Best games 2014 pc no download

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
I’m going to assume you’ve played the campaign, because you strike me as a reader of fine taste and culture. Shadowbringers and Endwalker bst by far the strongest, and makes that journey to get to the end all the more worth it. This post-apocalyptic follow-up to источник статьи best games 2014 pc no download game has its share of weird quirks. It’s a game about topography, a best games 2014 pc no download descendent of PC gamrs Populous and a travel sim as detailed as Euro Truck Simulator 2. Imogen: Another year, another jump up the list for Valorant. Chris: A brilliant detective game that presents a new little mystery every time someone walks into your shop, and a larger one to slowly piece together while you learn more about the world and its inhabitants.
 
 

 

[The 10 best PC games of | PCWorld

 

The story of crossed destinies and a broken love in a world torn apart. All of them will try to survive the horror of the trenches following their faithful canine companion. In Valiant Hearts: The Great War, the lives of all these characters are inextricably drawn together over the course of the game. Friendship, love, sacrifice, and tragedy befall each one as they help each other to retain their humanity against the horrors of war.

Over fifty single player levels including Adventure and Classic Arcade modes. Four distinct companion drones such as Attack, Collector, Ram and Snipe. Co-op and Online Competitive Multiplayer modes. Kennedy is dispatched on a mission to rescue the U.

Wending his way to a rural village in Europe, he faces new threats that are a departure from the traditional lumbering zombie enemies of the earlier installments in the series. Leon battles horrific new creatures infested by a new threat called Las Plagas and faces off against an aggressive group of enemies including mind-controlled villagers that are tied to Los Illuminados, the mysterious cult which is behind the abduction.

Something ancient and evil is stirring in Victorian England. Only you can stop it. Journey to the brink of madness and beyond as you set forth alone into the dark. You have 30 seconds to save the world Finally available outside Japan exclusively on Steam. Find a quest, level up, equip some loot, and slay the Evil Lord, all in half a minute. Outland puts players in the middle of a world of balance and chaos where their efforts allow them to bridge the ancient divide, or doom the world to destruction.

Each player’s adventure will take them between light and darkness and force them to adapt to an ever-changing world. This light versus dark core gameplay is inspired by the arcade classic Ikaruga.

Coming Soon. Essential Links. Highs and Lows. Highest of the Month. Lowest of the Month. Metascore: 91 User Score: 6. Metascore: 91 User Score: 7. Metascore: 90 User Score: 8. Metascore: 89 User Score: 7. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft Platform: PC March 11, Hearthstone is a free-to-play digital strategy card game that anyone can enjoy. Metascore: 88 User Score: 5. Metascore: 87 User Score: 8.

Year Walk Platform: PC March 6, In the old days man tried to catch a glimpse of the future in the strangest of ways. Metascore: 87 User Score: 7. Metascore: 87 User Score: 6. World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor Platform: PC November 13, To scrap with the greatest army Draenor has ever known, you will need your own forces and your own fortress.

Metascore: 87 User Score: 4. Astebreed Platform: PC May 30, Climb into the pilot’s seat of an otherworldly war machine and take down a genocidal alien race bent on eradicating humanity to preserve their own civilization.

Metascore: 86 User Score: 7. Metascore: 86 User Score: 8. Titanfall Platform: PC March 11, Crafted by one of the co-creators of Call of Duty and other key developers behind the Call of Duty franchise, Titanfall, with its advanced combat techniques, gives you the freedom to fight your way as both elite assault Pilot and fast, heavily armored Titan.

Metascore: 86 User Score: 6. Metascore: 85 User Score: 8. Dragon Age: Inquisition Platform: PC November 18, Select and lead a group of characters into harrowing battles against a myriad of enemies — from earth-shattering High Dragons to demonic forces from the otherworld of the Fade. Assetto Corsa Platform: PC December 19, Assetto Corsa is designed to provide a very realistic driving experience, with single player and multiplayer options, officially licensed cars and tracks developed using Laser scan technology, and the highest level of accuracy possible in reproducing real world motor racing environments.

Metascore: 85 User Score: 7. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Platform: PC September 30, Fight your way through Mordor and reveal the truth of the spirit that compels you, discover the origins of the Rings of Power, build your legend and ultimately confront the evil of Sauron in this new story of Middle-earth. Metascore: 84 User Score: 7. Ikaruga Platform: PC February 18, “Ikaruga” is a quick-paced shooter with strong strategy elements featuring a slow-motion training mode and co-op play for two.

Metascore: 84 User Score: 8. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft – Goblins Vs. Metascore: 84 User Score: 5. Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations Platform: PC May 29, The expansion allows you to create trade conflicts in secret, steal from your competitors with the use of privateers, use peace treaties to gain trade power and create a new trade capital to strengthen your grasp over trade.

SMITE Platform: PC March 25, Players choose from a selection of mythical gods, join session-based arena combat, and use custom powers and team tactics against other player-controlled gods and non-player controlled minions. Metascore: 83 User Score: 8.

Metascore: 83 User Score: 7. Frozen Synapse Prime Platform: PC November 14, Assume the role of Tactics, leading a rebel faction to overthrow a powerful corporation controlling the virtual city of Markov Geist.

