The industry’s tendency to iterate on its most popular names and ideas means good games are often built on the foundations of great ones – so even though the real innovation might have happened nine years ago, we’re still inclined to put the best overall experience on a pedestal.
Therefore, older games must be both playable and still genuinely enjoyable to make the cut, not simply ‘important’. But let’s be real: even if you did decide to go and play the original 1993 version Syndicate after seeing it on this list, which you wouldn’t, getting it to run properly on modern hardware would be quite an undertaking. The first pertains to timeliness: PC gaming history spans several decades and many of its most revered titles were released during the 1990s, whose incredible tech breakthrough saw leaps forward in both fidelity and ideation. We’ve tried clearing them out, but they grow back at an alarming rate.Īs custodians of this PC gaming corps d’elite, we must lay a few ground rules before allowing you into the great hall.
Look out for all the mouse balls and serial cables underfoot. You can hang your jacket on one of those vectors jutting out from Elite – one of the best space games ever made – over there, and we do ask that you leave all electronic devices inside this improbably large PC game box from 1997. Got your ticket there for the best PC games of all time? Ah, you do.