Top 1 PC Games Red Dead Redemption 2 - Honorable Mention

Red Dead Redemption 2 - Honorable Mention

Red Dead Redemption 2 ($60 on Steam) snuck up on me. For a long time I enjoyed everything but the story. I didn’t feel all that invested in Arthur Morgan, nor the exploits of Dutch and his gang. I partook in Rockstar’s elaborate Old West theater production but felt removed from it, preferring instead the quiet of a camp in the mountains, or people-watching in Saint Denis.

But then all those lonesome hunting trips endeared Arthur Morgan to me, and as the stakes ramped up I found myself more and more invested in getting him free of Dutch, finding him a happy farm somewhere and making a life for him. You know it won’t work out that way, and can’t if you’ve played the original Red Dead Redemption. I wanted it anyway though.

The journey is long and meandering, but maybe it needed to be. I spent the early hours annoyed by how damn slow the story unfurled, but now I wonder: If it were any faster, would the emotional payoff be as high? I doubt it.

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Game Link : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1174180/Red_Dead_Redemption_2/

Top 2 PC Games Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds ($25 on Epic Games Store) was our favorite Game of the Year when we did our work-in-progress list in June. It almost took home the prize here as well. I went back and forth, back and forth multiple times in creating this list, and while all the games are ostensibly tied for number two on this list, some came closer to the top than others.

Outer Wilds is a fantastic detective story. It’s a marvel of design. A galaxy in miniature, trapped in a time loop, where every event plays out over 22 minutes like clockwork. There are no upgrades, no unlocks. The only element that improves is you—your knowledge of the various planets and how they connect, your control over your ship, your understanding of the underlying mystery. If you knew exactly what to do and where to go, you could finish Outer Wilds in 22 minutes.

And yet it will probably take you upwards of 10 hours, making progress one crucial piece of information (and one death) at a time until it all clicks into place. There are some annoyances in the back half, with key events locked to certain parts of the timeline, leaving you to twiddle your thumbs before you can make progress. Those once-per-cycle moments are also what make Outer Wilds special though, and without them it would be a lesser adventure.

Game Link : https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/

Top 3 PC Games Observation

Observation

Two years ago we included a short experimental game called Stories Untold on our 2017 Game of the Year list. With Observation ($25 on Epic Games Store), developer No Code is two for two.

As No Code co-founder Jon McKellan so aptly put it, “Observation is kind of 2001: A Space Odyssey—but you’re HAL.” Or rather, you’re SAM, short for Systems Administration & Maintenance, the AI in charge of all mechanical and electrical functions aboard humanity’s premier space station. Something’s gone wrong though, the ship’s been damaged and your crew injured or perhaps killed. What happened and why? That’s the crux of Observation, the central mystery you need to unravel.

And it’s a well-written mystery, a spectacular bit of pulp science fiction. The real draw is No Code’s fondness for analog technology though—or in this case, early digital. Like Stories Untold, there’s a lot of attention paid to user interfaces, to CRT distortions and fiddly knobs and so forth, as you direct SAM in everything from opening doors to finessing the comms system.

Game Link : https://store.steampowered.com/app/906100/Observation/

Top 4 PC Games Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus

Metro is primarily a series about scrabbling through claustrophobic corridors with a janky flashlight and a weapon that’s literally taped together. Thus when 4A presented Metro Exodus ($60 on Epic Games Store) for the first time, an open-world game that would send Artyom and Co. venturing out of the titular Moscow subway system, I feared the worst.

Few manage the pivot to open-world as artfully as Metro though. Those cramped corridors still exist in the world, run-down bunkers and collapsing buildings and rusting shipwrecks strewn about the frozen banks of the Volga and the dried-up Caspian Sea. And while exploring between these landmarks never feels quite as vital, there’s still a wonderful tension to creeping through the snow at night, lit only by the full moon, watching Demons circle overhead and listening to Artyom’s strained breathing through a failing gasmask. Exodus is exactly what I wanted, a triumphant capstone for a series I feared might never get one.

Game Link ; https://store.steampowered.com/app/412020/Metro_Exodus/

Top 5 PC Games Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 2

“Resident Evil 2 is the Resident Evil that finally made me a fan.” I looked back at our write-up in June and I can’t think of a better way to put it, nor a better endorsement. I’d played past Resident Evils, but none ever hooked me like this year’s remake.

Capcom preserved the spirit of the 1998 original, and even preserved some of the more iconic setpieces and puzzles from Claire and Leon’s respective adventures. But it rises above nostalgia in a way few remakes ever manage. Resident Evil 2 ($60 on Humble) is a fully modern game, representing two decades of progress—in mechanics, in storytelling, in level design, in every discipline imaginable. One of my favorite changes is also one brand-new to the series: A map that changes color depending on whether you’ve finished searching a room or not. It’s a small tweak, but indicates both how technology’s evolved since 1998 and how discussions around difficulty have evolved.

For a series this old to reinvent itself? To scrape off some of the accumulated cruft? That’s incredible. Here’s hoping Capcom can repeat the trick with the Resident Evil 3 remake in 2020.

Game Link : https://store.steampowered.com/app/883710/RESIDENT_EVIL_2__BIOHAZARD_RE2/

Top 6 PC Games Heaven’s Vault

Heaven’s Vault

Of all the games on this list, I think Heaven’s Vault ($25 on Steam) asks the most of its audience. It’s a game about history—a fictional history, of a lost galactic empire and what caused its downfall. But it’s a functional history, a knot the player needs to unravel. Heaven’s Vault is loathe to give straight answers to even its simplest mysteries, instead communicating through crumbling mosaics and inscriptions on weathered walls and in chunks of wood washed up on riverbanks.

And everywhere, remnants of a lost language, glyphs the player needs to translate either through context or guesswork. Get a translation wrong, it might affect the way your character sees the entire story going forward. An ancient graveyard or simple garden? Religious artifact or junk? The choice is yours.

That’s what Inkle does best, of course. Studio co-founder Jon Ingold once told me their design approach is “Lots of little choices, all of which can be significant at any given moment.” Heaven’s Vault demonstrates that better than ever, even better than Sorcery! and 80 Days. By the time you’ve finished, the past, present, and future all bear your fingerprints, traces of where you’ve gone and what you bothered to learn. It’s an incredible achievement in interactive storytelling, made better by its faith that players will want to undertake such a daunting task.

Game Link Download: https://store.steampowered.com/app/774201/Heavens_Vault/

Top 7 PC Games Control

Control

Only Remedy could have made Control ($60 on Epic Games Store). Remedy, and its love for pulp science fiction and the paranormal, for Twilight Zone and Twin Peaks and New Weird. Remedy, and its eccentric use of live action video, its knack for picking the right licensed song for the right moment. Remedy, and its talent for creating a kick-ass shooter—a talent the studio hasn’t fully indulged since Max Payne 2.

But mostly Remedy, and its willingness to keep experimenting. Control is the culmination of two decades of idiosyncrasies, groundwork laid by Max Payne and Alan Wake and Quantum Break. All of them were flawed, but diamonds in the rough. Here, in the titular Federal Bureau of Control, all those best impulses finally came together in a game that plays as well as it’s written and vice versa, a gripping adventure that blurs the lines between mundane and menacing in ways that would make Rod Serling proud.

Also—and this didn’t factor into our decision at all—but it looks incredible with one of Nvidia’s RTX graphics cards, the first truly amazing ray-tracing showcase. Real-time reflections are the real deal.

Game Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/870780/Control/