PC Gamer

Very few magazines get anywhere near printing 400 issues, so it enthuses me greatly to present this landmark issue of PC Gamer magazine. For over 30 years PC Gamer has been reporting on the most exciting new PC games, hardware and culture, and doing

Twitter @MorganRPark This month Installed a series of portals in PC Gamer Towers and kept jumping through them butt naked. Twitter @wesleyfenlon This month Managed a team of weirdo Japanese mascots, including a porn-loving cat and a giant severe

A bad day at the office for Microsoft and CrowdStrike, as a borked update to the latter’s Falcon software led to MS servers falling victim to the blue screen of death. The problem’s since been fixed, but a mere 1% of Windows machines caused mass disr

‘Stranger than fiction’ accurately describes the fact that a furry hacktivist cartel of cyber-criminals called Nullbulge swiped around 1.1 TiB of data from Disney recently – unfortunately, the truth is also less of a laughing matter, since a trove of

Want to hire a nice lady to play Overwatch with you? Maybe even fall asleep on voice chat for a reasonable fee? Well, tough luck: the Twitter account for an ‘Overwatch cabaret club’ offering those services got shut down. Good news, though: an Apex ve

No Man’s Sky update adds stuff fans had “almost given up hope on”. The voice of Igon, Elden Ring’s angriest NPC, had no idea gaming was huge before he got the job. More than ten years after its creation, massive Russian Oblivion mod Citadel of Madnes

It should be no surprise to learn that The Spy cherishes information. The Spy strives to gather it, yes, but also to protect it from the prying eyes of everyone except the PC Gamer readership. The problem, The Spy has learned, is that everything is i

RELEASE September 5, 2024 | DEVELOPER GSC Game World The long-delayed STALKER 2 has slipped again to early September this year. But from what we’ve played so far the wait is going to be well worth it. RELEASE September 9, 2024 | DEVELOPER Saber Inter

Specialist in Ancient firearms Currently playing Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn This month Killed many gods. Oh, and in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn she… Specialist in Furious kicking Currently playing Anger Foot This month Raced around PC Gamer

This month the PC Gamer reviews machine tackles two free to play games that end up scoring at diametrically opposed ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, we’ve got Once Human, a stunningly good free to play game where you can build, farm, shoot and

EXPECT TO PAY Free DEVELOPER Karolína Kuberová et al LINK bit.ly/MourningTide If Dredge has left you terrified of the ocean, get your sea legs wet again with Mourning Tide, which offers a lovely bit of fishing, no monsters allowed. Hmm, that’s a fu

EXPECT TO PAY Free DEVELOPER Jon Topielski LINK bit.ly/PillowFightGame The whole deckbuilding roguelike thing can be traced back to Dream Quest, and now it’s come full circle with the unrelated but similarly nap-tastic Pillow Fight, which plays out

EXPECT TO PAY £20 DEVELOPERinkle Ltd PUBLISHERinkle Ltd I love the idea that in the future, aliens will analyse toilet graffiti to glean information about the human race. Cue a team of celestial beings, stroking their stardust beards as they unpick

EXPECT TO PAY £5 DEVELOPER LucasArts PUBLISHER LucasArts It’s strange going into The Dig with zero knowledge of what it actually is. I assumed, for some reason, it would be a cheerful archaeology romp; Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis without

THIS MONTH Bought a cute little scarf after an event ticket grind. ALSO PLAYED Tiny Bookshop demo, Elden Ring I ’ve been away from the MMOs of my past – taking a bit of a rest from sinking thousands of hours into Guild Wars 2 or The Elder Scrolls o

You might look at my game choices and think I’m trapped in 2005, but I look at you and think you’re trapped in 2024. Who’s better off? konami.com Who needs remakes? Certainly not Big Boss. It’s a lacklustre port, but the best game in the Metal Gear

