The 22 best PC games

Gaming PCs, especially powerful ones, may be more expensive than consoles, but PCs have flexibility, moddability, and power unavailable in the competition. As a result, PC gaming is able to quickly pivot both toward and away from trends to give its players unique and amazing experiences.

So, a warning upfront: Unlike our other Essentials lists, this one covers a catalog that’s spread across multiple decades, and focuses on the 22 games on the platform we think everyone should play if they want to get the most out of PC gaming. That includes some of our personal favorites, but also older games that cast a long shadow.

Why 22 games, though? Any less makes it hard to narrow things down, and any more might be overwhelming. Twenty-two games is a solid number of titles, spread across multiple genres, with selections for just about every age group. And, when possible, we’ve included a link to our guide for each game, in case you need a little help to get started.

Also, this list is constantly evolving. We’ve included the games that have been cycled out at the bottom for a little additional inspiration.

Let’s dig in!

Control

Critics and players have raved about Remedy Entertainment’s Control, a third-person action game unlike any other. Here at Polygon, we called it both an artistic and a technical achievement. While it’s available on modern consoles, the game looks and runs the best on a high-end PC, especially if you have an Nvidia RTX video card to enable real-time ray tracing.

As Jesse Faden, players enter a brutalist skyscraper in New York City only to uncover a mystery that would make the writers of The X-Files blush. The gunplay is exceptional, matched by sound design and animation flourishes that earned six nominations and one trophy at The Game Awards in 2019. But what ties it all together is a wild sense of humor and a relentlessly unnerving story that rewards exploration and mastery in equal measure.

The game can be a bit intimidating, especially its skill trees and somewhat cumbersome map. Check out our detailed guides section to get started. —Charlie Hall

Desperados 3

“Tactical stealth” isn’t exactly a booming genre, but developer Mimimi seems to have the format perfectly dialed in. After the success of Shadow Tactics in 2016, the team took those same design tenets — small squads of specialized units tackling armies of soldiers with precision and quick-saving — to the Wild West with Desperados 3.

Desperados 3 changes very little about what made Shadow Tactics great. It’s still an isometric stealth game filled with vision cones and seemingly-impossible odds. But small tweaks, like being able to cue up your entire squad’s next action to all play out at the same time, make it a much more satisfying experience than its predecessor.

The adventure is made up of stellar levels that look more like dioramas brought to life, each filled with charm and detail, from the rainy streets of New Orleans to the dusty byways of a sun-beaten desert town. Picking these levels apart, piece by piece, using each of your squad members’ specialized abilities, is tremendously satisfying, like a sudoku puzzle with more knife throwing. Fans of the classic Commandos series will feel right at home here. — Russ Frushtick

Disco Elysium

Old-school isometric role-playing games are having a bit of a renaissance of late, with winning franchises like Divinity, Pillars of Eternity, and Wasteland absolutely knocking it out of the park. Even the Baldur’s Gate franchise is back, with some excellent remakes or the originals and a third installment on the way.

But there’s simply nothing like Disco Elysium.

The award-winning role-playing game puts you in the shoes of a middle-aged detective, but this is your nor regular gumshoe story. From our review:

Disco Elysium tells the story of a grizzled detective who got so drunk he forgot who he was, and now has to solve a murder. He’s working in a town that’s mysteriously out of time: Disco music is all the rage, and there are record players everywhere … but modern technology also sometimes crops up as if it’s no big deal.

It’s up to you to split your time between reassembling your sense of self, and working out why there’s a man hanging by his neck near the center of town. Everything seems to be working on dream logic, and the quicker you’re able to meet the game on that level, the better.

And what makes Disco Elysium so unique mechanically is its ludicrously detailed character creation and leveling system, and the amount of control it gives you over how you play your character while leaving plenty of room for surprises coming from the game itself.

