top 10 pc games 2021
- Death Stranding
Death Stranding is an obvious biggie in July,
as Hideo Kojima’s post-apocalyptic,
postman simulator comes to PC.
This excites me on a technical level as it’s
the first outing of Guerilla Game’s Decima
the engine on PC, which we’ll see soon in their
Horizon Zero Dawn PC port.
Death Stranding was a staggering looking game
on PS4, but now we’ll see the photorealistic
models of its all-star cast at true 4K
and clamber around its vast landscapes with
frame rates unlocked - not to mention
ultra-wide monitor support, which is a perfect
fit for hills and valleys you explore as him
out of The Walking Dead.
The game itself is kinda mad - it’s a hiking
simulator with a big focus on balance and
weight distribution, but there are also bits
where you throw grenades made out of your
own blood at ghosts.
And it gets even weirder on PC with side missions
themed around Portal and Half-Life, made in
collaboration with Valve.
Whatever Death Stranding is, it certainly
ain’t boring, and we’ll hopefully have
a full review before July 14th.
What’s black and white and red all over?
Sounds like the setup for a terrible joke,
but it’s actually the pitch of
2. Othercide
Othercide, a turn-based tactics game from Lightbulb Crew
that drops you in a monochromatic world where
the only flashes of color are the scarves
worn by your squad of sisters and the blood
they spill in battle.
While the core of the game looks familiar,
as you exploit the turn order along the bottom
of the screen, and stretch action points into
deadly combos, Othercide does look much more
surreal than your typical XCOM-alike: you
build squads from a pool of daughters, who
you can also sacrifice to heal each other,
and maybe pass on a few of their traits.
If the squad wipes out you can purchase new
powers to make the next run easier - so there
are a few hints of a roguelite about the game.
It basically looks like it’s going to force
you into a corner, and ask you to make a lot
of tough calls.
A stressful end to the month, when it arrives
on 28th July.
If, like me, you spend at least a few minutes
every day thinking about the golden age of
point and click adventures, you’ll likely
be thrilled that
3. beyond A Steel Sky
beyond A Steel Sky is heading our way in July.
Or to put it in terms of genre fans will understand:
combine good news with the brain.
It’s the follow-up to Revolution’s 1994
classic
beyond A Steel Sky
beyond A Steel Sky, a sci-fi epic
set in a desolate Australia - very Mad Max
- where people live in vast cities.
Beyond has swapped 2D for 3D, much like Revolution’s
more modern Broken Sword games, and promises
to inject a bit more life into puzzles with
NPCs that follow more naturalistic behaviors
that you have to manipulate as part of your
puzzle-solving.
You can also hack Union City’s digital infrastructure,
changing the behavior of devices to further
mess with those digital lives.
If you want to really prep for the game, the
original
beyond Steel Sky is free on GOG.com.
What better time to get familiar with it?
4. Rogue Legacy 2
Rogue Legacy 1 was ahead of the Rogue-lite
curve when it arrived in 2013: giving us a
2D hack and slasher where every death put
you in a new castle and the shoes in your
child, complete with whatever weird genealogical
affiliations they inherited.
Here in 2020, it feels like every other game
is a Roguelite, but this sequel looks so improved
it’ll likely rise to the top all over again.
Just to list some of the improvements: now
each class has a specific weapon to master,
there are heirlooms that grant new powers
adding more of a Metroidvania vibe, there
are gold bonuses for taking on more debilitating
character traits to reward the hardcore, while
new accessibility options will help to struggle
heroes, and new level generation technology
to create even better biomes to explore.
This is on top of new traits, classes, spells,
equipment… listen, I know it’s lazy to
just list stuff, but the 23rd of July can’t
get here soon enough.
Releasing a paid multiplayer game into a landscape
dominated by a free-to-play behemoth is a
bold move, but then Rocket Arena is hardly
a timid shooter.
5. Rocket Arena
For starters, everyone’s armed with rockets
- the clue’s in the title - and it swaps
traditional death for a Smash Bros-type system
where you drive up damage in order to knock
opponents from the arena with a massive blast.
What follows is a colorful smackdown with
huge explosions lighting up the world, while
cartoon-y characters activate skills to do
everything they can to stay in the arena.
One of my colleagues played a preview build
and said it’s great fun, and it has all
the cosmetics and season structure that keeps
us busy in Apex Legends or Fortnite.
But the big difference is price: can a 25
pound multiplayer game holds its own in this
day and age, or will it go the way of Lawbreakers?
RIP.
Its fate will be decided beginning on 14
July.
6. Grounded
Grounded is an odd one: Obsidian’s first
game since being bought by Microsoft and instead
of making, ’ know, the RPGs they’re famous
for, it’s a survival game about shrunken
kids lost in the back garden.
I’ll admit, Honey I Shrunk The Kids: The
The game wasn’t what I personally hoped for
from this studio union, but the recent demo
partially won me over.
