PC Gamer - March 2012

57 Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Release: 2002 Tyler: Allied Assault made me feel small. No longer was I a chaingun-wielding one-man army ripping apart an entire alien civilization. I was one soldier among many, firing one bullet at a time. It made me the star of the war movies I gre w up loving, and the multiplayer was elegant, pure, and free of modern gimmicks.

56Zeno Clash Release: 2009 Nathan: I constantly lament the lack of truly alien worlds in gaming, but—in spite of its lack of vent cores that need frog-blasting—I think Zeno Clash is the closest our medium’s ever gotten to something truly foreign. Bird people, brain-bending philosophy, off-the-wall art—it’s all so gleefully insane. Having some of the finest first-person face-punch-ing this side of Riddick doesn’t hurt, either. Evan: Like playing Labyrinth or Dark Crystal in the Source engine, except you get to hurt and maim absolutely everyone.

55Hitman: Blood Money Release: 2006 Graham: A rare action game that encourages you to play a certain way—by being undetected and efficient—but has the good graces to let you fail. Half the fun of Hitman is getting away with your assassination. The other half is scre wing up, panicking, and working to clean up your own mess.

54 DC Universe Online Release: 2011 Josh: So much about DCUO is future-look- ing—its cinematic presentation, action combat, flexible group roles, perfect armor collection system—that anyone remotely interested in MMOs should play it, comic book interest or no.

53DCS: Flaming Cliffs 2
Release: 2010
Andy: It doesn’t boast a clickable 3D cockpit like DCS: A-10: Warthog but this Lock
On: Modern Air Combat survey
sim expansion pack makes up
for that with some terrific air-
craft variety (seven potent
fighter jets), rich single-player
depth, and rock-steady net-
code. If you’re not an RTFM
type, this ain’t the sim for you.

52 Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Release: 2001 Chris C: Ghost Recon’s the game I show people when they want to know how Special Forces operate in real life. One shot will kill, and if your guys ever break team cohesion—wandering off alone—they’ll eat a lead salad. You’ve gotta be disciplined and methodical to survive, and it recreates the tension and chaos that erupt from a firefight so accurately, it gives me wartime flashbacks.

51Company of Heroes Release: 2006 Tim: Legend has it the CoH team spent a year just working on the awesome Defense of Carentan mission, and it shows. German panzers gradually whittle away at your defenses while you desperately try and organize a retreat. StarCraft II may have the best multiplayer of any RTS, but I’d choose CoH’s awesome single-player campaign over Blizzard’s any day.

50 Grand Theft Auto IV Release: 2008 Graham: GTAIV ’s metropolis is perhaps the only game world to have its own personality. Liberty City is huge, exciting, and a complete jerk. Like a lot of PC games, it’s at its best when you form your own goals: try ragdolling from the tallest building, stealing helicopters from the airport, leaping motorcycles over buses in multiplayer, or installing mods that let you be Superman. Evan: Remember when we turned off the vehicle friction in the handling.dat file, transforming Liberty City into a swirling sedan maelstrom that was incompatible with human life? Cars hunted civilians mercilessly. That might’ve been the most fun I had in 2011.

49BioShock 2 Release: 2010 Rob: BioShock may have the best opening in PC gaming, but BioShock 2 is a better shooter.

Combat encourages more creativity and tactical variety, especially by forcing frequent “Alamo” moments. Its superb and emotional finale doesn’t get enough recognition, and the “Minerva’s Den” expansion just adds to the excellence. Chris C: It’s everything you loved in the original BioShock, tweaked to perfection (with an arguably superior plot). Also— you’ve got an auger-bit for a freaking hand!

48 Mech Warrior 2 Release: 1995 Logan: I can’t remember what vid- eocard I had, proba- bly a hand-crank model, but I played this at around 10 frames per second and loved every minute of it. By getting a few crucial things right—the mission design, the fantastic ka-chunk ka-chunk sound of your mech lurching forward—it didn’t necessarily matter if you couldn’t run it at the highest graphics settings or smoothest framerate. You were a giant polygonal box of death.

