Welcome to the PC Gamer Top 100—our annual list of the best games you can play right now. For the last few months, the PC Gamer team has been busy whittling down the hundreds of thousands of games available on PC; campaigning, voting and arguing until we arrived at the 100 games you’ll find below.
It’s a list designed to represent the passion of our global team of over 30 writers and editors. If you’re wondering why Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is back on the list for the first time in years, it’s because Josh made a fully animated powerpoint presentation that he delivered to the team while dressed up as a pirate. Not everyone went to those lengths to advocate for their chosen favourites, but you can be sure every pick is a game that at least a few people on staff care deeply about.
As always, the key question when creating a list of the best games is: What does it mean to be the ‘best’? Is it a canon classic—a game that can’t be ignored for its legacy to all of PC gaming? Is it an original idea, offering up something that’s never been seen before? Or, more simply, is it a finely crafted masterpiece—the pinnacle of its chosen genre? In truth, the answer is that can be any or all of the above, and so those are the criteria our scoring system is built around.
How we make the list
Ahead of the vote, the PC Gamer team is free to nominate any PC game for Top 100 voting. These nominations gave us a longlist of 300 games. Each member of the team is then asked to rate those games subjectively across three weighted categories.
Quality: How good is it? A purely personal rating of its calibre as a game. (60% of the Top 100 Score)Importance: How noteworthy is it? Its influence on other games and beyond. (20% of the Top 100 Score)Freshness: How unique is it? Its ability to stand out from other games. (20% of the Top 100 Score)
Importance and Freshness are weighted around the Top 100’s role as an annual list. Too much weighting to Importance, and the list remains stagnant each year. Too much to Freshness, and there’s little consistency. Quality remains the most important category—if we don’t think a game is actually good, it doesn’t make the Top 100.
The sum of each game’s ratings is divided by its number of voters, and then run through a few special formula—including a confidence rating that penalises games that receive too few votes—to produce the final Top 100 score.
We then make a few custom tweaks. In the interest of variety, we restrict the list to one game per series—we’ll only include multiple if we feel the games are different enough from each other to both be worth mentioning, for instance Baldur’s Gates 2 and 3. Otherwise the lower scoring games in a series are removed.
For the final step, every voter can pitch for one change to the list—promoting a game higher, or demoting it lower. Each pitch is voted on by the wider team, and if it gets a majority vote in favour, the change is made. Where that’s happened, we’ve noted the editor responsible for its new placing.
Only after all that do we arrive at the 100 games you’ll find below. We feel it’s an accurate reflection of the PC Gamer team, and who we are as gamers—our best attempt to corral our subjective, varied tastes into a list of games we wholeheartedly recommend. As always, we’d love to hear what you think—both of the list and how we make it. If you’ve got thoughts to share, email us at editors@pcgamer.com. Enjoy!
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100. Unavowed
Released: August 8, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 210.60, promoted by Robin Valentine
(Image credit: Wadjet Eye Games)
Fraser Brown, Online Editor: I’m extremely relieved that Unavowed managed to slip in at the end—though it deserves to be so much higher. This is Wadjet Eye’s best adventure game, and thus simply one of the best adventure games ever made, whether you’re an old-school point-and-click aficionado or have more modern sensibilities. A smart, pleasingly tangled supernatural story; a fascinating roster of supernatural investigators, from a hardboiled fire mage to a spirit medium with a tiny BFF, waiting to help you on your cases; clever puzzles that don’t outstay their welcome—I love it. If you’ve got an appetite for urban supernatural affairs like Dresden Files or Constantine, you’re gonna have a great time.
Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I’m a little sad that no one’s really picked up the formula laid down by Unavowed—even Wadjet itself—because it feels like a really strong case to me for how point-and-click adventures can modernise for the new era. So much of the genre is about nostalgia and throwbacks, but by bringing the best of it together with BioWare-inspired elements such as a party of companions and a story full of heavy moral choices, Unavowed feels really fresh and different.
99. Cities: Skylines
Released: August 10, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 213.12, promoted by Fraser Brown
(Image credit: Paradox)
Fraser Brown, Online Editor: The sequel has dented the brand, but the original Cities: Skylines remains a supremely impressive city builder, elevated by years of DLC and mods. It’s better than the follow up in nearly every regard—including being considerably better looking. If you’ve got a sudden craving to become a modern urban planner, there simply isn’t a better option, and I suspect this will be the case for a very long time.
Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: City builders are thriving, in part because so many developers are putting their own specific, weird or cosy twists on the genre. If you want the pure hit, though—the 100% uncut thrill of residential zoning, tax policies and traffic flow management—Cities: Skylines has spent the last decade as the undisputed king.
Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Cities: Skylines is the world’s best lesson in the incomparable power of the noble roundabout.
98. Against The Storm
Released: December 8, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 213.80, promoted by Evan Lahti
(Image credit: Hooded Horse)
Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: It strikes a perfect balance of resource-accumulation coziness (bake pies for frogs, brew beavers beer, delight your heat-loving lizards by assigning them to work in a kiln) and managing the looming stress of the storm, which pours on ever-increasing hardships that drive your animal and human villagers away or kill them outright. In a game about imperial settlements, it asks you to be thoughtful about your impact on the environment: the cost of each felled tree is felt, as nature itself resents your presence and gets more dangerous as you cut further into it.
The art is warm, effortlessly readable, and original. The structure of the game is one of the most clever I’ve seen in a roguelike—each run is one leg of an excursion into an overworld map’s fog of war. The latest DLC adds gloomy bats as a playable species, and a giant fuzzy creature-pet you need to placate by throwing resources at it.
Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: On paper, ‘roguelite citybuilder’ is my personal videogame nightmare. But Against the Storm is so devilishly moreish that I’ve struggled to put it down. Its dark and dreary vibe is surprisingly cosy, and there’s no better feeling than finally getting the blueprint for that one building you need to have your entire encampment running like a well-oiled machine.
Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Far more than a gimmick, the roguelite structure of randomised modifiers and choose-between-three-things upgrades works so well to enhance Against the Storm’s win condition. You’re not here to build a city that lasts. Your job is to satisfy your liege’s demands and get out of dodge—moving on to the next town. Whatever buildings you’re offered, whatever randomly generated threats are thrown your way, there’s always a path to victory if you’re flexible enough to use the options you’re given. In the very best runs, that victory arrives moments before the inevitable disaster—when you’ve pushed the economy and your people beyond breaking point in order to squeeze out the last few production cycles needed to finish the job.
97. Dave the Diver
Released: June 28, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 218.12
(Image credit: MINTROCKET)
Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: This quaint-seeming underwater platformer is actually a bottomless array of features and minigames. “Surely weapon upgrading will be the last feature I unlock,” you naively say to yourself before unlocking a photography system, fish farming, seahorse racing, and a multi-hour sea-people storyline. Otherwise, the over-the-top anime cutscenes (one of the DLCs introduces Godzilla) pair well with Dave’s coastal calm.
Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: Yeah, when I was creeping through a stealth section while armed guards hunted me, I asked myself “Is this game ever going to stop giving me new stuff to do?” Nope. Even the end credits has a new minigame to play.
96. Shadowrun: Dragonfall – Director’s Cut
Released: February 27, 2014 | Top 100 Score: 218.40
(Image credit: Paradox)
Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I like games where wizards and warriors go into a dungeon, avoid traps, fight monsters, and emerge with a pile of loot, and I also like games where hackers and cyborgs go into a corporation, avoid cameras, fight security guards, and emerge with a cache of data. Shadowrun: Dragonfall looks at the similarities between fantasy dungeon crawls and cyberpunk heists, takes one in each hand, and says, “Now kiss!”
The result is a turn-based RPG full of engagingly warped takes on the clichés. The dragon doesn’t demand tribute, they host a talk show and demand attention. The dwarf doesn’t craft magic swords, they code ultimate leet warez. And the hub’s not a medieval town, it’s an anarchist collective in the middle of Berlin.
95. Dusk
Released: December 10, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 218.40
(Image credit: New Blood Interactive)
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: The trailblazer of indie boomer shooters is still hard to beat after seven years and hundreds of lo-fi, movement and exploration-heavy FPSes released in its wake. Dusk remains fresh and surprising, even on repeat playthroughs. It manages breathtaking visuals (E2M4, E3M7) that once again show how art direction can trump fidelity. Dusk is also a very funny game, boasting some of the most earned jump scares in all of gaming, an aspect of the shooter that prefaced creator David Szymanski’s breakout horror game, Iron Lung.
Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I love Dusk because it looks old, but it feels new: There’s a clear reverence for the games that inspired it, but it doesn’t wallow in nostalgia the way lesser games might. The stripped-down approach to the genre is equally great. It works brilliantly well because it’s so pure—just guns, weird bad guys, clever levels, and nothing to do but shoot.
94. Metaphor: ReFantazio
Released: October 11, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 219.00
(Image credit: Sega)
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Not into Persona? I wasn’t, either, and it didn’t matter—even if you aren’t comparing it to some of Atlus’ other games, Metaphor: ReFantazio stands on its own two leather boots as an excellent JRPG. Which it shouldn’t be, because “it’s an election campaign trail” is a terrible elevator pitch for a genre that usually hinges on killing god at some point.
That still happens, but the road to get there is downright fascinating—and surprisingly thoughtful. Mind, I’d never been exposed to Atlas’ writing before, but I was always astonished at how cleverly it played around with the very serious themes it juggled. The flawed concept of utopia, the dangers of nationalism, the way people in power turn us on each other to hold onto it.
Also, you can turn into a giant fantasy mecha and hit someone with a sword very hard.
Overall, Metaphor: ReFantazio is bursting with intriguing fantasy politics, well-written characters, and a main villain I absolutely did not develop a strong crush on. Stop asking.
Fraser Brown, Online Editor: It might not be the highest-ranked JRPG on this list, but I remain convinced Metaphor is the greatest JRPG ever made, taking all the good stuff from Persona 5 and sticking it in a better game. As an added bonus: no more school.
Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Persona’s rag-tag teen shtick is losing its relatability as I barrel into my 30s, which makes me all the more grateful Metaphor exists. Fantasy, politics, and like Harvey said, a whole heaping of hot villains to love-hate. It’s shorter than a Persona game with a lot less min-maxing to stress out over, too.
Joshua Wolens, News Writer: The only videogame brave enough to just make Reinhard von Lohengramm its primary antagonist and so, by default, one of the best videogames ever made.
93. Hotline Miami
Released: October 23, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 219.20
(Image credit: Devolver Digital)
Jake Tucker, PC Gaming Show Editorial Director: Fast, brutal, and utterly hypnotic, Hotline Miami is a game that grabs you by the throat and demands attention. It’s a puzzle game at heart, with every room being a conundrum solved only through violence. You slam through doors, batter white-suited Russian gangsters with hammers (and other bits), and do everything in your power to survive in this top-down fever dream of neon, blood, and carnage. It’s twitchy, unforgiving and a total headfuck if you pay attention to the story.
All of this is threaded through with a killer soundtrack that pulses through the entire game. Each track doesn’t just accompany the violence, it feels like it drives it, surreal electronic music that amps up Hotline Miami’s grim atmosphere.
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: This OST still makes up a big chunk of my workout playlist.
92. Lethal Company
Released: October 23, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 219.40
(Image credit: Zeekerss)
Elie Gould, News Writer: Multiplayer wackiness is at an all-time high right now and that is thanks in large part to this hilarious co-op horror game. The best part? Zeekerss just gives players all the tools they need to create some zany moments and unforgettable memories and then just stands back and lets everyone get on with it.
Evan Lahti, Strategic Director: We were sprinting back to the dropship when, inches away from the door, an Eyeless Dog snatched me up in its teeth. My teammate, who had been just two meters ahead of me, was puzzled when I didn’t walk in behind him, having just heard me over prox chat seconds ago. “Uh… Evan?” He waits nine seconds for me to appear. With perfect comedic timing, the Eyeless Dog casually walks into the spaceship like it belongs there and eats my teammate.
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Turns out, positional audio might be the single best game mechanic for making you laugh—Lethal Company might have a lot of imitators, but that’s only because it was the first to recognise this immutable fact. It’s also gone and revitalised (potentially created?) a genre unto itself.
Yes, the term “friendslop” is a little derogatory, and I reckon we ought to come up with something better, but “nu-party game” doesn’t quite slide off the tongue. Besides, I could never mean anything by it. Because after playing similar games as well—including the excellent Peak—I’m just glad these indie playrooms are giving me an excuse to hang out with my mates again.
