Play These Games Before You Call Yourself The MasterRace

Being the PC Gaming MasterRace is not just about owning a beefy rig, it’s also about playing games on it that make you worthy of that title. So here are some titles that every PC Gamer should absolutely play. These games will either be quite demanding on your system, or actually demanding of you, requiring you to apply skill and intellect in overcoming challenges. Also, many of these games are best experienced on a PC with a keyboard and mouse.

Stalker Shadow Of Chernobyl

In 1986, the world’s worst nuclear disaster occurred at the Chernobyl power station. Soviet authorities established a 30km ‘Exclusion Zone’ around this nuclear wasteland, but in 2006 a second explosion rocked the stricken reactor, obliterating all living things and causing the Zone’s boundaries to ripple outwards. From this epicenter came waves of mutated creatures, deadly radiation, and a strange, anomalous energy. The Zone was cordoned off by the military, who would shoot on sight anyone foolish enough to brave the horrors within.

It is now 2012 – man has ventured further and further into the heart of the Zone driven by reports of strange ‘artifacts’ imbued with anomalous energy. Mercenaries and bounty hunters compete to recover these artifacts, which command extortionate prices on the black market. Others seek to find the truth behind the Zone, while some merely revel in the desolate lawlessness of the place. Whatever their motivation, over time these individuals – Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killer, Explorers and Robbers – have become known as S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s.

Awakening in the Zone, you are one such S.T.A.L.K.E.R., fighting for survival in this man-made Hell, while trying to discover the truth behind Chernobyl’s sinister past and ominous future.

Sid Meier Civilizations VI

Originally created by legendary game designer Sid Meier, Civilization is a turn-based strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Wage war, conduct diplomacy, advance your culture, and go head-to-head with history’s greatest leaders as you attempt to build the greatest civilization the world has ever known.

Civilization VI offers new ways to engage with your world: cities now physically expand across the map, active research in technology and culture unlocks new potential, and competing leaders will pursue their own agendas based on their historical traits as you race for one of five ways to achieve victory in the game.

Half Life 2

1998. HALF-LIFE sends a shock through the game industry with its combination of pounding action and continuous, immersive storytelling. Valve’s debut title wins more than 50 game-of-the-year awards on its way to being named “Best PC Game Ever” by PC Gamer, and launches a franchise with more than eight million retail units sold worldwide.

NOW. By taking the suspense, challenge and visceral charge of the original, and adding startling new realism and responsiveness, Half-Life 2 opens the door to a world where the player’s presence affects everything around him, from the physical environment to the behaviors even the emotions of both friends and enemies.

The player again picks up the crowbar of research scientist Gordon Freeman, who finds himself on an alien-infested Earth being picked to the bone, its resources depleted, its populace dwindling. Freeman is thrust into the unenviable role of rescuing the world from the wrong he unleashed back at Black Mesa. And a lot of people he cares about are counting on him.

Bioshock

Beffore getting into how good the gameplay in Bioshock is, the story deserves a strong recommendation. This is at par, and inspired, by the works of Ayn Rand, and tells the tale of a Dystopian underwater city born of Utopian ambitions.

BioShock is a shooter unlike any you’ve ever played, loaded with weapons and tactics never seen. You’ll have a complete arsenal at your disposal from simple revolvers to grenade launchers and chemical throwers, but you’ll also be forced to genetically modify your DNA to create an even more deadly weapon: you. Injectable plasmids give you super human powers: blast electrical currents into water to electrocute multiple enemies, or freeze them solid and obliterate them with the swing of a wrench.
No encounter ever plays out the same, and no two gamers will play the game the same way.

Tyranny

In Tyranny, the grand war between good and evil is over – and the forces of evil, led by Kyros the Overlord, have won. The Overlord’s merciless armies dominate the face of the world, and its denizens must find their new roles within the war-torn realm… even as discord begins to rumble among the ranks of Kyros’ most powerful Archons.

Players will experience the new world order under the Overlord in a reactive role-playing game (RPG), interacting with the populace as a powerful Fatebinder in the Overlord’s forces — roaming the lands to inspire loyalty or fear as they bring control to the last holdouts of the Tiers.

Dark Souls

Dark Souls is an action role-playing game from the developers who brought you Demon’s Souls, FromSoftware. Dark Souls will have many familiar features: A dark fantasy universe, tense dungeon crawling, fearsome enemy encounters and unique online interactions. Dark Souls is a spiritual successor to Demon’s, not a sequel.

Prepare for a new, despair-inducing world, with a vast, fully-explorable horizon and vertically-oriented landforms. Prepare for a new, mysterious story, centered around the the world of Lodran, but most of all, prepare to die.

You will face countless murderous traps, countless darkly grotesque mobs and several gargantuan, supremely powerful demons and dragons bosses. You must learn from death to persist through this unforgiving world. And you aren’t alone. Dark Souls allows the spirits of other players to show up in your world, so you can learn from their deaths and they can learn from yours. You can also summon players into your world to co-op adventure, or invade other’s worlds to PVP battle.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

The Witcher: Wild Hunt is a story-driven, next-generation open world role-playing game set in a visually stunning fantasy universe full of meaningful choices and impactful consequences. In The Witcher you play as the professional monster hunter, Geralt of Rivia, tasked with finding a child of prophecy in a vast open world rich with merchant cities, viking pirate islands, dangerous mountain passes, and forgotten caverns to explore.

Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic

It is four thousand years before the Galactic Empire and hundreds of Jedi Knights have fallen in battle against the ruthless Sith. You are the last hope of the Jedi Order. Can you master the awesome power of the Force on your quest to save the Republic? Or will you fall to the lure of the dark side? Hero or villain, saviour or conqueror… you alone will determine the destiny of the entire galaxy!

Pillars Of Eternity

Prepare to be enchanted by a world where the choices you make and the paths you choose shape your destiny. Obsidian Entertainment, the developer of Fallout: New Vegas™ and South Park: The Stick of Truth, together with Paradox Interactive is proud to present Pillars of Eternity.

Recapture the deep sense of exploration, the joy of a pulsating adventure, and the thrill of leading your own band of companions across a new fantasy realm and into the depths of monster-infested dungeons in search of lost treasures and ancient mysteries.

So gather your party, venture forth, and embrace adventure as you delve into a realm of wonder, nostalgia, and the excitement of classic RPGs with Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity!

Undertale

Welcome to UNDERTALE. In this RPG, you control a human who falls underground into the world of monsters. Now you must find your way out… or stay trapped forever.

Unreal Tournament

Built in the vein of the previous Unreal games, the new Unreal Tournament (still in Alpha stage), is Epic’s fast and frantic shooter.

Thief: Deadly Shadows

You are Garrett, the master thief. Rarely seen and never caught, Garrett is the best that ever was. Able to sneak past any guard, pick any lock, and break into the most ingeniously secured residences. Garrett steals from the wealthy and gives to himself, making his living in the dark and foreboding City. Here crime and corruption are commonplace, wealthy nobles prey on the poor and each other, and magic and machinery coexist uneasily. World weary and cynical, Garrett wants nothing more than to be left alone to ply his trade. But things never work out that way.

Dishonored 1/2

Dishonored is an immersive first-person action game that casts you as a supernatural assassin driven by revenge. With Dishonored’s flexible combat system, creatively eliminate your targets as you combine the supernatural abilities, weapons and unusual gadgets at your disposal. Pursue your enemies under the cover of darkness or ruthlessly attack them head on with weapons drawn. The outcome of each mission plays out based on the choices you make.

Doom 2016

Developed by id software, the studio that pioneered the first-person shooter genre and created multiplayer Deathmatch, DOOM returns as a brutally fun and challenging modern-day shooter experience. Relentless demons, impossibly destructive guns, and fast, fluid movement provide the foundation for intense, first-person combat – whether you’re obliterating demon hordes through the depths of Hell in the single-player campaign, or competing against your friends in numerous multiplayer modes.

Divinity: Original Sin

Gather your party and get back to the roots of great RPG gameplay. Discuss your decisions with companions; fight foes in turn-based combat; explore an open world and interact with everything and everyone you see.

You take on the role of a young Source Hunter: your job is to rid the world of those who use the foulest of magics. Embarking on what should have been a routine murder investigation, you find yourself in the middle of a plot that threatens to destroy the very fabric of time.

Dragon Age: Origins

You are a Grey Warden, one of the last of a legendary order of guardians. With the return of an ancient foe and the kingdom engulfed in civil war, you have been chosen by fate to unite the shattered lands and slay the archdemon once and for all.

Portal

Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, Portal has been called one of the most innovative new games on the horizon and will offer gamers hours of unique gameplay.

The game is designed to change the way players approach, manipulate, and surmise the possibilities in a given environment; similar to how Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun innovated new ways to leverage an object in any given situation.

Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuvering objects, and themselves, through space.

Torment: Tides Of Numenera

You are born falling from orbit, a new mind in a body once occupied by the Changing God, a being who has cheated death for millennia. If you survive, your journey through the Ninth World will only get stranger… and deadlier.

With a host of strange companions – whose motives and goals may help or harm you – you must escape an ancient, unstoppable creature called the Sorrow and answer the question that defines your existence: What does one life matter?

Torment: Tides of Numenera is the thematic successor to Planescape: Torment, one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved role-playing games of all time. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a single-player, isometric, narrative-driven role-playing game set in Monte Cook’s Numenera universe, and brought to you by the creative team behind Planescape: Torment and the award-winning Wasteland 2.

Fallout New Vegas

Fallout New Vegas is the fourth entry in the Fallout saga that began over ten years ago. It has been developed by a little company called Obsidian Entertainment. You may have heard of these guys. They’re responsible for games like Knights of the Old Republic II and Neverwinter Nights 2, along with its expansions. Simply put, BioWare has twice put their faith in Obsidian to take their properties and turn them into something more. And if you’ve played either of those titles, you’ll see the difference.

Fallout New Vegas takes us back west, to the sands of Nevada. The year is 2281; three years after Fallout 3, and two-hundred-and-four years after the Great War of 2077 destroyed nearly every living organism on Earth. Vault-Tec, with the permission of the United States Government, constructed a number of Vaults to house select citizens in the event of nuclear catastrophe. There are tales of several of these “Vault Dwellers” having made it to the world outside, and the incredible journeys they had. But those are for another time.

You are a courier. A dead one. You were shot in the head by a gang of three men and left in a shallow grave. But if the story ended there we wouldn’t have a narrative now, would we? Fortune favors the bold, and thanks to the help of a few strangers, you are given a second lease on life. You regain consciousness several days later…

Skyrim (With Mods)

Skyrim reimagines and revolutionizes the open-world fantasy epic, bringing to life a complete virtual world open for you to explore any way you choose. Skyrim is a great game in its own right, but add mods to it and the possibilities are endless.

Hey, while you’re here, check out our latest video:

Register with us for the best in gaming, and join us for video game discussions on our forums.