The 8 best PC games to buy in 2024

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At a glance: The The best PC games

Although video games are more popular than ever with the advent of home consoles—such as the Sony PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch—PC gaming is starting to make a big impression with all kinds of gamers. This is due to the rise of off-the-shelf gaming desktops and laptops from manufacturers including Alienware, Razer, MSI, Republic of Gamers by Asus, Lenovo and many others.

Meanwhile, the multitude of premium gaming platforms — Steam, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and others — make it really easy to play simple games on a PC that are largely cross-platform across all consoles. For example: The game Hi-Fi Rush it was an Xbox original, but it's also available to play on PC and now PS5. In addition, the graphics and sound cards are much more advanced than those found in home consoles, and you can simply upgrade the cards when the next generation of games hits the store shelves.

We've rounded up some of our favorite PC games, including picks we've played ourselves, along with games that received the highest four-star rating from players using digital distribution platforms GOG.com and Humble Bundle. Here are our top picks.

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What are the best PC games?

Below are some of the best PC games to play in 2024. All of the picks are sold at trusted online retailers, have high critical scores and reviews, and have at least a 4/5 star rating from players.

1. “Baldur's Gate 3”

Winner of Game of the Year Award and Gold JoyStick in 2023, Baldur's Gate 3 is a fantasy role-playing game with cooperative mechanics for one player and online multiplayer with an open world design. It has won critical acclaim for its high-quality writing, stories, production quality, and voice acting that effectively blend board game with PC gaming.

The game is based on a series of quests and side adventures where you go it alone or gather your own party to embark on a journey through the Forgotten Realms in the world of Dungeons & Dragons. You wake up with a mind-controlling parasite in your brain. You. he can either fight evil thoughts and resist the darkness, or give in to corruption in a quest for absolute power and destruction.

2. “Street Fighter 6”

The seventh main entry in the Street Fighter franchise (with over 80 releases in total), Street Fighter 6 is a fighting game that combines classic mechanics from the past with new techniques, such as its “drive” meter, which has not been seen in previous entire series of almost 40 years. So there are 18 races on the main roster — including Chun-Li, Ken, Ryu, Guile, Manon, Marisa, Kimberly and more — with four characters added in each season of the DLC expansion pack (downloadable).

Although the game features the same classic mode that players are used to with the franchise, Street Fighter 6 it also has a single-player “World tour” mode that is a combination of a fighting game and an RPG (role-playing game). It features a customizable character that you create while navigating its world street fighteras you learn to become a champion yourself.

In our tests, Street Fighter 6 it plays like a classic fighting game with a few new tricks up its sleeve that make the game feel powerful, fluid and overall fun. While the single player mode was a nice addition in theory, it seems slow and boring at times in practice. However, the “World tour” is optional. We are here for the games!

3. 'Against The Storm'

Against the Storm is a city-building game where you play the Viceroy, a leader tasked with reclaiming the wasteland and lost riches of the Smoldering City. Under the orders of the Burnt Queen, you must rebuild, repopulate, manage and expand the city to withstand 'The Blightstorm', the destroyer of the old world, to take back the kingdom on a new journey. I'm thinking Against the Stormlike The Sims, but set in a fantasy world.

The game was nominated for the 27th Annual DICE (Design Innovate Communicate Entertain) Awards for Strategy/Simulation Game of the Year earlier in 2024.

4. “Slay The Princess”

A fun twist on the damsel in distress trope, Kill the Princess — from Canadian indie studio Black Tabby Games — is an adventure game where you either save the princess or kill the princess. The game is told as a hand-illustrated visual novel, as you must choose to save or kill the princess, since the narrative tells you to kill her — or the world will end. All decisions in the game lead to her death or yours.

Kill the Princess received almost universal praise among game critics with a 90% on Metacritic for its simplicity and “no choice is bad” mechanics. It even won the OTK Video Game Award for Best Indie RPG in 2023.