91. Microsoft Flight Simulator
Released: August 18, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 219.43
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Alright, so the 2024 edition was pretty donked up. But Flight Sim 2020’s 1:1 scale virtual Earth remains one of the most impressive technical marvels in videogames, one that’s responsible for the closest I’ve ever come to having a spiritual experience with a controller in my hands: soaring north through Italy to approach the Alps rising to meet the evening sun, and feeling firsthand how terribly small we are.
Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: It’s the rare game that feels like we haven’t quite invented the hardware powerful enough to handle it, and may not for another decade. The level of detail in the planes is simply ridiculous, with each and every switch and button and toggle modeled and completely functional, which alone puts every other sim game to shame. And once you’ve gotten over the beauty of the cockpit, you can look out the window and see, y’know, the entire planet in real time. It’s still hard to believe this sim really exists.
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90. Team Fortress 2
Released: October 10, 2007 | Top 100 Score: 219.60
(Image credit: Valve)
Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: Still the pinnacle of the class-based shooter, the world’s premiere hat simulator, and the exemplar of how to build-out and maintain a truly community-driven title. Valve continues to issue periodic updates, albeit using crowdsourced content, and every so often still surprises fans by doing things like releasing a new comic (after a “relatively short” seven-year delay). Not bad going for a game that, on October 10, will somehow be 18 years old.
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I’d be hard-pressed to find a game that’s contributed as much to internet gaming culture as Team Fortress 2—with memes that’ve been burned into the public consciousness with all the fire of a branding iron. Couple that with some of the best class shooter gameplay to ever do it, and you’ve got one fresh-baked cultural touchstone ready to go. In other words, what makes Team Fortress 2 a good videogame? Well, if it were a bad videogame, I wouldn’t be sittin’ here, discussin’ it with ya, now would I?
89. Peak
Released: June 16, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 220.20
(Image credit: Aggro Crab)
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Peak came out of nowhere and climbed to the top of my estimation—it’s basically everything you’d want out of its genre of friendship-based co-op fun. You and your friends must ascend while maintaining your stamina, naturally crafting moments of peak physical comedy via the power of positional voice chat and a physics engine that hates you. Or you can just yell at your co-workers. I’m over it, Mollie, don’t worry.
Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Help me up that damn cliff next time, Harvey!
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: No.
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: I love that Peak is adjacent to, but not mimicking, the crop of co-op friendly horror games spawned from Phasmophobia. Unlike Lethal Company or REPO, Peak is bright, inviting, and enduringly simple. Yet that doesn’t betray a level of skill and coordination needed to clear its highest peaks. You can feel the expertise of two skilled indies in Peak. Yes, it was mostly made in a month, but there’s high craft here.
88. The Sims 4
Released: September 2, 2014 | Top 100 Score: 220.20
(Image credit: EA)
Mollie Taylor, Features Producer: Other life sims have attempted to knock The Sims 4 off its throne, but it continues to be top dog. If you’re willing to look past a small loan’s worth of DLC, The Sims 4 still excels with a well-oiled simulation, and a build mode I wish more games would crib from.
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Do I think the Sims 4 deserves to be the only game of its ilk? In a just world, and given EA’s reputation for microtransactions, maybe not. But as Mollie rightly points out, nobody’s managed to compete with it. Is the genre cursed by a witch? Perhaps.
Lauren Morton, SEO Editor: The Sims 4 returns after the coup I committed against the series last year. Inzoi’s launch this year hasn’t really managed to shake The Sims 4’s stranglehold on this genre of one, so on the list it stays, just banished to the 80s. Every year there are two wolves inside me: the one who still spends dozens of hours meticulously decorating houses each year and the one who knows that each new expansion brings increasingly cursed save file bugs to the game. Maybe next year I’ll get everyone to vote in The Sims 2 now that we’ve got the Legacy Collection available.
87. Subnautica
Released: January 23, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 220.33
(Image credit: Unknown Worlds)
Elie Gould, News Writer: I can’t go any deeper than up to my shoulders in the sea so it just goes to show how much I love Subnautica for all its beautiful corals, intuitive crafting, and fun base building that I’m able to stomach the sickening thalassophobia.
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Timeless survival crafting goodness, easily gotten on a bargain these days.
Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Subnautica may be the best videogame fakeout I’ve ever encountered. An exciting sci-fi game! An intriguing exploration adventure! Some… weird criticisms of capitalism here and there? And after lulling me into lazy-eyed complacency, my first goddamn Leviathan encounter. Most of the noises I made in that moment were not components of the English language, and of the bits that were, I cannot repeat them here, but it was balls-out terror worthy of anything conjured by Frictional. Those undersea horrors were my least favorite part of the game—I get creeped out by Jacques Cousteau documentaries, so going face to face with massive, unearthly horrors lurking in the black depths of an alien world is definitely not my thing—but it lent Subnautica a sense of intensity it otherwise would’ve lacked, making it unforgettable in the process.
86. Rocket League
Released: July 7, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 220.50
(Image credit: Psyonix)
Joe Donnelly, PC Gaming Show Deputy Editor: Rocket League is the epitome of ‘easy to learn, difficult to master’. At top-level, it’s a football-aping sports sim about small cars knocking around a massive ball inside a cage. But beneath this veneer lies a game of skill, tactics, aerial mastery and astute physics manipulation, with a decade’s worth of crossover and customisation content.
Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: I have such fond memories of the times I used to get home from work and jump straight into split screen Rocket League with a friend. As Joe points out, it’s a magical combo of being easy enough to pick up and play, but still with enough depth and skill ceiling that you find yourself striving towards mastery. It’s a surprisingly hard balance to achieve with a game.
85. Thank Goodness You’re Here!
Released: August 1, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 220.80
(Image credit: Panic)
Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: Still one of the only games that has made me ugly cackle at my PC. I’m not convinced I understand what a comedy slapformer is, but I know for sure that I want more of them. Especially if Matt Berry is somehow involved. Thank Goodness You’re Here! is filled with minigames that are as unsettling as they are entertaining.
Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Thank Goodness You’re Here! is an unequivocally brilliant comedy game. Not “funny for a game” but simply funny. Phenomenal gags, lots of slapping, and a tiny man who defies the laws of reality.
Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: It’s an absurdist satire, sure, but also incredibly loving in its homage to Northern England. An absolute delight, finally beating out Jazzpunk for me as the best comedy you can play on your PC.
Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: I grew up on shows like The Goodies and The Young Ones so I thought British comedy was in my veins, but the third time Thank Goodness You’re Here! expected me to piss myself at a man who collects WWII memorabilia having to clean up chimney dust I realized it was too British even for me.
84. Halo: The Master Chief Collection
Released: December 3, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 221.00
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: It doesn’t feel like Microsoft knows what to do with Halo these days, but luckily it got one thing right: The Master Chief Collection is the definitive way to enjoy the series’ golden years. It’s a generous package too: Five superb Bungie titles plus the half-decent Halo 4, with multiplayer modes aplenty including co-op and crossplay functionality. It’s the single best way both start, and finish, the fight.
Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: Battle rifle <3
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I have to second Lincoln here, Battle Rifle indeed <3. After firmly switching to PC and not having a way to replay Halo for many years, the classic games dimmed in my memory a bit. But the old magic returned immediately when I booted up Halo: Reach on my desktop for the first time at the end of 2019. For my money, the double Scarab fight at the end of Halo 3 is the defining moment of the series, and an all-timer FPS fight.
Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I played the hell out of Halo 1—in its intended Castilian Spanish (don’t worry about it)—back when I was a kid, but I’ll be honest: I never really understood the hype. That is until pandemic lockdowns led me to return to the game and finally try to beat it solo on Legendary difficulty. It was like sharpening the whole thing to a fine point. Suddenly, facets of the design that had slid off my incredibly smooth brain like water from a duck’s back became impossible to ignore. The placement of enemies and composition of their units, the precise natures of every individual weapon, the layout of each combat encounter: it all dovetailed into something I actually enjoyed ramming my head into over and over again.
And then there’s Halo 2, which, battle rifle <3.
83. Echo Point Nova
Released: September 24, 2024| Top 100 Score: 221.00
(Image credit: Greylock Studios)
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Echo Point Nova is a sprawling open-world FPS for trickshot sickos. It’s co-op Doom for friends who’d spend entire nights trying to do cool stuff in Tony Hawk or Skate. It’s the “yes and” movement shooter unconcerned with rational speed limits and unapologetically made for a mouse. It’s the cure to boomer shooter bloat—all killer, no filler, flow state action ripped out of a reality where Tribes sold more copies than Call of Duty.
