For a long, long time, there has been a lot of talk about the perceived differences between gaming on PC and gaming on consoles. These discussions inevitably boil down to either personal preferences or silly and/or vicious name-calling. The truth is that the gap between consoles and PCs has been shrinking – and will probably decrease even more once the PlayStation 5 is released.
But if that’s the case, what is it that defines a PC game? Apart from it being a game that can be played on a PC, obviously. Well, the biggest departure from the two (apart from the hardware) is the control scheme. Since controls represent the most fundamental way we interact with a game, everything is designed around them. The best PC games are intended to be played with a keyboard and mouse combo, which gives their gameplay a particular flow.
Best PC Games of All Time
The following is an examination of the best PC games of all time. While many of these are now available on other platforms as well, they nevertheless still embody the crux of the PC-centric gaming experience.
If you are more of a console gamer, we also have similar lists of the best PS4 games and Xbox One exclusives.
#1 The Best New Innovative Concept – Disco Elysium (2019)
Every once in a blue moon, there comes along a game that shakes up the status quo by playing around with – and outright disregarding – deeply entrenched design conventions. Disco Elysium, formerly known as No Truce With The Furies (which is, in this author’s humble opinion, a much more memorable and evocative title), is one such game.
While very little about it is “new” from a game mechanics standpoint, it manages to feel fresh, inviting, and an organic reinterpretation and extension of the unspoken (and uncontested) rules that govern how computer role-playing games function. Not so much a revolution as it is an evolution. But a necessary and welcome one.
Gameplay
At its core, Disco Elysium is a police procedural – albeit a highly unusual one. As a detective, your job is to solve a murder that occurred several days ago. How you go about doing this is entirely up to you.
Your character is defined by four attributes: Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motorics. Each of these has six different skills associated with it. With exactly two dozen skills available right from the beginning, many of which sport such esoteric names as Inland Empire, Shivers, Esprit De Corps, Composure – you know that this game is something unique.
Depending on your attribute spread, your character will start off as a detective who’s more intellectual, more sensitive and in touch with his (and everyone else’s) emotions, or one who is in tune with his body. A character who focuses on high Psyche is probably the most fun, but like any good CRPG – and especially one such as this, that seeks to replicate the tabletop experience – there isn’t really a wrong way to play Disco Elysium, since it offers a wide range of approaches and solutions for any character build.
But that’s just the beginning of your character customization: you’ll get to decide what kind of person and police officer you are – a supercop, a doomsday-spouting madman, a constantly-inebriated junkie, a communist, fascist, or even a “hobocop” who goes around collecting empty bottles for spare change. To top it off, it also features a clothing system where your attire also impacts your skills, and a sort of mind palace that lets you muse over thoughts and ideas that will give you further bonuses and penalties.
The end result is a game with an amazing amount of role-playing options. Your character can be anything from a classic hard-boiled detective, to an unorthodox and highly abstract misanthrope like True Detective’s Rust Cohle, an “everything is connected” Dirk Gently-style holistic approach, or a simple, sorry man long past his prime struggling with addictions, perceived inadequacies, and suicidal urges.
Graphics
The simplest description of Disco Elysium’s visual identity would be – a watercolor painting in motion. Every location is teeming with little details that tell a lot about its history and present use.
This is accompanied by distinct and expressive character portraits and models, which have a cell-shaded look to them. But the most striking parts of DE are the psychedelic art pieces that illustrate the main character’s skills and internalized thoughts.
While the entire game takes place in a small area, it’s very tightly designed with a surprising amount of content. You will see your character attempt, among other things, to sing karaoke, punch out a racist, paint graffiti, and proudly stand at the helm of a boat with a rock-blasting boombox.
Story
Just like in Planescape: Torment – one of our picks for best single-player PC games and a clear thematic influence on Disco Elysium – the game opens with your character waking up in a strange place, disoriented and suffering from complete memory loss. The mystery of your case is further compounded by the enigma of who you were – and your choices of who you now want to be.
Unlike most CRPGs, Disco Elysium doesn’t have combat – at least not in the usual sense. Still, when you’re a police officer investigating a murder case, every conversation is, essentially, a sort of combat encounter where your job is to get information the person you are interrogating wants to withhold. That is where your skills come in. They determine what you will notice, deduct, and how you can handle a situation. All are represented in a different voice and style – fitting for distinct facets of the player character’s personality.
For example, Electrochemistry is like a primal Id, only concerned with getting the next rush of pleasurable hormones (regardless if they are natural-occurring, or illicit substance-induced), while Volition is almost the reverse of that and represents your capacity for self-control. They often bicker amongst each other and can give you false information if you aren’t paying enough attention to what is happening.
A true stroke of design brilliance here – if a skill is too high, it can become a hindrance to the player, sometimes even forcing them to act in ways they otherwise wouldn’t have. Put too many points into Encyclopedia, and your character will start remembering useless minute trivia that has nothing to do with the situation at hand. Some skills are obviously better than others, but contrary to other games that often have (at least) a few borderline-worthless skills, here every skill is valuable and referenced from time to time.
