Best pc games last 5 years

Nintendo managed to take everything we loved about the past Animal Crossing titles and crank it up beyond our expectations, adding a plethora of new features. New Leaf gave us the customization and control over our towns in ways never imagined. It serves as a feel-good game , a welcome escape from reality. It also brought us our adorable queen puppy, Isabelle. Humor is difficult to come by in video games, but The Stanley Parable offers plenty of wit by lampooning the po-faced culture of Gorogoa is one of the most visually appealing games ever made.

I mix and match images, playing with size and perspective in order to create sense from disorder. The story and the puzzles are engrossing without being annoying, marking a new direction for a genre that had become wearying through obfuscation. I would like to thank whoever at Sony spent all of their goodwill to get a sequel to Gravity Rush greenlit.

The original was a beautiful and quirky open-world game. Fortunately, the game could be played anywhere on the PlayStation Vita. Unfortunately, few people played the game anywhere because, hey, PlayStation Vita. Minus a comically slow and off-putting intro, Gravity Rush 2 builds upon the potential of its predecessor. On the PlayStation 4, the creators have the graphical power to make a world that matches their concept art, a world that is bigger than I expected.

Not enough people played these games. I feel a compulsion to make up for everybody else, to play one every couple of weeks, if only for an hour. Or to listen to their soothing soundtracks.

Its premise is simple, its soundtrack is infectious, and because its gameplay is so easy to grasp, it makes a strong case for what sets VR gaming apart from traditional experiences.

Players step into a simple VR landscape. In front of them is a lane that sends blue and red blocks toward them, in time to the music. Playing Beat Saber feels like a mixture of a rave and a futuristic gymnastic dance. It requires full body movement, hand-eye coordination, rhythm, and a whole lot of sweat. Staying three steps ahead of seismic dot shifts could mean playing for a steady hour. The path is endless, but never a grind. When Mario Kart 8 was released for the Switch in , I breathed a sigh of relief.

Finally, it was here — the infinitely playable racing game, which feels as fun today, five years after its release, as it did when it came out in on the Wii U. Oh, and its cruel, randomly distributed items have the kind of big impacts that make gameplay feel meaningful, no matter your skill level.

Mass Effect 2 is the ultimate BioWare game, setting a bar that many players believe the studio has yet to top. While the first Mass Effect introduced players to a stellar sci-fi world, it asked them to struggle through obnoxious controls and vehicle sections to see it through. Mass Effect 2 changed all that, while retaining a compelling narrative world and environmental setting.

Warframe was born in as a last-ditch effort to keep the lights on at Digital Extremes. In the years since, it has managed to evolve into one of the best action games on the market, all the while remaining free-to-play. Every minute of action in Warframe feels cinematic and incredible.

No game has had quite the same journey as Diablo 3. Praised on release as the next evolution of dungeon crawlers, it was then hated for its real-money auction house. The introduction of rotating seasons and Great Rifts as a way to make players compete with one another made Diablo 3 a perfect prototype of what online PvE games would become.

The Witness is a game in which you solve a series of seemingly impossible line and maze puzzles that populate a pretty island. And while it is challenging, the game never feels unfair, gradually giving you all the mental tools necessary to figure out the next tricky puzzle. But The Phantom Pain is the most enjoyable Metal Gear to play, even with its sundry faults, mainly around story and multiplayer modes. Kojima and his team at Kojima Productions brought decades of stealth gameplay experience to bear with a layered open-world game of sneaking, tactics, and countertactics.

In , we invited Charles Yu, the author of some of the best science fiction of this generation, to write about Universal Paperclips. For Yu, the game approached the story of artificial intelligence from a place of cold, grim honesty. As an AI, your sole task is to make paper clips. As many as possible. As efficiently as possible. You were used — and so was every other bit of matter in existence. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is practically the gold standard of video game horror.

Its ability to simultaneously terrify and intrigue the player can be attributed to the myriad of ways in which it mixes up the thrills and its excellent Victorian setting. One minute you may be pursued by a very real invisible creature in waist-high water, the next find yourself dogged through the halls of a prison by a noisy monster that was never really there to begin with.

Civilization V takes the depth that makes 4X strategy amazing and simplifies it in a way that allows just about anyone to get a lot out of it. Especially after its second expansion, this hex-based iteration of the legendary human-history simulator series does a fantastic job of letting you play out basically unlimited "what if?

The first installment of the Black Ops sub-series in Call of Duty remains one of the best games in the overall franchise to date. The compelling single-player espionage story coupled with an exceptional multiplayer suite and what would ultimately become the new foundation for the Zombies mode forged a gameplay trifecta that still shines from a design perspective, even if its visual fidelity pales in comparison to its modern-day descendants.

