PC Gaming

Immersive simulation games⁠—immersive sims for short and “immsims” if you’re a true freak⁠—are a lot like sandwiches, soups, or pornography in that it’s easier to give an example than a watertight definition. Dishonored, for instance, is definitely an immsim; it simulates a lot of factors that respond to the player, boasts open-ended levels, and encourages…

Terminally Online (Image credit: Future) This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMO column. Every week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we’ve all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice. I didn’t…

Weird Weekend Weird Weekend is our regular Saturday column where we celebrate PC gaming oddities: peculiar games, strange bits of trivia, forgotten history. Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it’s the canon height of Thief’s Garrett or that time someone in the…

If you were hoping to get in on that Steam Deck hype without splurging on the newer model with the OLED screen, well, it’s whatever you’d call the opposite of a Christmas miracle: They’re sold out, and Valve isn’t going to make any more. As Liam Dawe wrote for GamingOnLinux, a disclaimer was snuck onto…

More quizzes! (Image credit: Larian Studios, PC Gamer) Want to keep testing your knowledge of gaming trivia? We’ve got loads more PC Gamer quizzes, on everything from healthbars to weird currencies to absurd patch notes. You may have already seen that this week here at PC Gamer we announced our Game of the Year awards…

Abiotic Factor is the best survival game I played this year for many reasons, but one of those is how stupefyingly extra Deep Field Games’ Half-Life-inspired adventure is. Its Black Mesa-esque research facility is so much larger and stranger than it needs to be, and that’s before you get all the strange pocket dimensions you…

Personal Pick (Image credit: Future) In addition to our main Game of the Year Awards 2025, each member of the PC Gamer team is shining a spotlight on a game they loved this year. We’ll post new personal picks each day throughout the rest of the month. You can find them all here. Okay, I…

2025 has been a big year for cooperative shenanigans (shenanifriends?) games, with titles like REPO and Peak providing some of the biggest hits of the year. RV There Yet? is the latest variant of the formula to achieve viral critical mass, taking the basic idea of goofing about with your mates in a virtual space…

One of the weirder things to happen in PC gaming this year was that a new Painkiller came out and pretty much instantly disappeared. I’m aware PC gaming moves so fast nowadays that many games get washed away without anybody noticing. But I thought Painkiller would have sufficient cultural cachet to stick around a little…