Best PC games to play in 2025
By Kirk McKeand
PC gaming is relentlessly pushing both the technical and creative boundaries of the industry forward: No platform can boast as beautiful and smooth graphics and as much genre variety. PC is home to everything from indie underground hits to triple-A blockbusters, from all-time great classics to the newest trends. That only begs one question: Which are the best PC games?
If anyone, dear reader, tells you that they have the answer to that question, give them a smack on the head. There are no right answers here. Tastes are different and every preference you can imagine will find something to satisfy it on PC. However, we can give you a few pointers and show you a few big names that you absolutely should have in your library.
It doesn't matter if you're new to PC gaming or just need some inspiration for your next shopping tour on Steam, GOG, Epic Game Store, or Battle.net: You've come to the right place. Here are some of the best PC games you can play in 2024.
Elden Ring
You could easily swap this out for any game from the Dark Souls series, but Elden Ring is more recent and it’s a real masterpiece. An open-world game unlike any other, one minute it’s oppressive and the next it’s dropping your jaw (or ripping it off). Just when you think you’ve seen everything the world has to offer, there’s a whole new area hidden beneath a well or tucked behind an illusory wall for you to explore.
Age of Wonders 4
Age of Wonders 4 takes player freedom and customization in turn-based 4X games to the next level: Allowing you to design your own factions to form near limitless combinations of aesthetics, bonuses, and powerful Tomes of Magic, the game is all about choices. From random events to economy management and hero equipment, you won’t ever find yourself with a lack of decisions to make – and you’ll find all of them reflected and represented in your empire.
Balatro
If you somehow haven’t already been sucked down the Balatro rabbit hole then it’s time to stop fighting it and get hooked on this brilliant deckbuilder. With the simple objective of making your score as big as possible, you have an incredible amount of tools at your disposal to do just that. You can manipulate your deck, alter your cards, build a set of unstoppable Jokers, and more as you slowly begin to see through its complexities.
Indiana Jones and The Great Circle
MachineGames has left behind its days of cutting through Nazis with fully automatic weapons. Instead, this game lets you bust them upside the head with a cast iron skillet, a plunger, a fire poker, and all manner of inanimate objects. Indiana Jones and The Great Circle blends everything great about Indy -- adventure, mystery, and action -- with what MachineGames does best. It's also one of the best-looking games on PC.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Perhaps the best RPG ever made outside of Japan, The Witcher 3 is epic and all-encompassing. In it, you take control of a witcher, a kind of ronin monster hunter who takes down beasts for coin. What you don’t expect, based on that premise, are side stories about spousal abuse, class divides, and what loneliness does to a person. You can find some of video games’ best writing in this fantasy world.
Crusader Kings 3
Oh look, it’s a game about watching a map change color. PC gamers love those. But where Civ lets us take turns, Crusader Kings 3 plays out in real time. And that’s not where the differences end. You won’t be working your way towards modern times here. Instead, it’s all about swords and steel and disinheriting family members (or murdering them) to ensure your heir takes all the land you’ve conquered during your tenure. There’s more court scheming and, uh, family love here than on Game of Thrones and no matter how good your intentions are, it'll all end in debauchery.
Final Fantasy XIV
MMORPGs on PC were dominated by World of Warcraft for ages, but Final Fantasy XIV has taken the crown in recent years. Its launch was a disaster in 2010, but its revamp in 2014 was exactly what the game needed. Since then, it’s grown stronger and stronger, releasing story expansions that many consider superior to even the mainline Final Fantasy games. If you want to lose yourself for hundreds of hours, there’s another life waiting for you here in one the best MMO games ever.
Total War: Rome 2
What have the Romans ever done for us? They provided us with the material for some pretty great video games, for one. Total War: Rome 2 is the most spectacular way of taking control of one of antiquity's superpowers and diving into massive battles that make you feel like you're watching a movie – though neither the game nor any esixting movies are an accurate depiction of how ancient battles looked like. Choose Rome or one of her rivals, build up your empire, fight grand battles, and keep your political opponents in check with the right dose of subterfuge. You can, in fact, build Rome in a day.
Titanfall 2
Now we move on to the best FPS campaign ever created. One minute you’re a lithe future soldier, running across walls, parkour jumping, and popping heads as you go. The next you’re piloting a hulking mech and punching the metallic guts out of another giant robot. The level of inventiveness on display here is awe-inspiring and you won’t forget the time travel mechanic any time soon.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Rockstar’s western is much more than GTA with horses. Sure, it’s an open-world game where you can freely wander and mess around in- between missions, but there’s a heartfelt story underpinning it all, along with some of the most memorable video game characters – and performances – ever. The world teems with life and feels like a proper ecosystem, all of it skinnable.
Minecraft
If there’s a list of the best games anywhere on the internet, it’s a rule that Minecraft must be on that list. We'll not break that. It’s a cultural phenomenon, boasting over one trillion views on YouTube videos of the game. Like virtual Lego, it allows its players to go wherever their imagination takes them. People have recreated entire cities, built spaceships, and even made working calculators in it. To top it off, the specs are so forgiving that it’s a perfect laptop game, it's highly modable, and you can revisit your favorite spots thanks to specific seeds.
StarCraft 2
There aren’t as many RTS titles as there used to be in PC gaming, but maybe that’s because StarCraft II already perfected the art. Play through the story mode and every new mission throws up some fresh dynamic, some new variable, teaching you in the same way Super Mario drip feeds its mechanics. All of it is fun, but it serves one purpose: getting you ready to face other players online. Thing is, you probably never will be. High-level StarCraft players are like another species, capable of issuing hundreds of orders per minute. We’ll be over here, turtling.
Fortnite
While Fortnite is available anywhere, we maintain that the PC version is the best experience. No matter how well you think you can aim on a controller, you can absolutely do better if you get used to mouse-aiming. Aside from that, Fortnite is simply the best Battle Royale game experience out there, it won the war and there aren’t many pretenders to the throne anymore.
Hades
Combining fantastic action RPG gameplay with satisfying roguelike mechanics and storytelling, and presenting it with an incredible visual style and a soundtrack fit for the gods, indie developer Supergiant Games landed a commercial and critical success with Hades. All of its elements are just perfect fits for each other with weapons that feel great to fight with, divine powers that feel awesome to unleash, and drama from the most dysfunctional family in the history of mythology that is interesting to dive into deeper. It’s also an absolute wrist-killer, but sacrifices must be made, eh?
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
It’s playable on Alexa and will probably come pre-installed on the brain chips of the future, but PC gaming is where Skyrim belongs. Already a beast of an RPG that you never truly finish, Skyrim’s PC mods are transformative to the experience. You can make it more pretty, add entire new questlines, and even change the mechanics of the game. That’s why Skyrim will live forever as one of the all-time greats. Todd Howard will likely also release a new edition of it every three years just because he can. And you'll buy them.
Sid Meier’s Civilization VII
Another one where the hours simply melt away as you play for just one more turn, Civilization is essentially a game where you watch a map change color, but that’s way more exciting than it sounds. Settle cities and grow your influence through diplomacy, culture, and military might, all while trying not to get nuked by Gandhi or fending off Queen Victoria, who really wants you to be interested in a trade agreement with England.
Dishonored 2
Old-school immersive sims don’t hold up too well these days, but thankfully, Arkane Studios is carrying the torch. Inspired by games such as Thief, Dishonored 2 plonks you in a whalepunk city and tasks you with assassinating a series of targets. Using magical powers, you can teleport, turn into animals, possess people, stop time, and more. The number of creative solutions to every encounter is mind-boggling.