All of the Fallout games are great, but New Vegas stands above the rest thanks to the depth of its characters, its dark sense of humor, and the flexibility of its story. House feel like anything but a black-and-white choice between good and evil. The fact that we get to decide the outcome makes it even better. For more, see our full Fallout: New Vegas review here. Mass Effect 2 is one of the best role-playing, cinematic, story, and character-driven experiences of the last decade. Well-written dialogue choices and their resulting relationship branches made every dynamic feel like they were wholly your own.

This pixelated building simulator may look like a basic block construction kit to the untrained eye, but beneath this low-poly pile of cubes lies one of those robust, sophisticated, and endlessly inspiring video games ever made. Minecraft can be played as a survival game where players craft weapons, raise rudimentary structures and survive the night against hordes of horrible skeletons and spiders.

It's easy to pinpoint the exact moment that the long-running NBA 2K series launched itself into the stratosphere of success and its main competitor, NBA Live, sank into a rebuilding mode it has yet to escape: the Fall of That year, NBA Live — then attempting to rebrand itself as NBA Elite — got canceled at the very last minute, while NBA 2K11 jelled into an incredible pro basketball simulation that, oh yeah, also happened to sign the elusive legend himself, Michael Jordan, to finally appear in a video game.

For more, see our full NBA 2K11 review here. Red Dead Redemption set a new benchmark for cinematic storytelling in games. Fundamentally, StarCraft 2 is an RTS in which units adhere to a strict rock-paper-scissors arrangement of strengths and weaknesses.

Surprisingly, that simplicity allows for seemingly limitless depth, with player tactics having evolved over a decade of thriving activity. Though the first Super Mario Galaxy wasn't part of this decade, the sequel is the better game anyway, and there probably hasn't been a better mainline Mario release since Super Mario Galaxy 2. Many more planets awaited you in the Galaxy follow-up, and on each one a new challenge, gameplay twist, or clever gimmick.

Arguably the height of the Batman: Arkham series, Batman: Arkham City expanded on the brilliant foundation of Arkham Asylum's empowering combat and dense world design with a much larger chunk of Gotham to explore. Surprises and fan-pleasing references are hidden in plain sight around every corner, and the sprawling story has no shortage of classic villains to tangle with, from Joker and Two-Face to the more obscure Victor Zsasz and Hugo Strange.

On top of all of that is an expanded range of gadgets that makes scouring the entire city for Riddler trophies a Batman fan's dream. Look, you don't get an entire genre of game named after you and not make it on a game of the decade list. Dark Souls is arguably the most influential game of the decade. Understandably, Demon's Souls did come first, but Dark Souls paved the way for the entire SoulsBorne franchise to become a cultural phenomenon, largely thanks to its central theme of survival and dedication.

Persevering among impossible odds that often feel unfair is a universal truth that every human understands. But what keeps people coming back is the tight combat system, intricate weapon upgrade trees, fashion souls dressing up with armor pieces , and world-building tucked neatly in the background and item descriptions for those willing to indulge themselves with a story of cyclical madness and suffering. After more than a decade of hopeless dreaming, the fighting game community was finally blessed with a new Marvel vs.

Capcom game. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 instantly reinvigorated the community with a modern character roster and a whole new set of combos and exploits to excavate from the complex game engine.

Like any good sequel, Portal 2 takes what made the original so great and makes it much, much greater. The puzzles are more complex and brain-breakingly satisfying.

The story and world are far more rich and detailed. Not only is the overall scope of Portal 2 much broader, it even throws in a fiendishly difficult co-op mode. It's just as well Portal 2 set the bar so high, because Valve doesn't seem in any rush to make a third game. For more, see our full Portal 2 review here. The first Saints Row was more or less an ersatz Grand Theft Auto with ragdoll physics and character customization, and the second one began to color outside the lines, but Saints Row The Third was where the franchise really came into its own and showed its true colors which are purple and silver, for the record.

The third entry transformed the eponymous heroes from a street gang to a cadre of celebrities running a global consumer brand, and then literally dropped them into the brand new city of Steelport, which rapidly became the goofiest sandbox action game to date.

Couple that with some top-notch developer support that has consistently added new content since release, and Terraria deserves to stand tall all on its own. There's a good reason why Skyrim has been ported to everything — even Amazon Alexa: it's fantastic. It is the quintessential open-world fantasy role-playing game. That it was released in and still hasn't been surpassed in its genre here at the end of the decade should give you a good idea of how high it set the bar.

Sure, it birthed many a meme and suffered many a glitch, but look at the game proper and you'll quickly remember why you fell in love with it. Before New Leaf, this cozy, low-stress simulation series had appeared in both Nintendo consoles and handhelds alike, but on 3DS it had finally found the perfect home.

