The 15 best PC games to play right now
Updated regularly
A few months into 2024 and we've got some stonking new games out already, all the better to add to our list of the best PC games to play right now. The trends right now are towards bombastic action adventures and puzzle games, but as we look to the future of 2024 we can see some roguelikes, deckbuilders and more strategy on the horizon. Still, whatever you're looking forwards to, you'll find something to enjoy on this list of the top of the top, the best of the best PC games out now..
If you're looking for a best games of all time list then you should head to our RPS 100 for that, where you'll find the greatest games of all time (as decided by us). This here list runs down the best games that have come out in the recent months, although there are a couple of genre heavy hitters that haven't been beaten since their release here too. So what are you waiting for? Read on for our low down on the best PC games you should be playing now - and check back in a while to see what's been updated!
The best PC games to play right now
- Against The Storm
- Helldivers 2
- Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew
- Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown
- Jusant
- Balatro
- Apex Legends
- Baldur's Gate 3
- System Shock Remake
- The Talos Principle 2
- World Of Horror
- Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden
- ΔV: Rings Of Saturn
- Forza Horizon 5
- Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Against The Storm
Against The Storm has been a firm favourite around these parts ever since it launched into early access on Steam in 2021, but now it's out in full 1.0, and the time has never been better to jump into this citybuilder with a roguelite twist. You might not think that the two genres go together naturally, but trust us, it's a match made in you'll-spend-hours-playing-this heaven.
As the Queen's Viceroy, your job is to build a succession of villages in an endless forest - no easy task, because the forst itself is fraught with dangers, and that's before we get to the world-ending Blightstorm that destroyed the rest of the world. It's here that Against The Storm stands out in the crowd, as, rather than building and strengthening one city, your job is to push through the forest and build multiple settlements one at a time, gathering as many resources as possible through your chain of homes before the storm returns to wipe everything out again. Which is where the roguelite bit comes in, you see?
You can only move on to your next town if you've completed your tasks, kept the settlers happy (a mix of humans and cool animals, who provide and desire specific things from and for your economy) and, crucially, staved off the Queen's impatience. But around that, the forest itself is an endless story generator, as each plot you get to build a town will have randomised elements. Sometimes you'll spawn with plentiful food resources, sometimes with nothing. Sometimes the forest glades will contain bandits or restless spirits. You never know what you're going to get, which keeps Against The Storm endlessly entertaining.
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store
Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 is the co-op shooter du jour, and for extremely good reasons. Equal parts comedy and action, you team up with some pals to take on swarms of giant insects and robots that are threatening earth. You do this with very big guns. As will be familiar to co-op shooter pals, you can customise your gear and special abilities - called Stratagems, which can include rocket launchers, massive orbital strikes, or a robot with lasers, each arriving in a drop ship to add some flair to the proceedings.
The missions - simple loops of get in, kill baddies, get out, with some optional objectives - are all chosen from your spaceship's galactic map, and they're timed, which keeps everything zipping along nicely. The rewards are less "keeping Earth safe" and more "getting a really cool new shotgun that feels great", as you struggle on the knife edge of horde management. Your chances of success are often governed by the Stratagems you've all picked, as something like napalm is more suited to immolating bugs, but they also result in some wonderful unintentionaly yuks, as your friend could unintentionally napalm all of you instead.
As a nice touch, everyone on your squad is working from a shared pool of lives, and combined with the timer it makes every mish feel like a famous last stand - but one that you have to keep doing. Helldivers 2 is extremely popular, and it's a riot.
Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble
Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew
Mimimi Games have given us one hell of a swansong before bowing out. From the Studio who brought you Shadow Tactics and the Desperados series comes a pirate-themed tactical RPG that'll shiver your timbers, alright. Rather than a linear series of set piece missions, In Shadow Gambit you and your pirate crew of miscreants have a bunch of islands to visit in almost any order you want (though you do end up reivisiting them during the course of the game). You'll be off stealing pearls, rescuing pirates, and solving strange riddles to find treasure, in a race against time and the Inqiusition - classic bad guy name, that - via Mimimi's signature turn-based stealth tactics.
Your missions take place across intricate and beautiful maps that are larger than in Desperados 3, but with a lot of variety in enemy placement and mission. The real change-maker is in Shadow Gambit's cast, who are distinct characters in their own right, but with different abilities and approaches to combat. Gaelle, for example, carries a cannon on her back and can shoot huge distances across the map, while aristocrat Pinkus can possess and impersonate enemies which, as you can imagine, is useful in a pinch. The many ways the missions can change in Shadow Gambit make it much more than a rinse and repeat cycle of stealth, and, combined with a surprising and touching story about memory, this is a really solid pick for a tactics fan.