Get it here: Steam

Doom Eternal

Polygon’s game of the year 2016 was called Doom, a reboot of the 1993 franchise from id Software and Bethesda Softworks. Believe it or not, 2020’s Doom Eternal is even better. From our review:

Doom Eternal stands apart from its contemporaries, the big, gaudy, self-serious first-person shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield that demand instant, microscopic movements to perform headshots in order to survive against preternaturally gifted teens. Competitive players of those franchises grapple with each patch’s meta, while memorizing maps, angles, and weapon advantages. It’s a popular approach to AAA first-person shooter design, but for all the grand scope and spectacle, the “fun” of these shooters largely takes place down the sights of a gun. Only one weapon in Doom Eternal includes a traditional scope, and it’s an optional upgrade. Ammo can be found in the chest cavity of every enemy, so there’s no need to be precious about firing from the hip.

In Doom Eternal, the “fun” is in the movement. Because you must restore health and armor with close-range attacks, moving in and out of scrimmages becomes the foundation of winning strategies. A double jump, a double dash, and a hook that pulls you toward its living target all allow you to establish your distance, as do environments sprinkled with walls, hills, tunnels, platforms, and monkey bars — all meant to be used for cover and escape, but also your own amusement.

Get it here: Walmart | Steam | Amazon | Fanatical | Green Man Gaming

Dwarf Fortress

Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter 2: Dwarf Fortress, better known simply as Dwarf Fortress, is a remarkable game. The result of the decadeslong collaboration between two brothers, Zach Adam and Tarn Adams, it’s one of the most complex and esoteric simulations every conceived, and it’s rendered in ASCII.

In the game’s most well-known mode, players take control of a band of dwarves setting out to create a community from scratch in a hostile world. “Control” is the wrong word, really, since the dwarves in the game have their own thoughts and feelings. Players merely suggest that they dig into the mountain and plant a field of mushrooms, while the dwarves themselves decide if they’re up to it at that particular point in time.

Regardless of whether you elect to play the game, simply creating a world in Dwarf Fortress is an experience not to be missed if you own a gaming PC. In each new round’s opening seconds, the game uses ridiculously complex systems to generate a 16,000-square-mile chunk of real estate, 250 miles thick.

Keep in mind that, in addition to the colony simulation itself, there’s another mode in the game: a roguelike single-player adventure that allows players to explore the game’s procedurally generated history from ground level.

Dwarf Fortress is completely free. Donations, naturally, are quite welcome. As a reward, you may be gifted with a handmade drawing. —CH

Get it here: Bay 12 Games | Steam

The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - a dragon flying over a river at sunset — A dragon in *Skyrim*.

One of the many benefits of PC gaming is the ability to get under the hood and tinker with the games that you already own. There’s no better series to satisfy the tinkerer’s itch than The Elder Scrolls. The franchise has embraced the modding community for nearly two decades, and the creative team behind it says that decision has had much to do with the series’ longevity and popularity over the years.

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim serves as an excellent introduction to game modding, thanks to its integration with the Steam Workshop. Simply purchase and download the game, and you’ll be able to select from more than 28,000 community-created mods that add everything from new skins, items, and quest lines to large-scale battles.

Of course, Skyrim is also available as a virtual reality title that’s fully compatible with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, or PlayStation VR for console fans.

For those who want to dig a little deeper, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind provides a much more hands-on modding experience. You’ll need to tinker with the actual game files themselves or download third-party tools to do the work, but the results can be extremely satisfying. One mod, now 18 years in the making, has even added an entire landmass with high-quality quests, additional voice-over work, and full integration with the game’s fast-travel system. —CH

Get Skyrim here: St e am | Amazon | GameStop | Fanatical | G reen Man Gaming

Elite: Dangerous

The sequel to the original Elite, a PC game that dates all the way back to 1984, Elite: Dangerous and its Horizons expansion are a borderline spiritual spacefaring experience.

At the core of this game is a realistic simulation of all 400 billion star systems in the Milky Way galaxy. No, that’s not a typo. The secret is the so-called Stellar Forge, a procedural system that developer Frontier Developments used to realistically simulate the formation of our galaxy. Using the best available astronomical data, the studio sort of threw all of creation into a digital rock tumbler and then continued to polish what fell out as an MMO.

It’s the community that makes this game such a joy to play. A recent effort to put new Fleet Carriers in every corner of the galaxy has contributed to a massive uptick in players, including all-time high player counts on Steam. Also, the developer is adding “space legs” — the ability to get out of your ship and walk around in first-person — some time in 2021.

