PERSONAL PICK

Mollie Taylor

HATSUNE MIKU PROJECT DIVA MEGAMIX+

The best rhythm game series finally came to PC. Easy to learn yet difficult to master, your thumbs will be sweating as they frantically dance across a massive library of computerised Japanese beats. Vocaloid isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s catchy as all hell.

PERSONAL PICK

Nat Clayton

SABLE

Sable isn’t a game about action, adventure, or saving the world. Instead, your journey across its pastel world is a warm hug of self-discovery: ascend mountains for the sake of it, try on new faces, meet people, and glide on your jetbike to the relaxing sounds of Japanese Breakfast.

100 ZERO ESCAPE: THE NONARY GAMES

RELEASED 2007 | LAST POSITION New entry

Jody: Puzzle dungeon visual novels of the “you wake in a room” variety, the Zero Escape games burst with gory deaths and narrow getaways. Nine people get trapped in mazes as twisty as the games’ jumbles of esoterica and hidden histories.

Phil: Satisfying puzzles and philosophical paradoxes, through an anime filter. It keeps you guessing as you navigate the timeline, unpicking a grand mystery.

Mollie: I’m still reeling from Virtue’s Last Reward years later. What a goddamn trip.

99 SHADOWRUN: HONG KONG

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION New entry

Jody: One recruitable companion in this cyberpunk-fantasy RPG is a Japanese ghoul samurai. Bringing him along on heists and infiltrations means fast-talking guards and civilians to convince them he’s an actor or a cosplayer. Your whole crew is made of misfits, including a rat-spirit shaman who treats garbage like gourmet.

Robin: The excellent Shadowrun: Dragonfall has been in our list for a few years now, but I definitely prefer Hong Kong for its brilliantly evocative setting.

98 SHADOW TACTICS: BLADES OF THE SHOGUN

RELEASED 2003 | LAST POSITION 95

Lauren M: Shadow Tactics is the immaculate tactical stealth success that proved Mimimi Games had the chops to take up the Desperados series. Every mission is a lovely puzzle, and there’s an immense joy in meticulously setting up a simultaneous kill using all my party.

Phil: One of the most rewarding stealth games of recent years, embracing the unforgiving attitude of the genre but modernising it where it counts. The real pleasure here is being dropped into large maps full of guards, and slowly picking apart the puzzle of their intricate patrol routes as you work your way through. Your motley crew brings a variety of ways to distract, dispatch and disappear your foes, and it’s these asynchronous abilities that make the difficulty so satisfying to overcome. Some are nimble, able to navigate rooftops and tricky terrain. Others are stuck to the ground, but bring traps and tricks to help clear a path.

Shadow Mode, which lets you queue up moves for your team to execute at the same time, is inherently cool, as you painstakingly plan multiple takedowns, hit a button, and watch the action play out.

97 TEAMFIGHT TACTICS

RELEASED 2019 | LAST POSITION New entry

Fraser: One of the last autobattlers left standing – the product of a short-lived trend that no doubt benefited from sharing a launcher with the rubbish but immensely popular League of Legends. I love the constant reinvention of characters and mechanics, and building my loadout of heroes midbattle, but the real appeal is how easy it is to just hang out and shoot the shit with friends while my diligent little warriors duke it out or die.

96 THE FORGOTTEN CITY

RELEASED 2021 | LAST POSITION New entry

Jody: Groundhog Day with gladiators. There’s only one gladiator, but you get the point. You’re in a time loop, reliving a single day in ancient Rome.

Time loop games seem like a great idea, but it turns out redoing the same thing even more than videogames usually demand is actually super frustrating. The Forgotten City gets around that with two inventions: an arguably anachronistic zipline, and a sensible human being. The wonderful Galerius greets you each day, and when you barrel up to him shouting instructions to save the lives of people you figured out how to save in the previous loop, he just gets on with it. Gordian knot elegantly cut.

That knot was Greek, but you still get the idea.

95 THUMPER

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION Re-entry

Nat: Once, in Berlin, I played an early build of Thumper so hard my thumbs bled. Deep, violent bass throbbing through my skull, an assault of neon violets burning my eyes, desperately trying not to shed blood all over a shared gamepad, I embodied Thumper in its entirety – apure rhythm hell where you stop looking at the beats coming down the track, and start feeling the rhythm pounding through your body.

Jody: You’re a god-killing space beetle. What could be more immaculate?

94 TITANFALL 2

RELEASED 2016| LAST POSITION 88

Nat: Last year, Titanfall 2 was basically dead. While that campaign is still solid as hell, DDoS attacks had rendered multiplayer servers largely unplayable. But in December, Titanfall 2 got a Christmas pressie in the form of Northstar – afan-run server browser that shot new lift into the knackered old mech.

In 2022, Titanfall 2 isn’t just playable. It’s thriving. While early builds only allowed for certain modes on certain maps, Northstar is now a wonderfully chaotic mess of custom gametypes and modded mechs, the best of which sees BT literally throw you into the start of each new round. It’s a throwback to the good ol’ server browser days, and a perfect place for Titanfall 2 to spend its long-overdue retirement.

93 FALLOUT:NEW VEGAS

RELEASED 2010 | LAST POSITION 87

Jody: New Vegas blends the strengths of Fallouts old and new. It’s got some of the originals’ problem-solving variety, letting you talk round a fascist legionnaire or a brain in a jar, and the 3D world and VATS combat of modern Fallout, with the pleasant ding of XP earned and the foreboding rumble of new quests begun.

