The top 100 PC games

Welcome to the PC Gamer Top 100—our annual list of the best games you can play right now. Every year, we look at the hundreds of thousands of PC games that are available to buy, and think, "yes, we can whittle this down into a numbered list". Hubris? Yes. A months-long crucible of heated arguments and impassioned pleas? Also yes.

More than anything, the Top 100 is designed to capture a moment in time. It's a place where the 'canon' classics of the past rub shoulders against the fresh new hotness. Where being a game that a significant portion of the team currently loves is as important as being a game that is recognised worldwide for its contributions to the medium.

It is a deeply subjective process—a way for PC Gamer's editorial team to advocate for the games they're passionate about. One member of our team has spent years attempting to get Overwatch back on the list, taking every opportunity to persuade their fellow editors to give it a chance. Not every entry required that level of dedication to earn its spot, but every pick is a game that at least a handful of our staff cares deeply about.

How we make the list

Ahead of the vote, the PC Gamer team is free to nominate any PC game for voting, giving us a longlist of over 300 games. Each member of the team is then asked to rate those games subjectively across three weighted categories:

• Quality:Is it good? A rating of the game's calibre. (60% of the Top 100 Score)
• Importance:Is it noteworthy? A rating of the game's influence. (20% of the Top 100 Score)
• Freshness:Is it unique?A rating of the game's originality. (20% of the Top 100 Score)

The weightings are designed around the Top 100's function as an annual, ever-changing list. Too much weight to Importance, and the list stagnates. Too much to Freshness, and there's no consistency year-to-year. Quality is the most important category because, ultimately, if we don't think a game is actually very good, it doesn't make the list.

The sum of each game's ratings is divided by its number of voters, and then run through a few special formulae—including a penalty for games that receive too few votes—to produce the final Top 100 Score for each game.

We then make some manual adjustments. In the interest of variety we mostly restrict the list to one game per series—only including multiple if we think the games are different enough from each other to be worth mentioning, as with Baldur's Gate 2 and Baldur's Gate 3. Otherwise, the lower scoring game in a series is removed. We also let editors pitch for a change to the list—each of which is voted on by the wider team, and only ratified if it gets majority approval.

What's left is the 100 games you find below. Some might claim it folly—attempting to wrestle the varied tastes of our editorial team into a list of games we wholeheartedly recommend. Nevertheless, we're sure that within these entries, you'll find something new to love.

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100. Deadlock

Released: TBA | Top 100 Score: 213.58

Elie Gould: I'm in no way a MOBA-lover but I sure do love Deadlock. I love its fantastically written characters, exciting and experimental game design, and its mode for dummies: Street Brawl.

Jacob Ridley: Welp, Elie has called me out. I play Deadlock for dummies, otherwise known as Street Brawl, and it's something special. A large cast of otherworldly characters keeps every round fresh. It's surprisingly accessible through excellent character, UI, and game design—a high skill ceiling, but fun all the way down. Great game, and I'm yet to even try the MOBA mode.

Elie Gould: That wasn't a call out, Jacob. I also love and play Deadlock for dummies, it rocks!

Andrea Shearon: It's me, the MOBA-lover logging in to say I've only put a handful of hours into Deadlock and already love it. I'm the reverse of Elie and not into hero shooters, but Deadlock (and Calico) have won me over.

Harvey Randall: It's also me, the person on the PC Gamer team with 360+ hours in this thing—and while I do (unfortunately, it's a character flaw) know how to play MOBAs, Deadlock is shaping up to be the best-in-class of the entire genre. Which means, as my fellows have stated, it also has an absolute ton going for it outside of just being a very good example of itself.

Valve has cooked up one of its coolest settings—a supernatural 1950s New York where barrel mimics lurk on street corners and Lovecraftian gods play at their own versions of the Grand Budapest. And while it's not yet finished, the fact it's getting record-high concurrents should tell you just how much Valve has cooked here.

Jake Tucker: I've tried and failed to get into Deadlock a few times now, and the main draw is the incredible world. MOBAs could be accused, usually, of being a little bit of a fantasy hodgepodge, but Deadlock's setting is consistent and fascinating, a tiny city for you to explore each game.

99. Death Stranding 2

Released: March 19, 2026 | Top 100 Score: 215.31

Morgan Park: I consider Death Stranding 2 the perfect kind of sequel. It builds on all of the fantastic hiking, delivery, and construction stuff that ruled about the original while rethinking what kinda sucked (combat). The addition of proper bandit camps and expanded combat options really rounds out its sandbox into something special—a contemplative walking simulator, a complex logistics game, and a memorable immersive sim. The first Death Stranding is one of my favorites, but On The Beach upstages it on all fronts. Personally, it should rate higher.

Sean Martin: Death Stranding 2 has a similar magic to Control, but where that game juxtaposes the mundanity of office life with paranormal occurrences, Death Stranding 2 actually makes logistics work ridiculously fun. I built a little truck, slapped as many batteries to the outside as I could, and drove it across Australia, even through Timefall events, which is more than any delivery man should have to deal with.

Jody Macgregor: I'm the guy who thinks the first one was better. The deliveries were more challenging, and the setting more mysterious. I loved not knowing what was going on and then slowly getting to grips with this bizarro whale-themed apocalypse. By comparison Death Stranding 2 has a bad case of the exposition dumps, with Dollman in particular basically existing just to parp out explanations in case you didn't understand the thing that literally just happened.

Fraser Brown: I loved the first one, but I refuse to spend £70 on a PC game. I have a dog to feed.

98. Total War: Warhammer 3

Released: February 17, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 216.90

Sean Martin: What we talk about when we talk about Total War: Warhammer 3 is really Immortal Empires, the colossal campaign culmination of a decade-long trilogy of games and expansions. I've played Total War almost my entire life, but Immortal Empires stands at the pinnacle of campaign gameplay—a fantastical brewing pot of fun factions and units, enough to enthral any would-be Warhammer-lover.

And it keeps growing and mutating like some endlessly ravenous troll. The Lords of the End Times expansion arrived recently and introduced the iconic period alongside a fresh endgame rework.

Jody Macgregor: One of those Lords of the End Times, the Great Necromancer Nagash, has a nailbiting campaign where basically everyone hates you and your economy is mid, but fortunately you are a gigantic bony badass (seriously, even his bootlaces look skeletal) who cannot be stopped. Your minions are constantly failing and you have to go bail them out personally, arriving like Darth Vader on the day an officer screwed up big time, then absolutely demolishing whatever opposition was causing the trouble. It's glorious.

Fraser Brown: I used to be a diehard historical Total War boy, but the work Creative Assembly has done on Warhammer has been too damn impressive. There were some bumps in the road, but the most recent string of DLCs have been incredible, culminating in one of my favourite expansions. God, Nagash is good. OK, he's actually incredibly evil. But I love this lich.

Jake Tucker: Hard same, why would I ever want to play as medieval knights smashing each other when I could play as Skaven fighting against monstrous ogres?

97. Cities: Skylines

Released: March 10, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 218.90

Fraser Brown: Still the best urban city builder around, even after all these years. The sequel is better than it was at launch, but the OG is still comfy on its city planner throne. City planners do get thrones, right? They should.

Phil Savage: There's no shortage of options if you want a focused city builder that hones in on a particular vibe or scenario. But if you want pure, maximalist city-building—the full uncut hit of zone distribution, traffic management and tourism expansion—Cities: Skylines is still the only true game in town.

