The PC Gamer Top 100

The best PC games you can play today.

The best PC games you can play today. Once a year, the entire PC Gamer team gathers together to vote on the games we recommend above all others. The ‘today’ part is crucial: these are games from across the history of PC gaming that we believe are still the most fun to play right now. It's a list of old favourites and new ones, games you know well and games you've likely never played. Hopefully you’ll discover some new favourites among them—and get the itch to go back to some you already love.

For a celebration of those vital historical games that pushed PC gaming forward, read our list of the 50 most important PC games of all time.

The Top 100 selection process is democratic and subjective. Each writer simply nominates their personal top 15 games, and we combine the resulting choices to produce a longlist. Two writers, one each from our US and UK teams, then get together on a sweaty and prolonged Skype call to decide on a final list that we’re proud of. That’s what you have here, along with personal picks from the team highlighting games they love that didn’t make the final cut. Enjoy.

100 Kentucky Route Zero

James: The marriage of point-and-click with literary fiction, this is a slow exploration of rural America through the lens of magic realism. You spend most of the game clicking around a minimalist overworld, a road trip dotted by brief text interactions with bizarre denizens. KR0 ruminates on history and decay, sometimes through folksy song, and sometimes via populating the entire floor of an office building with bears.

Steven: This third-person shooter has taken the basic concept of running repeatable missions as a hybrid ninja warrior and turned it into something that rivals the scope of a traditional MMO. The progression is deep —almost too deep, letting you slowly craft the ultimate warrior on your path to vengeance. Warframe’s nimble run-and-gun parkour sets a new standard for movement in this genre.

John: Of all the hundreds of Half-Life mods shipped across the world on PC Gamer’s demo discs, this is the one I’ll never forget. They Hunger has a sinister eeriness we re-lived much later in Ravenholm. It has all the hallmarks of a low-budget John Carpenter horror film: a claustrophobic setting, a crooked local sheriff (who, surprise, is a zombie) and a tormented local radio station broadcasting to stranded souls.