The writing is impressive not just for its technical mastery, but in the sheer range of emotions on display. One minute you’ll be laughing at the absurdity and humor and the next will bring a dose of sobering, gut-punching reality. There’s a consistency in style and quality, so these different moods conveyed never feel at odds. Quite the opposite – they enhance it all the more.
This is in large part thanks to the in-universe lore and characters. Like in any good noir detective yarn, they are all connected to your investigations in one way or another and are full of surprising depth (despite some of them appearing one-dimensional at first).
Your stoic partner and voice of reason, Lt. Kim Kitsuragi, deserves a special shout-out for being one of the best written and fully-realized side characters in the history of the gaming medium. It’s also evident that the techniques employed in real-life police work were extensively researched in preparation for writing and designing the game.
Overall Review/Final Thoughts
It’s the type of game that reminds you why you became a gamer in the first place. Is it perfect? Of course not – nothing is. But it’s a genuine, gutsy, well-crafted game brimming with love and intensity, hope and kindness for the abandoned and downtrodden – its good points far outweigh its minor flaws.
As long as there are studios willing to experiment with bold new ideas and pour so much raw passion and ingenuity into their work – then, as the song goes: “The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”
#2 The Best Epic Fantasy PC Game of All Time – Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition (2013)
It’s safe to say that Baldur’s Gate 2 made BioWare what it is today. A turning (and defining) point for the company, all of BioWare’s narrative particularities, writing quirks, gameplay design strengths, and weaknesses can be traced back to it.
When BG2 originally came out way back in 2000, it took the gaming world by storm. Today, almost two decades after it was released, it’s still held up as a shining beacon that captures the true essence, and, well, the sheer epicness of epic fantasy.
It’s a game that will, sadly, probably never be replicated again – let alone surpassed.
Gameplay
Baldur’s Gate 2 revolves around two things – questing and combat.
While there certainly are bigger games out there, they typically rely on things like procedural generation and padding out their gameplay in order to increase their playtime. Not so with BG2 – everything in the game is custom-crafted and hand-placed. Which amounts to over 100 hours of playtime, depending on how much of a completionist you are.
BG2 owes pretty much everything to its predecessor. Every sequel does, of course, but BG is a special case. Very little was changed between the first and second game – the engine, rules, and plenty of graphics were already firmly in place, so, besides some minor tweaks, the development team could focus almost entirely on creating new content. This explains why the game is so overflowing with quests, items, spells, abilities, characters, monsters, and battles – especially when compared to its original, which was far more constrained and limited in scope.
As soon as you enter the game world, you will be showered with tasks and treasure at every turn.
Very few games can match the sense of power and progression that BG2 offers. Contrary to many sequels that find ways of stripping you from your hard-earned experience levels and power, BG2 has you start off (regardless of whether you imported a character from the first game or not) as a reasonably-powerful and accomplished adventurer. But that’s only the beginning – during the course of the game you will slay demons and dragons, venture (among other places) to the Underdark, and fight beings of godlike power.
Combat, the next big draw of the game, is real-time with pause (RTWP) – a system that BG helped popularize. Like in a real-time strategy such as Starcraft, you issue orders to your party of characters, but you can also pause time whenever you want if you need to reconsider your strategy or change your commands.
The battles are, in a word, glorious. Despite regularly involving dozens of characters and spell effects on screen at once, it never gets visually confusing or cramped – if you understand the ruleset, you will always know what is going on.
Combat encounters come in many forms, but the ones that stick out for most players are the much-lauded mage duels. When you come across a high-level mage that has access to such game-changing spells like Time Stop, Spell Contingencies, and ones that grant immunity to physical and magical attacks – you first have to strip that wizard of their arcane defenses if you want to defeat them. You also have access to those very same spells, so battles between magic users become an exhilarating game of alternating between empowering yourselves and nerfing your enemies.
Graphics
For a game that came out in 2000, BG2 still holds up surprisingly well. The Enhanced Edition offers some superfluous additions such as highlights around characters and the option to zoom in and out a bit (these were added to make the game easier to navigate on tablets), but the graphical foundation of the game is as solid as ever.
During your travels, you will get to visit parts of the Forgotten Realms that have never before (or since) been explored in video game form. Locales ranging from the monumental city of Athkatla – by far, the most fleshed-out and memorable city in any CRPG – to other planes, towns, and, naturally, dungeons galore, are all as classic and enduring as the game itself.
Story
Continuing the story of the first game, Baldur’s Gate 2 chronicles the final chapters of the Bhaalspawn Saga. The main character is one of these Bhaalspawn – children that the evil god of murder, Bhaal, sired to serve as the fuel for his resurrection.
After thwarting the diabolical plans of Sarevok, our main character and their party are captured by Irenicus, a secretive and sinister mage. Upon escaping Irenicus’ laboratory, your would-be captor and Imoen, your childhood friend, are whisked away to an unknown location by the magic-enforcing Cowled Wizards, leaving you to pursue them.
