Welcome
In recognition of PC Gamer’s 30th anniversary, we asked ourselves a question: What is the point of the Top 100? Is it a list of games the team loves? A way to recognise the most important games on the platform? A celebration of the most exciting and vibrant communities? Or is it simply a helpful guide to what’s still worth playing today?
The answer, we decided, was all of the above. And so, this year, we’ve created a new voting system that takes all of those factors into account. And then we had a big argument about the results. That’s the other thing about the Top 100: You have to have a big argument. Enjoy.
PHIL SAVAGEUK EDITOR-IN-CHIEFphil.savage@futurenet.com
OUR NEW VOTING SYSTEM EXPLAINED
Over the years, the Top 100 has been created using a variety of methods – in recent years it’s just been a big argument. This year, we’ve created a system designed to capture the nuance of the things we consider most the important for a Top 100 game. We want to recognise historical importance, how well it plays today, and also to give space for the newer games we can’t put down. Most importantly, we need to just really love each game we pick.
100 FOOTBALL MANAGER 2023
RELEASED Nov 8, 2022 | TOP 100 SCORE 203.18 | PROMOTED BY Dave James
Quality 6.30
Importance 7.65
Hotness 8.10
Playability 6.30
Dave James: It’s very easy to dismiss the Football Manager games as just spreadsheets for footy nerds, but it remains one of the most influential PC games in the platform’s history. Not because it’s launched a thousand clones – indeed there is literally no genuine competition – but because it’s had a direct influence on the sporting industry it is simulating. There’s no other game that’s had such a lasting real-world impact as Football Manager. Plus, it’s addictive.
99 DIABLO IV
RELEASED June 5, 2023 | TOP 100 SCORE 207.43
Tim Clark: That Diablo 4 placed so low despite being one of the biggest PC releases of the year is, I guess, testament to how high the ARPG bar has been set. While I appreciate there are serious issues, my Necro has been having a lovely old time mooching around the lower World Tiers, trailed by a platoon of skellies, delivering justice on the tip of a bone spear.
98 HOLLOW KNIGHT
RELEASED Feb 24, 2017 | TOP 100 SCORE 212.35
Robin Valentine: Hollow Knight’s world strikes this amazing balance between hostility and wonder – you’re always simultaneously excited and terrified to see what’s around the next corner. It’s got some of that Dark Souls magic – which so many indie metroidvanias try and fail to capture – in its beautiful horror, intricate geography, and tragic fragments of history.
97 DESTINY 2
RELEASED Oct 24, 2017 | TOP 100 SCORE 212.89
Quality 6.82
Importance 7.72
Hotness 7.00
Playability 7.94
Jacob Ridley: I just can’t quit Destiny. I go through peaks and valleys in playtime, but I’m always keeping one eye on what’s going on and finding time to shoot stuff with fantastical weaponry. It has that replayable quality that few games manage, let alone master, even for those moments when it doesn’t feel at its best.
Phil Savage: Lightfall’s campaign was a massive misstep from Bungie, but the new expansion did at least do some things right. Buildcrafting is in a healthier place now, thanks to a mod rework and the much needed addition of a loadout system. And the relaxing of power requirements means it’s easier than ever to get into the meat of the game’s hardest activities.
The combat is unmatched in its balance of accessible gunplay and wildly overpowered space magic, and its raids and dungeons are still peerless. Recruit some friends, jump into King’s Fall, and have an experience you won’t find in any other shooter.
96 DEATH STRANDING
RELEASED July 14, 2020 | TOP 100 SCORE 214.49
Rich Stanton: Kojima’s outsize personality can sometimes overshadow the fact that he’s one of the great designers. Death Stranding sticks with me years later, and it’s not the pompous though oft-hilarious cutscenes, but the dogged journeys it sends you on and its total commitment to the act of traversal. You earn every triumph in this game with failure, pratfalls, and sometimes sheer bloody minded persistence.
The pandemic hitting just after release is a cosmically absurd coincidence, one that subsequently layered a degree of prophecy and meaning over a meditation on our fragmented society and inability to act as a united whole in the service of the common good.
95 TEARDOWN
RELEASED April 21, 2022 | TOP 100 SCORE 216.90
Morgan Park: Teardown is as fun as it is original: a sandbox puzzler powered by the best destruction engine since Red Faction Guerilla. I adore that Teardown establishes an elastic set of goals, usually “steal these objects in a minute”, and gives me infinite time to decide how to do it. It’s the perfect bait for people who love playing with Lego but get bored when nobody tells you what to make.
94 MARVEL’S MIDNIGHT SUNS
RELEASED Dec 2, 2022 | TOP 100 SCORE 216.95 | PROMOTED BY Evan Lahti
Quality 8.10
Importance 5.58
Hotness 5.08
Playability 7.73
Evan Lahti: It’s the best game about superheroes on PC and the best Mass Effect game since ME2. Midnight Suns puts Firaxis’ pedigrees on display: unit animation, the board game-ness of it all, its understanding of how to unfold a campaign. But it is also a heartfelt game about friendship, about managing intergenerational conflict, and about the relatable experience of being a vampire who starts a book club just to get closer to his alien crush.
Robin Valentine: It could not be more obvious as you play Midnight Suns that it’s a game Jake Solomon has been dreaming of making since he was a teenager. It’s a wonderful, unique game, combining many unlikely elements into a sprawling, sometimes messy, journey that embraces everything about comic book stories.
93 POWERWASH SIMULATOR
RELEASED July 14, 2022 | TOP 100 SCORE 220.65
Sarah James: Yeah, I know. This is one of those games where you just want to laugh at its existence, then you play it and 50 hours later, you’re trying to figure out why you can’t put it down. There’s no story to pull you in, and no impressive mechanics or cutscenes to fall in love with. Instead, Powerwash Simulator just works by appealing to that part of your brain that likes neatness and order in the most soothing way possible. And if you don’t think you care about making things shiny, this game is likely to surprise you.
Morgan Park: I love Powerwash Simulator for being an uncomplicated, stimulating “second activity” game that you can also choose to overthink and obsessively optimise. Great on Deck.
92 DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS
RELEASED Nov 2, 2009 | TOP 100 SCORE 219.09
The importance of to PC gaming still, even
