The best PC games right now

Thousands of new PC games release every year, and a lot of them are great. A lot of them are also bad. Some of them are really bad. And some of them are really good, but hardly anyone knows about them. It's hard to keep up!

Lists like our annual Top 100 (the latest edition of which was published October 2024) focus on the whole history of PC gaming, which inevitably means that a lot of great recent releases don't make the cut. That's why we made this list, which exists to answer one simple question: "What PC game should I play right now?"

On this list, you'll find our favorite recent releases mixed in with great games from the past few years, classics we think now is a good time to revisit, and some hidden gems. It's a reflection of what the PC Gamer team is playing right now, not a list of the all-time best games ever, although there's overlap.

For a more comprehensive list of great PC games past and present, check out our Top 100 list. We also have some fresh picks for the best Steam Deck games if you have one of Valve's handhelds. We also stay on top of the year's calendar with our guide to the new games of 2024, organized by month.

Need something to play these on? We have a guide to putting together an entry-level gaming PC for around $750, and we have some recommendations for pre-built PCs, too.

Icon key

• 💻 = Suitable for low-end PCs
• 🙋‍♀️ = Singleplayer
• 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️ = Multiplayer
• 🎮 = Best with a controller
• 🆓 = Free-to-play

Top picks for December 2024

Caves of Qud (94%) 🙋‍♀️
We don't award scores this high very often. Finally hitting 1.0 after years in early access, Caves of Qud is a new roguelike benchmark.

Path of Exile 2 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️
It may not have the flashy loot drops of Diablo, but the bosses—watch out. The early access release of PoE2 is absolutely worth a spin for ARPG fans: As much as we hate the cliche, it really is "the Dark Souls of isometric dungeon crawlers."

Helldivers 2 (86%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️
A huge Helldivers 2 update dropped at the end of the year, adding the long-teased Illumiante faction and a new four-person recon vehicle—Super Earth needs us once again!

• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (86%) 🙋‍♀️: MachineGames' best yet
• Infinity Nikki (74%) 🙋‍♀️: Open world fashion adventure
• Microsoft Flight Sim 2024 (90%)🙋‍♀️: Soar over a virtual earth
• Fantasian Neo Dimension (84%) 🙋‍♀️: Tough turn-based RPG
• The Rise of the Golden Idol (87%): "A gritty detective adventure that's nearly as clever and captivating as the original."
• Stalker 2 (83%) 🙋‍♀️: Janky, yes. Great, also yes.
• Factorio: Space Age (92%) 💻🙋‍♀️: "An immediate contender for the best expansion ever made."
  Dragon Age: The Veilguard (79%) 🙋‍♀️: We're not madly in love with BioWare's new RPG, but it's certainly a return to form after Anthem, and a beautiful game
• MechWarrior 5: Clans (82%) 🙋‍♀️: Quality standalone mech campaign
• Shadows of Doubt (83%) 🙋‍♀️: Innovative immersive sim
• Judero (83%) 💻🙋‍♀️: Delightfully weird
• UFO 50 (83%) 🙋‍♀️💻🎮: Retro indie collab collection of 50 games
• Tactical Breach Wizards (88%) 💻🙋‍♀️: Turn-based military magic
• Black Myth: Wukong (87%) 🙋‍♀️🎮: Action RPG based on a Journey to the West
• Sins of a Solar Empire 2 (87%)🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️: 4X-RTS hybrid

More recent hits

Frostpunk 2 (85%) 🙋‍♀️
"I never meant to run out of food, let hundreds of you perish from cold, or have the streets patrolled by giant fascist robots who stomp entire buildings flat while trying to prevent a single starving child from stealing a chocolate bar. Things just… got outta hand."

Satisfactory (90%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️
Satisfcatory saw a big bump in player count after it left early access, which was well-deserved: It's one of the best automation games around.

Hunt: Showdown 1896 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️
Hunt has quietly been one of the best multiplayer games you can play for a few years now, and it just got a huge new map and engine upgrade. (Though not without a little controversy.)