5. 'Videoverse'

Videoverse is a narrative adventure game that serves as a fun dose of nostalgia. Set in 2003, you play as a teenage gamer named Emmett, who plays his favorite fantasy game Feudal Fantasy, while navigating Internet relationships and building online communities on his favorite fictional social network and message board called “Videoverse.” However, once you announce that you are leaving the social networking site, you have to deal with the backlash and consequences of your decision.

The game is an accurate depiction of what digital life was like in the early 2000s when dial-up home internet was king! Furthermore, Videoverse won the Digital festival of Independent Games Critics' Choice Award during Indie Cup UK 2023.

6. “Hi-Fi Rush”

Developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda Softworks, Hi-Fi Rush is an extremely fun action game that combines platforming elements with rhythm-based mechanics. The game follows Tsai, an unpredictable rock star who gets a music player implanted in his chest during an experimental cybernetic operation. The result is that everything around him moves to the rhythm of his favorite music, including songs by The Black Keys, Nine Inch Nail, The Flaming Lips, Fiona Apple, The Joy Formidable, Zwan and more.

The object of the game is to escape and eventually defeat the evil Vandelay Technologies, which is responsible for the evil operation with the help of your government friends Peppermint, Macaron, Korsica, CNMN and the adorable cat 808. action is based on rhythm, so the better you attack baddies and jump platforms with the rhythm, the better your chances of making it in one piece.

In our game, we found this Hi-Fi Rush it's fluid with a slight learning curve for those unfamiliar with rhythm-based mechanics. However, as the character learns his new abilities, players also learn how to play the game as he progresses. With that in mind, it's not scary to pick up, but after about 20 or so, you can easily get the hang of timing and attacking the beat. It's also a lot of fun to play!

7. 'Alan Wake 2'

Alan Wake II is a survival horror and mystery game that follows, you guessed it, Alan Wake, a horror novelist who gets trapped in an alternate dimension. For the past 13 years, Alan Wake has been trying to escape his nightmares by writing a story about Saga Anderson, an FBI agent trying to solve a series of murders in a small fictional Pacific Northwest called Bright Falls. Fun fact: Alan Wake II it was actually released 13 years after the original game in 2010.

You play as Wake and Anderson to get a better perspective on the stories and to better solve the mysteries locked within the game

It won three Game Awards in 2023, including Best Game Direction, Best Storytelling, and Best Art Direction. Although Alan Wake II it didn't win, it was also nominated for Game of the Year.

8. “Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition”

Set in the fictional Night City, California, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition is an award-winning sci-fi action role-playing game. You play as V, a mercenary with a government implanted “bio-chip” with the biometrics of Johnny Silverhand, who is voiced and modeled by Keanu Reeves, a rock star and former terrorist. Silverhand's consciousness is starting to overtake V's, so you have to separate the two.

Although the game has many technical difficulties during its release in 2018, the developers have gone ahead to update these bugs with online patches to create Cyberpunk 2077 play more smoothly with almost zero problems. In fact, the game won the Gamescom Award for Best PC Game in 2020.

Shopping Guide? How to choose the best PC game

There are many factors to consider when choosing the best PC games for yourself. Ahead, you'll find some important factors we considered when compiling this list.

Storage space: Gone are the days of changing a floppy disk in a computer to play a video game. Today, games are downloaded over the Internet in huge files. It is important to consider how much available storage space you have inside your computer before choosing a game to play. Modern games can range from smaller titles such as Against the Storm with a tiny file size of 5 GB, in extensive and in-depth games such as Balder's Gate 3 with a huge file size of 150 GB. If you plan to download a lot of games on your computer, then the storage space can be used up very quickly. You may also need to consider additional storage options if this is the case.

Price: While physical copies are available for PC games, it is increasingly rare with the popularity of the instant gratification of simply downloading games. Fortunately, since it's a download, PC games can be cheaper than console games. In fact, the games on this list range from just $13 to Videoverse up to $80 with Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition.

Fun Factor: The most important thing about choosing a computer game is whether it is fun to play. If you are going to spend a few minutes or a few hours playing a game on your computer, it should look like a fun and immersive experience.