Whether you want to risk life and limb rescuing your fellow players as a member of the Fuel Rats, engage in high-stakes player-versus-player combat during community-sponsored narrative battles, or simply take a weekslong joyride to the edge of the our unfashionable Western spiral arm, there’s something in here for everyone. —CH

Get it here: Frontier | Steam

Final Fantasy 14

A handsome man with a big sword smolders beneath long bangs. The air is purple around him.

Final Fantasy 14 is the perfect game for those who have tons of time and want to get sucked into a wonderful world (and then never come out of it). The MMORPG has something for everyone: a riveting story for Japanese RPG fans, fun raiding and combat, a great class system, extremely cool fashion, and even multiplayer fishing raids.

With so much to do, Final Fantasy 14 can be overwhelming, but it’s a game that can be played at your own pace. It’s great for soothing that MMORPG itch that PC gamers get so often. The latest expansion, Shadowbringers, was phenomenal and cemented Final Fantasy 14 as one of the best MMORPGs of all time. —Julia Lee

Get it here: Amazon | Steam | Green Man Gaming

Fortnite

Listen: When the original version of Fortnite launched, I hated it. And I wasn’t alone.

At the time, it was a $40 early access title, an endlessly “soon-to-be-free-to-play” cooperative multiplayer hybrid building … thing. There were zombies in it. You collected characters in the form of trading cards, and unlocked abilities from a skill tree. There was so much mindless clicking in the original version that my wrist would hurt after every each session.

That original mode, called Save the World, is still in the game. It even has a small, but devoted, ongoing fan base. But their numbers are completely dwarfed by fans of the Battle Royale mode, what is now most often simply called “Fortnite.”

Fortnite is arguably the biggest game in the world thanks to Battle Royale. It’s more than just a fast-follow of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. It’s a dynamic world with elements of Minecraft’s elaborate building systems, but Epic Games is also constantly adding little mysteries alongside the massive seasonal content drops that keep the fans guessing about what’s coming next. In the first half of 2020, it’s also become a meeting place just to hang out and watch some movies. —CH

Get it here: Epic Games Store

Half-Life

The original Half-Life tells the story of the MIT-educated theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman and a transdimensional rift that may someday kill us all. As far as PC shooters go, Half-Life represents an inflection point for the entire genre, threading a nearly uninterrupted narrative through a seamless and carefully paced action spectacle.

While the gameplay itself more than holds up, the look and feel of the original leaves something to be desired. Thankfully, the team at Crowbar Collective — themselves a bunch of modders — have created Black Mesa. It’s not simply a remaster of the original game, but also an effort to redesign Half-Life’s final, troubled levels featuring jumping puzzles on the alien planet Xen.

Whether you want to play the classic version or the updated Black Mesa is up to you, but every PC enthusiast should at least try one or the other at least once. —CH

Get Half-Life here: Steam

Get Black Mesa here: Steam

Half-Life: Alyx

The gravity gloves worn by Alyx look futuristic, but hacked together

Half-Life: Alyx gave VR something it desperately needed: a brand-new entry into a huge series, long-awaited by fans, and designed specifically for VR. If you want to know what happens next in the story of Half-Life, you have to buy or borrow a VR headset and play through one of the most polished games ever released for virtual reality.

Nothing about VR is used as a gimmick here, as every interaction connects you to the world and grounds you in Valve’s new reality. You’ll learn how to take care of your guns, and how to inject yourself with life-giving medicine … or subject yourself to a horrific healing process that involves crushing little grubs that may be sentient. It’s equal parts captivating and horrifying.

Combine all that with an ending that’s an absolute stunner, and catches us up on the Half-Life story while also dramatically raising the stakes for the next adventure, and you have one of the best games in VR, as well as one of the best games of 2020, full stop. —Ben Kuchera

Get Half-Life: Alyx here: Steam

Kentucky Route Zero

Kentucky Route Zero is one of the most fascinating narrative experiments in all of video games. The brainchild of the small team of artists at Cardboard Computer, it uses magical realism to tell a bizarre tale set in rural America.

The game, which began as a Kickstarter campaign, has been released episodically over the past seven years. Cardboard Computer has also released a series of experiences it calls interludes, which are freely available online. —CH

Get it here: Steam | GOG | Humble

League of Legends

League of Legends can be extremely intimidating. It’s a hybrid of the RTS genre and action RPGs, where physical skill and high-level strategy mingle for intense online battles. With over 140 champions for players to learn and master, there are many different ways to break in, and multiple roles to play in each round.

