13 best PC games (September 2022)

The goal of PC gaming is to push the boundaries in technology. It’s the platform video games were born on, and it’s played host to dozens of genres that are still popular today — some of which are still barely playable without a mouse and keyboard.

As the world of console gaming has caught up with that of PC games from a technical perspective, the identity of a “PC game” has been muddied. It’s helped make more types of games available to more players, which is a net positive. But it’s also created a burning question: What makes a “PC game” in 2022?

To answer that question — or rather, to show how superfluous that question has become — the Polygon staff has compiled a list of the games that define the exciting, amorphous experience of playing games on PC in 2022. Many of these games can also be found on other platforms. Some are equally good using a mouse or keyboard. Meanwhile, if you’re one of the lucky ones who has gotten their hands on Valve’s handheld, we have a separate list for the best games on Steam Deck.

Here are the top 13 PC games that you can get today.

[Ed. note: This list was last updated on Sept. 22. It will be updated as new and noteworthy games come to PC.]

Destiny 2

Image: Bungie

Destiny 2 combines a typical loot-based shooter with Bungie’s best-in-class gunplay, and the result is one of the greatest MMOs on the market.

Although the Destiny franchise was initially met with mixed reactions, it has seen some ups and downs. But in the eight years that it’s existed, Bungie has drastically improved the formula via multiple expansions and a complete sequel. The studio now has one the best-supported live-service gaming titles in 2022.

Every couple of months Destiny 2Each season gets an expansion that adds new missions and activities as well as endgame content, such raids, to the game. Each of these different activities then provides its own unique rewards, creating an endless loop of grinding new activities for new weapons, which you’ll then use to grind the next season’s content. What makes that fun and not tedious, however, is Bungie’s extremely smooth gameplay, which can remain fun thousands of hours and nearly a full decade later.

Remarkably, Destiny 2The series is getting even better. 2022 not only saw the series’ best expansion yet, but it also delivered an excellent story and added new weapons the likes of which players have never seen. In a world filled with hobby games that you can play for years without stopping — especially on PC — Destiny 2 is worth all the time you’re willing to put into it.

Destiny 2 Available on Windows PC via Steam or the Epic Games Store

Dwarf Fortress

Image: Bay 12 Games/Kitfox Games

If you’re ever in the mood to play god, you can do a lot worse than playing Dwarf Fortress.

As the title might suggest, this is a simulation/management game about building, optimizing, overseeing, and, accidentally or not, destroying a fortress full of dwarves. What the title doesn’t tell you is that you’ll have to consider the region’s soil type, elevation, and weather patterns. You’ll also have to take the attributes of each of your seven starting dwarves into account — their skill sets, physical characteristics, and mental dispositions. Once you have completed the management and construction of each randomly generated world, it’s time to start growing your colony. You should also be observing as there are many unforeseen circumstances that could go wrong.

Chris Bratt created this Eurogamer video, which Chris Bratt (who later founded People Make Games) has a great overview of. Dwarf Fortress is so nuanced and complex that a colony’s cats have been known to die en masse because they had walked through the puke of drunken dwarves, proceeded to lick their paws clean, and promptly died. There are many other examples of emergent simulacra (ranging in severity from troubling to comical) that can be seen on the comments. Dwarf Fortress Any given playthrough has the potential for you to win. Playing Dwarf Fortress may not turn you into the most benevolent god — the dwarves have free will, after all — but you’ll almost never get bored. —Mike Mahardy

Dwarf Fortress It is now available for Windows PC and Mac as well as Linux through the Bay 12 Games website. A new version will soon be released to Steam.

Elite Dangerous

Image: Frontier Developments

Elite Dangerous may be old, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.

The spacefaring MMO has everything you could possibly want in a game of its type — it’s just that some of the bits are a little better than others. For example, the first-person shooting is only okay. It is, however, just okay. Elite This list is a testament to the excitement, danger, discovery and exploration that come with each flight.

That’s because this circa-2014 game features a realistic re-creation of all 400 billion star systems in our galaxy, each one with dozens of bodies that you can visit, and even walk on, in first person. It remains one of the best reasons to buy a VR headset — or build a working cockpit inside your home office. —Charlie Hall

Elite Dangerous It is also available on Steam and Epic Games Store.