The little handheld was powerful enough to display beautiful graphics and animation and its portability inspired players to bring their towns with them anywhere to meet friends and share their game worlds in real life.

Fishing, bug collecting, buying furniture, and yes - even paying off a mortgage - have never been this fun and charming. Borderlands 2 improved on the already-great Borderlands with little tweaks and improvements to the experience in almost every category; BL2 brought better characters, a better antagonist Handsome Jack , improved though not perfected inventory management, and even the series' best DLC pack, 'Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep'.

To this day, we'd be hard-pressed to recommend a looter-shooter that looks and plays as well as this one does. For more, see our full Borderlands 2 review here. There's nothing quite like Diablo's hack-and-slash-and-loot gameplay formula.

Blizzard further streamlined and refined that formula for the third main entry in the series. And as flawed as Diablo III was early on hello, Auction House , Blizzard deserves credit for improving and expanding on the game until it became the new gold standard for the genre. The series even managed to make a seamless jump to consoles in the process.

Do you know the definition of insanity? The vivid, colorful, often psychedelic open-world setting of Far Cry 3 was a refreshing change after a slew of serious linear shooters with drab grey and brown palettes. You wanna know the definition of insanity? Not acknowledging this as one of the best games of the decade. For more, see our full Far Cry 3 review here. Fez is one of the most clever puzzle platformers around, with mind-bending complexity and a deep web of secrets to uncover when you dig past its adorable exterior.

While Fire Emblem had slowly been gaining popularity in the West, largely thanks to the inclusion of some its characters in Smash Bros. Even if Switch's Fire Emblem: Three Houses furthered this popularity substantially, many hold strong that Awakening is the franchise's apex. Awakening set a standard for Fire Emblem moving forward by making the series more accessible, and adding a focus on inter-party relationships that will remain the norm for its foreseeable future. No game simulates the feeling of being in command of a starship flying by the seat of your pants like FTL: Faster Than Light.

It's a game you shouldn't expect to survive - more likely, you'll be blasted out of the sky by a vastly superior enemy ship or boarded by a death squad of giant killer insects who massacre your crew. Its tactical combat never gets old, tons of loot and random events keep every game feeling unpredictable, and unlockable ships force you to change up your strategies.

And every so often, you might even win. A gruesome, fluorescent, neo-noir top-down shooter that often rapidly veered into beat-em-up and stealth territory, Hotline Miami was the arthouse indie darling that kicked the door down so hard it broke our nose and knocked us unconscious.

For more, see our full Hotline Miami review here. Pure stealth games are hard to come by these days, but 's Mark of the Ninja served as a shining example of why this genre shouldn't be going extinct.

Its beautiful cel-shaded, comic-book-style art gave it a distinct look that brilliantly complemented its gameplay, and its story even managed to keep you hooked for the duration of the adventure.

You got to do all sorts of ninja-y things, like crawl along ceilings, throw ninja stars, and silently slit the bad guys' throats. It oozes both blood AND style. One of the most standout features of Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 was the innovative key system, which made it the only core Pokemon that enabled players to change the difficulty. The extended backstories and narrative points make its story one of the best in Pokemon history, and the content seems to never end even after the credits.

It has new cities to explore, an always-on Pokemon World Tournament, and dozens of other things to do and see, making it a standout Pokemon adventure of this generation. Although it must be said that the story owes a lot to Three Kings great movie , Spec Ops: The Line became legendary as the war shooter that highlighted the cost of human lives over the usual cool-factor, and the futility of war over just the frags.

Leading your squad through a desert hellscape into worse and worse situations, with little to no hope of a happy ending, was a new experience for many gamers. Drexion [H]ard Gawd.

Joined Jul 14, Messages 1, The most acclaimed games of the past 5 years are The Witcher 3 and Bloodborne. Buy The Witcher 3 gold edition and start from there, it's probably the most highly regarded game of the past decade and arguably one of the best games ever made. The most influential game developer of the past decade had to be From Software - so many other developers pulled ideas straight from their games.

Denpepe [H]ard Gawd. Joined Oct 26, Messages 1, Not sure if such lists exist, I know pc gamer has lots of best of lists, it also depends on what oyu like to play. Comixbooks Fully [H]. Joined Jun 7, Messages 17, It would be better to be in a vacuum or time machines and let the good stuff come out and be suprised by the progress other devlopers worked hard at.

I didn't play some of the games listed above maybe 10 or so. Last edited: May 20, Bigbacon Fully [H]. Joined Jul 12, Messages 19, Fallout games, skyrim. M76 [H]F Junkie. Joined Jun 12, Messages 12, Comixbooks said:. I didn't play some of the games listed above maybe 6 or so.

