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2023 is likely to go down in history as one of gaming’s greats, and at times it’s been challenging just to keep up. Baldur’s Gate 3 brought the 20-year-old PC franchise back with a bang, and smaller releases like Slay the Princess were a reminder of the important role PCs still hold for indie games.
Given how cross-platform the vast majority of games are these days, we’re not going to primarily focus on PC exclusives. Instead, the aim is to highlight a great selection of games that show off PC gaming at its best in 2023. So alongside games like Slay the Princess, which are only available on computer platforms, there are also titles that work particularly well with a mouse and keyboard (Baldur’s Gate 3) or which offer interesting PC-exclusive graphics options (like Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty or Alan Wake 2’s ray tracing).
Regardless of your definition, the following ten games are a fantastic place to start if you’re looking to add this year’s best releases to your PC library. Whether you’re looking for a game to idly play on a laptop or something that’ll truly push your desktop gaming PC to its limits, you should find something to enjoy in the list below.
Baldur’s Gate 3
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Basing video games around the expansive world of Dungeons & Dragons is a tall order. Not only does the beloved tabletop roleplaying game encompass decades’ worth of rules and lore, but its players have also come to expect that the only limit to the experience is their own imagination. Larian Studios hasn’t just managed to create a faithful D&D experience with Baldur’s Gate 3 — it’s come damn close to offering as much freedom as the tabletop game itself.
In Baldur’s Gate 3, if you can think it, you can probably do it. Want to fling a gnome across a village? Sure thing. Befriend a nest of ravenous giant spiders? You betcha. Take down imposing foes via the power of pure rizz and fart jokes? Hell yeah. And I haven’t even mentioned the bear scene yet. But this isn’t just the turn-based RPG that D&D nerds have spent years dreaming about — it’s also approachable enough to have sucked in folks who have never rolled a 20-sided die before.
Practically every inch of the game is explorable, and while you can make a fully customizable player character to explore the Sword Coast with, you can unlock oodles more unique content by playing as one of the game’s many romanceable companion characters. It’ll likely take completionists several run-throughs to experience everything that it has to offer. I’m still discovering new locations, items, characters, and secrets with 350-plus hours of gameplay, and I still expect to be playing Baldur’s Gate 3 well into the new year. If Larian ever releases a DLC, I fear my family will never see me in person again. — Jess Weatherbed
Alan Wake 2
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At its core Alan Wake 2 is a survival horror game, but it’s a survival horror game wrapped in a police procedural that integrates live-action elements so seamlessly that more than once I found myself staring at footage of a real actor and marveling at how good video game graphics have gotten in 2023.
If you played the original game, the core conceit of its sequel is the same. You point your flashlight at enemies to weaken them and follow up with more traditional weapons to take them down. But Alan Wake 2 builds on this premise in numerous ways. This time around, you’re not just playing as the titular Wake, you also play as FBI agent Saga Anderson investigating the disappearance of the Stephen King-esque writer after the events of the previous game trap him in a horror story of seemingly his own creation. Then, when you are playing as Wake, you’re now able to rewrite the story itself, changing the fabric of the world around you.
The whole game is an audiovisual delight on PC, where Remedy has pulled out all the stops with support for the latest and greatest ray-tracing technologies. Play it with headphones or surround sound speakers if it’s an option — hearing shadows quietly whisper Alan’s name as I passed by them sent shivers up my spine. — Jon Porter
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
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There were a couple of different reasons to revisit Cyberpunk 2077 this year. First, the culmination of three years’ worth of updates and patches polished up the core game to what it arguably should have been at launch with its 2.0 update. On top of that, CD Projekt Red has also been remarkably proactive at bringing Nvidia’s latest graphical bells and whistles to the game, whether that’s support for path tracing, frame generation, or Ray Reconstruction.
But it was Phantom Liberty that I thought represented the best of the new additions to the game, adding a meaty side quest complete with new characters and locations to explore. Idris Elba steals the show as Solomon Reed, a sleeper agent whose allegiances and backstory remain in constant flux. But performances are stellar across the board, and there’s a fantastic spread of different mission types contained within its runtime.
The expansion is by no means short, but it feels tight and focused next to the sprawling ambition of the original Cyberpunk 2077. If you’re at all tempted to dip your toe back into the neon lights of Night City, Phantom Liberty is a great way to experience the best it has to offer. — Jon Porter