LoL is also fascinating solely as a spectator sport. Fans turn out in droves to watch multinational tournaments played all around the world. Many esports organizations hang their hats on the quality of the LoL teams they can field. Given that kind of popularity, it’s little wonder that this game is one of the most-watched titles on Twitch. —CH

Get it here: Riot

Minecraft

Before Minecraft was the cultural force it is today, it was a survival game.

Minecraft drops players on a procedurally generated map eight times larger than the surface of the Earth. They’ll have to forage for, hunt down, or grow enough food to survive, all while dodging the ever-present threat of explosive Creepers and deadly zombies, on the way to an endgame battle against a powerful extradimensional dragon.

Of course, it’s Minecraft’s no-stakes Creative mode that has garnered the game tens of millions of views on Twitch and YouTube, two entire industries seemingly purpose-built for the new breed of gaming personalities that it helped to reveal to the world. —CH

Get it here: Microsoft | Mojang | Amazon

Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds, Polygon’s game of the year for 2019, began as a student project before embarking on a successful crowdfunding campaign on the Fig platform.

Outer Wilds is about exploring the unknown, but there’s a catch. The game’s pocket-sized solar system runs on a tight 22-minute loop. Each cycle ends with the player waking up, with everything seemingly reset, except for the knowledge they’ve gained by exploring space and the planets in it. Why this is happening, and what the player must do to set things right, make up one of the most intriguing mysteries in all of gaming. —CH

Get it here: Epic Games Store

Return of the Obra Dinn

Just like an old-fashioned murder story, Return of the Obra Dinn poses a complex mystery, layered with personalities, motives, secrets, and lies. But it supercharges whodunit conventions by infusing misdirection into every nook and cranny of its intricate, gorgeous murder scenes.

The story is set aboard an early-19th-century merchant ship that shows up in port five years after it was reported missing, presumed lost at sea. The ship is bereft of human life. My job is to board the ship and figure out what happened. I’m soon confronted with evidence of a voyage gone awry. Skeletons, exploded cannons, and destroyed rigging all add up to … what?

Obra Dinn features a monochromatic art style inspired by early Macintosh games, but it’s also fully three-dimensional in movement and visuals. As the player, you inhabit an insurance adjuster from the Age of Sail who gains limited control over time and space. The game demands attention to detail and cleverness on the part of the player to get to the bottom of what happened to each character, while delighting them at every turn with a story and design that gradually reveals itself with surprising bursts of sound and violence.

In his glowing review, our Colin Campbell concluded that Obra Dinn “isn’t merely a great game, it’s the work of an intense and creative intelligence.” —CH

Get it here: Steam | GOG | Humble

Sea of Thieves

Sea of Thieves is a pirate sandbox that gives players a ship, an arsenal of weaponry, and a goal: amass huge amounts of booty. That’s a simple premise, but there’s nothing truly like a good session of Sea of Thieves.

Players take control of a sloop, brigantine, or a galleon, and accept voyages from a colorful assortment of trading companies. From there, the sea is wide open. Players can take on skeleton forts, hunt vicious megalodons and kraken, dig up chests of treasure, or haul cargo across the ocean. Sea of Thieves is a gorgeously rendered game, full of vivid colors and stunning vistas. The Tall Tales quest system builds on that, creating beautiful mysteries in smaller, more intimate stories.

There are few rules and extra mechanics stapled onto that core pirate fantasy, and players can spend much of their time playing beautiful shanties with their crew or just mucking about on the high seas. Pirates beware, because even the simplest goal can become twice as chaotic when another ship crewed by strangers gets involved. —Cass Marshall

Warframe

This science fiction fantasy shooter blends third-person action and Vanquish-style acrobatics with tried-and-true MMO systems to create a vibrant community of players. It’s also more approachable than it’s ever been before.