Echo Point Nova is a beautiful object that I’m continually impressed by: 1-4 player co-op that’s equal parts arena shooter and extreme sports platformer. It’s got Crackdown agility orbs. You can slap stickers on your hoverboard. There’s a modifier to turn on friendly fire, and another that makes the floor lava.
Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: You can use a grappling hook on clouds, you can hoverboard up walls, and you can blast guys with a shotgun while backflipping in first person. What else is there to say?
82. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Released: April 24, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.63
(Image credit: Kepler Interactive)
Jess Kinghorn, Hardware Writer: The isolated residents of Lumiere know their days are only ever counting down. Every year the Paintress across the sea wakes to inscribe a new number upon her monolith. If you’re that age or older, well, time’s up and you ‘gommage’, becoming nothing more than petals upon the breeze.
Staring down this end, the titular expeditioners instead choose to spend their final year of life taking the fight to the Paintress through many, many turn-based fights. The twist here is that combat features an element of timing, with perfect parries against nightmarish painted creations netting you devastating counter attacks.
Marinated in the angst of many classic console JRPGs from the early oughts, Clair Obscur wrings out its existential set up for all its worth with a cast of party members I’m actually close in age to. Between that, lively dust-ups, and world-building that wouldn’t feel out of place in a premiere YA novel, it’s little wonder this French-developed RPG has since become my whole personality.
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I don’t have enough good words to say about Clair Obscur—I could talk about its very competent and interesting spin on turn-based RPG combat, but what really hit me sideways was its story. Clair Obscur starts out a solid, intriguing jog, then breaks out into a dead sprint after the end of Act 2 that had me glued to my screen until I’d finished it.
It’s rare my opinion on a narrative flips so quickly from mild enjoyment to absolute fascination, but Clair Obscur really did just pull a magic trick on me. Except the dove in this question was a fistful of existential dread, and the magician punched me in the face after yelling “tah-dah!”
Also, you can electrocute a mime to death and steal its baguette.
Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: The most aggressively French Final Fantasy X you can play, which I mean as a complement. I don’t love it as much as some people on team—unlike Harvey, I wasn’t enamoured by its third act—but overall there’s much to praise about Clair Obscur’s design, story and characters.
Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: If I had my way, this game would be banned from the list forever just for those absolutely criminal Gestral Beach platforming sections.
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: I respect Phil’s opinion, but not Robin’s, and will be challenging him to single combat over it. The criminally terrible nature of the minigames is half of the point. All JRPGs need an optional, awfully-designed activity, like FF7 Remake’s squatting section. Just be glad we didn’t see Gustave drop it low.
81. Blue Prince
Released: April 10, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.97
(Image credit: Raw Fury)
Chris Livingston, Senior Editor: I never would have guessed there’d be a fresh take on the now-ancient “walking around a mysterious house solving a bunch of puzzles” genre—but then Blue Prince became a nearly year-long obsession for me. Its roguelite elements can be occasionally frustrating, but the depth of the mansion’s mysteries and the sheer brilliance of developer Tonda Ros’ puzzle designs made this one of my favorite games of the past, I dunno, decade?
Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: Like a fool, I went into Blue Prince expecting a short, breezy 10-or-so-hour puzzler that I could lose myself in between playing larger games. But then it just… keeps going, each mystery hinting at something deeper than I ever expected. If I have one criticism of Blue Prince it’s that, at the end of my 77 hours with the game, its late-late-late-late game puzzles became so obtuse that they wore out my patience. If I have a second criticism, it’s that the Gallery room is some spectacular bullshit. Everything else, though? Flawless. A perfectly executed mystery box that keeps unfolding in fascinating ways, with an ambience that drives you forward into its surprising twists and heartfelt story.
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80. Stellaris
Released: May 9, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 222.00
(Image credit: Paradox)
Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: Though recent DLC and support has been uneven at best, this nearly 10 year old 4X remains a wonderfully rich and dense simulation of a whole galaxy’s worth of life, culture, and inevitably war. At this point in its life, it has almost every sci-fi trope you can imagine covered, playing out like a grand and remarkably coherent mash-up of every space sci-fi series in the universe.
Fraser Brown, Online Editor: Yeah, that’s absolutely the appeal, here. Sure, it’s a great real-time 4X, but there are loads of great 4Xs—Stellaris is special because it’s like 20 great sci-fi games rolled into one. And it’s elevated even further by the incredible mods, like Star Trek: New Horizons, an absurdly huge Star Trek mod that lets you take control of a species from the show, leading them from their first warp-flight adventures to galactic conquest. Stellaris is effectively the best Star Trek game ever made.