Future Publishing Ltd Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA | Tel: 01225 442244 | Email: [email protected] | www.pcgamer.com Brand Director Tim Clark Global Editor-in-Chief Evan Lahti PC GAMER UK Editor-in-Chief, UK Phil SavagePrint Editor Robert J

There are 103,744 games on Steam. Of those, 14,499 were released in 2023 alone. And that’s to say nothing of the many, many PC games that haven’t made it to Valve’s digital storefront. All of which is to say: it never gets any easier. More games arri

I’ve noticed a distinct lack of rhythm games in this year’s Top 100, and yet it’s been a year when a truly fantastic rhythm game has left a lasting impression on me. Few games meld music, art style and good vibes as well as Sayonara Wild Hearts. I pl

Is this cheating? Yes, but I put a very tasteful PowerPoint presentation together to get votes for this thing and I’ll be damned if I let that go to waste. Hades 2 is already bigger than the first game, somehow, and its music is even better than the

RELEASED 204 | TOP 100 SCORE 216.15 Harvey Randall: After the saga City of Heroes has been through, ending in a legitimate private server with an official thumbs-up from NCSoft, this is a very special MMO. I’m still best mates with a lot of the peopl

RELEASED 2004 | TOP 100 SCORE 219.68 Jody Macgregor: Bloodlines launched in such a state some people who played it then still have trauma. I took years to get around to it, after the unofficial patch, and it immediately went on my all-time list. Each

RELEASED 2012 | TOP 100 SCORE 214.10 Phil Savage: It’s been 12 years, and Guild Wars 2 is still a quietly revolutionary vision of what an MMO can be. There’s no subscription, no FOMO-inducing scarcity, no penalty for taking an extended break. Everyth

RELEASED 2004 | TOP 100 SCORE 220.13 Wes Fenlon: Dril was talking about KotOR 2 when he tweeted “the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: ‘theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. You fucking moron’” (I still lo

RELEASED 2018 | TOP 100 SCORE 221.85 Rich Stanton: A great roguelike at launch, but the way it was built upon has made it an all-timer. Best of all was how the game subtly changed over time, increasingly focusing on the bizarre and wonderful combinat

RELEASED 2020 | TOP 100 SCORE 222.02 Robin Valentine: I’m not sure any game has nailed exploration to the degree that Outer Wilds has. Its solar system is a little clockwork diorama, stuck in a 22-minute time loop – and yet within that tiny sandbox t

RELEASED 2024 | TOP 100 SCORE 221.76 Nick Evanson: A perfect example of something that doesn’t really bring anything new to the table, but what it does offer is a moving story, told through finely crafted gameplay, and replete with sumptuous scenery

TOP 100 SCORE 222.30 Andy Chalk: Pentiment starts at a slow burn, but that’s what sets the hook: out of nowhere, I was suddenly immersed in a world filled with living, breathing people whose names I knew and lives I cared about. I tried so hard to do

TOP 100 SCORE 222.90 Ted Litchfield: We’re still waiting for the third and final episode, but Ultrakill is already an absolute heater in Early Access: An absurdist retelling of Dante’s Inferno in which you play a blood-powered omnicidal robot invadin

TOP 100 SCORE 222.36 Robin Valentine: The only things more fascinating than Golden Idol’s intricate mysteries are the grotesque, gurning faces of its cast. A twisting, complex, and fascinating story of murder, magic, and authoritarianism, told in a t

RELEASED 2016 | TOP 100 SCORE 222.98 Robin Valentine: Maybe still the best ending in videogames, right? Rich Stanton: A flawless gem. Inside is supremely clever, but what sticks with you is how the facility slowly unfolds itself, the looming horror o

RELEASED 2010 | TOP 100 SCORE 223.06 Nick Evanson: Sure, Civ VI is OK and Civ IV is very good, but number five is perfection and probably the only ‘real’ Civilization game that matters. It almost certainly defines the phrase ‘just one more turn’. Eve