Metascore: 83 User Score: 6. Transistor Platform: PC May 20, Transistor is a science-fiction themed action RPG set in a futuristic city where players will take on the role of a young woman who gains control of an extraordinary weapon of unknown origin after a mysterious group of assailants nearly kills her with it.

Freedom Planet Platform: PC July 21, Fight your way across the celestial world of Avalice where cats are green, motorcycles drive up walls and monster girls do most of the buttkicking! Broforce Platform: PC April 7, A ridiculously violent platform game about being awesome action heroes from the 80s and 90s while slaying satanic terrorists and aliens while unraveling an evil plot to destroy the planet while dealing with being awesome action heroes from the 80s and 90s.

Terrian Saga: KR Platform: PC July 9, KR is a bit, story-driven, side-scrolling action puzzle-platformer which follows the story of a military robot on a mission to subdue a rogue agent operating out of an installation on the planet Valiant.

Metascore: 82 User Score: 7. Metascore: 82 User Score: 8. Metascore: 82 User Score: 4. Metascore: 82 User Score: 6. Lethal League Platform: PC August 27, Lethal League is a competitive projectile fighting game where the goal is to launch a ball into the face of your opponent. Metascore: 82 User Score: 5. WildStar Platform: PC June 3, WildStar is an massively multiplayer online adventure game where players make their mark as Explorers, Soldiers, Scientists or Settlers and lay claim to a mysterious planet on the edge of known space.

Nidhogg Platform: PC January 13, Nidhogg is the epic award-winning fencing tug-of-war, full of graceful acrobatics and clumsy stabs. Metascore: 81 User Score: 6. Metascore: 81 User Score: 7. Metascore: 81 User Score: 8. Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault Platform: PC November 17, Assume control of US Allied forces as they face tactical challenges and harrowing terrain during a surprise offensive manoeuvre led by the relentless resurgent Oberkommando West.

DG2: Defense Grid 2 Platform: PC September 23, The sequel to the tower defense game of the same name, Defense Grid 2 introduces new worlds and threats to test your tower placement strategies. Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth Platform: PC October 23, Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth sends players on an expedition from Earth to lead their people into a new frontier to explore and colonize an alien planet, and create a new civilization.

Metascore: 81 User Score: 5. Metascore: 80 User Score: 6. Metascore: 80 User Score: 7. Trials Fusion Platform: PC April 16, Trials Fusion melds the classic, proven Trials formula of simple yet addictive competition with the social and visual breakthroughs of the next generation of gaming.

The Banner Saga Platform: PC January 14, Live through an epic role-playing Viking saga where your strategic choices directly affect your personal journey. Metascore: 80 User Score: 8. Luftrausers Platform: PC March 18, Luftrausers is an arcade-style aerial combat shooter where ace pilots will be able to customize their own “rauser” and battle wily enemy fighters amongst the clouds or charge colossal battleships scattered across the open seas.

Age of Wonders III Platform: PC March 31, Age of Wonders 3 marks a modern reimagining of the series, where players join a clash of kings, queens and dark lords for the spoils of an ancient paradise.

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.

The AI has a goal. It improves itself to reach that goal. Then, when it has reached its goal, it dismantles itself. It feels grim, cold, ruthless, inhuman, and devastatingly true. Doki Doki Literature Club starts out as a harmless, saccharine dating simulator set in a high school, before it subtly builds to a creepy crescendo, featuring one of the best video game villains of all time.

It not only manages to twist expectations of the genre, but breaks the fourth wall in spine-chilling ways that will make you rethink all your anime girl crushes forever. Grand Theft Auto 5 is a technical achievement and an incredible open world. Grand Theft Auto Online takes place in that same world, taking advantage of the same tech, but behaving more like a multiplayer environment.

Sometimes, that means players pass time by jumping on Hot Wheels-style track races in the sky. Utilizing the rarely seen PlayStation Move controllers, Joust has players perform an organic ballet that blends strategy, fencing, and the two-step in surreal fashion. The objective: Jostle someone hard enough to set off their controller, while keeping your own controller protected.

While the game is notoriously difficult to coordinate who has that many Move controllers, after all? The Polygon team has been playing Jackbox party games since their debut in Prior to the release of Street Fighter 4 , it had been almost a decade since Capcom released a new entry in its landmark fighting game series.

And while Street Fighter 3 might have been the pinnacle of pixel art 2D fighting games, it was unclear if the company could translate its iconic characters into 3D. The next year, a massive update called Super Street Fighter 4 cemented a legacy that still lives to this day. Super was more than a mere update to the base formula.

It rebalanced the gameplay, making it tighter than ever; brought new and classic characters into the fold; and added several other features like new modes and the ability to unleash one of two Ultra Combos to swing the balance of any fight. Frog Fractions looks like a crappy math game for elementary school kids, in which a frog uses its tongue to zap bugs that turn into fractions.

But it gets crazy fast, morphing into a genre-spanning spoof of edutainment and old-school gaming nostalgia. Character-action games seemed to be on a tear this decade, with Bayonetta 2 developer PlatinumGames at the forefront. Lead character Bayonetta is a captivating badass, and her variety of witchcraft attacks never gets old. Layering precise timing with her aerial attacks, her pistol-packing high heels, and her horrifying spectral hair monsters is a sight to behold.