96. Doom Eternal

Released: March 20, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 219.27

Morgan Park: The list of big-budget singleplayer shooters is depressingly small these days, but even if they were the hotness, I don't think Doom Eternal would have trouble keeping its FPS throne. Eternal is the ultimate marriage of acrobatics and heft, casting the Slayer as a helldiving fighter jet with dashes, jumps, but no wallrun. Though sometimes dinged for some brave difficulty spikes, this is still peak modern Doom, and a true PC shooter—as in, you really should play it with a mouse and keyboard.

Shaun Prescott: I've struggled to care much about new FPS games since Doom Eternal. It's so unrelenting, so exhausting, that I think it filled my cup forever.

95. Dwarf Fortress

Released: August 8, 2006 (Alpha) | Top 100 Score: 219.30

Lincoln Carpenter: Dwarf Fortress is one of the most distilled forms of PC gaming. Acclimating to its demands and expectations is almost a lifestyle in itself, but you're rewarded for the effort with a sprawling fantasy management sim and a deeply simulated roguelike, with systems for modeling nerve damage and geographic water drainage and civilizational ruin. It's a synthesis of conscious craft and procedural generation, an engine for a long tradition of oral storytelling, and the product of the years-long and ongoing effort of obsessive software wizards. It's an absurd achievement of fantasy simulation, and its creators only intend on doubling down.

Oh, and it regularly produces patch notes like "Made the corpses of small animals that die out of water stop teleporting"—the surest sign of quality one could ask for.

Joshua Wolens: I'm genuinely convinced Dwarf Fortress might be the best game ever made. At the very least, if I were given some sort of ambassadorial role where I had to explain the power of videogames to an alien race, DF would be the first thing I showed them.

94. Inside

Released: July 7, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 220.67

Lauren Morton: Inside is one of those bucket list puzzle games you play once and remember fondly forever. I wish I could bottle those "Oh do they want me to… Oh wow, of course," moments that you can only ever experience once in a game and only one game in a decade truly gives you. This is that game, a surreal and creepy descent into sci-fi horror that so many sidescroll puzzlers with children in imminent danger have tried to capture since. It's nigh on perfect level design: beauty and blood pressure-spiking combined.

Andy Chalk: Inside is so good. I had no idea what was going on at any given moment or what the hell it was all about when it was over, but the vibe was pure and immaculate: Horrifying yet starkly beautiful, showing just enough of its world to satisfy without surrendering the mystery, and having the balls to end inconclusively—and, frankly, incomprehensibly. Importantly, too, Inside doesn't overstay its welcome. It's a short, sharp, surreal shock that'll leave you too wondering what the hell it was all about when it's all over.

Sean Martin: If we're talking space occupied in my brain relative to hour count, Inside is one of the most memorable, atmospheric, and smart side-scrollers I've ever played.

93. BattleTech

Released: April 24, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 221.14

Evan Lahti: Mechs are metal piñatas. Their modular durability make them the most fun-to-shoot targets in video games, more than Nazi zombies, helicopters, or terrorists. Mechs die gradually: first layers of armor, then internal structure (a mech's bones, basically), then a weapon or other component. Worst-case, an ammo compartment explodes, annihilating the equipment around it. That combat pacing is a perfect template for a video game, and it works even better in the context of an XCOM-style campaign where you're a mercenary company that's scavenging parts over time and making risk-reward judgments on which contracts to accept.

Lincoln Carpenter: The real magic trick of BattleTech is Harebrained Schemes' ability to make speed and motion so crucial in a turn-based tactics game about massive, hulking war machines. A slow mech is just an easy target.

Fraser Brown: One of the worst things Paradox ever did was not let Harebrained Schemes work on another BattleTech game. The good news is that this one has so many great mods that you can make your own sequel.

Jake Tucker: One of the best turn-based strategy games ever made, the fact this didn't spawn a multi-part series or even get the level of support of several of Paradox's other titles makes me sad. There's something about the fantasy of running an intergalactic band of mechanised mercenaries that nothing else quite hits and has got me installing this game again on my second screen while writing this entry.

92. Hollow Knight: Silksong

Released: September 4, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.14

Sean Martin: Year after year, I've advocated for Hollow Knight's position on this list, but I'm more than happy to see Silksong succeed. Scaling the kingdom of Pharloom, from its abyss-shrouded depths to its towering silken spires, is a frustrating endeavour, but I'll be damned if it's not the richest action-platforming experience you'll ever have. Hollow Knight punches above its weight constantly and Silksong is no different, weaving together masterful combat, exploration, and platforming, with an infamous ability to make you delight and despair in equal measure.

Harvey Randall: Despair really is the name of the game, here—while I like Silksong for all the normal reasons (its gorgeous setting, its excellent combat, its beautiful music), part of what enraptured me about it was its animosity towards the player. Silksong is a jerk to you. Hidden benches, traps, unreasonable runbacks, poison maggot swamps and infuriating side-quests. But that acts as a counterbalance to its beauty, and gives it enough personality that I just kept coming back to it.

91. Marathon

Released: March 5, 2026 | Top 100 Score: 221.33

Rory Norris: Time and time again, Bungie has proven it's the best in the business when it comes to the simple joy of shooting virtual guns. Marathon combines impeccable weapon feel and a deep toybox with the innate tension of an extraction shooter for truly nail-biting action. Add to that its knack for environmental and mechanics design honed with Destiny's endgame, and you've got the most intricate, cerebral, unchained extraction shooter for those sickos willing to learn its ways.

Phil Savage: Arc Raiders is definitely the better game, but damn does Marathon's PvP feel good.

Issy van der Velde: Improving is an incredibly rewarding feeling. At launch I was a scared little runner, now I'm an Arachne angel of death

Jacob Ridley: My obsessive interest in this game during its first two weeks then sudden, complete drop-off to not playing it again since—not even once—should be studied by scientists.

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90. Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles

Released: September 30, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.40

Evan Lahti: "If by our deaths a single drop of noble blood should water the earth, they shall not be in vain." Compared to the 1998 original on PlayStation, Tactics' contemporary English translation is extraordinarily Shakespearean. This is Japanese, turn-based King Lear. Soft colors and art direction blend cuteness with a backstabbing medieval tale.

There are charming, dated aspects to this chesslike RPG, like the need to grind random combats to level up critical abilities like Auto-Potion, but the depth of the jobs system and a light sandbox campaign structure makes Tactics enduring. You've also gotta love the outright strangeness of some of the job classes: the Orator (there's an actual "Lecture an enemy to sleep" ability), the Calculator (target spells based on prime numbers), stealing weapons or armor outright off of enemies as a Thief—all of which resist modern notions of a damage-maxing meta in favor of playing Tactics with a touch of silliness.

89. Arc Raiders

Released: October 30, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 221.59

Rory Norris: While Tarkov might be more gnarly and Marathon more satisfying shooting, Arc Raiders is wholly unique in how it has naturally, seemingly accidentally, become a social sim. Blasting players and machines is sublime, but making friends with strangers on the surface and the chaos that ensues are among my fondest moments in any game.

Evan Lahti: Can't understate the technical achievement of the ARCs themselves from an animation and pathfinding perspective. These are the best, most dynamic and unpredictable robot enemies to ever grace a video game. Even the lowly Tick has a small chance of screwing a seasoned player in the right circumstances.

Sean Martin: For me it's the Fireflies, they're such genuine buggers, always setting me aflame at the worst possible moment. But honestly, I wouldn't change them. The wild variety of ARC machines and how they insidiously permeate each map is part of what's kept me coming back even a year later. With the Frozen Trail's addition of raid-style activities like the Fallen Emperor and Arc Frigate, I'm excited for the game's current trajectory.