RELEASED 2013 | TOP 100 SCORE 223.50 Andy Chalk: Just an incredible vibe. A man, a dog, a truck, a delivery to make. A slow drift along a mystical highway cutting through the heartland of America. Pretentious postmodernism for ennui junkies? I don’t

RELEASED 2015 | TOP 100 SCORE 223.80 Lincoln Carpenter: A traditional, tile-based roguelike that has a fascination with chrome spindles, transdimensional excretions, and books full of procedural gibberish. It’s a game where every run has its own laye

Arma 3 is an all-timer if you’re willing to weigh your PC down with a terabyte of mods and embrace the soldier fantasy. A clunky military sandbox that is kept alive by hundreds of modders making content, Arma 3 works best when you grab your Teamspeak

TOP 100 SCORE 224.13 Joshua Wolens: Not many games can boast what Baldur’s Gate can: every entry in the series is unalloyed gold, and this 24-year-old game can still hold its own against its feted successor from last year. Clever, epic, and with a po

I threw the Top 100 into chaos by nominating this innovative Nintendo classic, which highlights the intricate schedules of a townful of NPCs living a three-day time loop. Majora’s great, but more importantly, it’s now playable at 4K, 60fps on PC than

TOP 100 SCORE 224.32 Wes Fenlon: Blends mecha cool, sci-fi dystopia and vast build variety into From’s most straightforward action game. Harvey Randall: A game brave enough to ask: what if FromSoftware didn’t make you pay to upgrade weapons or respec

TOP 100 SCORE 224.73 Robin Valentine: There are a lot of co-op games these days, but few force you to truly cooperate like Deep Rock Galactic does. Each player is armed with their own distinctive set of tools – only by combining them in creative ways

RELEASED 2016 | TOP 100 SCORE 220.25 Fraser Brown: Ignore the number – Dishonored 2 will always be a top 10 game. Arkane’s gift to humanity is the pinnacle of stealthy sandboxes: freakishly flexible, devilishly smart, and god damn is it a looker, wit

RELEASED 2022 | TOP 100 SCORE 225.00 Tyler Wilde: This multiplayer medieval warfare game is both extremely unserious – there’s a key dedicated to shouting and you can beat enemies to death with flaming chickens – and 100% serious, with well-designed

RELEASED 2020 | TOP 100 SCORE 221.05 Wes Fenlon: After Phantom Liberty, Cyberpunk 2.0 deserves even higher placement! I bounced off it completely at launch, but found myself fully immersed in Night City last year. The reworked RPG skill trees thread

RELEASED 2014 | TOP 100 SCORE 225.29 Rich Stanton: The only Alien game ever made where I am actually scared of the Alien, and a perfect corrective to Hollywood’s mismanagement of the series. This was a labour of love for its developers, and that shin

Neverwinter Nights is an endless RPG feast: the 7/10 base game from 2002 has nostalgia value for me, but that’s just the beginning. In 2003 we got two expansions that formed a single fantastic fantasy campaign, while the real NwN is a staggering libr

I actually petitioned for Overwatch 2 to be in this list, but then Blizzard nerfed Ana for what felt like the eleventh time this year so I’ve switched gears to Cult of the Lamb. This roguelite crusade clicks with me for so many reasons, the art’s coo

RELEASED 2022 | TOP 100 SCORE 225.30 Tyler Colp: A grimy, psychological horror game that looks a lot like an old Resident Evil. Although it may feel small, its world is vast and surreal and an unforgettably haunting setting. Jody Macgregor: When a ho

RELEASED 2015 | TOP 100 SCORE 225.77 Phil Savage: Here’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed in Top 100 voting over the years: a disappointing sequel can also ruin the placement of its better, more beloved predecessor. It’s almost as if the stink of the sequel

RELEASED 2016 | TOP 100 SCORE 225.35 Jake Tucker: Titanfall 2’s campaign is a selection box of fantastic FPS ideas. Every level does something new with the theme or mechanics, sparking the sort of curiosity and joy usually reserved for Nintendo games