By my estimation, 2017 was one of the best years in gaming history. Even if we ignore the Nintendo Switch (and we will because this is PCWorld) 2017 delivered an incredible number of top-tier games. Our initial version of this list of the best PC games was almost 30 entries long, and paring it down to 10 was painful. I can name a handful of games we cut in 2017 that would’ve made 2016’s Game of the Year list over and above some of the selections we actually included last year, including Opus Magnum, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, Hollow Knight, Resident Evil VII, and Observer.
The best games of 2017 certainly make up an exciting list; it really was a vintage year for PC titles. Resident Evil 7 ripped our nerves to shreds.
But ten’s our number, and so ten is what you’ll find below, followed by a couple of honorable mentions. As always, our list is in no particular order—there’s a Game of the Year, but below that is simply nine runners-up.
Nioh
Dark Souls has inspired many imitators—so many it’s become a running joke. Few have reached the same heights as From Software’s originals, though.
Nioh ($50 on Steam) is one of the few. It borrows quite a bit from Souls for sure, but evolves many of those ideas in just the ways you’d expect from a Team Ninja game. It’s fast, aggressive, and unforgiving, with a remarkable amount of depth in its combat system.
Most noteworthy are the weapon stances. Each of Nioh’s dozen or so weapon categories (Spears, Dual Swords, Kusarigama, etc.) can be used in High, Middle, and Low stance, with each stance resulting in entirely different animations and combos. Once you get the hang of it you’ll find yourself swapping stances mid-fight or even mid-combo to keep your opponent off-balance or maybe get in an extra-powerful hit while they’re staggered.
But my favorite feature is the Ki Pulse. Like in Dark Souls, attacking and blocking depletes stamina (called Ki here), and once it’s gone you leave yourself open to attack. But whereas in Souls this often means cutting an attack short, in Nioh you can follow up a combo with a well-timed button tap to instantly regenerate some stamina—then either retreat to safety or continue to press the attack. It’s a smart system, and one that encourages a much more aggressive play style.
Turns out that’s exactly what I wanted from a Souls-style game. There’s plenty more we could discuss, especially surrounding the game’s take on Tokugawa-era Japan and the exaggerated story of real-life sailor/samurai William Adams, but combat is key to this genre and it’s Nioh’s exceptional combat that kept me coming back night after night.
Prey
Did you expect Prey ($40 on Steam) to be good? Wait, you mean Prey, the follow-up to that campy 2006 shooter? The one sandbagged by controversy after Bethesda scrapped Human Head’s original sequel and gave the property to Arkane? Yeah, that Prey.
I certainly didn’t expect Prey to be good. Or at least not “Game of the Year list” good.
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Arkane pulled it off though. The key to Prey lies in its openness and system-drive gameplay. Arkane gives the player tools, and it’s up to the player to use them, be it brute force or a craftier approach. The elevator’s broken? Sure, you could rewire it, or you could use your glue gun to create ledges in the empty shaft, then climb to the next floor. Door locked? Shoot the release valve with your Nerf gun—or co-opt alien powers to transform yourself into a coffee mug, then jump through the hole.
If Dishonored is Arkane’s modernized take on Thief, Prey is System Shock. You’ve got your deserted space station (Talos I), your alien presence, and so on. More than anything though, you’ve got the spirit of System Shock--a free-form approach to problem solving, where every door has about a dozen keys if you know how to use the tools you’ve been given. It’s a game that makes you feel like a genius even when you’re playing exactly how the designers planned, which is a rare quality indeed.
Stories Untold
Stories Untold ($10 on Steam) is likely the smallest game on this list. A horror anthology, Stories Untold consists of four short vignettes, more ominous than outright terrifying. The first chapter actually came out of a game jam called The House Abandon, where you’re home alone playing a text adventure and then...well, I don’t want to spoil it.
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That’s a running theme with Stories Untold, actually. It works because so much of its horror is understated, subtle. Much of it is couched in mundanity, like the twiddling of knobs on an X-Ray setup or entering code words into a workstation while it softly snows outside. There’s a focus on analog technology, the ways we interface with machines—and no surprise, once you find out one of the developers worked on the retrofuturistic tech in Alien: Isolation.
The final chapter of Stories Untold isn’t quite as satisfying, trying to tie a neat bow on what up until that point was a refreshingly messy experiment. But it makes our list if for nothing else because it proves unequivocally how many avenues developers have yet to explore, and how even something this simple can form a connection just as strong (if not more so) than the relentless bombast of games with a hundred times the budget.
Torment: Tides of Numenera
Torment: Tides of Numenera ($45 on Steam) had enormous shoes to fill. After all, it was billed as a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, long considered one of the greatest games ever made. That’s not a burden I’d willingly take on.