Thankfully, you don’t have a time limit on this, so you can explore and take on unrelated quests to your heart’s content. Along the way, you will meet a cast of unforgettable characters, some of which will help you, many who will oppose you, and several you’ll be able to recruit into your party. Your companions will banter among themselves, form friendships or come to blows, and a couple of them are even romanceable by your PC. Most of them have their own little quests and they will frequently chime in to voice their (dis)pleasure with how things are going.
They come in (literally) all shapes, sizes, classes, races, and alignments, but it is their personalities that permanently brand them into the memory of anyone who’s played with them. Some are stoic and brooding, others are hilariously unhinged, deliciously evil and self-serving, or paragons of virtue and chivalry – but all of them are charming and entertaining. Their writing is the best BioWare has ever done (before or since), witty and engaging. But more importantly, it never ventures too far into the domains of obnoxious, one-note personalities that BioWare’s later games have become riddled with.
The only problem is the new content and characters which were added in the Enhanced Edition – their style and presentation clash with the original.
Luckily, all of them are optional, so you can ignore them if they are not to your liking.
Overall Review/Final Thoughts
In recent years, there has been a revival of Baldur’s Gate-style of games. But even though some of these spiritual successors, most notably Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder: Kingmaker, managed to outdo Baldur’s Gate 2 in several key areas, such as providing better role-playing options, BG2 is still overall a superior game. Truly, one of the best PC games of all time.
And, if all of this wasn’t enough, BG2 has a still-active modding scene that has produced hundreds of mods of all types. Some of these add quests and NPCs that are even better than the base game itself.
Here’s to hoping that the upcoming Baldur’s Gate 3 manages to be as good as the second installment of the series.
#3 The Best Immersive Sim PC Game of All Time – Prey (2017)
Made by Arkane Studios, developers of the marvelous Dishonored series (which is deservedly one of our best stealth games), Prey doesn’t really have anything to do with the original Prey from 2006. The story of how the new Prey came to bear that name is a convoluted tale of copyright, canceled sequels, and corporate buffoonery, but suffice to say that the two exist as completely separate and distinct entities, despite sharing the same title.
To say that Prey is the absolute best immersive sim of all time is a bold claim to make – after all, the genre is closely associated with such legends as Deus Ex, Thief, and System Shock 2, games that frequently top the GOAT lists. But Prey, while definitely weaker than them in many ways, still manages to build a playing experience that is more cohesive and in tune with the tenants of the genre.
Gameplay
On the surface, Prey looks like a typical FPS/survival horror game with some RPG elements thrown into the mix. But it’s an immersive sim, and that means – choice. You can play it as an all-out shooting game, you can stealthily prowl around to avoid detection, you can hack turrets, develop psychic powers, save people, live them to die, take the longest possible route to an objective, or a riskier shortcut.
Weigh your options and choose a playstyle that fits you.
The wonderful thing about Prey is that every weapon, item, skill, and ability is useful – from the moment you acquired it and up to the very end. For example, the game’s signature weapon – the Gloo Cannon, which fires quick-hardening foam – can be used to temporarily incapacitate enemies (allowing you to flee or kill them by other means), to neutralize flames and hull breaches, or to create a sort of makeshift staircase so you can climb elevated surfaces you otherwise wouldn’t be able to reach.
The equally scrumptious level design allows you to tackle problems and objectives as you want. The game takes place on a space station that gradually opens up as you progress through the game. Similarly to a great Metroidvania, you will have to do a lot of backtracking as you accomplish your goals and gain items. Fortunately, the levels don’t remain static – they will change both visually as the alien infestation progresses, and newer (and often tougher) enemies will replace the ones you’ve disposed of. This means that, even though you will have to revisit some areas time and time again, this never gets to feel too repetitive – thanks to cleverly designed goals, fresh obstacles, and new options to overcome them.
Graphics
Prey is set on Talos I, a futuristic space station orbiting the Moon. Staffed (at least, until recently) by an international team of scientists and other personnel, Talos I is a mishmash of different architectural styles – with Art Deco, retrofuturism, and Soviet-era brutalism being the most prominent.
This gives the entire station a unique look, but the art design goes one step beyond to build the atmosphere of Talos I as more than just a research site – but also a home for the people working in it. Besides the numerous laboratories and hi-tech equipment, there are also cafeterias, bars, crew quarters, toilets, and other leisure locations that remind us that numerous people lived there.
Their scattered food, drinks, and other items serve to remind us that up until a short while ago – this was a bustling and lively place.
The main enemies in the game, the alien race known as the Typhon, contrast this formerly idyllic workspace all the more with their unnerving designs. Some of them can shapeshift into small objects, so until you get the equipment to identify them while they are hidden, you will never be absolutely sure if the items around you are safe and ordinary, or a Mimic waiting to pounce.
The game is optimized really well and you will be able to run it on a wide selection of computer components but to get the most out of it, you will still need a top-notch gaming graphics card.