88. Alien: Isolation

Released: October 6, 2014 | Top 100 Score: 221.60

Sean Martin: Peak cinema is the only way to describe Alien: Isolation. It's undeniable that the Xenomorph's elaborate AI, which stalks you through Sevastopol space station, redefined the survival-horror genre. But for me, its greater success lies in creating a game that feels exactly like its movie counterpart. We see all sorts of films made from old games, but few games made from old films, and almost none that achieve such aesthetic parity with their source material—it's a monumental achievement, and another reason to get excited for the sequel.

Issy van der Velde: 12 years later and I still scream every time the Xenomorph drops down from a vent right in front of me.

Fraser Brown: It took me a decade to finish Alien: Isolation because it simply scared the absolute shit out of me. Playing for an hour left me a sweaty, cowardly mess. Incredible game.

Joshua Wolens: They should never have given you the flamethrower. By the game's end I was using it to shoo away the xenomorph like spraying a water bottle at a stray cat.

87. Terraria

Released: May 16, 2011 | Top 100 Score: 221.70

Andrea Shearon: I often joke I'll love any game handing me a set of Legos, but Terraria is a particularly good set. I've been digging holes to hell and hacking up mutant eyeballs for well over a decade now, and I'm still not tired of it. While all of my friends were playing Minecraft, I was in my own little survival sandbox corner with Terraria. The 2D side-scroller was always more my style, and after this year's update, I'm back to regularly building NPC castles and spelunking for treasures.

Jake Tucker: I've been playing Terraria for what feels like my entire adult life, and I still find things that make me squeal with delight. The developers have a fantastic sense of what would be fun in their own game. Each and every update, including this year's surprisingly huge content pack, feels essential.

86. Overwatch

Released: August 10, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 222.00

Elie Gould: I've been gunning for Overwatch to get onto the Top 100 ever since I rocked up at PC Gamer and seeing it finally do so after a monumental 10th year is pretty special. An absolute staple of the genre, Team 4 has managed to turn the ship around with great effort from a stagnating hero shooter to an FPS game that's experimental, polished, and continues to be a hell of a lot of fun.

Rory Norris: Don't forget the monkey scientist and hamster in a wrecking ball.

Harvey Randall: I admit it—after a long time of Elie trying to get me to play Overwatch (there definitely has not been a gun to my head at any point, and I'm not saying this because there currently is one) I've got to give fair dues: Overwatch is pretty fun at the moment. It's a very competent hero shooter, and the foibles of Overwatch 2, which put me off the game in the first place, have mostly been done away with.

85. Deep Rock Galactic

Released: May 13, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 222.00

Rory Norris: Deep Rock Galactic is a rare co-op game that actually demands you work together to creatively solve problems. Each class brings unique tools to help you survive the bug-infested caves of Hoxxes IV, from a zipline to drills. That's not to mention their banter, which plays into DRG's cynical, blue collar humour.

Mix these Dwarves into a cocktail of unique, challenging enemy design, procedural level generation, and some of the most creative weapons I've seen, and it's easily the most fun I've had with the genre. Rock and stone, to the bone.

Lincoln Carpenter: Deep Rock's gameplay just has such a pleasant rhythm: Punch your way into the next procedural cave, light it up to see what you're working with, figure out how to navigate up to that delicious Morkite seam glittering above you, fight guns blazing with your backs against the wall when a swarm catches your scent, repeat. It's an enduring delight.

84. Citizen Sleeper

Released: May 5, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 221.17

Issy van der Velde: Like all great sci-fi, Citizen Sleeper uses its futuristic setting to explore a very current problem. Trapped on derelict space station the Eye and caught between a corrupt trade union, gang, and your former corporate owners, you play as a Sleeper whose mind has been digitised and put into a decaying robot body. The expensive stabilizer needed to keep from falling apart can easily be swapped for numerous real-world analogs: insulin, inhalers, hormones, antidepressants, even food and water. The fact that the need for stabilizer is the result of planned obsolescence only makes the game's parallels to our present day even more conspicuous.

I managed to carve out a nice life on the Eye despite the horrors of capitalism, and maybe that's the point—you may not change the whole world, but you can change yours.

Harvey Randall: Citizen Sleeper is one of those games that caught me at a very important time in my life—new job, new city, and big, scary changes. In the same way that I found a home in real life, I found one on Erlin's Eye: An apartment, a cat I said hello to, friends and responsibilities pushing through the industrial megastructure like green shoots.

It's also just a remarkably clever game—that journey being reflected in its mechanics, too. It slowly fades from a harsh resource management game into something more like a visual novel, and that's far from an accident.

83. FEAR

Released: October 17, 2005 | Top 100 Score: 223.09

Jake Tucker: Some shooters turn firefights from a shooting gallery into a puzzle. Those shooters are not FEAR, a shooter that turns every firefight into the coolest action sequence of all time. Shotguns blow your enemies in half, the nailgun pins them to walls and grenades turn rooms into the lobby scene from The Matrix. Behind the scenes, incredible AI and some great encounter design keep you moving forwards, but FEAR is the greatest fire-and-forget FPS there is, where the rule of cool is in charge.

Andy Chalk: FEAR was scary as hell when it was new, and that part of it has faded but it's still a powerful FPS nut-punch that'll suck the wind right out of you. Tight, looping level design, AI that'll mess you up, and some of the best videogame guns ever made deliver unsurpassed close quarters combat: The shotgun and Penetrator get all the love but for my money the hard staccato of the G2A2 assault rifle is where it's at—and now I want to replay FEAR again.

Joshua Wolens: One of the illustrious—and sadly few—games that let you pin your enemies to the wall, and the best of them.

82. Left 4 Dead 2

Released: November 20, 2009 | Top 100 Score: 223.11

Elie Gould: Left 4 Dead 2 is still a hell of a lot of fun. Perhaps it's nostalgia but I don't think any other zombie game has nailed the gruesome pleasure of killing off the undead quite like this gem. You'll still find me dragging my friends into Diescraper Redux despite being thrown from the top more times than I'd care to admit.

Phil Savage: This is a surprise inclusion for me. Left 4 Dead 2 is fine, but I'd argue Fatshark has eclipsed its brand of four-player co-op. I'd take Vermintide 2 or Darktide every time.

Harvey Randall: I've got to disagree with Phil a little bit, here—while I would personally rather play Darktide or Vermintide 2 as someone who likes a little meta-progression, there is absolutely something refreshing about the simplicity of Left 4 Dead 2. No classes, no gear, no fumbling about with equipment or meta-progression or cosmetics. You hop in and you shoot a zombie with your shotgun and that's that.

81. Grand Theft Auto 5

Released: September 17, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 225.00

Phil Savage: Yes, yes, GTA 6 is right around the corner—for consoles, at least. For now, though, GTA 5 is still well worth your attention on PC. The base game is great, but it's found life beyond that through Rockstar's own (admittedly janky, but incredibly expansive) GTA Online, as well as the extensive modding scene that encompasses everything from quick jokes to full, in-depth roleplaying server support. To this day, there's little else that rivals the chaos of GTA Online's heist missions—they're an endless generator of memorable co-op moments.

Issy van der Velde: I've spent hundreds of hours in GTA Online, mostly using it as a vehicle to catch up with friends as we resupply each other's illicit businesses and chit chat about our lives. I enjoy it as a social space, one that exists on an invite-only server, but the chaos of the public ones is too infuriating for me. No thank you, Rockstar, I don't want to try and sell millions of dollars worth of drugs while people with unstoppable flying rocket bikes blow up hours of my hard work.