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store
Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown
Not just a new entry in a beloved franchise, but an action-adventure platformer, with some Metroidvania-y elements, which our review thinks is good enough to elbow Hollow Knight out of the way. Yes, Prince Of Persia: The Lost Crown should be a go-to for anyone looking for some leaping-to-avoid-traps action. As Sargon, a warrior out to restore the crown by rescuing the kidnapped prince, you'll fling yourself around to avoid spinning blades, spike pits, and bosses attempting to ascend to godhood. All in a days work, right?
The story involves heroics and time travel, always a favourite, but it's Sargo's athleticism, and special abilities like insta-dashing and custom checkpointing, that make it a joy just to move around the city that forms your playground. It's fun just to run around figuring out the right combiation of wall jumps and spins that will complete a traversal puzzle. The massive boss fights are almost secondary, but Sargon is a dab-hand with his double swords too, don't worry.
Where can I buy it: Epic Games Store Ubisoft
Jusant
Jusant is a lovely and meditative adventure about climbing to an impossible height. You - an unnamed protagonist accompanied by a small blue blob, a magic shell horn, and a length of rope - emerge out of a seemingly-limitless desert and begin climbing a huge spire, which was once home to different civilisations. Using button presses to manually grab and release hand holds on the rock, you carefully make you way upwards.
The controls create a real link with the climbing itself, so you work a bit tentatively at first, and then climb with more speed and confidence as you go. This is necessary, because it's a long way to the top, but also because you have an amount of stamina that runs down as you engage in a climb. You can pause to rest your hands, and hammer in pitons so that if you fall you're still part way up the cliff, but as the climbs grow more complicated, with multiple stages and moving handholds, you start looking up and planning your route before you start. Almost like real climbing.
The higher up the spire you go, the more perilous the weather becomes, as you encouter rain and wind. But you also find remnants of the people who used to live there. There are sounds stored in shells, fragments of letters, and buildings you can look at to understand their purpose, though they're now abandoned. It's a beautiful game telling a quiet story, without any dialogue.
Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble
Balatro
"A poker roguelike? It can't be done!", they said. Well it can, and has been, in the form of Balatro. This stylish little game uses traditional poker hands - two pair, flush, straight, etc. - so some familiarity with them is useful, but it's not mandatory, because Balatro is a lot about cheating. Cheating is mandatory, in fact.
Though not every level is a boss in Balatro, you have to defeat eight of them to win a run of Balatro, and each of the bosses has a little sting in the tail, be that debuffing certain suits, or putting some suits out of action entirely. So while understanding poker might help, really what Balatro is about is collecting a strong deck of the 150-odd Joker cards. Some jokers buff your multiplier, which are juicy cards to play to win a hand, but may only do this if you first play the right cards to trigger them. Others let you pull more cards to your hand, or eliminate cards on the board, or generate extra cash, which keeps you in the game longer.
Balatro then, is about realising the rules are to bend and break the rules. You can then go forward into the new, rules-less paradigm, jokers in hand, to break them in the most synergistic way possible to win. What a treat
Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble
Apex Legends
The initial pitch didn't sound particularly enticing: a first-person shooter set in the Titanfall universe, but minus that series' defining mechs and in their place a free-to-play game chasing the battle royale bandwagon. To our surprise and delight, it used grappling hooks to board that bandwagon and wrest control of it. Years on from release, Apex Legends is still the best battle royale game in town.
It's the last game standing for us for the smart ways in polishes up the genre's core tenets. You can designate a leader to control the descent of everyone in your party during the initial drop, ensuring you stick together. The ping system is a masterclass in easy contextual communication with teammates. Survivors can bring their fallen teammates back to life if they're bold or sneaky enough. Also, yes, there's a robot with a grappling hook that's more fun to play than almost any other character in any other character-based online shooter.
Matt wrote in his review that Apelegs was "the best battle royale game we're going to see for a long, long time," and after years of new characters, maps and modes, that's still true.