Story
Your main character, Morgan Yu (a deliberately unisex name, since you can choose to be either gender) is a newcomer to the station. There, Morgan made to perform a series of simple experiments until one of the doctors is attacked by a Typhon, and he realizes that he has actually been on the station for over three years, stuck in a loop where he was forced to repeat the same day over and over again.
The aliens have gotten loose and killed off most of the crew. It is now up to you to somehow deal with this crisis and contain the spreading infection. Like in System Shock 2 – to which Prey is the spiritual successor to – you will piece the story together through audio logs, emails, notes, and the scant few interactions you will have with the remaining survivors.
Accomplished game designer Chris Avellone worked on the game, so it’s no wonder that the narrative is focused, well written, and full of revelations and surprises. The Typhon themselves are a fascinating alien race concept, the conflict between them and humanity is due to the aliens lacking mirror neurons, which are hypothesized to be linked with complex emotions such as empathy.
Overall Review/Final Thoughts
Prey is one of those games where the love that went into making it is apparent in every detail and aspect of its design. Featuring excellent gameplay, great writing, and a design that centers around giving you a slew of multi-purpose tools in the form of weapons, gadgets, and abilities, Prey takes the immersive sim blueprint one step beyond its forefathers.
If you are looking for a bigger challenge, the Mooncrash DLC turns the entire game into an awesome roguelike that could have easily made our best roguelike games list had it not been an addition.
#4 The Best Turn-Based Strategy PC Game of All-Time – Heroes of Might & Magic III Complete (1999)
Heroes of Might & Magic III has never waned in popularity – it is still being played today by passionate strategy fans all over the world. It isn’t hard to see why it has endured and stood the test of time – it looks great and plays even better.
It came out in the same era as Baldur’s Gate 2, a unique time for the gaming industry. At the very end of the 90s and beginning of the 00s, gaming hadn’t mutated into the money-grubbing behemoth it is today, and studios could still afford to experiment and take risks. The costs of game development, now too reliant on high-end graphics and soul-crushing crunch time, were more realistic and manageable, so developers could focus on making content on a scale that’s almost impossible to do nowadays.
HoMM3 is a child of that bygone time – big, captivating, and endlessly replayable.
Gameplay
You control the titular Heroes – powerful generals who specialize in might or magic and which lead their armies into battle. Every faction – nine of them in total – has their own characters (with different starting skills and bonuses) and settlements that produce special creature units.
Starting from their settlement, the Heroes move across the overmap in a turn-based manner, explore for resources, treasure, spells, and skills. The gold and other resources (such as ore and gems) can be used to purchase further troops and upgrade your base, unlocking more powerful creatures and better spells in the process.
The Heroes don’t participate in combat directly (this was added in HoMM4 and it proved to be a controversial gameplay change), but they can still cast offensive and defensive spells. Their primary and secondary skills, as well as the enchanted equipment (called artifacts) they have equipped, greatly contribute to the effectiveness of their armies.
When two armies clash, the perspective shifts from an isometric view to a battlefield grid. Because there are so many units in the game, all of them with their own strengths, weaknesses, and special powers, the battles are highly tactical. Just like in chess, you will have to think several moves ahead.
Graphics
You’re probably wondering why the original HoMM3 was chosen over its HD Edition that came out in 2015. There are several reasons for this, but the two most important ones are that the source code for the Armageddon’s Blade and The Shadow of Death expansions was lost, and that the new graphics sometimes don’t reflect the fidelity of the original. If you can’t stand the look of old, low-resolution graphics, then give the HD version a try, but you will be missing out on a lot of great content from the expansion packs.
The graphics of the original game, outdated though they may be, still positively ooze charm and have an unmistakable visual flair to them.
Story
The stories of Might & Magic and Heroes of Might & Magic are closely intertwined, with events that are played out in one series affecting the other. Moving away from Enroth where HoMM1-2 and M&M6 took place, HoMM3 is set on the vast continent of Antagarich.
Queen Catherine Ironfist (née Gryphonheart) learns that her father has died, leaving her homeland of Erathia in chaos. His death sets off a series of events, with neighboring countries seeking to take advantage of this sudden shift of power. Each nation is featured in its own campaign, with an additional faction in the Armageddon’s Blade expansion pack.
The writing does a fine job of conveying the different viewpoints of every faction and their leaders, making it easy to sympathize even with the swamp-dwelling rebels from Tatalia, or the barbarian tribes of Krewlod.
The expansion packs further develop the story and setting with new campaigns, scenarios, characters, items, and creatures, and feature some of the toughest battles in the entire series.
Overall Review/Final Thoughts
It may come off as a cliche, but they don’t make ‘em like this anymore. Nostalgia aside, HoMM3 is universally accepted as the best game in the series. After New World Computing went out of business, the rights both HoMM and M&M were sold to Ubisoft.
To be fair, Ubisoft did try to do something with the license – even putting out a very welcome and unexpectedly retro Might & Magic X in 2014 – but they never really got what HoMM was all about. The new setting Ubisoft cooked up for the series is a pale shadow of the fun lore that delighted fans with its mix of High Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the gameplay was simply never up to par with HoMM3.