Click to expand Joined Oct 29, Messages 2, Plants vs. Zombies the first game Orcs must die Assasin Creed Origins. DF-1 2[H]4U. Joined Jun 17, Messages 2, Zombies the first game Orcs must die. Release : May 5, October 12, Joined Nov 11, Messages 1, Multiplayer is a mess and was only fun when the gentle giant hackers would Gatling gun money bags on you and you had a crew of buddies that were active. Just damn good old fashioned metal gear fun. Wasteland 2 for old school RPG fans in the theme of the original fallout's with a ton of 90's humor mixed in.

Just Cause 3 if you want an open world to blow stuff up in Forza and Forza Horizon games for racing now that they are ported over and stable. Dirt and Grid series Codemasters are fun as well. Your down-and-out detective is thrust into circumstances where you must solve a murder, but with all great stories its not the conclusion that is solely gratifying, but the journey you took to get there as its ludicrously detailed world and cast of characters drive it along, supported by some of the best writing seen in a game.

Nier: Automata is, by all accounts, a game that shouldn't exist. Director Yoko Taro's original Nier flopped back in , but it nevertheless developed a ravenous fanbase — and for good reason.

To put it simply: Nier: Automata does what the original sought to do, learning from its failures and building on its successes to create a blend of hardcore and fluid combat, bullet-hell shoot 'em up segments, and visual novel stylings. It all coalesces into something entirely new. Despite a frustrating PC port that the fanbase had to fix themselves with the all-but-mandatory FAR mod, Nier: Automata's staying power is etched somewhere within its philosophical musings of humanity, pain of existence, and ability to find the humor in between.

Each of its big story moments is punctuated with a haunting soundtrack courtesy of composer Keiichi Okabe. All of that makes Nier: Automata a game that needs to be experienced from beginning to end — and not just ending A, but endings B, C, D, and E as well.

Those multiple endings build to something no other game has ever dared to attempt with apologies to the original Nier. But this one just hits a little different, you know? It has the same tension of going from a technologically inferior underdog to powerful war machine, with the constant threat of the permanent death of your customized soldiers looming over every decision. However, it turns the formula of defending Earth from alien invaders on its head by boldly recasting XCOM as a guerrilla force attempting to liberate the planet from alien occupation, making the situation feel even more desperate than ever.

This bigger, deeper sequel adds not just complexity in the form of new and more powerful soldier classes, equipment, and aliens, but also a huge focus on replayability. Procedurally generated maps keep you from falling into a repeatable pattern in tactical missions, frequent random events on the strategic map shake up your build and research orders, and of course mods galore. Next up for Firaxis is Marvel's Midnight Suns , which will be released in the second half of The free update follows Franklin and his new "celebrity solutions agency" years after the events of GTA V.

Dre composed new music for the game and will be featured as a character. It masterfully mixes pieces of classic cRPGs with more modern mechanics and designs, feeling old and new at the same time. The sequel has improved upon its predecessor's already incredible combat by deepening its systems while simultaneously simplifying and smoothing out its clunkier bits - not to mention it introduced some brutally smart new AI.

There's also an overwhelming amount of game here to play. With six different origin characters, custom tags to make your own, and over 74, lines of fully voiced dialogue, this massive RPG has more than enough to keep you coming back to it.

In a roguelike, variety is king: Slay The Spire 's constantly changing decks of ability cards, powerful relics, and the three drastically different playable characters keeps these turn-based battles fresh and engaging for far longer than they have any right to. Watching your character's attacks, defenses, skills, and powers evolve across its three chapters is a journey, and throwing your hand in at the end of a run knowing you may never see its like again can be like saying goodbye to a friend you were only just getting to know.

Of course, the possibility of getting an even better combination the next time through makes it tough to resist hitting the New Game button, and the randomized Daily Climb runs give even veterans a new and interesting way to play every day.

Just as the first Half-Life proved you could tell a story in a first-person game without taking control of the camera away, and Half-Life 2 pioneered physics-based puzzles and combat, Half-Life: Alyx has set a new standard for polish in virtual reality shooters and is a truly unique experience for VR headset owners. Its full-length campaign pulls out all the stops for an amazing and horrifying battle against alien soldiers, zombies, headcrabs, and three-dimensional puzzles, and it even turns the simple act of reloading your weapon into a desperate life-or-death struggle.

It caps it all off with a fantastic ending that made the wait almost feel worth it. A "visually and technically enhanced" version of The Witcher 3 is coming to PC in Q2 and will include new content inspired by Netflix's The Witcher series — the second season of which is now streaming. Portal 2 claims the top spot because, in the past decade, nothing else has struck so many chords so perfectly.

No game accomplishes so much so well.