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. The studio expects the update to roll out "in early summer" (early winter in Australia), and it'll also usher in some new physics improvements.

Here are some more screenshots of the double-trailers in action:

I’ve been playing Euro Truck Simulator 2 regularly for almost three years now, despite originally installing it as a joke. When I first heard about it I snorted at the idea of driving trucks at a reasonable speed around Europe, dutifully obeying the traffic laws. Then I lost 60 hours to it. As I often tell anyone who’ll listen, it’s a genuinely brilliant, well-made game, and the virtual road trips it’s taken me on are some of my fondest PC gaming memories.

So I was delighted to hear that a new expansion had been released this week by developer SCS Software. Vive la France adds 20,000km of new roads and motorways, 15 new cities, enhanced vegetation, a French tollgate system, and authentic roadside scenery including quaint rural villages and majestic chateaus. The perfect excuse (as if I needed one) to climb back into the driver’s seat of a virtual truck and go for a long, relaxing drive.

One of my favourite features in Euro Truck Simulator 2 is being able to tune into live radio stations from around Europe. For this journey I chose Nostalgie Rock, a French classic rock station that plays absolutely perfect trucking music. Bombing down the road to the sounds of Creedence, The Kinks, Canned Heat, and David Bowie… there’s no feeling quite like it. And the French adverts between songs add an extra layer of immersion.

Euro Truck Simulator 2 is an surprisingly atmospheric game, despite the fairly mundane subject matter. My first experience in the expansion is driving through the countryside at night and seeing the glowing lights of farmhouses in the distance, and the silhouette of a grand chateau towering over them. The sense of place these little details give you is powerful, and in general the updated France map feels a lot more hand-crafted.

Because most of your time in ETS2 is spent on largely featureless roads, the moments when you see something—a plane taking off, a hot air balloon, a chateau, a bridge—are bizarrely exciting. I perk up like a dog having a treat waved in front of its nose. Look! A thing! And then it’s back to the grey road. And I love that. It triggers the same reward response I get from, say, loot spilling out of a boss in Diablo, but in a very different way.

And there’s plenty of that in the France expansion. I saw the cooling towers of a nuclear power plant poking out from behind some trees, which was pretty exciting. And I marvelled as I drove through a dense forest. Anyone who’s ever been on a long road trip will know how important having something to look at through the window is for keeping you sane, and the same applies here. Some jobs in Euro Truck Simulator 2 can take an hour or longer.

The ETS2 map has grown so much. Last year’s Scandinavia update added a huge amount of new country and some of the prettiest scenery in the game. And while Vive la France isn’t quite as dramatic as that, it’s a worthy purchase for anyone invested in the game. Paris feels more like a city, the addition of bespoke road signs, advertisements, and speed traps adds authenticity, and the extra roadside detail helps bring the world to life.

For me, ETS2 is the perfect expression of PC gaming. A weird, niche simulator that no big publisher would ever back, but that found success anyway. A rich modding scene that has added everything from multiplayer to snowy weather. And a passionate dev that’s still supporting the game long after release. If you still think pretending to drive trucks sounds weird, give the demo a shot and you might be surprised by how much you love it.