Mike Bithell has proven himself one of the most creative developers of the past decade, with wonderful creations such as Thomas Was Alone and Volume. The robot interviews other passengers also robots in order to uncover a mystery. Puzzles offer welcome and timely pacing breaks. In Civ games, players build cities, develop tech, train military units, and expand their territories.

Cities are the most important elements in these games. Cities were better able to defend themselves against numerically superior forces. But it was Civilization 6 that really shook up the much-loved franchise by giving players control over the areas surrounding their cities, even in noncombat situations.

Expansions released post-launch deepened systems such as trade, tourism, religion, and even environmental sustainability. Civilization 6 provides players with worlds unto themselves. Despite its cute art style, strategy game Into the Breach understands what it means to pilot a giant robot better than most giant robot games. In a flawless tactical game, mechas can be placed in the line of fire to protect a building, or they can be used to crush buildings for tactical advantage.

In short, their largeness matters. Into the Breach trusts the player enough to give them a near-perfect level of information about what will happen on the next turn.

There is very little that Hollow Knight does poorly. Every world your little bug knight travels to is packed with memorable enemies and lush scenery, all set to a beautifully melancholic score.

Then die. Then die again. Brad : Like other Souls games, DS2 is sly in its storytelling—a corpse strategically placed here, an item with a glimpse of backstory there. Hayden : Far Cry 4 is a snow-covered retread of Far Cry 3 in nearly every way. I know that. You know that. Brad : Yeah, Far Cry 4 is astounding. Only after I got my hands on the full game was it clear that the alien of Alien: Isolation is actually the least interesting part.

Brad: No game has ever made me feel so tense, so hunted. Alien: Isolation forces you to think about every move, and punishes you mercilessly if you make the wrong one. This is a testament to how much this thing terrifies the shit out of me, but also how utterly perfect it is as an Alien game. I have to keep going. Very, very slowly. Jody: The early parts are the best parts, for sure. Just like the Alien series as a whole. Robin: The vibes are just impeccable.

If you could distil Control’s weird, SCP-inspired atmosphere into a liquid, I’d drink a gallon before lunchtime. And I love how much fun it is to move and fight through its bizarre, impossible spaces while you’re soaking all that in. Fraser: It’s brutalist architecture porn. And as striking as it is, boy does it have a glow up when you turn on ray tracing. There are a lot of flat, reflective surfaces in the Oldest House, so it’s a great showcase of those fancy reflections. Josh L: Control is a game all about being lost, lost in the maze-like architecture of the Oldest House, lost on your place in its world and lost in the knowledge—or rather the unknowableness of the objects and places the bureau deals with.

There’s really nothing quite like it. Wes: In Satisfactory we built a power plant tower so tall you could see it from across the planet. We built factories with so many glass windows that even an RTX gave up on rendering them all. We connected conveyor belts carrying precious resources across the desert to a cargo train that spiraled up the side of a mountain. We built a mining facility so far away it needed aerial drones to collect its materials—even though we couldn’t actually build drones yet.

Satisfactory begins as a game about optimization, finding the most efficient ways to pump out resources. Master that, and you’re left with a sandbox that rewards building however and wherever the hell you want, just for the satisfaction of it.

Morgan: The stories that come out of Satisfactory sold me on it instantly. I, too, want to look over a mighty empire of automation and discover that my robot children no longer need me. I’m also just really into watching materials actually travel down conveyor belts and pass through machines, instead of everything happening inside a menu.

More games should do this. Jody: Village is Resident Evil at its most decadent and gothic. There’s a bit with a baby in a puppet house that’s as scary as the series has ever been, a werewolf attack in the village that pays homage to Resident Evil 4’s early siege, and the vampire-haunted Castle Dimitrescu, which lives up to its reputation.

Playing RE8 a while after release, I didn’t think Lady D could possibly be as cool as the hype around her suggested, but she absolutely was. And there are plenty of surprises after that, with plot twists I wasn’t expecting, neat references to older games in the series, and a Mercenaries mode that’s basically bullet heaven. It’s more run and gun than previous games, but since it’s a modern vision of Resident Evil it’s not short of variety to keep things interesting. You visit heaps of beautifully designed levels throughout, and each one offers a taster session in everything Resident Evil has done well over the years.

The story does follow on from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, so you may find you want to start there before hitting up Village, but Village does do a pretty good job of explaining what’s going on in case you’re not up to speed. From Village you can dive back into the horrifying and gory world of Resident Evil with the remakes, but be prepared to feel a lot more panicked and underpowered in those games—Mr.

X is absolutely terrifying in high definition. Rich: As CS:GO’s twitter bio says, this is “your favourite first person shooter’s favourite first person shooter. And incredibly, the most-played game on Steam 10 years into its lifespan. But it’s waning in importance as the tail of battle royale and extraction shooters lengthens. Speaks to the timelessness of Counter-Strike’s stop-and-pop design that it doesn’t need new seasonal guns or magical movement abilities to stay interesting.

Fraser: There’s understandably still a great deal of fondness for the original Company of Heroes, but here the multiplayer really got to shine, leading to CoH2 having a much longer tail. And, honestly, I’ve had enough of France and the invasion of Normandy.