We really hope that Ubisoft realizes the possibilities of the HoMM (and M&M) intellectual property and makes some more games, but until then, if you want some more HoMM3 content – here are some excellent mods to tie you over.
#5 The Best Star Wars Action PC Game of All Time – Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (2003)
There have been so many superb Star Wars games over the years that it’s hard to single one out. The franchise has spanned many genres – RPGs (Knights of The Old Republic), MMOs (Galaxies, The Old Republic), strategies (Galactic Battlegrounds, Empire At War), racing games (Episode I: Racer), and space combat flight sims (X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Rogue Squadron), just to name a few.
Plenty of these games don’t even involve the Force or Jedi and Sith in any significant way. But, not to disparage the storytelling potential of non-Force sensitive characters, the most iconic element of Star Wars has always been the Force and its many wielders.
No other Star Wars game has ever gotten the feeling of being a powerful Jedi quite like Jedi Academy did.
Gameplay
Jedi Academy’s gameplay takes the elements from its predecessor, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, and hones them to near-perfection. To start with, it rectifies the biggest criticism of JO – no lightsaber and Force powers for the first several missions – by having you begin the game already armed with “an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.”
You still have the option of playing the game as a regular FPS, but the primary focus is on third-person combat and lightsaber duels. These represent some of the most exciting fights in computer gaming, and they showcase how lethal lightsabers truly are. In most SW games, these awe-inspiring instruments of destruction are relegated to the position of yet another weapon – perhaps with a greater damage output than any other, but not that much different from the rest of your arsenal. In JA, however, they are as deadly as their movie versions – with most human (and humanoid) enemies being struck down with but a single open slash.
Your repertoire of new acrobatic moves, Force powers, and weapons is also expanded by other lightsaber types. You will start with a traditional lightsaber (you can customize its hilt and lightbeam color), but at one point in the game you will get to choose another one: a standard single lightsaber, dual-wielding a lightsaber in each hand, or a saberstaff like the one Darth Maul used in The Phantom Menace.
As a Padawan in training (and, later, full Jedi Knight), you will receive various peace-keeping missions that will take you all across the Galaxy. These can be straightforward search and rescue assignments, cult investigations, orders to capture a crime lord, and so on. Every section has five missions, but you only need to complete four of them to advance the story. Still, it is recommended that you do all of them – they are fun, differ in gameplay and design, and give you stronger Force powers.
Graphics
The graphics of Jedi Academy were outdated even at the time of its release. Powered by the Quake III engine, what JA lacks in polygons and advanced effects, it makes up for in dynamic character animations and varied locations.
Every person and creature in the game moves in their own way. Your enemies possess the same moves and powers you do, so they will also lunge through the air, parry your blows, pull you closer, push you away, fry you with Force Lightning, and change combat stances.
Each lightsaber style has specific advantages and disadvantages. For example, the fast style is, obviously, very fast, but also has limited range and decreased damage, while the saberstaff is the most acrobatic, with big, sweeping motions that cover a lot of ground, but it also leaves wide gaps in your defense. It’s a lot like rock-paper-scissors in this regard, with you constantly adapting to the flow of battle and changing styles as the need arises.
Story
Taking place after the fall of the evil Galactic Empire, the fledgling New Republic is trying to rebuild with the help of Luke Skywalker and his newly-formed Jedi Academy. There, for the first time in decades, Force-sensitive youngsters are being trained to become the new generation of Jedi.
You are one of these Padawan apprentices. Jaden Korr, your main character, can be male or female (personally I prefer the female version, since she is voiced by Jennifer Hale, the VA for Mass Effect’s female Commander Shepard), human or one of the more prolific SW alien races, such as the Twi’lek, Zabrak, or Kel Dor.
Kyle Katarn, the protagonist of Jedi Knight 1 and 2 (and its FPS prequel, Dark Forces) is now a respected Jedi Master and your mentor at the Academy. One of the coolest characters in the SW Expanded Universe (which is now, after LucasArts’ acquisition by Disney, sadly no longer canon), his style of teaching puts greater emphasis on hands-on experience than Luke’s more contemplative tutelage.
He and Jaden (along with fellow student Rosh Penin, who might be the most irritating SW character since Jar-Jar Binks) have to find out what the Disciples of Ragnos, a Sith cult, are planning to do.
This investigation will take the team to all corners of the Galaxy, and such well-known places as Darth Vader’s castle on Vjun and the dark planet Korriban.
Overall Review/Final Thoughts
Out of all the different Star Wars games that ever tried to replicate lightsaber combat, Jedi Academy is hands down the best. It does this by portraying it akin to samurai duels, it takes versatility, precision, and grace, but even then – everything can be over in a flash.
Keeping with the tone of this article, it would be remiss of me not to mention that there is a dedicated Jedi Academy modding scene, with great (and massive) mods like Knights of the Force.