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (95%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🎮
Elden Ring's expansion has earned one of our highest review scores ever—even higher than Elden Ring itself. In his review, Tyler said that Erdtree "not only complements the base game but expands its thematic and systemic scope even further."

Destiny 2: The Final Shape (92%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️
The Final Shape concludes Destiny's decade-long story arc and is also its best expansion yet: "a satisfying conclusion to the series' first saga, and a compelling shooter packed full of stuff to do," Phil said in his review.

Animal Well (90%) 💻🙋‍♀️🎮
When you get to the end of this retro metroidvania, that's when the mystery really begins. "The most engrossing exploration platformer I've played in years," Shaun said in his review.

Abiotic Factor 💻🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️
It hasn't blown up like some other recent early access survival games, but a couple of us at PC Gamer are really enjoying this six-player co-op survival-crafting adventure where you're scientists stuck in a Black Mesa-like paranormal science facility.

Manor Lords 🙋‍♀️
We haven't reviewed this early access medieval town builder—we'll do that when it hits 1.0—but we quite like it so far, and it runs well for an early access game. The dev has some exciting ideas for its future, too.

Dragon's Dogma 2 (89%) 🙋‍♀️
A "glorious, thrilling, accidentally hilarious, frustrating, maddening" RPG, as Fraser called it in his review. It's got its share of jank—and you can ignore the silly microtransactions—but more than makes up for it with its phenomenal combat system, goofy NPC companions, and slapstick goblin fights.

Tekken 8 (89%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🎮
It doesn't quite crack 90% in our review, but Mollie's enthusiasm for Tekken 8 is barely held back by its netcode problems and limited character customizaton: "Tekken is freakin' back, baby, and I couldn't be happier," she wrote.

Against The Storm (91%) 🙋‍♀💻
This roguelike city builder was one of our favorite games of 2023. Be careful, it's the sort of game that can suspend perception of time—you might put several dozen hours in before you know it.

Alan Wake 2 (88%) 🙋‍♀
"In the first playable moments of Alan Wake 2, you control a naked, balding, middle-aged man stumbling in confusion around a forest." Never stop being Remedy, Remedy.

Jusant (89%) 🙋‍♀
"An incredible rock climbing game", as we put it in our review, with "a compelling narrative that gently weaves its way through your journey."

Baldur's Gate 3 (97%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️
Our highest review score in 16 years went to "an unrivalled RPG that will swallow your life whole." It's true: Few of us at PC Gamer haven't been swept up by Baldur's Gate 3's D&D sandbox. Starfield's good too, but it has struggled to pull us away from our tadpole friends.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (87%) 🙋‍♀️
Not only do we really like Cyberpunk's first and only expansion, we're very pleased with the 2.0 update, which is free for all owners, and improves the whole game with changes to skill progression, AI, and other fundamental aspects of the RPG. Now is definitely the time to play Cyberpunk 2077, if you haven't.

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon (87%) 🙋‍♀
Another FromSoftware banger. AC6 departs from the Souls formula the studio has become most associated with over the past decade to revive its action series where you're a "a one mech army instead of some nasty little guy," as Wes put it in his review.

Diablo 4 (85%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️
We liked Diablo 4 when it released, even if we weren't in love with the live-servicey aspects, and it improved a lot in the months that followed. More recently, we called it a "phenomenal action RPG."

PC Gamer's Top 10

These are the top 10 games from the latest edition of PC Gamer's yearly Top 100 list, which was published in October 2024. Baldur's Gate 3 has usurped Disco Elysium's throne.

