The best PC games to play right now (2024)

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[2021] Creative v17.00 Update brings a new HUD Controller Device, a Glass Gallery, and more! | Fortnite: Creative Dev Tracker | devtrackers.gg

You could easily swap this out for any game from the Dark Souls series, but Elden Ring is more recent and it’s a real masterpiece. An open-world game unlike any other, one minute it’s oppressive and the next it’s dropping your jaw (or ripping it off). Just when you think you’ve seen everything the world has to offer, there’s a whole new area hidden beneath a well or tucked behind an illusory wall for you to explore.

Age of Wonders 4 takes player freedom and customization in turn-based 4X games to the next level: Allowing you to design your own factions to form near limitless combinations of aesthetics, bonuses, and powerful Tomes of Magic, the game is all about choices. From random events to economy management and hero equipment, you won’t ever find yourself with a lack of decisions to make – and you’ll find all of them reflected and represented in your empire.

Racing games are a big part of PC gaming history, but it’s typically in a slightly different gear to console, focusing on forensic simulation over arcade thrills. The Forza Horizon series proves that there’s also room for the latter. Whether you’re chasing a train or buying your hundredth whip, there’s a dizzying amount of things to do here, and they all fly by at 200kph. Oh, and if you want to show off what your PC can do, it’s a looker, too.

Perhaps the best RPG ever made outside of Japan, The Witcher 3 is epic and all-encompassing. In it, you take control of a witcher, a kind of ronin monster hunter who takes down beasts for coin. What you don’t expect, based on that premise, are side stories about spousal abuse, class divides, and what loneliness does to a person. You can find some of video games’ best writing in this fantasy world.

RimWorld is... well, it's whatever you want it to be. A spritual successor of sorts to Dwarf Fortress, it gives you total freedom regarding what kind of community you want to build. You want to lead a tribe of cannibals that hate technology? Go ahead. You want to build a technological utopia where everyone sheds their weak flesh and goes on to live as cyborgs? Cool. Or you can do a myriad other things, like getting rich off of harvesting your prisoners' organs and selling them on the black market, joining an aristocratic space empire, or whatever else you can think of. Oh, and we haven't even talked about mods yet. Those are fun as well.

Oh look, it’s a game about watching a map change color. PC gamers love those. But where Civ lets us take turns, Crusader Kings 3 plays out in real time. And that’s not where the differences end. You won’t be working your way towards modern times here. Instead, it’s all about swords and steel and disinheriting family members (or murdering them) to ensure your heir takes all the land you’ve conquered during your tenure. There’s more court scheming and, uh, family love here than on Game of Thrones and no matter how good your intentions are, it'll all end in debauchery.

MMORPGs on PC were dominated by World of Warcraft for ages, but Final Fantasy XIV has taken the crown in recent years. Its launch was a disaster in 2010, but its revamp in 2014 was exactly what the game needed. Since then, it’s grown stronger and stronger, releasing story expansions that many consider superior to even the mainline Final Fantasy games. If you want to lose yourself for hundreds of hours, there’s another life waiting for you here in one the best MMO games ever.

What have the Romans ever done for us? They provided us with the material for some pretty great video games, for one. Total War: Rome 2 is the most spectacular way of taking control of one of antiquity's superpowers and diving into massive battles that make you feel like you're watching a movie – though neither the game nor any esixting movies are an accurate depiction of how ancient battles looked like. Choose Rome or one of her rivals, build up your empire, fight grand battles, and keep your political opponents in check with the right dose of subterfuge. You can, in fact, build Rome in a day.

Now we move on to the best FPS campaign ever created. One minute you’re a lithe future soldier, running across walls, parkour jumping, and popping heads as you go. The next you’re piloting a hulking mech and punching the metallic guts out of another giant robot. The level of inventiveness on display here is awe-inspiring and you won’t forget the time travel mechanic any time soon.

Rockstar’s western is much more than GTA with horses. Sure, it’s an open-world game where you can freely wander and mess around in-between missions, but there’s a heartfelt story underpinning it all, along with some of the most memorable video game characters – and performances – ever. The world teems with life and feels like a proper ecosystem, all of it skinnable.

If there’s a list of the best games anywhere on the internet, it’s a rule that Minecraft must be on that list. We'll not break that. It’s a cultural phenomenon, boasting over one trillion views on YouTube videos of the game. Like virtual Lego, it allows its players to go wherever their imagination takes them. People have recreated entire cities, built spaceships, and even made working calculators in it. To top it off, the specs are so forgiving that it’s a perfect laptop game, it's highly modable, and you can revisit your favorite spots thanks to specific seeds.

There aren’t as many RTS titles as there used to be in PC gaming, but maybe that’s because StarCraft II already perfected the art. Play through the story mode and every new mission throws up some fresh dynamic, some new variable, teaching you in the same way Super Mario drip feeds its mechanics. All of it is fun, but it serves one purpose: getting you ready to face other players online. Thing is, you probably never will be. High-level StarCraft players are like another species, capable of issuing hundreds of orders per minute. We’ll be over here, turtling.

You can go back and play the original Doom right now and it’s still good, but there are plenty of modern boomer shooters that are also worth your time. Doom 2016 gets a spot on this list because it took the essence of Doom and updated it for a modern audience. Heavy metal, gore, demons, and the fiery pits of Hell await.

You can always switch this one out for Fortnite, but there’s something undeniably PC about PUBG. The clumsy movement, the identical structures unceremoniously plonked around the map, the complex inventory management – you can see the game’s roots as an ARMA mod in every aspect. It also helps to have mouse aiming precision when lining up those headshots. When you’re not, ahem, hiding in a toilet and listening to the sound of stomping enemy boots, at least. Just don't think too much about the name. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds: Battlegrounds? Really?

Combining fantastic action RPG gameplay with satisfying roguelike mechanics and storytelling, and presenting it with an incredible visual style and a soundtrack fit for the gods, indie developer Supergiant Games landed a commercial and critical success with Hades. All of its elements are just perfect fits for each other with weapons that feel great to fight with, divine powers that feel awesome to unleash, and drama from the most dysfunctional family in the history of mythology that is interesting to dive into deeper. It’s also an absolute wrist-killer, but sacrifices must be made, eh?

It’s playable on Alexa and will probably come pre-installed on the brain chips of the future, but PC gaming is where Skyrim belongs. Already a beast of an RPG that you never truly finish, Skyrim’s PC mods are transformative to the experience. You can make it more pretty, add entire new questlines, and even change the mechanics of the game. That’s why Skyrim will live forever as one of the all-time greats. Todd Howard will likely also release a new edition of it every three years just because he can. And you'll buy them.

Another one where the hours simply melt away as you play for just one more turn, Civilization is essentially a game where you watch a map change color, but that’s way more exciting than it sounds. Settle cities and grow your influence through diplomacy, culture, and military might, all while trying not to get nuked by Gandhi or fending off Queen Victoria, who really wants you to be interested in a trade agreement with England.

Old-school immersive sims don’t hold up too well these days, but thankfully, Arkane Studios is carrying the torch. Inspired by games such as Thief, Dishonored 2 plonks you in a whalepunk city and tasks you with assassinating a series of targets. Using magical powers, you can teleport, turn into animals, possess people, stop time, and more. The amount of creative solutions to every encounter is mind-boggling.