The fact that there will be a PS4 and Switch port out early next year speaks volumes about the cult status and longevity of this game.
#6 The Best Indie Adventure PC Game of All Time – Primordia (2012)
Once upon a time, adventure games would have topped any best PC games list. The late 80s and early 90s saw the genre’s heyday, with Sierra and LucasArts adventures being some of the most hotly anticipated games of the year. A far cry from today, where adventure games are few and far between.
Even so, the current situation is a marked improvement from what it was at the turn of the century. And while big studios still don’t see a reason they should return to making these sorts of games, indie developers have been making adventures that in many rival what was being done during the golden age of the genre.
Out of the many notable indie point & click adventure games in recent years, one stands out above the rest – Primordia.
Gameplay
Primordia is a classic point and click adventure through and through. Just like those venerable games of yesteryear, the gameplay revolves around solving obstacles in the form of puzzles. To do this, you will have to seek out items, use them on objects or combine them into new items, interact with the characters you meet along the way and help them with their problems.
What sets apart Primordia from other games of its ilk is the quality of the puzzles in question. This has long been a subject of debate and speculation, but most agree that one of the main reasons why adventure games fell from grace in the mid-to-late 90s was their opaque puzzle design.
Jokingly referred to as moon logic, this term was widely adopted after Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw used it in his Zero Punctuation series to describe baffling adventure game puzzles that only make sense to the person or persons that designed them. For everyone else, they are an exercise in frustration and boil down to trying every possible item + object/character combination until, through rote trial and error, you stumble upon something that works. A good puzzle game can always be deduced through logic (or, at least, through the logical rules that apply to the world the game is set in), common sense, and observation.
And this is where Primordia is head and shoulders above its contemporaries – the puzzles here are not only well thought out, but are also enjoyable and can be solved without employing such disconnects from reality and rational thought as the infamous Moustache Puzzle from Gabriel Knight 3.
Graphics
Constructed in the Adventure Game Studio (AGS), an open-source development tool that is used for many indie adventure games, Primordia sports a retro pixel art look. But unlike many modern games that use this art style – often to their detriment – simply to invoke a sense of nostalgia, here it is expertly used to convey melancholy and the loss of not just a world, but an entire purpose of being.
Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the color palette is dominated by browns, greys, and reds – the appropriate pigments to depict scorched earth, mounds of corroding metal, and dilapidated machinery. Regardless of the low resolution, the artwork is distinct and sharp enough to avoid the usual pitfalls associated with the genre, like pixel hunting, unclear exit points, and similar-looking characters.
Speaking of the characters in the game, despite them all being robots of different types and sizes, all of them are designed in such a way that you will never be unsure which is which. The artstyle draws heavy inspiration from Franco-Belgian comics as well as Japanese anime and manga.
Story
The brainchild of writer and designer Mark Yohalem, Primordia accomplishes something that most computer games (and, indeed, works in any narrative medium) struggle with and ultimately fail to do – it builds a coherent and cohesive world that is wholly believable, yet still completely fantastical.
The game’s player duo, the android Horatio Nullbuilt and his little floating sidekick Crispin Horatiobuilt are living out their robotic days inside a crashed airship until their home is invaded by another robot that steals the ship’s power core. They pursue the robot across the desert and into Metropol, the last (relatively) functioning city on Earth.
The story unveils like an exquisite noir movie plot, with existentialism, love, cynicism, hope, and despair in equal measure.
The game never gets too caught up in its own cleverness and doesn’t steer the player in either direction, but lets them determine the resolution in one of several possible endings, which depend on the actions the player took during the course of the game and how they solved the puzzles.
The characters, lore, and worldbuilding are all simply tremendous, with frequent little touches of genius such as the robots using “B’sod” as an expletive.
Overall Review/Final Thoughts
If you are looking for an adventure game that is cerebral, introspective, touching, and one which you will be able to complete without getting fed up with bizarre puzzle solutions and looking up the walkthrough online – then I can’t recommend Primordia enough.
It is a precious gem of a game in an industry that is filled with imitating, exploitation, and jumping on the latest fad bandwagon.
#7 The Best PC Game Expansion Pack of All Time – Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer (2007)
Before the proliferation (and misuse) of DLC, expansion packs were the principal way in which base games were invigorated and expanded with new content. Typically being released several months to a year or more after the base game, it gave developers enough time to listen to player feedback. Since they were also expected to sell fewer copies (only a fraction of the players bought them – the ones that liked the source game the most), and, consequently, were smaller in budget and scope, studios took the opportunity to experiment with different concepts.
Sometimes these resulted in wild new gameplay breakthroughs which were a radical departure from the initial game. Some were good, others less so.
Few are remembered as fondly as the first expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights 2 – The Mask of the Betrayer.
Gameplay
Neverwinter Nights 2 was, apart from some inspired setpieces, a fairly humdrum fantasy CRPG. Hordes of rampaging monsters, stereotypical notions of good and evil, generic late medieval Western European architecture we’ve seen in one form or another a thousand times before. The game fluctuated in quality – in one chapter we would have to solve a murder mystery which culminated in a brilliant courtroom scene, then in another, we would trudge around interchangeable ork-infested mines for dreary hours on end. Even its ending was unsatisfactory – it literally amounted to a rocks fall, everyone dies cliffhanger.