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80. Monster Hunter: World

Released: August 8, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 225.33

Lincoln Carpenter: There are arguments to be made in favor of later Monster Hunter entries, but eight years after launch, World and its Iceborne expansion are—pound-for-pound—still the best encapsulation of Capcom's 20-year investment in making the most satisfying possible duels with the most charismatic possible dinosaurs. World was Monster Hunter's big budget introduction to a global market, and still feels like a celebration to match the occasion: a roster of excellent monster designs, some of the most vibrant maps in the series, and an admirable iteration of the 14 weapon types.

Sean Martin: And we all know that Insect Glaive is obviously the best of those iterations.

79. BioShock

Released: August 21, 2007 | Top 100 Score: 226.00

Jake Tucker: BioShock is still one of the finest examples of how games can build a world that feels completely alive. Rapture’s crumbling art deco halls, eerie silence and unforgettable atmosphere create a setting you never want to leave. The combat is a perfect mix of guns, powers and experimentation, while its exploration of choice, control and ideology gives the whole adventure a weight few shooters have matched. It’s not just a great FPS, it's also an FPS that lets you blast a man in the face with an assload of bees.

Issy van der Velde: That twist made me rethink the way I engage with videogames entirely.

Andy Chalk: I'm sometimes tempted to give Ken Levine a hard time for making the same game over and over, but I can't complain too much about BioShock. The shooting and the politics are fine, but Rapture itself is the star—one of the most memorable videogame locales I've ever had the pleasure of exploring. I tend to be lukewarm on direct sequels but this is a notable exception: Tell me we're going back underwater to make sure Andrew Ryan's still dead and you can just have my money.

Sean Martin: Just a shame BioShock 2 is the better game, really. The more you learn about Rapture, the more you realise the city's story is best told through the perspective (and power fantasy) of a Big Daddy, not some dude who didn't even live there.

Jake Tucker: BioShock 2 is fine, but it struggles to justify its existence alongside the original. Rapture feels less mysterious the second time around, its philosophical ambitions are less compelling, and the story lacks the original’s devastating twists. Playing as a Big Daddy is fun, but familiarity ultimately diminishes the magic.

Issy van der Velde: I agree with both Jake and Sean here. The sequel lacks the wonder of the original, but it feels so much better to actually play. So, what do we value more? The story and immersion, or how it feels to blast splicers while dual wielding plasmids and a rivet gun?

Jake Tucker: Bioshock is on the top 100 list, and Bioshock 2 isn't, so…

Joshua Wolens: BioShock 2 is a game that conjures an entirely new, apparently vitally important character out of thin air just so it can do horseshoe theory with her and Andrew Ryan. But oh well, both 1 and 2 are epigones to the true greats: System Shock 1 and 2, which did everything the B'Shocks did but better.

78. Frostpunk

Released: April 24, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 226.17

Sean Martin: I have just over 50 hours in Frostpunk, which is a hilariously short time for a game that's lived rent-free in my head for the past eight years. Though the city-building genre continues to endlessly innovate, Frostpunk's atmosphere and narrative leave an indelible mark, as you try to make good choices (and often don't) to shepherd your city through an icy apocalypse. It's not a game I'd hop into for fun, but it will etch itself into you forever… why am I recommending this, again?

Jake Tucker: The apex of the "failing is fun" genre, because you will fail in Frostpunk, no matter how hard you try. God, it's compelling though.

77. Destiny 2

Released: October 24, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 226.43

Phil Savage: This year Destiny 2 ceased updates. It's no longer a live-service game. What we're left with, then, is arguably the best version of Bungie's shooter we've had in years. The final update was a triumph, removing the FOMO and seasonal uncertainty that has haunted Destiny 2 throughout its life. Now you get to focus on what was always the most important thing: exceptional gunplay, enjoyable buildcrafting and some of the most impeccably designed combat encounters and missions around. Destiny 2 is dead; long live Destiny 2.

Lincoln Carpenter: I hope I'm still this fun after I'm dead.

Sean Martin: There might be life left in it yet, too, with the campaign and raid content being unvaulted. Dare I hope for Destiny 3? (I daren't).

Fraser Brown: The best shooting in the worst game. I hope Destiny 2 sticks around forever because I enjoy seeing my colleagues having their hearts broken over and over again. I'm an awful person.

76. Max Payne 2

Released: October 14, 2003 | Top 100 Score: 226.50

Andy Chalk: This is peak Remedy: Max Payne 2 goes for full pathos with a twisting tale of men and women clinging to each other for survival, purpose, and love as bullets scream, bombs blast, and blood flows from bodies broken like a weak man's dreams. Max's NYC is a perfect arena for balletic battles and Max Payne 2 packs them with guns, goons, and the poetic movement of bullet-time slo-mo. But it's the inescapable tragedy of its heroes and villains that make it all so unforgettable.

75. Yakuza 0

Released: August 1, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 226.67

Shaun Prescott: There will never be agreement on which Yakuza game is the best, but there's something close to a consensus that Yakuza 0 is where you should start. This is the instalment that really took Ryu Ga Gotoku's longrunning Japanese crime melodrama to the western masses, not least because you don't need any knowledge of the other (checks Wikipedia) eight mainline games. RGG's commingling of gangster movie, Lynchian surrealism and goofy sentimentality is on full display here, and the combat is still sublime. Plus: karaoke rules.

Jody Macgregor: Karaoke totally rules. So do Kamarocho and Sotenbori, Yakuza 0's twin settings. They're so true to life I was able to navigate Kabukichō and Dōtonbori, the real places they're based on, the first time I visited them. (Though Sotenbori's map is flipped upside-down.) Playing Yakuza 0 makes them feel like home, like places you could imagine yourself living. And doing karaoke in.

Lauren Morton: Sorry to the "release order" defenders but Shaun is right that Yakuza 0 is the best place to begin this series if you want to truly fall in love with it. The early games are mired in early '00s cynicism, which is fine, but the camp and glamor of the '80s makes the Yakuza cast really sing. Literally, because again, karaoke.

74. The Walking Dead

Released: April 24, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 226.67

Jody Macgregor: I replayed Telltale's zombie dilemma agoniser this year. It's even better than I remembered. The opening's so strong—from being driven to prison by an oblivious cop who doesn't notice the zombie outbreak behind you to finding eight-year-old Clementine and realising you'll need to depend on a group of survivors to protect her, all in episode one.

Some choices are easier than others, but no matter what you do she's there, soaking up everything, making you want to be a better person even as the world collapses.

I cried, again.

Harvey Randall: As a pure videogame,I don't think The Walking Dead has aged all too well—especially given the gloss of its unique mechanics has faded, given both time and especially games that've done branching narrative paths better since. Laborious walkaround sections and choices that stop mattering an episode and a half later don't help matters.

However, I also have a reverence for the classics—and The Walking Dead is absolutely a brilliant story, one that really furthered the cause and popularity of strong narrative choices in videogames, even if it didn't live up to its own lofty ideals when viewed as an entire package. I still get choked up by thinking about Lee's final moments, and thus I cannot say it shouldn't be here.

Fraser Brown: I'm in the midst of a replay right now, and unlike Harvey I actually think it has aged really well. Its mechanics were never particularly novel—it was always about the presentation and the characters, and nothing has changed in that regard. The first season remains the greatest, but there's plenty to love in the sequels too.

Joshua Wolens: Keep that hair short.