‘Tenno’ is the noun used for the player character, who awakens from cryosleep only to be immediately thrust into conflict with the Grineer. Luckily, my Warframe gets me through the conflict, and I am aided by the benevolent Lotus. Confused at all the proper nouns? It takes a while to pick up the size and scope of Warframe’s plot, but that largely doesn’t matter. Most of it is pretty standard sci-fi stuff — an ancient empire crumbled, the factions of that empire are now at war, and I am a powerful card put into play. But there is a twist that you shouldn’t spoil for yourself if you’re going to play.

What that effectively means is that I unlock a host of missions with variable objectives and I get to jump around and be a ninja. Warframe’s combat is a genuine joy. Movement is fast, fluid, and beautifully lethal. Individual hits can have a huge impact — I take pleasure out of pulling back an arrow and firing it right through an enemy’s head, where he ricochets back and is pinned to a wall. Melee attacks are accompanied with a satisfying sound effect and bright flash, along with a snappy animation. —CM

Get it here: Digital Extremes | Steam

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Years after its release, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt still stands as a towering achievement in modern video game design.

Much has been written about the game’s lengthy main quest and how the series uses player decisions to make thoughtful changes to the game’s world over time. In that regard, it’s the gold standard for digital role-playing games. But where The Witcher 3 truly shines on PC is in providing a glorious spectacle for the eyes. From the game’s rich and moody skyboxes to the environmental and character art itself, The Witcher 3 looks best on PC, with longer draw distances and higher resolutions than are possible anywhere else.

In that regard, the five-year-old title’s age is actually a benefit. You’ll spend far less on an appropriately high-end graphics card today than you would have when the game was first released. —CH

Get it here: Walmart | Steam | GOG | Amazon | GameStop

Valorant

Image: Riot Games

Valorant is a modern update of the classic tactical first-person shooter formula. Two teams of five face off, with one trying to plant a bomb and the other trying to prevent the planting. It’s tense, difficult, and strategically demanding, but the game’s smart design and technical excellence give it that critical multiplayer secret sauce of helping you improve regardless of whether you’re winning or losing.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Valorant at the moment is that it provides an incredibly strong foundation for future updates. Developed by Riot Games, which also created League of Legends and has overseen its updates for over a decade, Valorant’s eyes are set squarely on the future, with promises of new maps, new game modes, and new characters in both the near and distant future. Valorant’s already an incredibly fun game, and with a bright-looking future in front of it, it’s certainly a PC shooter worth investing some time in. —Austen Goslin

Get it here: Valorant

World of Warcraft

A high-fantasy massively multiplayer online game standing on the shoulders of giants like Ultima and EverQuest, World of Warcraft has continually reinvented itself for more than 15 years, and has recently even moved back to the past to try to rekindle the interest of players who may have left the game.

And WoW continues to have a thriving community, even if the total number of players sometimes goes up and down with the times. Whether you land in Azeroth solo or with a close group of friends, you should never need to adventure alone. —CH

Get it here: Walmart | Blizza r d

XCOM 2: War of the Chosen

Turn-based tactical strategy games are another example of an entire genre that was born on the PC. I can think of no better example than War of the Chosen, the outstanding 2017 expansion for XCOM 2.

The style of game is simple, even if the strategy is not: Take a small group of heavily armed commandos and painstakingly move into and out of harm’s way, taking turns moving or attacking with an enemy who is trying to stop, to accomplish some sort of objective.

Where War of the Chosen excels, however, is in its world-building and storytelling. Not only is it based on the exceptionally well-executed reboot by Firaxis Games, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, it also includes a lovable cast of characters. Making things even more fun, the voice-over artists all hail from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

In my review, I called it “the definitive XCOM experience,” and that’s just as true today as it was at launch. —CH

Arma 3

Get it here: Bohemia | Steam

BattleTech

Get it here: Paradox | Steam | Fanatical | Green Man Gaming | GOG

Sid Meier’s Civilization 6

Crusader Kings 2

Get it here: Paradox | Steam | Amazon | Fanatical | Green Man Gaming

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Get it here: Steam | GOG

Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak

Get it here: Steam | GOG

Metro Exodus

Get it here: Epic Games Store | Steam

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

Get it here: Steam | Amazon | Fanatical | Green Man Gaming

StarCraft Remastered

Get it here: Battle.net

Total War: Three Kingdoms

Get it here: Walmart | Steam | Fanatical

War Thunder

Get it here: Gaijin | Steam

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