Joshua Wolens, News Writer: I am a sentient communist rock on a quest to dominate the galaxy. Also, Stellaris is good.
79. Cult of the Lamb
Released: August 11, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 222.00
(Image credit: Devolver Digital)
Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer: Cult of the Lamb is one of those games you expect to keep you entertained for a couple of hours, but quickly becomes an all consuming entity that perfectly blends cult management and heretic slaying roguelike mechanics. There is nothing better than running your own little cult full of woodland creatures who praise the very ground you walk on.
Elie Gould, News Writer: This game makes me go non-verbal for hours, would recommend.
Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: Since the first time I saw The Wicker Man I’ve wanted to be in charge of my own pagan settlement like Lord Summerisle. Cult of the Lamb comes closest to that, only instead of Chrisopher Lee at his peak I’m an adorable sheep.
Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: There’s such a magic to the way Cult of the Lamb mashes its two genres together. In some ways, both halves are quite shallow, and by the time I was done with my original run, I left the game feeling like I’d enjoyed my time with it but there wasn’t enough depth to ever bring me back. A few months later, I had to jump back in just to check out one of the updates for a news piece… and before I knew it, I was completely hooked all over again, throwing myself at all the new post-game content.
It’s the absolute definition of a game that’s more than just the sum of its parts—the way village life and dungeon runs feed into each other makes for one of the best videogame hooks ever.
78. Total War: Warhammer 3
Released: February 17, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 222.00
(Image credit: Sega)
Jody Macgregor, Weekend/AU Editor: The joy of early Total War games was the zoom. Order a block of soldiers around, then scroll the mousewheel and watch individual soldiers charge – mindblowing 25 years ago. Warhammer gives us back that joyous spectacle, because when you zoom in it’s no longer dudes with spears, it’s a bear-rider slamming into hot pink daemons.
Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: After 620 hours (not to mention 2,000 hours with the first and second), I still find myself loading up Total War: Warhammer 3 and hopping into Immortal Empires. The joy of Total War is that every campaign is different; new early game challenges, late-game obstacles, random factions in ascendancy—it lends itself so well to repeat play. This is also helped by Creative Assembly’s continued support through DLC, but also via free updates and reworks that add entirely new features, such as Unusual Locations, or the Dwarf Deeps we got last year.
Robin Valentine, Senior Editor: I’ve never been able to get on board with Total War. Something about the way combat works is just anathema to me—I can never quite find the fun in it. And yet I’ve spent hours and hours bashing my head against it in the Total War: Warhammer games, and even bought DLCs I’ll probably never be brave enough to try.
I can’t help myself—it’s the pure authenticity of the series to the lore and history of Warhammer Fantasy that keeps me coming back despite my ineptitude. It’s an absolute feast of nostalgia for a longtime fan like myself, bringing in elements from across the decades. Not only does it now include every proper faction the tabletop game had, it dives into wonderful obscurity, resurrecting unit and army ideas from one-off campaigns, hazily remembered White Dwarf articles and even stranger sources.
There are Warhammer games I prefer to play, but I don’t think any of them can beat Total War: Warhammer for sheer density of reverence to the franchise.
77. What Remains of Edith Finch
Released: April 25, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 222.00
(Image credit: Annapurna Interactive)
Joe Donnelly, PC Gaming Show Deputy Editor: What Remains of Edith Finch arrived towards the end of the walking sim craze that swept the 2010s indie scene, but it is, for me, the pinnacle of that movement. In telling the titular character’s poignant family story, it is one of the most imaginative, creative, thoughtful, heartfelt and truly unpredictable adventures you’ll ever play.
Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: I reviewed What Remains of Edith Finch for PC Gamer back in 2017 and I absolutely stand by its 91% score. Just thinking about it now, all these years later, I still feel that knot in my gut: Such a brilliant yet powerfully sad story, made all the more sorrowful by its inevitability. Calling it a “walking simulator” is accurate but woefully inadequate. It is, as I said back then, a masterful piece of storytelling: Uplifting, devastating, and utterly unforgettable.
