The Best PC Games of All Time

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“Half-Life 2 is, simply put, the best single-player shooter ever released for the PC,” wrote Dan Adams for IGN in 2004. He wasn’t the only critic raving about it, either; indeed, Half-Life 2 was awarded 39 separate “Game of the Year” distinctions, indicating that, yes, it was certainly one of the best PC games to ever come along.

But why was it so widely-acclaimed? It started with Half-Life 2’s foundation, the Source game engine—specially-created by the game’s developer, Valve Corporation—which gave gamers a high-resolution experience that couldn’t be matched by contemporary competition.

This game wasn’t just pretty packaging, though. The puzzles, mechanics, and game environment offered singular and immersive gameplay, complemented by mind-bending physics simulations and the iconic Gravity Gun. Meanwhile, players related to the nerdy appeal of protagonist Gordon Freeman, who has since become one of the most popular characters in video game history. Five years after the original Half-Life was released, its sequel showed gamers everywhere that it was well worth the wait; over a decade after its own debut, this game stands alone as the greatest PC game ever.

The influence of Doom is easy to gloss over nearly 26 years after its release, but nonetheless, it’s difficult to overstate just how much of an impact this game made on the future of PC gaming. It paved the way for first-person shooters before they were even called first-person shooters; rather, any game that was structured around firing your way through bad guys and ghouls simply became known as a “Doom clone,” until the term “first-person shooter” took hold.



It wasn’t just Doom’s hyper-violent approach that so captivated the millions of people who played it, though. The 3D graphics were ahead of their time, the high-powered arsenal led to hours of entertainment, and the multiplayer mode made sure that you weren’t just playing with yourself, either. Though this gory masterpiece was not without its controversies, including an unfortunate connection to Columbine mastermind Eric Harris, it’s impossible to trace the origins of today’s games without eventually landing upon Doom.

Since its inception, the Grand Theft Auto series has been the standard for open-ended exploration, allowing its players to completely eschew social responsibility in the name of reckless, virtual mayhem. Rockstar always knew how to make a hit with this franchise, but the fifth main entry was a homerun. In the first three days of its 2013 release, Grand Theft Auto V sold over $1 billion in product, surpassing the ambitions of even its own most hardened criminal warlords by becoming the fastest-selling entertainment property ever.



In his review of the game, Polygon’s Chris Plante remarked: “The achievement of Grand Theft Auto 5 is its consistent quality. That's what makes its world feel so believable—there's almost nothing that will pull you out of it.” His praise was echoed by many critics who felt that GTA V’s presentation and design made it as immersive as any game to date; however, they also denounced its poorly-written, even misogynistic, depictions of women, as well as its portrayals of torture. Still, as long as you don’t get too lost beneath its dark underbelly, Grand Theft Auto V towers over its storied predecessors as the franchise’s most outstanding achievement.

Though only a little over three years old, Blizzard’s Overwatch has quickly established itself as not only one of the greatest first-person shooters of all-time, but as a legitimate sporting movement by spawning the Overwatch League, a first of its kind professional eSports league that will support permanent Overwatch teams in cities like Seoul, Shanghai, New York, and San Francisco.



Backed by sports moguls like Robert Kraft, Jeff Wilpon, and Andy Miller, the Overwatch League has both the financial support and the fans to become a cultural force in the years to come. No doubt it’s all thanks to this game’s accessibility and appealing online experience, complemented by a colorful character roster that audiences immediately came to love.



Indeed, Blizzard did perhaps too-good of a job creating a cast of characters that gamers could get behind. In 2016, Pornhub reported that Overwatch had become one of its most popular search terms of the year, seeing an 833 percent surge in searches among the 18-24 year old demographic. Sex, sports, entertainment: What’s next for this game?

There were doubts that the original Portal could be made into something bigger and better the second time around, but when has it ever been a good idea to bet against Valve Corporation? As the esteemed company once again proved with this platforming puzzler, they just know how to make a damn good game. Portal 2’s cooperative mode was hailed for being just a plain fun way to spend some time with a friend, making for a collaborative experience that was hard to match. Building from the original’s mechanics and gameplay, the sequel also brought in new characters, a wicked sense of humor, and some top-notch writing to supplement the series’ formal innovations.