The surprising part is Tides of Numenera mostly pulls it off. Maybe not so much from a mechanics standpoint—it’s weirdly easy to abuse Numenera’s systems, especially when it comes to skill checks. Each character has a pool of points which can be spent to ensure success on nearly any task, and those points replenish when you rest. Powerful right? And there’s no penalty for resting, so…
It doesn’t matter though, at least not if (like me) you’re in it for the story. In 30ish hours I only had to sit through a half-dozen fights. The rest was spent exploring Numenera’s refreshingly weird world and reading through pages and pages of dialogue. You know, the same reasons people liked Planescape all those years ago. From cities hidden inside transdimensional space slugs to a tavern full of psychics to a room inside your own mind, Tides of Numenera always has some new wonder to show you. It’s a font of creativity in a genre that’s all-too-often willing to play it safe, and a reminder that video games can do anything, not just retread the same narrow slice of tropes time and time again.
If you’re looking for a(nother) game to fight your way through, Tides of Numenera probably isn’t a good choice. But if you just want to be told a story, or want to explore an interesting world and read pages and pages of dialogue about what makes it tick, then I think you’ll love it.
The Evil Within 2
It took me three years, but I finally finished The Evil Within in October—after its sequel had already released. I won’t take much time to discuss it here, but suffice it to say: The Evil Within is the worst masterpiece I’ve ever played. It has some of my favorite moments in any horror game ever, but it’s debatable whether those moments are worth playing through one of the decade’s jankiest games and fighting its busted save system.
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I recommend The Evil Within 2 ($60 on Steam) wholeheartedly though. Picking up where the first game left off, returning protagonist Detective Sebastian Castellanos is forced to re-enter STEM, a virtual world of sorts that’s “hosted” in someone’s brain. In the original Evil Within the brain in question belonged to a psychopath—the reason it all went so wrong.
In The Evil Within II, the host is Sebastian’s daughter, and she’s being threatened by some unknown force. It’s campy for sure, but an excellent setup for psychological trickery and some amazing environments, reminiscent of German Expressionism or (for an example closer to home) the best moments in Silent Hill’s history. The final two hours or so are some of the most audacious I’ve ever seen a horror game attempt.
Pair all that with a game that actually plays well this time around and you’ve got a winner. The Evil Within II sands off some of its predecessor’s rough edges, and while usually that’d be cause for concern...well, The Evil Within had a lot of rough edges, and losing a few leads to a much more enjoyable experience. It’s a solid stealth game, a decent shooter, and everything in between, meaning you can sit back and admire the spectacle.
Next page: More of the best PC games of 2017, and PCWorld's Game of the Year.
2017 has been an amazing year for video games across all platforms, but with the likes of Destiny 2 and Assassins Creed: Origins being big hits with all the attention, it is sometimes hard to see which games released this year are suitable for children.
Kids this year have been spoilt for choice, both from AAA developers as well as indies. Whether it is platformers or puzzlers, there have been some great titles released this year for younger gamers.
Being a parent of young children, I know what kinds of games my kids and their friends like, so based on this, I have selected 10 PC games that I think your kids will love as well. These are games that will test and excite younger and older kids alike, so there is something for everyone!
Snake Pass
Released early in 2017 was beautiful physics-based puzzle-platformer Snake Passfrom British developer Sumo Digital. In Snake Pass, you play as a snake called Noodle, and with the help of his hummingbird friend, Doodle, you need to move around various locations collecting gate gems to progress to the next level. That's it. The premise of the game is to collect items to move on.
There are no enemies, no fighting, no dialogue, and no other characters to interact with. This makes it an ideal game for kids because they just get to complete the puzzles and get instant gratification in doing so. Yes, the movements might be a bit taxing for younger players, but once they start thinking like a slithering snake, it makes it easier to move.
In addition to being available on PC via Steam, Snake Pass is also available on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
LEGO Worlds
We couldn't have a list of great PC games for kids without having a building game on the list somewhere. Since the obvious one has been out for many years now, it couldn't be included, so we turn to the ultimate building franchise for this slide.
LEGO Worldswas released at the beginning of the year and brings everything you'd expect from a LEGO building game. The game features an open world with procedurally generated environments that you can fully manipulate. Kids can build whatever they can imagine by either moving things brick by brick or by using a prefabricated building and then customizing it.
LEGO Worlds is currently available on Steam for PC as well as on PS4 and Xbox One.
Cuphead
What do you mean I can't include Cupheadon a list for kids? Alright, it isn't really suitable for younger kids, but I still think it is OK for older ones. I agree that it isn't an easy game. Having put in numerous hours and still not really gotten anywhere, I can attest to its difficulty, but as with anything, practice makes perfect and, yes, I think older kids can get to grips with it.