The main campaign has a lot to recommend it, too, if you don’t mind the Russian cold, and is further elevated by the impressive non-linear Ardennes Assault expansion, paving the way for the impending Company of Heroes 3 and its dynamic campaign. Morgan: Psychonauts 2 is what happens when the brilliant folks at Double Fine get as much time and budget as they need to make a 3D platformer.

This is a gorgeous sequel that picks up right where the first left off. A charming, heart-wrenching story through the lens of a collectathon platformer. Jody: The original Psychonauts was a wonderful concept buried under uneven concessions to its genre. Which is to say, it was a Double Fine game. What a concept, though: a summer camp for psychics run by a spy ring that trains them for espionage by letting them rummage around inside the mental landscapes of troubled folk.

If only it weren’t for the fussy boss fights, and platforming that was let down by poor controls and checkpointing. Like Morgan says, Psychonauts 2 is Double Fine finally getting the freedom it needs to make a game that lives up to that idea. So, uh, thanks, Microsoft? It’s a Pixar movie you can run around in, zooming across levels based on a psychedelic Yellow Submarine or a papercraft library where you end up trapped in a book, leaping across pages as the platforming suddenly transitions to 2D.

One level’s a hospital that is also a casino, with a maternity ward where wannabe parents gamble on a roulette wheel of babies. It’s constantly imaginative and twisted. Phil: A city-builder about creating elaborate, automated production chains—ferrying myriad resources from across the world to turn into the goods your citizens crave.

The cities you create will be ornate and beautiful, but the real joy is found in watching a successful, stable supply of sewing machines leave your factories. Fraser: The DLC has made it feel a bit bloated, especially now that you can set up colonies in even more places, but the logistics porn keeps me coming back anyway. It’s intensely satisfying serving the needs of your demanding citizens, and like Phil says the cities make for great eye candy.

Evan: Perhaps the best raw, customizable storytelling engine on this list, RimWorld is the progeny of hyper-granular colony sims like Dwarf Fortress. Your pet turkey can break individual bones or lose their beak to say, frostbite in the winter after a specific level of cold exposure. It’s moddable as hell: I played hours this year with a multiplayer add-on.

Every fresh start means it’s time for new experiments, which have been greatly enhanced by the expansions, introducing royals, psychics and cults.

It works surprisingly well on Steam Deck, so I’ve fired it up yet again to play on the go. Finally I can live the dream of sitting on a noisy bus while leading a colony of tyrannical transhumanist cannibals.

Katie Wickens, Hardware Writer: Firmly is Rimworld embedded in my yearly game rotation, as the call of sandbox colony sims inevitably draws me in when real life gets hard to parse. Rimworld has so much to give, with each restart delivering a totally unique experience.

I bid thee tug on my heartstrings once more, o’ tiny pawns of the outer Rim. Evan: The launch of the early access prototype Arma Reforger in May complicates this a bit: Arma is improving on its path to Arma 4, but slowly. For now, Arma 3 is still my recommendation for a feature-complete military sandbox. Arma 3 continues to remind us that scale is one of the precious feelings games can give us. That doesn’t just mean “big maps. Morgan: Arma 3 is the game that pushed me to finally get a desktop PC in I picked up the best prebuilt PC a year-old could afford, meaning Arma 3 still ran like crap.

That’s OK, because I still managed to dump hours into AI scenarios, Day-Z adjacent sandbox survival modes, and a proto-version of PUBG battle royale developed by PlayerUnknown himself you’d join servers from your external internet browser, it was pretty cool. Arma is one of the few series out there actively pushing the capabilities of videogames and placing that power in the hands of players to make new things.

After a decade of updates, Arma 3 is both gigantic and often cheap. Robin: I can’t believe this is still on here. Both we and Bethesda need to let it go already. Jody: I get it. I’d be tempted to replay Morrowind if I wanted a full playthrough of an Elder Scrolls RPG today, yet I still keep Skyrim installed and hop back on the regular just to check out new mods.

I’ve recently explored a cyberpunk city and begun a multi-part quest mod with fully voiced followers. Skyrim’s alive, and people are doing more interesting things to it than most live-service games.

Mollie: Robin, you’re going to have to pry Skyrim from my cold, dead hands. It’s been my comfort game for the past decade, the one I can easily fall back into for some bittersweet nostalgia. Will I ever play anything other than a stealthy archer? Who knows. Old habits die hard. Sean: Skyrim is irreplaceable, but that’s also its biggest fault.

Without another Elder Scrolls game to take its crown, I’m doomed to keep returning to it even though I know full well I’ve done everything there is. Lauren M: How does one bond with friends if not by stomping around a haunted house and wailing increasingly awful “where are you? Jacob: I used to jump into Phasmophobia expecting to be terrified almost immediately, now I do it because it’s a great social game to play with a handful of friends. Enjoying a stroll through an abandoned and potentially haunted campsite or prison is now my idea of a good time, just shooting the breeze and poking fun as we idly check for ghosts on our vast array of ghost hunting gear.

I love those moments simply tracking spectres so much that I’ve actually explored haunted castles or those claiming to be haunted with friends in real-life because of it.

Phasmophobia made me realise I love the quirky ghost-hunting culture that I thought only existed in episodes of early s British TV show Most Haunted; a world filled with EMF meters, spirit boxes, infrared thermometers, and ‘I’d rather be ghost hunting’ caps.