76. Alien: Isolation
Released: October 6, 2014 | Top 100 Score: 222.32
(Image credit: Sega)
Rich Stanton, Senior Editor: The best licensed game ever? Alien: Isolation is one of those rare examples of a game that truly ‘gets’ the source material, and its setting of Sevastopol is a brilliant slice of retro-futurist design that takes all its cues from the Nostromo while still feeling like its own place. Probably the single best piece of Alien media outside of the first two films, and also just straight-up one of the scariest things I’ve ever played.
Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: You’re 100% right when you say it ‘gets’ the source material, Rich. I remember interviewing the Creative Director, Alistair Hope, about working on the game, and it was immediately obvious both him and the team were just massive Alien fans who’d essentially pushed and lobbied to get this made at Creative Assembly. It’s still strange to think that the foremost British strategy developer made such an excellent survival horror game, but it shows what you can do when you respect and love the source material.
Joshua Wolens, News Writer: No game ever had a better save mechanic. Saving your progress in Alien: Isolation means running up to a dreadfully exposed and wonderfully lit public phone and standing there like a lemon while you wait for the machine to stop beeping at you. It’s a fantastic exercise in suspense: craning your head from side to side but unable to look behind you as you pray the xenomorph won’t turn you into lunch while you’re distracted. Perfection.
Fraser Brown, Online Editor: It took a full decade for me to finish this game because I had to keep checking out. I’m a big ol’ coward. But I kept coming back! I couldn’t help myself. Alien is the pinnacle of sci-fi horror, and Alien: Isolation is the game that captures its horrible magic the best.
75. Monster Hunter: World
Released: August 8, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 223.13
(Image credit: Capcom)
Wes Fenlon, Senior Editor: Oof, it hurts to put World here over 2025’s Wilds, but the newer game’s sublime monster-killing action can’t overcome its flaws: PC performance, lacking challenge, and promising environment systems it does practically nothing with.
Lincoln Carpenter, News Writer: While Wilds is in desperate need of a redemption arc it may never get, World is a complete package.
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: If I were stranded on a monster-infested island, this is the Monster Hunter I’d take with me.
Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: I mean, I’d probably just take my Insect Glaive… a copy of Monster Hunter World ain’t going to do much when you throw it at that hungry Tigrex lumbering towards you.
74. Cyberpunk 2077
Released: December 10, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 218.57 promoted by Ted Litchfield
(Image credit: CS Projekt)
Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: Sorry haters, I didn’t need a Netflix anime or balance patch to realize a simple truth in December 2020: Cyberpunk was always good. Sure, its many patches really made it sing, but I took the long view from the start: Many all-timer RPGs (some further down this list) were overambitious, uneven, and technically quite shit at launch. CD Projekt, you watch the streets, Troika will watch the skies.
Night City is a triumph, a union of graphical grunt and art direction that has 2077 remaining a benchmarker’s favorite. Cyberpunk’s main quest is better plotted and paced than The Witcher 3’s, while it continues CDPR’s industry-leading standard of quality and quantity for side content. The sidequest centering on a VR recreation of Christ’s Passion made out of an actual snuff film is pure Philip K. Dickian sci-fi excellence, and one of my very favorite quests in RPG history.
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: Unlike our true believer Ted here, I had the fortune of coming to Cyberpunk 2077 late—and while I’m willing to take his word for it that the game endured a harsher reception than was strictly deserved, I’m kinda glad I waited. The game I wound up playing was incredibly put together and, best of all, my car didn’t explode at random intervals. Phantom Liberty is also a masterclass in DLC, somehow managing to patch itself into the central nervous system of Night City without ruining anything.
Regardless of its jank history, Cyberpunk 2077 has been forged into an all-timer RPG that’s deservedly up there with the greats. Also, in the grim corporate future, you can go Cool/Reflex and wavedash your enemies to death.
Andy Chalk, NA News Lead: Like Harvey, I waited nearly four years before jumping into Cyberpunk 2077, and as far as I’m concerned it was the best thing I could’ve done. The game I played was brilliant: Occasionally hinky, as such massive undertakings inevitably are, but solid, steady, and alive in a way that precious few games are. The city is largely an illusion, yes, but the sensation of depth is so well done—I fast-travelled once to see what it was like, but otherwise I drove everywhere, or often just walked so I could more easily take it all in. Yeah, the future is godawful by every measure, but I could not get enough of it.
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