Where can I buy it: Steam, Origin
Baldur's Gate 3
You probably already know about Baldur's Gate 3, and if you haven't heard of it already then it can only be assumed that you've been living under a rock for about three years. After a lengthy and well-recieved stint in early access, the D&D-based RPG launched last year to near-universal acclaim, and won basically every award going. You and a squad of weirdo thieves, warriors and wizards pick your way through a dense and beautiful fantasy world. You're all infected with mindflayer tadpoles, and are close to becoming ontologically evil bipedal psychic octopuses, so your goal is to, you know, stop that happening. This eventually becomes saving the world, as is wont to happen.
The journey you take around the heartlands of Faerûn is winding, full of intrigue, danger, and dodgy dice rolls. Combat in Baldur's Gate is based on the D20 system - i.e. you roll dice do to things. It's fiddling and complicated, and turns a lot of the people off the game. On the other hand, if you can get to grips with it, then you'll have a grand old time. Key to success is making a balanced party of four, taking up strategic positions (using higher ground, cover and half cover, and so on) and using traps and environmental hazards to your advantages. You can sneak your rogue around to the side to shove an enemy archer off a cliff, or send your ranger up to the beams of the ceiling so they can set oil barrels on fire from above.
The other half of the game is the story, which is full of twists and turns and threads that branch away only to come back into the weave again. You can rescue a child from a hag. You can get turned into cheese. You can sneak into a vampire lair, try to steal a hammer from a demon, and, obviously, have weird video game sex with members of your squad. One of whom can turn into a bear. RPGs, baby!
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG
System Shock Remake
It's been a good old time for remakes of classics the past few years, but for anyone with even a passing interest in immersive sims, the recent System Shock remake is a must get. The Shock game that inspired Ken Levine's BioShock series, this is also one of the most famous "trapped in space with a rogue AI" games, so as you can imagine, 1994's System Shock had a far reaching impact on video games. Initially planned as a reboot, this is instead a faithful remake that preserves the good parts of the original.
In BioShock you play a hacker caught doing naughty hacking, and given the task of hacking SHODAN, an AI controlling a space station. In the process you remove SHODAN's ethical constraints - an excellent idea - and, upon waking from a months-long coma, discover that SHODAN has taken over the whole station, killed most of the crew, mutated others, and turned yet others into cyborgs. Avoding these enemies as well as some extremely aggressive robots, you sneak around the station and figure out what happened and how to stop SHODAN. This is an immersive sim with a capital immerse, so don't expect to get big glowing 'quest objective here' arrows or step by step instructions on how to do things in your mission log. You're going to have to read signs to find your way around, carefully remember instructions you read, and also shoot big guns as you run away from a hideous mutant.
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble, Epic Games Store
The Talos Principle 2
Do you like puzzle games? Do you like thinking about what it is to be a person? Do you also like robots? Then you should get The Talos Principle 2! Nearly ten years after Croteam's much loved puzzle-adventure-meets-existential-pondering game, The Talos Principle 2 also sees you take on a series of puzzles in first person, with the goal of each being to get to a button and press it. This is harder than it sounds, because the button will obviously be behind a bunch of obstacles - pressure plates, fences, big fans, boxes to move around, lasers, and exclusion fields that stop you bring useful objects with you. Unlike the first game, there aren't any gun turrets or patrol drones, which is surely a relief, but the puzzles are still fiendishly difficult and inventive all the same.
Like the first game, though, is the fact that you're an artificial intelligence. Years after the events of The Talos Principle, you awake as a new android (the one thousandth created, in fact) and brought to a marvellous android city, where surprising happenings result in you being taken to the puzzle gauntlet in the first place. The Talos Principle's themes, about what a 'person' is and who has the right to exist, and what kind of existence is worth having, are what make this series stand out from other puzzle games, and for any puzzle fan it's a must play.
Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble, Epic Games Store
World Of Horror
World Of Horror is a complicated and clicky puzzle game that's quite difficult to actually win. Playing as a lcoal teen in a Japanese seaside town, you discover that a terrifying god is trying to force it's way into our world via your town's lighthouse, and to get to the top you have to collect five keys by solving five cases around town. It's sort of Junji-Ito-meets-Round-The-Twist, as you figure out who has been kidnapping the school swim team, or why you suddenly can't leave your own flat, or visit a strange cult in a camp outside town.
