We reveal the best PC games of the last 12 months.
Apex Legends has always been good, and season 9 is the clear standout. Its new Arenas game mode is a distinctly Respawn take on Counter-Strike.
It might be a Left 4 Dead clone, but Back 4 Blood proves hugely replayable, with new deckbuilds to test out and Corruption Cards that can continually put new spins of missions.
In a world of multiplayer games that are either ultra-competitive or glorified checklists, Chivalry 2 is a rare game that just wants you to hop into a match and go effin' wild.
Village blends several excellent horror game staples into a fluent game. Each primary "area" of the map feels like a discrete experience, some focusing on action, others outright dread.
A game of building empires and expanding cities, but with heaps of human drama and complications, where intrigue and strategy exist in harmony.
An Uncharted game with better characters. All of the enjoyable hours spent shooting, climbing, and walking are just sponges for hours of funny chatter between teammates.
Few games have ever more successfully evoked the feel of a tabletop RPG. A night with Wildermyth is like a supercut of a fantastic year-long Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
The story is hasty and the open world largely redundant, but shooting aliens on a massive hula hoop has never felt better than this.
This mighty little RPG is remarkably distilled. If Diablo is a 10-gallon tank of ARPG liquid, Loop Hero is a thimble of hyperconcentrated essence.
There's an earnest warmth to Sable's writing. Almost every conversation is fleeting and incidental, but penned with such absolute earnestness that it's hard not to well up.
In most games, an open world full of icons can easily exhaust. But here, each one is a guarantee of something fun to do in a car. Love racing games? Horizon remains the pinnacle of the form.
Finally, an Arkane game that dares you to let your hair down. Where Dishonored wagged its finger at high-chaos murder and mayhem, Deathloop revels in it.
The Berlin mission is emblematic of what makes Hitman 3 so good. Hitman 2's levels were bigger, but this sequel is more playful in the way it confidently lets you explore its levels.
The best game of 2021 is a riveting Viking adventure that tweaks and twists tired survival tropes to ensure staving off death never feels like a joyless grind.