But this gave Obsidian a clean slate to move the expansion pack in an entirely different creative direction. Gone were the areas filled with nothing but trash mob combat encounters, the all-too-common Ancient Evil™ plot. They were replaced with a story, setting, and characters that rival Planescape: Torment in their uniqueness and execution.
Most CRPGs don’t really have a good reason why the player character is adventuring. Or, if they do, the looming doomsday threat can always take a backseat while the character goes off to gamble, hunt collectible trinkets, or perform similar unrelated tasks. MoTB approaches this in a singular way – by tying the player character’s need to adventure with an inventive gameplay mechanic that permeates everything about the game – its plot, history of the setting, and role-playing options.
The PC is infected with the Spirit-Eater curse – a seemingly incurable supernatural affliction that compels the person suffering from it to feed on spirits or die in agony. Everyone who’s ever suffered from it has died, no matter how many spirits they’ve consumed.
In gameplay terms, this is illustrated by the spirit meter – a measure of how hungry your character is. As it’s depleted, you character will get weaker. If it completely drains, you die. The player can choose to manage this in one of two ways – by attempting to suppress their hunger, or letting it rage unchecked, consuming everything in sight.
This results in two thoroughly different playstyles. If you focus on abilities that slow down your spirit meter, you will unlock abilities that will let you passively leech off the spirit energy of nearby (friendly) spirits, but you will lose out on the truly devastating high-level powers your curse can bestow upon you.
On the other hand, if you give yourself over to your cravings, you will unlock a more deadly set of abilities, but you will always be at risk of starvation. A perfect example of a high-risk, high-reward system that’s organically interwoven in the gaming power fantasy mindset and the compulsion to constantly look for new ways of gaining more power.
Graphics
No need to mince words, the game looks dated. The expansion pack added some new graphical options, but this isn’t a game that will make you gasp in wonder at its graphics. It never has been.
But it still does a good job of working with the graphical limitations to give us some unusual sights – the lush, spirit-rich lands of Rashemen, an ancient flooded city, the Plane of Shadow, and the resting place of slowly-decaying former god of death.
Your companions are also uncommon – instead of the usual stock menagerie of Elves and Dwarves, we can have a party comprised of a Hagspawn, a Half-Celestial, and even a minor deity in the shape of a gigantic, rainbow-colored bear.
Story
The events of MoTB are only tangentially related to the ones from the NWN2 Official Campaign and can be played without playing the original. They both feature the same protagonist, whisked away before they could be crushed by rocks at the end of the NWN2 OC.
Waking up in a barrow, the PC soon realizes that they’ve been cursed to become the newest Spirit-Eater and they must somehow find out how to remove the curse – or master it. The story is a lot more personal this time around, and you will be able to take on beings of immeasurable power and accomplish legendary goals that befit a high-level epic campaign such as this.
The pacing of the game is handled much better than it was in the original, and your affliction will always give you a sense of urgency and purpose to your quest. The companions, while fewer in number, are tightly integrated into the plot and will help you not just in combat, but in quest resolutions as well. Speaking of quests, they are as outlandish as the setting, and you will have the option to enter someone’s dreams, luring innocent merchants to a tribe of cannibals in exchange for knowledge, curing a wood spirit, and many more.
Due to the nature of the game, at least two playthroughs are necessary to see and do everything. For example, if you play as an aggressive Spirit-Eater, some characters will respect you and offer you their assistance, while the same ones will outright attack you if you try to control your hunger.
Overall Review/Final Thoughts
Once you finish the first expansion, the second one, Storms of Zehir, as well as the Mysteries of Westgate (which wasn’t made by Obsidian but by Ossian studios) are also worth playing. Each one puts a different and interesting spin on NWN2 and they are available in a handy, all-encompassing package over on GOG.
But if, for whatever reason, you only want (or have the time) to play just one of these – pick Mask of The Betrayer. You won’t regret it.
Bonus Round – The Best Free PC Games
There are so many great free PC games – old and new alike – that it’s difficult to narrow the list to just a few of them. Some of these, such as Warframe and World of Tanks, deserve entire articles dedicated to them alone, which is why I’ve decided to focus on other games you might not have played yet (or realized that they’re completely free).
So, without further ado, here are the best free PC games.
#1 The Best Free PC Visual Novel – Doki Doki Literature Club! (2017)
Metafiction in video games are hardly a new development. Game designers the likes of Hideo Kojima (Metal Gear Solid), Yoko Taro (Nier: Automata), and Toby Fox (Undertale) have pushed the boundaries between reality and gaming fiction in ways that surpass the usual fourth wall breaking. In retrospect, much of their commentary is self-evident and stems from the highly interactive nature of video games – something that sets them apart from every other medium.