The five cases are drawn from a large pool, and will be randomised each time, but each time you play through World Of Horror you learn a little bit more about what you should do in each situation with the tools that you have. You also learn how consequences can stack up - if you kick over a lamp when you find the janitor turning girls into mermaids, it can burn down part of the school, locking off the playground for the rest of your playthrough. It's a game about iterating horror, almost. Luckily runs through the game can be fairly short, as you might encounter afflictions that make your task more difficult (like losing your face) or easier (like making friends to go with you at school, or growing weird teeth so you can bite enemies). The strange turn-based combat in encounters with ghosts and demons, the arresting art style all rendered in MSPaint, and the deliberately obscure nature of playing, really make World Of Horror a unique scary game experience.
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Humble
Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden
Banishers: Ghosts Of New Eden is one of the most engaging action adventure games you can play right now. Set in the late 1600s, you play as Red and Antea, a pair of Banishers whose job it is to get rid of ghosts and ghouls who, in this alternate version of our world, hang around causing mischief after death. When the pair head to New England to investigate a particularly powerful haunting, Antea is killed but - as could be predicted - she comes back as a ghost. The rest of the game is an emotional journey to reclaim her body and set her free, or bring her back to life.
Which you choose is key, as though you'll have to end hauntings around New Eden either way, if you want to resurrect Antea it requires you kill a bunch of living humans to harvest their life force. The haunting stories you encounter are diverse and imaginative, and change the world of New Eden over time depending on your choices. Around this is a fast-moving combat system where you switch between Antea and Red, using different abilities to attack different enemies. Banishers is a really strong single-player adventure with a great hook and a genuinely compelling story. A definite boost if you have live-service fatigue.
Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble, Epic Games Store
ΔV: Rings Of Saturn
If, on the other hand, you're looking for a deeper simulation game then look no further than Rings Of Saturn. This is a mining sim that leans on physics and realism to add flavour to your task. As you dive deep into the titular rings things get more risky, as friendly fellow miners fall away an are replaced by outlaws and radicals. Buy tools for your ship to mine asteroids, a robot arm to grab or, or drones to hoover it up. This is the sort of game where lasers are invisible unless you fire them through a medium, that's the sort of physics simulation we're talking about here.
You can choose to mine, to get satisfaction out of doing your job with the tools that work the best for you, or you can explore derelict ships and chase down slim side stories. Though it's a game about simulated space labour in exchange for money, it's not grindy. It's about experimenting! It's about exploration via the mundane! It's a super sim game.
Where can I buy it: Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store
Forza Horizon 5
We couldn't escape from this list without leaving a racing game in our tracks, now could we? And if you're looking for the best racing game out there right now, well that honour definitely goes to Forza Horizon 5. A spin-off series that has now arguably outstripped its maker, the latest Forza Horizon is an open-world carstravaganza on a humongous scale. The racing festival framing might be getting a little tired now, but Forza Horizon 5 dishes up some show-stopping setpieces in Mexico (an active volcano! Huge dust storms! Actual changing seasons!) all set to a soundtrack of licensed tracks that you can really bop to.
The difficulty is pretty flexible, encouraging you to relax and explore the ludicrous, polished world in all its realistic mud-splattered glory, clearing many a map marker as you go. But there are also deep customisation options for cars - including all the marquee brands like Porsche and Ferarri - and drivatars, and community challenges and player-made events to keep you coming back for new hashtag car content.
Where can I buy it: Steam
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Yakuza: Like A Dragon kicked the series into a slightly new direction, and Infinite Wealth has now run in that direction with joyful abandon. This JRPG is bigger and badder, strapping a bunch of new features onto the Like A Dragon you knew and loved. Career criminal and cool guy Ichiban has gone straight and left the life of crime behind, but is dragged back into it - and to Hawaii - for some more adventures. It's colourful, chaotic, and has made tweaks to the class systems and turn-based combat to make fights more rewarding, keeping the sense of chaos the series is known for, but within the confines of a turn-based RPG system.
Perhaps most significantly, there's now both a sort of Pokémon system and a Like A Dragon take on Animal Crossing, though both are optional. Really, you're going to find the same warren of Yakuza-y side-quests and weirdo NPCs that you always have with these games, now infused with a bit of Hawaiin culture. As Ed's review says: "I sort of laugh-cried at an old man trying to fulfil his wife's final wish to see snow. His way of going about it? Chucking shaved ice into the air. But it does the Yakuza thing! It goes so much deeper than shaved ice in the most unexpected of ways."
Where can I buy it: Steam, Humble
That's our list of the best PC games to play as of... right now. But remember that this is a living list, and we're going to be updating it again. Maybe you think we've missed an obvious one, but check back regularly to find out what new games have been added - and what we've removed - so you can be surprised and delighted all over again.