Fortnite

Epic Games

Fortnite It is the best video gaming playground. It’s a war royale. It is a game of building where friends can create maps and make games. Does it have the same weird zombie gameplay it was initially marketed? All of these questions are answered, unsurprisingly, yes.

Crucially, Fortnite It is also one of the few games where you can use a official Spider-Man spider slinger and dress up as Goku. Indiana JonesDarth Vader rides along on a wolf and you get attacked by him. It’s chaotic video game nonsense, and there’s nothing else like it.

Fortnite is the “it” game of the past five years partially because it’s the only thing out there that lets you dab as Kratos, but also because it’s an excellent shooter that’s a ton of fun to play with pals. It takes the old “fun for the whole family” moniker and really follows through with it — there’s truly something for everyone. You can compete to win your Victory Royale, or simply make silly machinima together with Rick Sanchez (Xenomorph). Fortnite You can get it.

Fortnite Available via Epic Games Store

League of Legends

Riot Games Image

League of Legends This is one of most influential video games in the last decade. It has set an example of what a game should look and feel like. It’s an incredible live-service game with tons of new content added each year. It’s a complex strategy game that never plays out the same way twice. It’s one of the biggest esports in the world. And it’s completely free to play. You can play it for free. League wasn’t the first game to claim any of those accolades, Riot learned lessons from League’s predecessors (such as Starcraft and the original DOTAmod) was to expand the possibilities of a highly competitive and prestigious game, and it has been relevant for over 13 years.

MOBA’s classic format sees 10 players team up to create a match and split the game into two. Every player in each team gets a role and can pick from more than 160 characters to help their friends. During the match, the goal is to reach the other side of the arena and destroy the enemy team’s base. The match is tense and draws both teams together, giving rise to gold and inspiring their heroes.

It’s extremely complex — almost like learning a new language — but that complexity is what keeps the game interesting and fun. After thousands of matches, there’s still nothing quite like spending an entire Saturday playing League of LegendsYou will always have a different experience every day.

League of Legends is available via Riot’s client.

Microsoft Flight Simulator

Image: Asobo Studio/Xbox Game Studios

Microsoft Flight SimulatorIt is truly an amazing modern wonder. This simulator can pull in more than two petabytes Microsoft Bing mapping data and creates a VR-compatible high-quality flight simulation. Then, it flies with real-world weather conditions and air traffic.

You can fly, ski, or race a float, glide, and military planes. Halo’s Pelican — it’s all there, along with more once you access the in-game third-party storefront. While MSFS Compatible with Xbox consoles as well, the game shines on PC, offering a world of fun for those who love to play it.

It is important to plan in advance and have sufficient USB ports on your hardware for the joystick and throttle, pedals, head tracking peripherals, multi-function displays, and pedals. Ooh, that would be so cool! ButtKicker and a cup holder and… —Charlie Hall

Microsoft Flight Simulator Available via Steam or the Microsoft Store

The Return of the Obra DINN

Image: Lucas Pope/3909 via Polygon

The Return of the Obra DINN It’s the one rare game I want to forget. Not because it’s heavy or overly traumatic, but because I want to experience it again with fresh eyes. You might also like Outer Wilds, it’s a game that relies heavily on discovery and the use of newfound knowledge.

Less known facts about playing The Return of the Obra DINNYou’re better off, so let us take it for you and play. Fine. I’ll spoil that you get to play as an insurance investigator. If that doesn’t get you to install, nothing will.

Jokes aside The Return of the Obra DINN puts you in the shoes of an insurance investigator (that part wasn’t a joke) for the East India Company in 1807. Armed with a magic pocket watch, it’s your responsibility to discover what happened to the good ship Obra Dinn, a merchant ship lost at sea five years prior.

Every area of the ship you visit will give you a brief description and some music or dialogue. This information can be used to complete your ledger, and you will know the fate or name of every soul on board.

It’s a difficult game to describe, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it since its launch in 2018. It’s intoxicating music and graphics, which continue to amaze me. Sadly, I’ll never be able to play it as a newcomer again — as I already know the fates of those aboard — but I can enrich your life by sharing it with you.