The animation in the game is amusing and very well done, and if kids watch retro cartoons on certain kid's TV channels, there is nothing really that they haven't seen before.
Cuphead is currently available on Steam for PC and also available on Xbox One.
Yooka Laylee
As the cover slide suggested, Yooka Layleewas going to appear on this list somewhere. It was one of the most anticipated games of the year -- how could it not be?! All the beautiful animation and quirky characters make this very much suitable for kids.
Of course, today's kids probably won't know about the game's predecessor, Banjo-Kazooie, so they will be going into it with no expectations or thinking that it has anything to live up to. Whether they just want to explore or go straight into collecting, this will keep kids occupied for ages. Younger players might have a little bit of trouble getting the hang of all the controls, but once they've mastered them, they will love playing this game!
Yooka Laylee is available on Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux and also available on PS4 and Xbox One.
Brawlout
This little gem of an indie fighting game is a fun way of bringing the genre to kids. While consoles have had a cartoon-type fighter for many years, there don't seem to be many out on PC, so Brawloutis a welcomed addition.
The concept of a fighting game is pretty self-explanatory, but this game adds platforms to the mix, making the gameplay a bit more dynamic and fast-paced. Each character has its own unique playstyle such as a Nordic-looking Walrus-type character who uses ice attacks to freeze people in place or a Porcupine character who uses electric shocks to stun.
Brawlout is currently available on Steam for PC.
Sonic Forces
There have a number of Sonic releases this year, but for this list, we are recommending the most recent, Sonic Forces. The titular character has long been one of the characters associated with games, and kids love him! In this new game, you and Sonic have to save the world from Dr Eggman and a new villain called Infinite by bringing together an army to defeat them.
Sonic Forces brings back the much-loved platforms mechanics from previous games as well as adding some 3D action in for good measure. One of the big drawing points of the game is the fact that players get to create their own character to join Sonic on his missions.
The game is currently available on Steam for PC but is also available on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
A Hat in Time
Since its release in October, A Hat in Timehas done incredibly well, gaining an overwhelmingly positive reception on Steam. Just from looking at the animation and storyline, you can see that this is a good game for kids! Plus, a game that has a kid as its main character is a nice way of getting kids interested in the game. If it weren't for a couple of cases of bad language, this game would have a universal rating.
The game follows the adventures of a space-traveling little girl who has a love of hats. As she explores new worlds in order to retrieve some missing items, she gets to craft new hats with different abilities to help her out such as a witch's hat that allows her to cook potions.
A Hat in Time is currently available on Steam for PC and Mac.
Portal Knights
So far, this list has been missing an RPG, so here comes Portal Knights to fill that spot. This sandbox action-RPG is fantastic for teaching kids about teamwork and team dynamics.
In Portal Knights, you take on the role of a Warrior, Mage, or Ranger who must travel to different worlds to lots of different islands to combat the effects of the great Fracture. Each island is randomly generated and offers a variety of unique environments, creatures, and resources for crafting. The crafting and gathering side of things is a nod to Minecraft, while the look of some of the land and characters themselves are quite reminiscent of LEGO.
This game caters very well to two types of players -- the first being younger players who will enjoy mining and crafting items as well as the farming aspect of the game; the second being older kids, who may enjoy a more in-depth combat system.
Portal Knights is currently available on Steam for PC, but it is also available on PS4 and Xbox One.
Ben 10
Even though Ben 10has just been released, it would be hard not to include it on a list of games for kids. From its humble beginnings as a kids cartoon, the Ben 10 franchise just keeps on growing!
This latest addition is an action-adventure game, and once again you play as Ben as you try to save the world from some of the series' most famous villains, including Queen Bee, Zombozo, and the Weatherheads. As usual, there are 10 alien creatures to transform into, so kids are going to enjoy exploring new abilities and the looks of these new forms.
Ben 10 is currently available on Steam for PC and also available on PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
Yonder: The Cloud Chaser Chronicles
Everywhere I've been on the internet while looking for great kids games of 2017, I've repeatedly seen Yonder: The Cloud Chaser Chronicles mentioned, and if you are familiar with the game, then you will know why.
This beautiful adventure game focuses on exploration and crafting as its staple theme. There is no combat in the game, which makes it ideal for younger children and makes the game very relaxing and easy going. As you explore the island of Gemea, you befriend and train animals, gather fruit and resources, and then build your own farm to help generate food and resources for the inhabitants of the island.
Yonder is out on Steam now for PC and also available on the PS4.
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Do your children play any of the games on this list? Maybe they play something else? If so, please let us know which games your children play so that we can check it out as well!