73. Guild Wars 2

Released: August 28, 2012 | Top 100 Score: 227.25

Phil Savage: Guild Wars 2 is secretly the best live service game ever made. No FOMO, no desperate pleas for engagement—just a steady drip of new stuff to do. 14 years into its life, and it's absolutely full of things to discover and chase, whether that's filling out your collection of mounts and new traversal options, testing new builds, or unlocking new fits to step up your fashion game. Everything ArenaNet adds stays relevant—the game's horizontal progression ensures every map remains populated and worth playing in. It's the MMO for people who don't have time for MMOs.

Fraser Brown: I play too many live service games, and Phil is spot on. I took a hiatus of nearly a decade, but then Phil dragged me back to Tyria, and I'm so glad he did. It's the ultimate MMO toybox, with so many incredible distractions, but with this genuinely fantastic core loop holding it all together.

Lauren Morton: Guild Wars 2 invented the live service schtick of blowing up and recreating your game map years before anyone else attempted it. Old Lion's arch? I was there. I've been a Guild Wars girl since 2006 in the original and it's genuinely incredible how this series continues to innovate the genre more than its splashier competitors do.

72. System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster

Released: June 26, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 227.52

Joshua Wolens: The trailblazer, the GOAT, the original and best. System Shock 2 set a standard for countless videogames that followed since, and it's better than nearly all of them. Every new playthrough invites you to try something a little different and thereby reveals something new. My last playthrough was as a psychic operative, absolutely marveling at the number and strangeness of the skills that were available to me. Then the game just let me turn invisible by the end, which was maybe a touch broken, sure.

Andy Chalk: Activision pours hundreds of millions of dollars and worker-hours into barfing up a new Call of Duty retread every year, yet somehow a quarter-century ago a few dozen guys in a cash-stripped studio were able to create a game that remains peak immsim to this very day, and I think that really says something about the current state of the videogame industry. Which is perhaps not the point of this list but god dammit, someone has to say it.

Ted Litchfield: I've got to go hater mode (more contrarian) here, and I'm pretty sure I said the same thing in last year's Top 100: I think Nightdive's 'Shock 1 remake is a better starting point for someone new to the series or coming from BioShock.

I love System Shock 2 to bits, but even with the remaster, it's a less approachable, more prickly game. You can still soft lock yourself on the critical path. Its RPG system is just Kinda Weird. The 'Shock 1 remake is no less complex or deep, but far less obtuse. Love 'em both, though.

71. Dispatch

Released: October 22, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 228.00

Fraser Brown: A brilliant evolution of the Telltale-style adventure game, Dispatch strips out a lot of the point-and-click holdovers that never quite fit the format, leaving behind incredibly tight storytelling with impressive production values. This is one of the best superhero cartoons ever made, essentially.

Jody Macgregor: I enjoyed the dispatching minigame, where you choose which problems to assign your B-list heroes and pray sending the guy with fire powers to put out a fire isn't a dumb idea, but I'm not sure it's essential to the game's success. Dispatch is proof Telltale was right. Big decisions, quicktime events, engaging writing, and solid performances are enough to make a brilliant videogame on their own. (And a reliable release schedule that made its episodes part of the conversation rather than a reason to wait.)

Jake Tucker: Dispatch is one of the rare games where the comedy actually makes me laugh.

Harvey Randall: Dispatch is just so good—it feels like the platonic ideal of what a classic-style Telltale game was always going for. A playable TV show. And it's helped by the fact that there's actually a pretty solid videogame inside all of that! One which I wish had more impact on the central yarn itself, but hey.

Mecha-Man is also just a really good and appealing superhero. Everything about Robert's characterisation is spot-on, from his sad, crappy little apartment with a plastic chair in the middle of it to his biting wit. Dispatch is a spectacularly-written story that manages to be hilarious without getting overly quippy or irreverent about its own genre.

Jacob Ridley: One of the best new games to play on Steam Deck, or a handheld gaming PC of your choosing. Also, there is a clear wrong choice for romance in this game, but you can tell how broken we all are by how many of us make it.

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70. Thief Gold

Released: November 30, 1998 | Top 100 Score: 228.15

Jody Macgregor: Variety made Thief the ultimate stealth game. The Gold edition gives you 15 missions covering burglary, jailbreak, and a trip through another dimension to rob a god. Your opponents might be simple guards, terrifying undead, or lizards burping toxic gas.

Later stealth games focused on a more manageable number of levels and guard types, but constantly having to alter your tactics made Thief a fascinating puzzlebox. You were never sure whether you'd be dealing with an angry wizard or some drunk in a lopsided helmet.

Andy Chalk: Some say Thief 2 is the better game but for my money Looking Glass got it right the first time: Gold is where it's at. Garrett's adventures take him everywhere (and the more fantasy-flavored monster missions are great, dammit), but the game's singular focus on stealth never changes, and that's what makes it so brilliant: You really are a thief. It took me a few frustrating tries before I finally clicked with what Thief was doing, but once I did I never looked back.

Ted Litchfield: If you've gone almost 30 years without playing Thief, it actually won't hurt you to wait a little bit longer at this point: Nightdive's upcoming remaster is currently my single most anticipated game (see also entry 72, the System Shock 2 remaster).

Joshua Wolens: I have been stuck in the Downwind Thieves' Guild tunnels for 4,679 days. Send aid.

Ted Litchfield: You just gotta go left, then right, then left again. Past the whistling guard. Ignore the underground hut. Play a game of roulette. Collect the Royal Crescent. Backtrack all the way back to the beginning of the level. You should be good.

69. Satisfactory

Released: September 10, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 228.17

Jake Tucker: Satisfactory is the perfect co-op game. Exploring its alien landscapes, discovering new resources and slowly turning a messy outpost into a perfectly tuned factory is endlessly satisfying. With friends or alone even gargantuan projects become a series of tiny tasks, and the joy comes from those small breakthroughs, whether finding a better route for your conveyor belts or shaving seconds off production. It’s a game about creativity and curiosity and it rewards both. It's also a game about making your friends do the stuff you don't want to do so you can spend hours optimising a power grid.

68. Slay the Spire 2

Released: March 5, 2026 | Top 100 Score: 228.67

Evan Lahti: Like styles of dance, each of Slay the Spire 2's five characters has a rhythm. The Silent feels like speedy tap: high-volume, lower-damage tiny knives and an emphasis on deck turnover. The Regent loads stars methodically like cosmic cartridges, then expends them in dramatic flourishes. Ironclad is reckless and brutal, shrugging off self-injury if it means pulling off a coup de grâce. The Necrobinder stores block like blubber on their bony hand. Each run is a set of dance steps you haven't seen before, a blend of improvisation and routine.

Harvey Randall: Slay the Spire 2 is just broadly better than its predecessor, which is a hard thing to do when you're trying to one-up the videogame that made the roguelike deckbuilder (a genre so ubiquitous it's become exhausting) a thing. I especially love the improvement from boss relics to Ancient Relics, which have gone from "pick whatever gives you energy" to a legitimately interesting set of choices. Vaaku take the wheel!

67. Cyberpunk 2077

Released: December 10, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 229.01

Sean Martin: It's funny to think a mere six years ago, one of the most anticipated RPGs ever, Cyberpunk 2077, launched as a buggy, undercooked mess, revealing its gameplay trailers were effectively lies. It's come a long way since then. With the 2.0 update and its impeccable Phantom Liberty DLC, Cyberpunk completed its comeback arc in 2023, cementing itself as another CDPR classic.

Morgan Park: While The Witcher will always be closer to my heart, Cyberpunk 2077 has grown into my favorite CDPR game. This is what I always wished Grand Theft Auto was like.

Harvey Randall: I came to Cyberpunk 2077 very late, and rather than being punished for my tardiness, I was rewarded with what has become one of the best open-world RPGs out there. It might not've started that way, but it certainly ended up there, so let this be a lesson: Always procrastinate. Yep, that's definitely the takeaway.