The Return of the Obra DINN Steam is now available

Satisfactory

Coffee Stain Studios

Old staples in PC gaming are management and automation games. Satisfactory It is the best of modern times.

Satisfactory, Your role is that of an employee in a space-corporation and has you being dropped to a hostile, unknown planet. Your job is to use the planet’s resources to build up an incredible factory for your overlords, producing more and more technologically advanced items that you’ll eventually send back to the mothership via a giant space elevator.

Here’s the catch Satisfactory is that it’s all in first person, and you’re just one small employee in what can turn out to be a giant factory. Not only do you have to visualize how to lay out your factory floor without a god’s-eye view, you’ll need to gather resources from miles and miles away — areas that are difficult to reach on foot — and make difficult decisions. Are you looking to transport oil from your factory via a 1,000-meter pipeline? You can either mine the oil and then make a pipeline that runs to your factory. What are your options for handling a situation where your production is halted by an accidently blown fuse?

Each problem becomes more challenging as there are many possible solutions to factory layout problems. But these puzzles are also extremely rewarding, ensuring that every area of your factory — the refineries, the power plants, etc. — all come with their own memories and triumphs.

Satisfactory It is also available on Steam and Epic Games Store.

Total War: Warhammer 3/Immortal Empires

Image: Creative Assembly/Sega

Sometimes, video games just can’t help themselves. You can see how they grow in a vertical fashion, and the systemic complexity makes it impossible to balance or be elegant. They grow horizontally, with bigger maps, more characters, or new magical spells, until they’re bloated beyond repair. They collapse eventually under the enormous weight of their own faults.

Total War: Warhammer 3 It isn’t one of these games.

This was the original fantasy installment of a franchise that focused on history. It has now become a three-part grand strategy game. In it, armored mammoths and sex-crazed demi-gods battle in huge battles.

The trilogy continues in this way, as did the two previous installments. Warhammer 3 It is half strategy and empire building, half real time. Your goal is to expand your territory and improve the cities you have, then build armies that will be sent off to war. When they encounter an opponent’s army or attack an enemy city (maybe it has valuable resources? Maybe it’s a strategic chokepoint? Perhaps it’s just an aesthetic thing? Fucking cool?) the camera zooms in to real-time strategy battles on scales that aren’t comparable in any other game.

It is however different than its predecessors. Warhammer 3 This is not a small exercise. The campaign maps, every faction and all of the characters from each game are combined into one large mode. Immortal Empires, in which you’re just as likely to see a world war play out between ogres, dwarves, vampires, and undead Egyptian pharaohs. Immortal Empires It redefines sandbox games and has the potential to be a title that is desert-like. —Mike Mahardy

Total War: Warhammer 3 It is also available on Steam and Epic Games Store. It’s also available on Game Pass via the Microsoft Store.

Valorant

Riot Games Image

Valorant is Riot Games’ take on tactical shooters. It comes directly from the makers of League of LegendsThe game fuses the gunplay’s harsh accuracy with unique characters in vibrant and colorful environments. This makes it one of the most precise and efficient shooters on the market, as well as having a lot more personality that its less militaristic, dreary counterparts.

Valorant, you’ll play on a variety of maps as both offense and defense. You will be asked to place a bomb in one of the key locations on the map by the offense. The defense must then defuse the bomb. The offense will win if the bomb explodes or all defenders die. If all the offense’s defenders die, or the bomb is disarmed, then the defense wins. While the rules may seem simple, the characters provide an additional layer of complexity.

Each round, players can buy weapons and abilities — the latter being unique to the Agent they selected at the start of the match. Some characters are capable of placing cameras in order to monitor the actions of opposing players. Others can also resurrect their dead bodies. While some characters have the ability to fire arrows and others, they can also create poisonous clouds that can block access points. Each character works in a different way, so they can work together to make devastating combinations.

Unlike LeagueThe interface is easy to use and understand. But the skill ceiling is just as high as Riot’s other competitive games, and you can be easily outmatched by better players. This is why Valorant It can be daunting but it is also very exciting. It’s a game where you can really feel your skill level increase over time, which helps losses feel like learning experiences and wins feel absolutely incredible.