Rich Stanton: I return to Phasmophobia every few months with the same group, because it’s always different. Yeah we’ve seen much of what the game has but its combinations, its capacity to shock you out of over-confidence, remains undimmed. My favourite horror experience ever. Fraser: Too many people know what my screams sound like now. Thanks, Phasmophobia. Josh L: I love paranormal investigation shows, and this game lets me experience that world for myself, in VR, and it’s terrifying, I love it!

Jody: Bloodlines remains an unbeatable example of a specific kind of RPG: one with sexy vampires you can kiss. It’s got atmospheric urban hubs to explore, wonderfully animated NPCs, and a sudden switch to full horror that scared me shitless even on playthrough three. The Unofficial Patch continues being updated long after fixing Bloodlines’ biggest bugs back in the day I got stuck in half-open doors and had to reload more than once. It even inserts shortcuts past combat-heavy areas, the main weak spot of a game otherwise happy to let you sneak, talk, or kiss your way out of problems.

Actually, I think kissing caused more problems than it solved. But they were newer, more interesting problems, so that’s OK. Josh W: It just nails the World of Darkness vibe so well: the scheming elders, the ancient conspiracies, the general millenarian dread. Sure, some aspects—like literally every interaction in the Chinatown section—have, ah, not aged so well, but where Bloodlines shines, it shines brighter than any game that’s tried to do the same thing before or since.

Katie: Seven years is a long time for any game to stay relevant, but Cities: Skylines remains the big apple of my eye as one of the greatest city builders of all time. It’s not moved in the top list this year, since we consider it truly representative of the genre—the pinnacle of traffic management and a well rounded city design sandbox.

The game’s easy to pick up, and deep strategies reveal themselves as you learn to manage traffic flow, master road hierarchy, and exert your authority with evil cycle-to-work schemes. The fact there are still tons of active modders in the community today, and that Colossal Order is still releasing DLCs, means there’s a constant stream of content to keep you amused until they finally grace us with Skylines 2.

I’ve got two cities on the go at the moment. One of them is a new attempt at a cyberpunk city, after my last one got a bit out of control thanks to some broken mods. The other is one that’s aggressively anti-car, because cars can fuck right off. Sean: Vermintide 2 is the most down-to-earth Warhammer game around; it’s essentially about five roommates trying to deal with the end of the world. They drink together, bicker together, and yes, slaughter an endless number of humanoid rats together.

In a setting rife with OP gods and champions, I love that it’s about a bunch of misfits just trying their best. Robin: And I love that that set up lets it just be this perfect encapsulation of what the Warhammer Fantasy setting is about.

It’s got that wonderful humour and satire in the dialogue, the characters sniping back and forth, but always against this absurdly grim, violent backdrop. It’s authentic to that world in a way that I think few games outside of Total War manage. Fraser: There are few things in this world as cathartic as smashing lots of evil rats. Vermintide 2 is the best panacea for a bad day.

Just try to frown when you’re covered in blood and guts and fur. Wes: After a few years of playing Vermintide’s missions over and over, I really enjoy the roguelike-esque mode Fatshark added. A full run takes a couple hours, but each level is a smaller commitment than a normal stage.

Bring on Darktide. Chris: For years I wondered what the appeal of a hardcore farming sim was, but then I spent a couple seasons plowing, planting, cultivating, growing, and harvesting. When my first crop of beets began pouring into my trailer—and I am not being sarcastic here—it was a genuine rush.

The deep complexity of the farming systems and the exquisitely recreated farming vehicles, which to my mind are just as impressive as sci-fi spaceships, make it easy to turn farming into an obsession. Morgan: I haven’t kept up with the Farming Sim series in recent years, but I’m glad to know it’s as chill as ever. This is the game that truly kicked off the “simulator” trend on Steam, but it’s never treated the label like a joke.

This is an honest-to-god snapshot of farm life: a lot of menial labor building up to a single delivery that doesn’t pay quite as much as you hope, but enough that you should probably plant more wheat and do it again. Sarah James, Guides Writer: If Farming Simulator has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t want to be anywhere near me when I’m reversing something with a trailer attached to it.

Phil: Excuse me while I mourn the fact that this has become our sim du jour over Euro Truck Simulator 2—for my money still the king of the pretend-to-do-someone-else’s-job genre. Robin: I genuinely had to uninstall this game to make myself stop playing it, because I was in so deep I could feel it giving me RSI. It’s the perfect pick up and play game and fits perfectly with Valve’s handheld. As much as it’s a skateboarding game it reminds me of the compulsive nature of scrambling action puzzler, Trials 2, where I would restart levels time after time and settle for nothing less than a clean run every time.

It’s the same thing with OlliOlli World, but with a more esoteric aesthetic. Dave: While Football Manager absolutely is a management simulation of what it’s like to control the finer points of a football team in modern times, it’s also one of the most engaging RPGs around. Most people will simply dismiss it as little more than a set of spreadsheets with no soul, but for the people for whom FM has become the game they play, it means so much more than that.