Imogen: Can’t believe we don’t have rules against games that require a library of mods to work well.

Jody: Three mods isn’t a library!

Nat: Janky, ugly, rubbish.

Chris L: Bethesda plus Obsidian, yeah, you’re gonna get tons of jank. But for an RPG I’ve already played multiple times I could dive back in today and have a wholly different experience with consequences and choices I’ve never encountered before.

92 COMMAND & CONQUER REMASTERED COLLECTION

RELEASED 2020 | LAST POSITION No change

Phil: Two classic RTSes in one loving package makes this an easy recommendation despite the age of its source material. Red Alert, in particular, is practically timeless – an alternate history World War II where Einstein travels back in time to assassinate Hitler. The result is much as you’d expect: campy FMV cutscenes, a pumping industrial soundtrack, and the deadly thrum of Tesla Coils as they prepare to decimate your army. Still a joy to play.

91 INSIDE

RELEASED 2016 | LAST POSITION New entry

Rich: Inside may be bringing up the rear in this list but it’s one of the best experiences I’ve had in gaming. A contemporary re-casting of the Frankenstein myth, the environments are a near-seamless blend of clever puzzles and bleak suggestion about where you are. Horror, sci-fi, and for my money the best twist in games.

Sean: Inside is the perfect narrative sidescroller: it’s got atmosphere, a moody soundtrack, smart puzzles, and most important of all: tension. As you pilot the boy through rainswept ruins and enslaved cities towards whatever end, Inside does that rarest of things, making you consider the act of playing the game itself.

Nat: Inside is a game you only play once. But that one time is a masterclass in mood, in building up tension and dread as you push a small child further into a brutalist meat grinder. It’s playing in almost the exact same space as Limbo, a trial-and-error platformer more than a real puzzler, but the artistry on display is phenomenal, woods and barns and deeper, darker industrial places all painted in a dreary watercolour greyscale that pushes you towards hopelessness.

Robin: Has to be said, it’s got one of the best endings of any game. If it’s not been spoiled for you yet, then oh boy are you in for a treat.

90 SNOWRUNNER

RELEASED 2020 | LAST POSITION 80

Morgan: Snowrunner is the best game about driving trucks through mud ever made. Not that it has much competition, but this is one sim you should really try for yourself. Jobs are various versions of “deliver X to Y,” but they’re really just reasons to have fun carving a path through natural hazards. It also sports some of the best physics-based suspension and land deformation tech around. It dropped a few places this year, but Snowrunner is still an easy recommendation.

89 HOME WORLD REMASTERED

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 78

Nat: Homeworld is PC gaming’s great space opera. A majestic, galaxy-spanning drama played out in a way only games could manage—by way of a perfectly executed three-dimensional spacefaring RTS. Gearbox did a hell of a job remastering the games to not only look gorgeous, but play with a little less ’90s faff, and a thriving mod scene means Homeworld also doubles as a phenomenal RTS adaptation of Star Wars, Star Trek, Halo, Mass Effect and more.

88 TEKKEN 7

RELEASED 2015 | LAST POSITION 74

Mollie: Bombastic, crisp combat and an electrifying soundtrack keep me coming back to Tekken 7. I still can’t find another fighting game that’s this much fun to watch and play. It has a steeper learning curve than some, but it’s totally worth it. The dramatic slow-mo cam that inches in on the final punchup should be in every fighter!

87 METAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN

RELEASED September 1, 2015 LAST POSITION 71

Morgan: This seven-year-old open-world stealth gem is starting to show its age, but the best bits of Metal Gear Solid V are still some of the best moments in the genre. Even the best immersive sims struggle to match The Phantom Pain’s freeform approach to missions and huge variety of tools.

86 FROSTPUNK

RELEASED 2018 LAST POSITION 71

Sean: In the often warm and cosy city-builder genre, Frostpunk is a shard of ice. You’re not an omnipotent eye in the sky governing a faceless population; as you balance sacrifice and survival in a snow-strewn apocalypse, Frostpunk forces you to face the people, and ultimately be held extremely accountable.

85 ALIEN ISOLATION

RELEASED 2014 | LAST POSITION 83

Jody: A cinephile’s dream, recreating the look and sound of Alien with loving care. It’s also a nightmare, recreating the xenomorph from gurgling growl to lashing tail and letting it loose to stalk you through (lovingly recreated) space station corridors.

If someone’s not into strategy games I don’t feel guilty convincing them to play one. When people aren’t into horror, it’s usually with good reason. If you don’t like being afraid you won’t like Alien Isolation. It’s terrifying. That said, if you enjoy the relief of triumphing over a boss in a Souls-like, think how relieved you’d feel confronting actual fear rather than some guy who transforms into a thing with long arms.

84 CONTROL

RELEASED 2019 | LAST POSITION New entry

Robin: The vibes are just impeccable. If you could distill Control’s weird, SCPinspired atmosphere into a liquid, I’d drink a gallon. I love how much fun it is to move and fight through its bizarre, impossible spaces while soaking all that in.

Fraser: It’s brutalist architecture porn. And as striking as it is, boy does it have a glow up when you turn on ray-tracing. There are a lot of flat, reflective surfaces in the Oldest House, so it’s a great showcase of those fancy reflections.