1. Baldur's Gate 3 (97%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️: Our 2023 Game of the Year and a brilliant RPG
2. Disco Elysium (92%) 🙋‍♀️💻: Our 2019 Game of the Year and former #1 game
3. Elden Ring (90%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️🎮: Another day, another FromSoftware masterpiece
4. Minecraft (96%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️: One of the most influential and fun games ever made
5. Persona 5 Royal (94%)🙋‍♀️: The most stylish RPG on PC?
6. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (92%) 🙋‍♀️🛁🎮: Geralt holds a special place in our hearts
7. Half-Life 2 (96%) 🙋‍♀️💻: Valve's groundbreaking shooter turns 20 this year
8. Balatro (91%) 🙋‍♀️💻: The poker roguelike is the newest game in the top 10
9. Stardew Valley (80%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️💻: Still our favorite farming/life sim
10. Doom (1993) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️💻: You'd hear about Doom a lot more if "doomlike" had caught on

More great PC games

These games aren't all piping hot out of the oven, but some things get better with age. They're the cream of the crop on PC, either scoring 80%+ in a review, winning one of our GOTY awards. If you just want a damn fine PC game from the past several years, close your eyes and point at this list—you'll land on something worth playing.

• The Plucky Squire (85%) 🙋‍♀️🎮: Glitchy but clever puzzle platformer
• Core Keeper (86%) 💻🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️: Minecraft meets Valheim
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (80%) 🙋‍♀️ The latest and biggest ever Yakuza RPG.
• Tchia (90%) 🙋‍♀️ One of the best open world games of last year and of any year.
• Amnesia: The Bunker (93%) 🙋‍♀️ You have one gun, and there is one monster... which can't be killed with a gun. Good luck!
• Remnant 2 (84%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️ Surpasses the first game with better combat and even more procedural surprises and weird bosses.
• Viewfinder (87%) 🙋‍♀️💻 A trippy puzzle game in which you alter reality through "astonishing visual and space-bending tricks you've never seen in a videogame before.'
• Dave the Diver (91%) 🙋‍♀️🎮💻 A simple fishing and restaurant management sim at first, but it goes much deeper than that...
• Vampire Survivors (87%) 🙋‍♀️💻 The best value on Steam: A $5 bullet hell roguelike that would run on a toaster and is hard enough to stop playing that you might want a copy for your toaster.
• Pizza Tower (90%) 🙋‍♀️💻🎮 An ode to Wario Land that's better than Wario Land.
• Honkai: Star Rail (90%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️: The new RPG from the Genshin Impact studio.
• Pentiment (88%) 🙋‍♀️💻: A great, narrative-focused murder mystery set in the 1500s.
  Marvel's Midnight Suns (88%) 🙋‍♀️: A deckbuilding tactics game and a superhero friendship simulator.
• The Case of the Golden Idol (89%)🙋‍♀️:💻 Challenging detective puzzles with a fascinating story.
• Elden Ring (90%) 🎮🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️: Surprise, surprise: This open world fantasy gauntlet from Dark Souls creator FromSoftware is brilliant.
• Immortality (95%) 🙋‍♀️💻: Her Story director Sam Barlow's latest video mystery is his best yet.
• Teardown (90%) 🙋‍♀️: A physics-based destruction engine that would've been fun even if it weren't also a genius puzzle game.
• Hitman 3 (90%) 🙋‍♀️: The art of assassination, polished as finely as Agent 47's head.
• Slay the Spire (92%) 🙋‍♀️💻: The deckbuilding roguelike all others aspire to beat.
• Total War: Warhammer 3 (90%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️: A brilliant final act with the series' most inventive and unusual factions yet.
• Strange Horticulture (90%) 🙋‍♀️💻: A beautiful and engrossing detective game packed with mysteries, puzzles, plants, and intrigue.
• Wildermyth (90%) 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♀️💻: Narrative design as genetic engineering, it will live in your head like an imaginary friend.

The best PC games by genre

Find our selection of the best PC games just a bit too broad? Perhaps you know you're after a gripping story, or an intense racer, or the kind of sim you can spend a whole weekend playing like a second job. Our genre lists have curated recommendations for RPGs, racing, strategy, and more. Check 'em out:

• Best FPS games
• Best MMOs
• Best racing games
• Best RPGs
• Best strategy games
• Best survival games
• Best battle royale games
• Best cyberpunk games