Sure, at its simplest FM is about shuffling a pack of little computer people into an order and with a strategy that will win you more football matches than you lose, but the wider career can last for years, even decades, as you live a full life in football. And in that lifetime you can experience the many varied highs and lows of football; whether that’s a last minute winner delivering an elusive Champions League win, a courageous full-back declaring their sexuality to a packed press conference, a brilliant season pushing your tiny home team of Bath into the professional leagues, or the pain of relegation, sackings, and a son who turns out to be too rubbish a footballer to fit in with your team and you have to destroy their career and the tender age of 21 with a cancelled contract.

It’s also become a game I don’t just play at my PC; I deliberate over transfer decisions in the shower in the morning, agonise over tactical tweaks long after I’ve shut down my rig from a bad run of matches, and dream of actually making it into the football league again. Lauren Aitken, Guides Editor: I hate spreadsheets in real life, but will apparently spend hundreds of hours in one to take Rangers to the top of the Champions League.

My favourite regens were called D. Truman and I. Innocent, and that’s all I have to say about FM Robin: This game’s such a vision for what the place of point-and-click games could be in the modern industry.

Instead of resting on laurels of nostalgia, it’s pulling in inspiration from Bioware and Telltale to craft a brilliantly textured narrative and world to go with its smart puzzles.

Fraser: Not just one of the best adventure games around, Unavowed is also a high point for urban fantasy. There are shades of Dresden Files and John Constantine, but this is a singular yarn, grounding the fire mages, ghost assistants and confused demons with human drama, and setting it in a version of New York that absolutely feels tangible.

Designer Dave Gilbert loves this city and loves these characters, and that makes me love them too. Morgan: Jackbox Games continues to demonstrate why it’s the master of party games. You’d think eight releases later these packs would be out of good ideas, but Party Pack 8 features some of the cleverest games the series has ever seen, like a hidden drawing murder mystery game Weapons Drawn or a genius twist on Family Feud in Poll Mine. I especially love the creativity of Job Job, a game where you write stories using word clouds written by each other.

Imogen: I wanted Jackbox to be kicked off this list in favour of Gartic Phone. Sure, Jackbox is unique and fun, but it’s the series that’s good, not any one individual game. Mollie: Sometimes I think Jackbox has had its day. Then I’ll end up drinking with some buddies, the game will come out and the floodgates open to countless Jackbox-themed inside jokes.

I agree with Imogen, the series is good rather than one particular pack standing out as the must-have. I’m partial to Jackbox 5 myself—the last time I played Patently Stupid I had bellyache from laughing so hard.

Even if each pack has its duds, you’re bound to find a good time from at least one game. Morgan: This gorgeous, well-written, and downright fun story didn’t get the love it truly deserved across the internet last year. Yes, the combat is simple, but Eidos Montreal’s take on the Guardians of the Galaxy demonstrates a lot of love for the source material and a high bar of comedy that I wouldn’t have expected from the Deus Ex studio. The characters are so good, this game made me like the Marvel movies a lot less.

Give it a shot. Fraser: GotG has been accused of being a movie knock-off that couldn’t afford the expensive cast, but it’s really one of the best comic adaptations around, capturing the argumentative found-family far better than any two-hour MCU flick ever could.

Like Morgan says, the gags are great, but the comedy is accompanied by powerful emotional highs and lows that make this rollicking space adventure incredibly heartfelt and genuine. Fraser: I’m terrible at cards and even worse at sleight of hand, but Card Shark makes me feel like a master. As the mute apprentice of Comte de Saint-Germain, I’ve learned a lot about how to part 18th century French nobles and revolutionaries from their cash.

The mechanics of deceit are both complex and compelling, embracing the tactile nature of card games and then layering oodles of intrigue and a nice big conspiracy on top. I finished the whole thing in a single long afternoon, but I’ve hardly stopped thinking about it since. I even picked up a real deck of cards to see if the game rubbed off on me, but no, I’ve still got the dexterity and wits of a sloth.

Morgan: Ashamed that I haven’t given this one a proper shot. Cheating at cards is such an immediately fun game premise and I’m delighted that it actually works. Wes: Surely you’ve heard of Valve’s FPS puzzle comedy Portal and its sequel, which will make you laugh and feel incredibly smart at the same time.

I’m going to assume you’ve played the campaign, because you strike me as a reader of fine taste and culture. What really keeps Portal 2 on the Top year after year is its co-op campaign and staggering Steam Workshop scene, providing effectively infinite test chambers to solve.

Play nothing but Portal 2 and Kerbal Space Program for the next year and you could probably earn an honorary physics degree. Nat: It’s so easy to forget how Valve’s writing was on top of its game in Razor sharp and effortlessly funny, even without memetic cake jokes. Morgan: Portal 2 lives in the corner of my brain reserved for perfect games. It’s not a crowded space.

Man, I can’t wait for Valve to make narrative games again. Sarah: It’s hard to believe Portal 2 is over 10 years old. I haven’t played recently but I remember the last time I fired it up, it hadn’t aged at all. I think it’s time for another replay. Nat: I’d always written off Flight Sim as this stodgy old thing, something dads fuss over on their yellowed old CRT in the garage. But a scale model of the Earth is a hell of a thing, and with a flight model that can be as accessible or as finicky as you like, I’ve found endless joy in even the familiar drudgery of an Edinburgh to London flight—especially if I’m doing it in the Halo Pelican.