Issy van der Velde: If CDPR could just fix that one visual bug that keeps the ballistic coprocessor augment showing in first-person though that'd be great.

Joshua Wolens: Jonathan Silverhand is my best friend. Oh, he nuked a city? He nuked a city, did he? Whatever. Like you're perfect.

Andy Chalk: I'm like the Harv: I didn't touch Cyberpunk 2077 until 2024, after the release of Phantom Liberty, so I missed all the early-day shenanigans. What I got instead was a city I could believe in, filled with people I cared about and impossible choices I'll never be fully sure of. I betrayed an honourable man for a murderous fanatic—and worse, I'd probably do it again.

Ted Litchfield: I liked it in 2020 when everybody was still really weird and mean about it, beyond reasonable critiques of the glitches and stuff. I saw some very earnest, heated discussion on Twitter about whether it was anticapitalist enough. Pepperidge Farms remembers.

66. StarCraft 2

Released: July 27, 2010 | Top 100 Score: 229.33

Jake Tucker: The gold standard of RTS games, Starcraft 2 is a tightly balanced competitive strategy game that nothing else in the genre has ever quite matched. It's a game where every split-second decision matters, with the three completely different factions coming together to offer a competitive depth that felt unreal at the time. Whether you’re executing a flawless build order, surviving a desperate defence or outthinking an opponent in the late game, every victory feels earned. Starcraft 2 feels like Chess except all of the pieces are blowing each other up.

65. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor

Released: September 17, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 229.50

Rory Norris: I love Vampire Survivors, but Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has perfected the genre with its infusion of the dwarves. Crucially, it avoids the mindlessness of most auto-shooter Survivor-likes once you become reasonably equipped—that novelty wears thin fast. In spite of stages being procedurally generated, they escape becoming a forgettable backdrop thanks to your ability to mine the environment, creating escape routes or kill zones on the fly.

Likewise, borrowing the main game's creative enemies makes each one a fun hazard to untangle while you're running around passively firing lasers, shotgun blasts, and lobbing grenades every half second.

Then there's the dwarves themselves, who have maintained their wit and unique kits in the transition. There's even a brand-new dwarve who rides a drill equipped with flame-throwing exhausts, mines, and more. That's rad.

Jake Tucker: This game has, since it launched into early access, been the reason I take my Steam Deck on every work trip and holiday. It's truly incredible and the addition of weapon customisation and mining creates a smart twist on the usual Survivors-like formula.

64. Spelunky 2

Released: September 29, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 229.61

Evan Lahti: Criminally underplayed, Spelunky 2 rewards two types of platformer player. First, it's a rich 2D game about falling, jumping, and avoiding teleporting Egyptian crocmen. The slipperiness and inertia of the physics system is grounded and simulation-y, but promotes uncertainty, timing, and movement tech. Second, it's a roguelike that rewards replay and discovery: you can beat Spelunky 2 a dozen different official and unofficial ways, from finding the backdoor into the City of Gold to escorting a fragile purple eggplant past multiple angry deities, or by completing every stage of "The Chain," an 8-step scavenger hunt across the game for special artifacts that unlock a 94-level, cosmic post-finale-finale. But equally it's a game you can play with your kid, ignoring all of that eternity nonsense, teaming up in co-op to rob the shopkeeper so you can become jetpacking Indiana Jones.

Issy van der Velde: I watched my housemate do all of the above because I was too rubbish at the game to do it all myself.

63. Alan Wake 2

Released: October 27, 2023 | Top 100 Score: 230.27

Elie Gould: This sets a high bar for horror games. Not because it's massively scary or contains particularly icky monsters but because it boldly expanded on what a horror game is. It stepped out of the usual bounds of the genre to give us rock opera, a mind-bending interactive plot, and the talkshow host Mr. Door alongside a brilliant example of crime fiction. Horror games can sometimes fall victim to cliché—Alan Wake 2 does not, which is why it's one of the best.

Rory Norris: It's one of the most creative, artistically literate games I've ever played, horror or otherwise. It's bold, both in its intertwining narrative between a tortured writer and a troubled detective, and in how it presents it to us—stunning sets, live-action cutscenes or, as Elie mentions, a sudden dance break.

62. Vampire Survivors

Released: October 20, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 230.40

Elie Gould: I don't know what poncle baked into Vampire Survivors because once you start up a run it's almost impossible to put down. It may have something to do with its perfect roguelike loop, amazing soundtrack, and perhaps my own hubris that all I need is one more run to finally best The Director. What's more, we've also got the even more impressive Ode to Castlevania DLC, which adds 40 new weapons and a monstrous map that I almost always get lost in.

Fraser Brown: Vampire Survivors singlehandedly justified my purchase of a Steam Deck, and then proceeded to keep me awake night after night. Other bullet heavens have come along with fancy new ideas, but the OG is undefeated.

61. Stalker: Call of Prypiat – Enhanced Edition

Released: May 20, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 230.55

Joshua Wolens: I reckon 2027 might finally be Stalker 2's year, but for now, you still can't do much better than Call of Prypiat—the first game in the series that felt like it actually came together as a game. Shadow of Chornobyl is an ambitious Eurojank classic and Clear Sky has its charm, but it took until CoP for all Stalker's systems, from factions to sidequests to mods to artifacts, to mesh into the shooter-RPG-horror hybrid we all know and love. And it's still janky, thank god.

Andy Chalk: My heart will always belong to Shadow of Chornobyl—being the first always carries extra weight with me—but yeah, if you're going to play any one game from the OG Stalker trilogy (and you should, GSC's ambition was virtually boundless and that they were basically able to realize it is nothing short of remarkable), Call of Prypiat is it: Weird, wild, and janky enough to give you the full ride without forcing you to look up config file tweaks on GameFAQs.

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60. Kerbal Space Program

Released: April 27, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 230.80

Phil Savage: Whether or not you think Kerbal Space Program is the best PC game, a good argument can be made for it being the most PC game. It's a bit nerdy, a bit janky, and it does something that no big-budget, triple-A videogame can match. Its vision of space shuttle tinkering is inherently satisfying and absurdly deep. And, of course, it has built a dedicated community covering everything from tutorials to modding—letting you define exactly the experience you want. A true win for the spirit of PC gaming.

Lincoln Carpenter: There truly is no kind of gaming pride that's comparable to completing a successful Kerbal moon landing and return flight, knowing that all the complicated vehicle stages, flight plans, and delta burns were designed and executed by you and you alone. Great way to give yourself lasting delusions about how much you could contribute to an actual space program.

59. Caves of Qud

Released: December 5, 2024 | Top 100 Score: 230.86

Lincoln Carpenter: We toss the word "fever dream" around a lot, but the warped, time-wracked world of Caves of Qud's retrofuturist science fantasy is perhaps the term's most deserving use case. Qud's systems and simulational mechanics are as dense and arcane as its deliciously indulgent prose, which together create a brain-boiling sense that—across the long expanse of time—the idea of something as mundane as a chair has become as mutated and malleable as your many-limbed ape-man or cyborg gunslinger will prove to be by the end of a run. Live and drink.

Wes Fenlon: It turns out that mixing the primordial essence of computer games—deeply systemic roguelikes like Rogue and NetHack—with writing that channels verbose sci-fi lit and '70s tabletop RPGs was a potent combination nobody had dared dream of before. Maybe because pulling it off would take, like, 15 years. These guys were just crazy enough to do it.