47 Rise of Flight Release: 2009 Andy: The first WWI flight sim to get dog- fighting aficionados excited since Dyna-mix’s classic Red Baron 3D. Gorgeous graphics, sweet flight model, and superb AI make this a must-have for any serious dogfighter. Whether you shoot for an Iron or Victoria Cross, Rise of Flight injects your flyboy hips with some serious swagger.

46 Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad Release: 2011 Rob: The simplest actions in RO2 require skill and forethought. The things we take for granted in every other game are made ne w again. It’s the only game where I often find myself holding my breath before taking a shot, or realizing my eyes are burning because I haven’t blinked in about 10 minutes. Real, palpable tension. Evan: I’m still amazed by the way every single kill feels earned. Detailed damage modeling makes the act of firing so cerebral—RO2 cares if I peg a Soviet in the calf or the shoulder or the knuckles. Who would’ve thought that the most modern shooter in years would be one that features wooden, bolt-action weaponry? Tripwire loves PC gaming.

45Max Payne 2 Release: 2003 Tyler: Max Payne 2 is about as silly as noir gets, but it never winks at its audience to make sure we all know that it knows it’s silly. It takes itself seriously to the end, and that somehow sucks me into its absurd melodrama, transforming me into a rogue cop with a chip on his shoulder and a half-empty bottle of painkillers in his pocket. Logan: The original touched on this a bit timidly, but the sequel has some seriously deranged sequences—the giant hypodermic needle in the funhouse!— that leave you wondering what part is real and what parts are just the warped perspective of a really scre wed-up guy. Oh, and bullet time.

44Battlefield 1942 Release: 2002 Tyler: Why Battlefield 1942 and not Battle- field 3 Why blurry textures and a limited physics engine over lens flares and F/A- 18 Super Hornets? It’s not just nostalgia—Battlefield 1942 remains my standard for large-scale warfare because it demonstrates how simple mechanics and scenarios can stimulate player creativity and lead to something much more grand than may be apparent on the surface. My friends and I had hundreds of absurdly tense and complex BF 1942 battles.

43Quake III Release: 1999 Graham: On its sur- face, we love Quake III for its railgun, its rocket launcher, and Q3DM17. Beneath that, there’s infinite depths to mine if you want to become a better Quake player. How many seconds ‘til that Mega Health respawns, and what route around the map will see you hit the choke-points and be back in time to pick it up again before the enemy? If you don’t know, you keep playing. Quake III is slick, simple and pure. There’s a reason why it was an eSport.

42 Star Wars: The Old Republic
Release: 2011
Josh: It’s just come out, and The Old Republic is already the largest, most engross-
ing Star Wars universe ever
made. This is a world you could
believably live in—and with
eight class stories at 200 hours
each, you just might for awhile.
On top of that, it manages to
accomplish what most
doubted was even possible in
an MMO: meaningful player
choice in major storylines. We
can’t wait to see what Bio-
Ware’s able to turn this world
into with a few expansions
under its belt.

41 System Shock 2 Release: 1999 Rob: A true horror game. Not just because of the haunting and terrifying sound effects, or the persistent menace of the starship Von Braun’s shadowy interior. The story itself is a nightmare, as an alien collective infiltrates and quickly twists an entire crew into becoming a bloodthirsty hive-mind. Audio logs slowly reveal the villains who enabled the disaster, and the sad fate of the few doomed heroes who saw it coming. This is a game where, as each zombie begs for death, you remember they were once human. Logan: What Rob said. I’d just add this: System Shock 2 is terrifying because the entire game is situated in the idea that there are actually a lot of things worse than death. Aaaghh.

40Bastion Release: 2011 Logan: I love games like Braid and Portal for those mind- blowing moments and narrative twists that left me reeling, but Bastion achieved something much rarer. Instead of employing intellectual twists (no matter how ingenious and thought-provoking), it delivered an experience more like music, treating its sly narration, audio and art like melodic lines in a song. Bastion works its magic directly on the senses.

39iRacing.com Release: 2008 Andy: Some still whine about the subscription fees, but—if you need your sim racing to be accurate— nothing touches iRacing. Used by professional and amateur racers as well as tens of thousands of gamers, this is the ne plus ultra of PC racing technology. (You may even find Dale Earnhardt Jr. or Justin Wilson racing alongside you).