BY HAYDEN DINGMAN

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have ridden off into the sunset, replaced by the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. But what do we care, right? This is PCWorld, and my graphics card will function just as well next month as it does today, new consoles be damned.

But there’s no denying that hardware changeovers tend to drive the industry forward. Freed from the constraints of aging consoles, games leap ahead—not just in the living room, but on PC as well. By this time next year, today’s best games may well look…well, old. Time marches on, even children get older, consoles embrace modern SSDs and Ryzen CPUs, et cetera.

Thus the end of a console generation is also the perfect time for a retrospective. We’re feeling nostalgic about the last seven years and the games we played along the way, and we thought we’d celebrate those games one last time before they fade into the depths of our Steam libraries.

From Alien: Isolation to The Witcher 3, here are some of our favorite games of this generation, in no particular order.

ALIEN: ISOLATION

The presence of the Alien (read: Xenomorph) in Alien: Isolation is still my least favorite part. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a marvel of artificial intelligence, and a true hunter. Being its prey is as frustrating as it is fascinating though, with the Alien’s unpredictable nature a challenge that all-too-often results in your death—and a reminder that yes, you’re playing a video game. Tension broken.

But for all my complaints, Alien: Isolation has stuck with me. Creative Assembly’s rendition of the space station Sevastopol is brilliant, drawing on the look of the films and then extending it in ways both big and small. It feels like you can reach out and touch Alien: Isolation, from its charmingly overengineered save stations to the tactile motion detector that’s often your only companion. It feels real and weighty in a way few worlds manage.

It’s a real shame Creative Assembly hasn’t gotten the chance to work on another project like Alien: Isolation since. I love Total War, but honestly Alien: Isolation is their best game this generation.

RAINBOW SIX SIEGE

Back at E3 2014, I called Rainbow Six Siege the first “next-gen” shooter. Little did I know Siege would still stand alone more than six years later, as the console generation came to a close.

Much of this generations games focused on refining or making good on old ideas. Games got larger, longer, more photorealistic—but very few of them got more complicated.  is one of the only games to take the power of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (and the PC of course) and use it to create an all-new experience, one that wouldn’t have been possible on older consoles. went small instead of large, creating intimate multiplayer maps where nearly every surface was destructible, and where out-thinking your opponent