58. Hades

Released: September 17, 2020 | Top 100 Score: 231.60

Jody Macgregor: Hades does lots of things right. Responsive controls, cleverly tweaked Greek mythology, outstanding music, writing and performances both on point—but none of that wouldn't matter if it weren't for God Mode.

This simple toggle enables 20% damage reduction, which goes up by 2% each time you die so it naturally plateaus at your skill level. That one little option is the reason Hades is the roguelite everyone's partners and kids got into, and got to see all the other stuff it does so well.

Harvey Randall: Gorgeous artwork, solid roguelike design, some legitimately impressive narrative witchcraft—and let us not forget, Darren Freaking (note: not his actual middle name) Korb on the soundtrack. Supergiant Games just makes some of the prettiest, nicest-sounding mastercrafts in the business. And while I've tried to get Hades 2 on this goddamn list for ages (tried, and failed) I'm glad that Hades 1 still gets its day.

57. Stellaris

Released: May 9, 2016 | Top 100 Score: 231.75

Fraser Brown: Stellaris is all the sci-fi games rolled into one elaborate 4X. Robot uprisings, planet-consuming parasitic aliens, weird cosmic deities, clone armies—every base is covered. And all this amounts to a lot more than set dressing, with each sci-fi trope capable of dramatically changing the strategies you have available to you, along with the challenges you'll face. There's potentially thousands of hours of game in here, especially if you start delving into the overhaul mods, turning it into, for example, the best Star Trek 4X.

Sean Martin: Whenever my cravings for sci-fi 4X see my reinstall Stellaris, I almost always find myself putting in another 30 or more hours—it's genuinely terrifying how expansive it is, a vast universe of content beckoning me to click that end turn button just one more time.

56. Nier: Automata

Released: March 17, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 232.00

Phil Savage: Existential philosophy, bullet-hell infused action-RPG combat, and hot androids, all wrapped up in a beautifully melancholy package. Nier: Automata is a singular thing, weird and Japanese in a way that ensures it sticks in the memory long after its credits roll... And then roll... And then roll again a few more times. Each of its playthroughs gives you a new part of the story—a new piece of the puzzle, letting you hop between protagonists on a lasting journey towards tragedy, heartbreak and, ultimately, hope.

Wes Fenlon: Now that there's a complete mod for inserting the superior Papa Nier into Automata's predecessor, Nier Gestalt, I recommend playing it too; you can see all the ideas creator Yoko Taro was playing with in terms of multiple endings and genre-hopping in a rougher, but still very compelling, form. And the music's even better.

55. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege

Released: December 1, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 232.00

Morgan Park: Rainbow Six Siege is firmly an elderly live service game at this point, but it's still the crunchiest, most dynamic competitive FPS around. It's a game of quirks—granular destruction, complex gadget interactions, and unforgiving lethality—but that's exactly why nobody has managed to usurp it in almost 11 years. I don't play as much as I used to, but that has more to do with my mental health than its strength as a shooter.

Rory Norris: Nothing compares to miraculously winning a 1v5 while your team chants 'clutch or kick' down the mic.

Jake Tucker: I've resigned my Rainbow Six commission and slunk off to the retirement home at this point, but Siege is the rare live service game that's managed to keep the original spirit alive even after all of these years. The destruction adds a fun element that I don't think any other shooter has quite reached.

54. Prey

Released: May 4, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 232.08

Jody Macgregor: Playing System Shock we dreamed of a game like it but more fully realized, a complete space you could explore inside and out. Prey is that, complete with zero-gravity walks outside its spooky half-abandoned space station.

It's also complete in that every single member of its crew can be found, even if a lot of them are dead. You look them up in the database, find their tracking signal, then hunt them down somewhere in its expanse. They may well have been killed by shapeshifting shadow aliens, but they'll be there, and that sense of a real lived-in place you just get to roam about is amazing. You can even find the character sheets from the crew's D&D game.

Also you can learn alien powers then use them to transform into a mug.

Andy Chalk: It bothers me a little bit that we've ranked Prey higher than System Shock 2, even though I mostly agree with it. It's exactly as Jody said: System Shock but newer, deeper, smarter, and hotter. So what went wrong? Why wasn't it a smash hit? Why isn't Arkane flying high with unlimited budgets and creative freedom? I will never understand: Bethesda saddling it with the title of a mid shooter from a decade earlier was baffling and idiotic, sure, but bad branding can't be the whole story.

It's all academic now, I suppose. But while it's too late for Prey or Arkane, it's not too late for you: This is a phenomenal game, a true spiritual successor done right, and you should play it.

53. Hunt: Showdown 1896

Released: August 27, 2019 | Top 100 Score: 232.11

Evan Lahti: A cerebral shooter that rewards underappreciated skills: spatial thinking, interpreting NPC body language, listening, deception. This sort of thing happened every night when I mainlined Hunt from 2021-2023: you watch your opponent vanish into a field of 10-foot-high corn stalks. Your mind flashes with a minor algebraic epiphany like that A Beautiful Mind meme, and you blind fire your Berthier 1892 bolt action into the corn. From the husks, a "AHHHH-UHHH" death cry reminds you that having instincts is three times more badass than having aim.

52. Sid Meier's Civilization 5

Released: September 23, 2010 | Top 100 Score: 233.14

Tyler Wilde: Civ 5 and Civ 6 are genuinely neck-and-neck for me. I enjoy the creative opportunities of Civ 6's more elaborate city building, but Civ 5's more wargamey art gives it a weight that the later, more cheerful games are wanting.

Jake Tucker: "What's your favourite Civilization" is a question up there with "do you prefer Alien or Aliens," but for my money the best is 5, which makes combat more strategic but shuns a lot of the complexity of 6.

Fraser Brown: If we must pick a Civ, we could do worse than Civ 5. But the series feels like it ran out of steam a long time ago. Firaxis 4Xs really peaked with Alpha Centauri, possibly the greatest 4X of all time.

51. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2

Released: February 8, 2005 | Top 100 Score: 233.41

Ted Litchfield: Before a recent replay, I was worried KotOR 2 might not hold up, that my memories were sweeter than the actual game. Nah, it still whips. Best Star Wars game 22 years running. Unbeatable sci-fi atmosphere distinct to anything else in Star Wars, while still being very Star Wars. Everyone praises the characters and story⁠—shout out to women's wrongs queen, Kreia⁠—but KotOR 2 has surprisingly fun buildcrafting. It's an uneven, easy RPG combat-wise, but a fun one with way more depth than it gets credit for.

Sean Martin: KotOR 2 is required reading from my perspective. If you want to understand BioWare and where Mass Effect came from, you play KotOR, but if you want to know about Obsidian and see the seeds of Fallout: New Vegas's brilliance, you play The Sith Lords. It's the quintessential Empire Strikes Back of gaming, because it's Star Wars, yes, but also because it's the better, darker second instalment.

Fraser Brown: KotOR 2 is a philosophy class where you occasionally get to muck around with lightsabers and gaslight your companions. It rules.

Joshua Wolens: I fear I will never again love an RPG companion as much as I love my effective altruist grandma.

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50. What Remains of Edith Finch

Released: April 25, 2017 | Top 100 Score: 233.83

Andy Chalk: What Remains of Edith Finch is a walking simulator about family, loss, and understanding that will rip your heart out of your chest and make you look at it, at least twice. Maybe that sounds like the kind of experience you're not interested in, and that's fair: Nearly 10 years after I awarded it a 91% review score, I still feel it in my gut. Do you want that? Edith Finch will give it to you. I get it if you don't. But man, what a story. What an experience.