The process of smashing up bugs and plants
to get the building blocks for items and shelter
is familiar to a thousand early access survival
games, but the difference here is a lack of
early access jank: it all seems quite polished
and neat, and the giant garden setting creates
fun pockets of surreal discovery as you hide
inside soda cans and watch the sunset through
the jungle canopy of an overgrown lawn.
Of course, if you’re familiar with our videos
you’ll know I have this massive weed growing
on my patio, so I don’t have shrink for
the same effect.
Anyway: this is still early access, of course,
so expect some bugs, of both the insect and
technical variety.
It’s on Steam but is included in an Xbox
Game Pass subscription, so that’s a much
a cheaper way of trying it out with some pals.
7. Maid of Sker
More like Maid of Scares, am I right?
Well, hopefully, I am: this is a first-person
survival horror game from Wales Interactive
- and true to their name, it’s based on
Welsh folklore.
You’re exploring a hotel patrolled by blind
monsters, so every creaky floorboard or scenery
bump is an invitation for them to crush your
skull in.
It sounds a lot like the Jeff section from
Half-Life Alyx, but stretched to an entire
game - you can even clasp your hand over your
mouth to hold your breath in - just not too
long or you’ll grasp your way into the grave.
There’s also a strange orb - a phonic modulator,
apparently - that can deafen enemies, though
it comes with limited ammo - which is where
the whole survival horror thing kicks in.
It’s this panicked resource management that
interests me - too many horror games are just
walking simulators with a jump scare.
Will this be something more?
We’ll find out at some point in July.
If that last game was the Maid of Sker, this
The next one features tracks made for cars.
Made for Scars.
Okay, that doesn’t work.
But hopefully, Trackmania will, although for
a game out, er, tomorrow, there’s been remarkably
little shown of Nadeo’s latest user-generated
racer.
8. Trackmania
It’s pitched as a remake of Trackmania Nations,
which was a free version of the game with
a big emphasis on online competition - that
seems to run into this Trackmania with a tiered
a pricing model that gives you more community
features for more money.
Of course, the real appeal lies in hooning
around impossible track designs, livened up
here with bigger building space, new ice
and dirt surfaces, as well as special modifier
track pieces that can put everyone into slow
motion for that dramatic photo finish.
The new structure looks like it’ll serve
up seasons of new tracks and highlight community
builds, so if you’re not into construction
yourself, you can sit back and let everyone
else do the hard work.
Nice.
If Trackmania’s track designing sounds a
tad conservative, you might want to check
out
9. Rock Of Ages 3
Rock Of Ages 3 Make & Break, where you
can build winding obstacle courses for people
to race boulders down.
Rock of Ages has always been barking mad:
a blend of tower defense as you attempt to
protect yourself from an onslaught of rolling
death and then switching to the rocks themselves
as you steer giant lumps of spinning destruction
- or cheese - through your enemy’s defenses.
It’s all wrapped up with hand-animated style
that echoes Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python
animations.
It’s… a bit much.
But when you’ve been stuck indoors for
what feels like 15 years, a bit much is quite
nice.
The room I work in is increasingly turning
into a furniture store, so the fantasy of
smashing everything to f**k is really appealing.
I plan to let off some steam on 21 July.
If you watched our recent Steam Game Festival
the stream you’ll know I was a little dismissive
10. Destroy All Humans
I played it on some console about 500 years
ago and it was fine.
You know: open-world cartoon violence for
teenagers not old enough to buy GTA.
My expectations were low for a remake and
so I was pleasantly surprised by what a nice
job Black Forest Games appear to be doing
with this one: it’s not a simple HD remaster,
but a full makeover that really punches up
the visual chaos of Crypto’s alien rampage.
Now, I’m saying that some flashy explosions
are going to radically reinvent a simple sandbox
action game, but there is something very reassuring
about this kind of mid-tier console adventure,
the kind of game that vanished as the budget
the gap between and Indie got out of hand.
I imagine it’ll be a bright, colorful way
to waste ten or so hours come the 28th of
July.
Before I wrap up this video I also wanted
to give a quick shout to a few more things
on my radar: there’s Fight Crab, which I’ve
only really selected because it’s called
I probably shouldn’t say more as, of course,
the first rule of Fight Crab is we don’t
talk about Fight Crab.
I’m also intrigued by Roki, a point-and-click
style adventure influenced by Scandinavian
folklore - if you type Scandinavian folklore
into google images, you get this picture of
a man talking to a fox, which is the real
the reason I included it.
There’s also Drake Hollow, which is about
building villages for vegetable creatures
and bashing out the brains of anything that
wants to eat cute vegetable creatures.
There’s also Neon Abyss, which is one of
those hundreds of roguelikes mentioned in
the Rogue Legacy 2 bit, but with a really
hectic looking arsenal and fizzy sprite work.
Honestly, I could list another 20 more great
games coming to PC this month, but I’m really
hungry and want to go and eat some cereal.
Why not help me do my job for me and recommend
more great games in the comments,