Dan Salvato, the creator of Doki Doki Literature Club, decided to go the other way and explore the meta ramifications of a genre that is known for its minimal interactivity – visual novels.
Gameplay
Originating in Japan, visual novels are about as simple as you can get, gameplay-wise, while still being a game. They make a walking sim seem like the height of interactivity in comparison.
Most visual novels follow the same formula – your character (who’s usually a highschool or university student) communicates with other characters (some of which are romance options) that are manga-style 2D drawings with a couple of revolving static poses. You have very little control over these dialogues, though you will occasionally be presented with choices that affect how the story plays out. VN typically have multiple endings, often with explicit sex scenes.
However, Doki Doki Literature club endings are explicit in a different way.
Doki Doki Literature Club sticks to this basic template, at least in the beginning. However, things soon start to take a weird and dark turn.
Graphics
Visual novels are limited graphically as well. They commonly consist of plain backgrounds which are often traced artwork of real photographs. The character designs in Doki Doki look authentic enough to be mistaken for Japanese.
That is until the glitches start happening.
Story
As any long-time anime and manga connoisseur will tell you, there are certain pet peeves one tends to develop after watching dozens of these shows. For every quality, out-of-the-ordinary anime out there, there are at least fifty forgettable, by-the-numbers ones. The situation with visual novels, being so easy to produce, is even worse. Like any mass-producing industry, the Japanese also love their obnoxious archetypes – the shy, reserved girl, or the one who masks her own insecurities through an outward facade of aggressive behavior.
Like another psychological horror that pretends to be another genre in order to deconstruct anime stereotypes – Neon Genesis Evangelion – Doki Doki also looks at these character concepts and takes them to their logical extremes, all while initially impersonating a cute dating sim. And just like in NGE, the result is not pretty.
From a saccharine beginning, it goes on to explore themes of depression, self-harm, obsession, and self-awareness. To say any more would be to spoil the entire experience.
Overall Review/Final Thoughts
No matter if you are a lover of all things Japanese, or if you can’t stand the anime and manga, everyone should try Doki Doki Literature Club at least once. It’s far from a perfect game, but it does have something to say about our relationships, mental issues, and how we take them for granted. It’s uncomfortable, macabre, and mournful.
And, well, even if you don’t like it, it’s free. Can’t beat that price. All you stand to lose is a couple of hours.
#2 The Best Free PC Sim Roguelike – Dwarf Fortress (2006)
Few games are as influential as Dwarf Fortress. Or as futile. There is no way to win Dwarf Fortress, every game, regardless of how well things are going, ends in a disastrous loss. But this doesn’t mean it’s any less fun.
After all, the game community’s official motto is: “Losing is fun!”
Gameplay
There are several modes of play in DF, but the main one is, fittingly, about running a Dwarven stronghold. After generating your world – which sets its geography, history, and other parameters through procedural generation, the game can begin.
Every single Dwarf in DF is an individual with their own personality and skills. In the game’s primary mode, you control a Dwarven Fortress and everything in it – mining, food preparation, trading, smithing, etc. The entire system is much more complicated than that, but this is simply a broad overview. The best part of the game is seeing how a once-thriving fortress can spiral out of control due to a single bad event. One Dwarf losing his mind can set off a chain reaction of other mishaps.
The second game mode is Adventurer mode – a roguelike CRPG where the player controls a single adventurer. After choosing the character’s name, gender, race, attributes, and skills, they set off to explore the world and take on quests. But, since this is a hardcore experience, they must also take care not to starve and freeze.
The combat system is equally complicated, with detailed and realistic anatomy.
The third mode is called Legends and it allows you to see all the list of all the important events of that generated world – important historical figures, cities, civilizations, and their assorted conflicts and interactions.
Graphics
The graphics in Dwarf Fortress are text-based, meaning they are made up of different colored text characters and symbols. This can be off-putting to anyone who hasn’t been gaming on a black and white monitor since the 1980s, but there are many graphical mods out there that will make it easier to play the game.
Story
There really isn’t one. The events in the game are randomized at the beginning and further occur as you play it.
Overall Review/Final Thoughts
With Dwarf Fortress set to be out on Steam in the near future, with enhanced graphics and other quality of life improvements, this is the perfect time to get acquainted with the game. Despite its punishing difficulty, it’s a barrel of laughs and easily one of the best simulation games ever made, and one of the best free PC games, period.
Conclusion
There you have it, the best of the best. Of course, a lot of this comes to the sort of games you prefer, but the best PC games of all time are on this list precisely because they transcend likes and dislikes.
They possess that certain something – a spark of creative madness that can’t simply be defined and reproduced with the same result, regardless of how much money or resources you have at your disposal. Great games come and go, but I’ll bet that even decades from now, people will still be playing the likes of Heroes of Might & Magic 3.
Remastered, remade, enhanced, modded, or original, these are the games that redefined and continue to shape gaming. Like all art, they encompass the time and circumstances of their creation but are not defined by it. And, like all legends, the best PC games are of universal and eternal excellence.