Fraser: My love of flight is usually overshadowed by my hate of airports and uncomfortable seats. Flight Sim’s perfect for me, then, cutting out all the shit and just letting me soar above the clouds and occasionally do flyovers of Paisley to see if it accurately simulates the amount of broken glass and dog poo on the streets.

It doesn’t, but it’s still an incredible recreation of Earth. Morgan: My brief love affair with Flight Sim in sent me down a long road.

Not only am I way more familiar with plane operations than I never imagined, but I’m also way more afraid of these magnificent steel beasts that regularly defy god. Even when I think I’m doing everything right, stuff goes wrong and I just start flipping switches. I’m not sure I’ll ever sleep on a flight again.

Jody: So many space games are about being a pilot or the spaceship itself. Mass Effect understood we wanted to be the ship’s captain, just like on TV. The one who bosses people around, gives inspiring speeches, leads the away team, plots the journey, and, yes, macks on blue alien honeys. Imogen: Mass Effect is two of my favourite aspects of games rolled into one. Stupid otherworldy politics that make no sense and gun action. Oh, and my third favourite too, smooching aliens.

The point is Mass Effect games showed me how deep relationships can go in games whether they be platonic, intergalactic, or romantic. Nothing has ever made me feel the same as realising the consequences of the suicide run or saying goodbye to Tali.

Mollie: I’m all here for alien smooching. What a babe. Ted Litchfield, Associate Editor: I often find myself ragging on Mass Effect, its militarism, the way it ended, the questionable ethics of its workplace romances. But at the end of the day I replay the whole trilogy at least once every two years. It’s a touchstone for me, a world I’m always happy to go back to. It also doesn’t hurt that the Vanguard class lets you teleport around shotgunning dudes in the most satisfying way imaginable.

Nat: They “improved” the Mako for this “remaster”, as if it were ever possible to improve on perfection. Morgan: A murder mystery visual novel set in a twisted vision of heaven.

The pitch was enough for me to try Paradise Killer, but what kept me around is the unique approach to its central mystery, allowing players to track each citizen’s timelines, solve puzzles out of order, and make your own conclusions about whodunnit. It’s pretty serious business wrapped in a completely absurd world, with memorable characters like Lady Love Dies, Dr. To solve the brutal murder, you first need to make sense of this world and its strange rules.

Unravelling this mystery isn’t all that challenging, it turns out, but it’s absolutely rewarding. Wes: I did wish in the end that this mystery had required a bit more deduction and a bit less “talk to everyone after finding every new piece of evidence,” but I loved how freeform it was, loved that it would’ve let me present my case way earlier if I’d chosen to, loved how it cleverly organized evidence, and loved the creativity poured into every single bit of this world.

If I’m not interviewing an immortal skeleton bartender assassin in the next mystery I play, why bother? And with every new expansion and league, it subtly reinvents itself, beckoning me back.

 
 

Best games 2014 pc no download

 
 

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze best games 2014 pc no download traffic, and understand where our audiences come down,oad.

To learn more or opt-out, ddownload our Cookie Gest. If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. As this extraordinary decade draws to a close, we decided it was time to make a list of the best games of the past 10 years. We began with a long list of around games that team members nominated.

Then we individually voted 2041 the 50 we most wanted to gsmes in the list. After we tallied the votes, we gathered together to sort out the unholy mess, and to argue the merits and faults of the top lc After a surprisingly calm and erudite discussion, we agreed on the following list.

For criteria, we gave ourselves a lot of latitude. Most of these games either significantly advanced the art and craft of game продолжить чтение in the past 10 years, or innovated in the specific context of their genre.

Some of them represent wider shifts in gaming culture in the last downloqd, including esports, games as a service, representation, streaming, and the rise of indies. We wanted to present a list that represents how games have http://replace.me/26599.txt an ever more intimate relationship between the player and the experience.

Here we go! The women are professional rivals. Virginia explores how women in the workplace are undermined by patriarchal power structures, including divide-and-conquer strategies. In the early part of this century, the question of whether or not games could make us cry was one that exercised plenty of convention panels. Best games 2014 pc no download those days, examples of genuine emotionally charged games were certainly extant, but they were rare.

Life Is Strange is a game that places downloae at the very center of complicated, layered relationships, between friends, doanload, colleagues, and family. Slay the Spire is a small indie game, but it challenged the collectible card game business by creating an ever-changing dungeon for players to battle through without fear of failure.

Hearthstone bred frustration in players for over five years, with its deck-building complexities. But Slay the Gamed offered a perfect safe place to learn how to 204 a deck on your own.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is perhaps the game that, ahem, reawakened mo tactical role-playing franchise, but it is Cad drawings viewer free Emblem: Three Houses that represents a masterful culmination of the series. The game draws on the aspects that made Awakening appealing the focus on individual 20144, robust support conversations, and, yes, romantic relationshipsbut fine-tuned the failed experiments of Fire Emblem: Fates the branching narratives, the gray morality, and the devastating results of turning on your friends.

Super Mario Maker changed the streaming px by allowing viewers to create an endless stream of content for their favorite dosnload. Cuphead took the modern trend of difficult games and married it to a brilliant art style. It evolved 2D action shooters like Best games 2014 pc no download and Metal Slug by focusing mostly on boss fights.

