There’s an old saying in gaming monitor circles that once you’ve gone ultrawide, there’s no going back. Indeed, having had the vast Samsung CRG9 hogging my desk for a bit last month, I’m inclined to agree. But what do games actually look like on a screen this wide? It’s one thing looking at lovely wallpapers, but another thing entirely to have a game occupy your entire field of vision.

To find out, and more importantly show you>, I’ve rounded up all the very best ultrawide PC games, complete with pictures of what they actually look like in the flesh, plus oodles of lovely GIFs so you can see how it works in action. If you thought playing Red Dead Redemption 2 in 5120×1440 was impressive, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

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I love a spin-off. Angel? Great stuff! Count Duckula? The Better Call Saul of cartoons. Kourtney and Khlo Take Miami? Take me, I m yours! I could go on and on cutting-and-pasting from this Wikipedia page, but I ll get to the point. Games also have spin-offs. Often they ll be forgotten about. Sometimes they re even disowned. On a few occasions, they ll take on a life of their own and exist apart from the game that spawned them, never calling, never visiting, only sending a multipack Christmas card. Below are a few stories of surprising spin-offs. The 2D Half-Life 2, the Fortnite that failed, the single-player Counter-Strike that no-one asked for, and more.

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It’s been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that’s happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you>, but a day’s work for us. Below you’ll find our picks for the 50 best games released on PC across the past decade.

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Valve today formally announced Half-Life: Alyx, a “full-length” game exclusively for VR. Half-Life is returning after 12 years, though Gordon Freeman seemingly is not and this isn’t Half-Life 3. Set between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2, this one stars future sidekick Alyx Vance in the years before Gordo’s return when she and her dad were building the resistance. And yes, this really is only for VR. Come watch the announcement trailer.

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The nicest thing I can say about Terminator: Resistance is that if a Terminator were sent back in time to wipe out its code, the timeline of gaming in general would almost certainly proceed unchanged. Confused by the apparent failure, Skynet would keep on sending Arnies back to delete it, unaware that the job was already done, and that its agents were just piling up awkwardly in the offices of developer Teyon. The killer AI would squander all its resources on needlessly ferrying metal strongmen into the past, spiral into logistical collapse, and leave humanity to be declared the winners by default. Hooray – Terminator: Resistance saved us all.

That’s about it, however. Although I started out with a mind to write a Wot I Think about it, the truth is there s barely any Wot to Think about in Resistance. Everything it does has existed in games since the advent of the mouse, and its particular format was perfected 15 years ago with Half-Life 2. They’re remarkably similar in a lot of ways, but where Half-Life 2 offers everything with pace and precision, Terminator: Resistance is about as lively as that eye-ball Arnie scrapes out of his head in the first movie. As such, this isn’t so much Wot I Think, but Wot Might Have Been: a glimpse into the alternate timelines where Terminator: Resistance was something fresh and fascinating.

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The dramatically named Korean developer Pearl Abyss has three new games whirring away on their development PCs. The developers of Black Desert Online are working on three new MMOs: one shooter from the creator of Counter-Strike, one child-friendly jaunt, and one fantasy game. The three games have a proper reveal planned for on November 14, during Pearl Abyss Connect at G-STAR 2019. For now, we know they’re called PLAN 8, Crimson Desert, and DokeV, alongside a handful of other details.

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The best shooters endure. While other genres warp beyond recognition, there is something solid about the first-person shooter that makes it as dependable as a nice big AK-47. Maybe it s the gung-ho simplicity – look down a barrel and pull the trigger. It’s as fun to fire a double-barrelled shotgun from an early 90s FPS as the slick shotties of today. For that reason, this list runs the gamut from genre classics to those released in the last year. There’s bound to be something for you in this, our list of the best 50 FPS games on PC. Let s lock and/or load.

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Spooky season is upon us. I know this, in part, because someone has already covered the treehouse windows in cheap cobwebs and I can’t gaze broodingly at the completely normal, not at all unsettling events of the outside world in 2019. But the real clue is Team Fortress 2‘s Halloween event, back once more with two new maps, a buncha hats and a temporary re-opening of every Halloween event from the past eleven years.

It’s nothing special, really, beyond an excuse to dip back into backstabbing as the Spy. This is good enough for me.

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An enterprising thief allegedly burgled Valve’s Bellevue office last June, making off with a prop (I assume) minigun and an estimated $40,000 ( 32k) worth of games and equipment. The intruder shoved the goods into a wheelie bin and lugged to his car across the street.

There will be no jokes about this grave matter.

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Oof, imagine not blinking for half a decade. My eyes shiver at the thought. But this is what the NPCs of Half-Life 2 have been suffering. The dry eye epidemic was first reported to Valve’s GitHub repo back in 2014 and since then it turns out only a select few have felt the joy of smashing their eyelids shut. But after almost five long years, City 17’s tortured citizens can finally blink again, thanks to a small official update.

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