Valorant is available via Riot’s client.

Warframe

Digital Extremes Image

It began as a simple game of ninja fighting in tight spaceship corridors. Over the past decade it has grown to be one of the most bizarre, funny, and breathtaking science fiction universes available in video gaming. It’s also free.

Warframe is a game about collecting the titular cyborg space assassins and mowing through tens — or even hundreds — of thousands of enemies on planets, moons, and star bases across the solar system. You can create dozens of craft systems and landing crafts. There are also three open worlds. Every year, there is a convention in London, Ontario.

Warframe can be a grind, sure — unless you spend real money in its marketplace — but the combat, which plays like a mashup of third-person shooters and Musou melee encounters, is satisfying enough to last you the several hours until your next new character, weapon, or upgrade. Whether that new addition to your arsenal be Frost, the defensive ice warrior; the Secura Lecta, a vicious whip that increases your credit yield; or Corrosive Projection, a mod that decreases the armor of enemies in your vicinity, there’s something new around every corner. It’s a collector’s dream, and it’s replete with gratuitous sci-fi violence. —Mike Mahardy

Warframe It is also available on Steam and Epic Games Store.

World of Warcraft

Image: Blizzard Entertainment/Activision

World of Warcraft It’s still the MMO of choice. Final Fantasy 14Only recently have things caught up. But, unlike Final Fantasy World of WarcraftIt has been exclusive to computers with keyboard and mouse controls. It’s also 18 years old and still going strong.

As you might expect from a game that’s old enough to vote, World of Warcraft hasn’t always been one of the best PC games out there. It’s had moments of brilliance and eras of serious disappointment. However, the quality of WoW’s content has ebbed and flowed, it’s always offered an incredible world to adventure in, peacefully by yourself or in a boisterous group of buddies. It’s become a staple in the lives of millions of fans over nearly 20 years, and it’s always there for players who want to run a quick quest or upgrade a piece of gear.

For 2022 World of WarcraftLooks like it is about to end its recent period of darkness with the coming Dragonflight expansion. While the game isn’t publicly available, I’ve played most of the experience on the beta, and it already seems like an excellent reminder of why I — and others — have loved World of WarcraftIt has been for many years. It’s a return to pure fantasy and simplistic systems that reward your time, rather than asking you to grind for days for minuscule but mandatory improvements.

World of Warcraft Battle.net has the ability to provide this information.

XCOM 2 – War of the Chosen

Image by Firaxis Games/2K Games

XCOM 2 – War of the ChosenThis is the most successful videogame turnaround story since. Final Fantasy 14 – A Realm Reborn. What started as a buggy and sometimes frustrating follow-up to Firaxis’ beloved XCOM reboot was rejuvenated with the War of the Chosenexpansion and it is currently one of my favorite strategy games.

As in the original game XCOM 2.This game is about fighting aliens with your soldiers. It’s a turn-based tactical game, so you’ll move each of your characters individually before ending your turn, causing the computer to move in response to your actions. It’s like a chess match where you upgrade and bond with your pieces between matches, and then have to say goodbye if the enemy ever takes them. You can disable the permadeath setting, but it is highly recommended that you keep it active.

War of the ChosenOn the other side, you can add new enemies and allies to your base campaign, which will eventually give you entirely new types of soldier type. That bonus content is great, but it’s the way that content flows into the base campaign that solved the issue of vanilla XCOM 2.’s frustrating and breakneck pace. With the expansion, players have so many more challenges to overcome and avenues to explore that it feels like an entirely new experience — where you’re constantly doing something new. New bosses are available to hunt and there is a greater variety of missions to complete. Undead enemies can also be found that could disrupt your gameplay.

It’s a brutal game, and lives up to the endless memes of high-percentage shots that inevitably miss at the worst possible moments. But each encounter — be it an individual firefight between two opposing soldiers or an entire mission — tells a story. Firaxis did not create this story, it was crafted from your choices.

If you love base/resource management, strategy games, or both, you’ll find a game that you can play over and over again with XCOM 2 – War of the Chosen.

XCOM 2 – War of the Chosen It is also available on Steam and Epic Games Store.