Instead of leaning on complex mechanics or slow animations, Cuphead offers an unmistakable art style to keep things fresh, pushing the player forward in anticipation of the next visual revelation. And it all comes to life in a dilapidated, gorgeously realized house that somehow допускаете symantec backup exec 2014 server download меня? simultaneously like a video gamey setting and a real place.

Developer Creative Assembly has been plugging away at its best games 2014 pc no download series Total War sincewith various degrees of critical and commercial success. The game creates a web of intrigue that brings the real challenges of historical leadership to life, augmenting a genre that has often beest from tactical rock-paper-scissors simplicity.

Developer Simogo has quietly created hit after hit. Adventure game Year Walk explored Swedish folklore. And Device 6 is a Bond-tinged puzzle game. Each Simogo title is relentlessly stylish, and visually distinct from the others. Nothing looks quite like it, and nothing plays quite like it.

Telltale was formed inwith the aim of creating episodic games that would be eagerly awaited by fans. The first season was its biggest hit, telling the story of a man rare in games, an African-American lead ссылка seeks to save a young girl from a zombie apocalypse.

During the game, players solve simple puzzles while making difficult moral choices that affect the story. The Walking Dead finished its first season with a dramatic high that left many players in a state of emotional turmoil. The company was wound up in After Resident Evil 4Capcom led the legendary horror franchise down an increasingly ridiculous road of betrayals, clones, and infected presidents. Resident Evil 7 took a hard turn off that track, into welcome new territory.

Its protagonist is just a guy looking for his wife; the armies of zombies have been replaced by one spooky family with moldy minions; and the action movie set-pieces are gone in favor of down,oad sprawling, creepy Louisiana estate. This reset works best games 2014 pc no download tremendous effect. There are individual elements that tie np world together, creating a suffocating atmosphere of terror — from small touches yames the VHS tapes to big swings like the Baker family matriarch and her jumps between kindly host and single-minded, hysterical murder.

But it came with a key innovation: the nemesis system. Players take on the role of The Rangerwho spends his days infiltrating orc strongholds and ambushing orcs in the field. But dwnload he fails to defeat certain best games 2014 pc no download, they become stronger, and they acquire a nasty grudge against The Ranger. This pleasing dynamic gives an otherwise competent action-adventure the bonus of drama, character, and personality, as variously vile orcs take their turn in the narrative limelight.

Monster Hunter is one of those franchises that is as strange as it is popular. Monster Hunter: World takes everything great about the franchise and polishes it up, while sanding down the rough, archaic bits that have scared away newcomers.

Controlfrom developer Remedy Entertainment, is weird, confusing, and beautiful. Main character Jesse Dkwnload has powers that allow her to telekinetically pick up and best games 2014 pc no download nearly anything best games 2014 pc no download the area, which is a thrilling juxtaposition to the pristine, bold lines of the building. This was a decade of mobile games unapologetically tailored toward young women. While not a visual novel like the other specified titles, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood was perhaps the biggest indication that a mobile game for girls could be successful.

Naysayers scoffed at the idea of a Kim Ho game. At first glance, FTL looks like something of a microgame. Every one of its ship designs is the best, and each one of their systems is vital to survival. Its success mainly comes down to its familiarity — the art dowwnload evokes Super Mario Bros. This is an unashamedly derivative work that nonetheless offers comfort through simplicity, and a feedback loop that soon becomes addictive.

Indeed, at the height of its fame, Nguyen pulled Flappy Bird from mobile stores, saying that he thought people were spending too much time on the game. Bad guys have been staples of video games since the first нажмите сюда invaded our space. Mostly, their motivations go unquestioned. But Papers, Please is a donwload about how we are all vulnerable to performing evil acts and, in gwmes right circumstances, capable of being villains.

Players take on the role of a border guard working for a totalitarian regime. The entire game centers on civilians passing through the border.

Players inspect paperwork and behavioral patterns, on the lookout for terrorists and political opponents of the regime. Even more spectacular than the graphical upgrade, however, was the dowmload of controller support that literally downloax the game faster to play. Dialogue has been one of the biggest challenges in game design these past 10 years, as designers have sought new ways to invest characters with depth and personality, while utilizing conversations as a useful, entertaining mechanic.

In Oxenfreeplayers take on the role of Alex, a teenage girl embarking on an island jaunt with her friends. She interacts with them through dialogue trees presented as speech bubbles, and in real time. Oxenfree is a smartly downlad coming-of-age mystery that holds promise for the future of dialogue-as-game.

Years before most folks were talking downloar inclusion, and in a genre where ggames subject по этому сообщению rarely brought up, PGA Tour 13 was doing it matter-of-factly, as a value-added feature for all players.

This is the game you get when developers actively listen to what players want. Nintendo managed to take everything we loved about the past Animal Crossing bes and crank it up beyond our expectations, adding a plethora of new features. New Leaf music lyrics downloader for pc us the customization and control over our towns in ways never imagined.

It serves as a feel-good gamea welcome escape bezt 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 n 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. Best games 2014 pc no download story and the puzzles are bo without being annoying, marking a new direction for a genre that had become wearying through obfuscation. I would like best games 2014 pc no download thank whoever at Best games 2014 pc no download 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 best games 2014 pc no download 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 gqmes 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 best games 2014 pc no download of them is a lane that sends blue and red blocks toward them, in time gamfs 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 best games 2014 pc no download grind.