Oli Welsh of Eurogamer specifically highlighted this quality in his review of the title: “Portal was a sequence of great jokes, but Portal 2 is that rare beast, an actual video game comedy—and one of the funniest ever.” He was hardly alone in his praise; numerous outlets and institutions, including the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, named Portal 2 their game of the year.

Directed by Ken Levine, who first made his name with the System Shock cyberpunk series, BioShock was a morality tale wrapped in a role-playing game wrapped in a first-person shooter. Somehow, this Russian doll of a game pulled it all off, though, creating a visceral world that still lives in the minds of many gamers.



“Sure, it's fun to play, looks spectacular, and is easy to control,” wrote Pete Metzger for the Los Angeles Times. “But it also does something no other game has done to date: It really makes you feel." This perhaps best describes the game’s remarkable appeal: Its artistry and ease didn’t just make it an easy pastime; rather, the choices that this story of survival forced upon you were enough to give you pause in a way that few games ever do.

As gaming has advanced from static platforms like arcade machines and Atari, its dimensions have expanded beyond the 2D limitations of past systems to encompass entire worlds. Open world gaming makes video games as big as our imagination, allowing us to fully immerse ourselves in our preferred fantasy for hours and hours. In 2011, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim became the paradigm for this type of role-playing experience, boasting stunning environments, thrilling dungeons, and an addictive system of character development that you can completely lose yourself in.



Few games have been so unrestricted in their boundaries as to suggest an alternative manner of playing them altogether. That is, Skyrim isn’t defined by a storyline that you complete from start-to-finish; rather, it’s more impressive for everything you can do instead of doing that. Spend hours dueling dragons, running from one mountain to the next, or “beating the game,” for whatever that can mean in this context. Either way, Skyrim is a game that, because of its countless, fantastic possibilities, can quickly become more of a priority than your own life.

In an age of excess, it’s refreshing to find anything that strips back the accoutrement of modern life, and instead charms us with a simpler approach, and the mystery contained therein. Kentucky Route Zero, a magical realist point and click adventure that has been released in episodic installments since 2013, has won the gaming world over in this fashion, emerging as a true dark horse in today’s entertainment landscape. Its structure is almost anachronistic, and didn’t exactly come with a sexy sales pitch.



Kentucky Route Zero is slow-paced, focusing on exploring new environments and talking with new people,” the development team wrote on the game’s Kickstarter. But enough people, 205 to be exact, felt intrigued by its potential to throw the creators, Jake Elliott and Tamas Kemenczy, enough money to get this project off the ground: just $8,583.



However, with a little, Elliott and Kemenczy have accomplished a lot, producing a four-act series that has been critically-acclaimed throughout. It leaves the glitz and glamour of big-budget games aside to instead win your heart with spare, moody, and strange storytelling.

Stature plays a large role in Myst’s entry on this list; the adventure game is heralded, but far from perfect, and retrospective reviews of the game, which was originally released in 1993, have been even less charitable in their criticism. In 2000, IGN went so far as to say that Myst was no longer worth playing, despite the fact that, at that point, it was still the best-selling PC game ever.



So, why was it so successful at all? Well, for many, Myst marks a turning point when gaming leveled up, when it was first taken seriously as entertainment for members of the population who were old enough to drink a beer. Its presentation was gorgeous, and the storytelling was initially received as fresh and original, even if it was weighed down by considerable glitches in gameplay.



So, while it hasn’t aged particularly well, Myst is still synonymous with modern-day ambitions to elevate gaming’s place in the cultural hierarchy of popular entertainment. A line from a 1994 New York Times article is particularly telling with respect to this game’s impact: “Wired magazine, the bible of the new technology, even thinks that it has defined a new art form,” they note. To Wired’s credit, they were right; in 2013, Myst was added to the Museum of Modern Art’s collection.

Minecraft may not strike you as one of the greatest PC games of all time, but it should stand out as one of the most important. After all, it’s the most commercially-successful PC game of all-time, and sits only behind Tetris as the top-selling video game, period. So, even if the endlessly creative sandbox experience didn’t strike your fancy, it’s safe to say that it chewed up the time of millions of wannabe world-builders across the globe.



Rarely does any game become a viral phenomenon to Minecraft’s degree, as the title has spawned countless parodies, homages, clones, and YouTube walkthroughs. It is the seed of creation and discovery that has been planted in a generation of gamers, and its educational edition, MinecraftEDU, has even legitimized it as a new tool for learning in the classroom. Who needs Legos anymore?