Harvey Randall: One of the only games that launched a thousand video essays to well and truly deserve that level of introspection. I'm a touch down on "walking simulators", but I think Edith Finch does enough interesting stuff with interactivity to warrant mercy from me. Videogames can tell such powerful stories because of how we interact with them.

49. Persona 5 Royal

Released: October 21, 2022 | Top 100 Score: 233.84

Phil Savage: Achingly stylish from head to toe, Persona 5 propelled Atlus to JRPG superstardom. And for good reason: it looks and plays like nothing else around, its UI coming from an alternate dimension where form and function aren't enemies. As much as I love Persona 4's rural vibes and Metaphor: ReFantazio's bold, nuanced story, Persona 5 is Atlus at the height of its powers, everything from combat to dungeon design to characters to soundtrack coming together to create an aesthetic marvel. If you only have 100+ hours to dedicate to one JRPG, make it this one.

Andrea Shearon: That's cool and all, but I still think Metaphor eats its lunch.

Sean Martin: I feel like Metaphor has most of the same problems Persona 5 does: repetitive dungeons and samey weakness-based combat, though its battle music does have a monk chant-rapping in esperanto, which is definitely a point in its favour. Oh, and Hulkenberg of course.

Joshua Wolens: By Hulkenberg he means Heismay.

Sean Martin: Heismay, too. I love my bat shinobi.

48. Return of the Obra Dinn

Released: October 18, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 234.00

Sean Martin: It's easy to forget information games (also wonderfully known as 'Metroidbrainias') exist, but they account for three entries in our Top 100 this year: Outer Wilds, Blue Prince, and one of the genre's progenitors, Return of the Obra Dinn. This short shipboard detective game sees you exploring a mysteriously empty vessel and accounting for the grizzly fates of its 51 missing souls. Obra Dinn's greatest trick, besides its memorable atmosphere, is its information sandbox, letting you form your own deductions free from any tiresome railroading.

Phil Savage: I had never heard the term 'Metroidbrainia' before and I immediately hate it. I'm adding it to the list of banned terms in PC Gamer's style guide immediately. Still, Obra Dinn rules, whatever terrible genre name you decide to saddle it with.

Wes Fenlon: Borderline criminal Obra Dinn has slipped this far down the list, but compared to many of the other games in the Top 100 it's an experience that you can really only have once. The 1-bit presentation is so striking, and the process of assembling scraps of knowledge into a complete portrait of the vessel's doom, will be with me forever.

47. Abiotic Factor

Released: July 22, 2025 | Top 100 Score: 234.00

Evan Lahti: It's Half-Life 1 but you and your buddies craft varieties of alien soup that you pour into each other's mouths. Despite this inspiration it's one of the most original survival games in years, a portal-hopping sci-fi adventure where you break desktop computers for crafting materials. Why aren't 40 million people playing this?

Phil Savage: I'm a survival game sceptic, but Abiotic Factor won me over effortlessly. It's got all the standard crafting and survival tropes, but centres them perfectly around its mad science theme. Portals to alien worlds, incredibly weird tech, an extradimensional entity that takes the form of a crawling office worker, asking you to put coffee in his coffee hole. It's all here.

Andrea Shearon: I'm a survival crafting sicko—name it and I've played it—but nothing hits like Abiotic Factor. It's such a good homage to Half-Life, and I'm still impressed by its effortless transitions between goofy, slapstick predicaments to white-knuckle horror. I'll never forget my first encounter with the Leyak. Oh how quickly "hey, do you see that thing?" turned into frantic screaming.

46. Undertale

Released: September 15, 2015 | Top 100 Score: 234.05

Ted Litchfield: Buried under calcified strata of memes and "fandom" lies a brilliant little gem of a game, one that would mess around with your save files to break the fourth wall before it was cool. Undertale built an entire battle system only to make you feel like a monster for using it. It has a wonderfully heartfelt story and memorable cast that only become more meaningful, more dear with the possibility of an evil playthrough leaving it permanently sullied. I should finally figure out Deltarune's whole deal.

Harvey Randall: Undertale (and Deltarune, which Ted you absolutely need to play, you'd love it) is a videogame that enjoys a rare combination of both a rabid, overbearing fanbase and the actual quality to back said fanbase up. Toby Fox not only produces bangers—Megalovania slaps, I don't care what you say—but also heartfelt, imaginative, and funny videogames that'll have you attached to a talking skeleton in slippers.

Issy van der Velde: Undertale made me feel bad for playing it, which is a bold choice. I wish more videogames were brave enough to cause active discomfort while playing them. I didn't like how many tiny text boxes I had to click through, and that made it all the more difficult to bottle up my frustration and not kill every monster I stumbled across.

Ted Litchfield: Harvey, Megalovania is still on my workout playlist.

45. Resident Evil Requiem

Released: February 27, 2026 | Top 100 Score: 234.20

Elie Gould: Requiem has RE4's action, RE7's scares, and nails RE2's survival-horror, need I say more?

Rory Norris: I love Leon Kennedy, and we get a good dose of him here—corny jokes and silly combat included. But he's older, wiser, and more worn out returning to Raccoon City all these years later. Despite these developments, I was more impressed with newcomer Grace Ashcroft. It's where most of the RE7 and RE2 DNA is found, and actor Angela Sant'Albano steals the show. I'd love to see the two reunite someday.

Sean Martin: I do kind of wish Resident Evil Requiem had stuck around the hospital longer, though. Some of the Raccoon City sections left me a bit cold, trading the puzzles and spooky mansion-vibes for a barren and much more boring zombie cityscape, though the facility is cool.

Joshua Wolens: Sometimes I see people making fun of Grace online, and to those people I say: I will find you and I will d-d-d-destroy you.

44. Into the Breach

Released: February 27, 2018 | Top 100 Score: 234.60

Sean Martin: It's funny that one of the best mech games ever made isn't some bombastic Armored Core-style pilot sim, but is about looping turn-based tactics, as your time-traveling mech squad tries to save humanity from giant insects. Into the Breach is fantastically replayable thanks to inventive mechs, pilots, and gadgets, giving you a toolkit to tackle its random scenarios. But each battle is also a compromise that can see you sacrifice civilians, or even a pilot, for the greater good—it makes me feel like I'm slapbang in the middle of one of Gundam's darker spinoffs.

Issy van der Velde: If you like Into the Breach, try the far superior FTL: Faster Than Light. It's a game so nice they had to name it twice. They're very different in terms of setting and combat (real-time as opposed to turn-based), but the moment-to-moment decision making is just as tense and thrilling.

43. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

Released: November 16, 2004 | Top 100 Score: 234.67

Jody Macgregor: Night-time cities are excellent videogame locations. Think the Arkham series, almost every cyberpunk game, and most of Thief. My fondest memory of Vice City is delivering pizza listening to Wave 103 all night long.

Bloodlines is the ultimate "cut loose in a city at night" game. You're a vampire, of course you only come out when it's dark, but more than that you feel like you own the night. Every alley and nightclub is a place you belong. The ultimate videogame power fantasy? Feeling safe in LA at 2 am.

Andy Chalk: "What if Bauhaus was a videogame" is the sort of idea that elicits confused stares, but here we are 20-some years later still talking about its brilliance. It's also why I think we have to give up on the idea of a sequel: Bloodlines is maybe the ultimate distillation of a very specific time and place, and efforts to recapture that, but different, are doomed to fail because that incredibly powerful sense of place is so essential to the experience.

Fraser Brown: Like I said in last year's Top 100, Bloodlines is one of my favourite RPGs, but I would never, ever recommend it to any sane person in 2026. The story is killer and the writing is still incredibly potent, but it's j