Best PC games to play in 2021

“Tactical stealth” isn’t exactly a booming genre, but developer Mimimi seems to have the format perfectly dialed in. After the success of Shadow Tactics in 2016, the team took those same design tenets — small squads of specialized units tackling armies of soldiers with precision and quick-saving — to the Wild West with Desperados 3.

Desperados 3 changes very little about what made Shadow Tactics great. It’s still an isometric stealth game filled with vision cones and seemingly-impossible odds. But small tweaks, like being able to cue up your entire squad’s next action to all play out at the same time, make it a much more satisfying experience than its predecessor.

Based on Mike Pondsmith’s tabletop role-playing game, Cyberpunk 2077 is a bleak game that sees corporations, both foreign and domestic, keep a stranglehold on military tech, health care, cybernetic advancements, drugs, and virtually anything that the common person could want or need. You play as a mercenary, V, a person caught up in a job that has lasting repercussions throughout the story campaign. As a result, you must shoot, hack, and slice your way out of trouble in this sprawling, open-world action-RPG. This highly anticipated title offers thrilling gameplay, atmosphere-oozing sights and sounds, and hours of story-heavy missions, but it feels a bit undercooked due to small and large bugs.

Old-school isometric role-playing games are having a bit of a renaissance of late, with winning franchises like Divinity, Pillars of Eternity, and Wasteland absolutely knocking it out of the park. Even the Baldur’s Gate franchise is back, with some excellent remakes or the originals and a third installment on the way.

But there’s simply nothing like Disco Elysium.
The award-winning role-playing game puts you in the shoes of a middle-aged detective, but this is your nor regular gumshoe story.

The Codemasters-developed Dirt 5 hearkens back to the 1990s, a time when Colin McRae Rally and Sega Rally Championship elevated “extreme” racing games. Like those games, Dirt 5 isn’t concerned with realism or deep customization options; instead, the rally racer wants you to barrel your way to victory on winding, mud-covered tracks. While Dirt 5 isn’t wholly original, it succeeds at delivering a loud, colorful racing experience for folks looking for a PC game packed with high-speed escapism.

Call of Duty: Warzone has entered the competitive battle royale fray, with a few tricks up its sleeve to shake up the formula. Based on Modern Warfare’s 2019 reboot, Warzone introduces unique battle royale elements, such as loadout kits and respawn matches, that separate it from the competition and greatly impact how the game plays. These additions are hit-or-miss, but the overall package is highly polished and has enough meat to attract traditional FPS fans.

The sequel to the original Elite, a PC game that dates all the way back to 1984, Elite: Dangerous and its Horizons expansion are a borderline spiritual spacefaring experience.

At the core of this game is a realistic simulation of all 400 billion star systems in the Milky Way galaxy. No, that’s not a typo. The secret is the so-called Stellar Forge, a procedural system that developer Frontier Developments used to realistically simulate the formation of our galaxy. Using the best available astronomical data, the studio sort of threw all of creation into a digital rock tumbler and then continued to polish what fell out as an MMO.

It’s the community that makes this game such a joy to play. A recent effort to put new Fleet Carriers in every corner of the galaxy has contributed to a massive uptick in players, including all-time high player counts on Steam. Also, the developer is adding “space legs” — the ability to get out of your ship and walk around in first-person — some time in 2021.

Fortnite is arguably the biggest game in the world thanks to Battle Royale. It’s more than just a fast-follow of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. It’s a dynamic world with elements of Minecraft’s elaborate building systems, but Epic Games is also constantly adding little mysteries alongside the massive seasonal content drops that keep the fans guessing about what’s coming next. In the first half of 2020, it’s also become a meeting place just to hang out and watch some movies.

Death Stranding baffled PlayStation 4 owners who weren’t quite prepared for a plot involving extinction, isolation, mortality, and humanity’s remnants trying to piece together a broken world. The controversial console game is now a PC game that sports enhanced graphics, platform-specific Half-Life themed missions, and a photo mode. Taking gameplay cues from the action, stealth, and survival genres, Death Stranding is a more daring affair than the typical mainstream video game title. After all, not many games feature a delivery person who fights flying whales one minute, and then discusses the afterlife with Guillermo del Toro the next. It’s an odd, slow burn.

Mortal Kombat 11 is far more than the guts-and-gore titles on which the series built its fame. The fighting game continues the series tradition of Kung Fu Theater-style action and otherworldly mysticism to lay the foundation for military operatives, ninjas, gods, and monsters to punch each other squarely in the face. With its character customization, HDR10 support, smooth animations, and new offensive and defensive meters, MK11 is the best Mortal Kombat game to date.

Half-Life: Alyx gave VR something it desperately needed: a brand-new entry into a huge series, long-awaited by fans, and designed specifically for VR. If you want to know what happens next in the story of Half-Life, you have to buy or borrow a VR headset and play through one of the most polished games ever released for virtual reality.

Nothing about VR is used as a gimmick here, as every interaction connects you to the world and grounds you in Valve’s new reality. You’ll learn how to take care of your guns, and how to inject yourself with life-giving medicine … or subject yourself to a horrific healing process that involves crushing little grubs that may be sentient. It’s equal parts captivating and horrifying.

Combine all that with an ending that’s an absolute stunner, and catches us up on the Half-Life story while also dramatically raising the stakes for the next adventure, and you have one of the best games in VR, as well as one of the best games of 2020, full stop.