What are the best new games hard-core PC gamers will want this season?
It’s been an exciting season for new game anouncements and launches, and while there have been a lot of announcements for consoles and the overall gaming spectrum to be excited about, I wanted to highlight some of the best new games hard-core PC gamers will want this holiday season, and then more games you’ll want into the new year as they get released.
These new and upcoming releases are going to demand the most out of your system, so it’ll be important to remove any bottlenecks, and ensure your gaming PC is maxed out with Seagate’s newest top-of-the-line FireCuda 520 NVMe SSD, or the FireCuda 510 NVMe SSD which earned the Editor’s Choice award at PC Mag. (Some of these games are also available for consoles, so if that’s your jam get on Seagate’s Game Drives for Xbox and PlayStation.)
Best PC games for the holidays
If you’re looking for gamers’ favorite gifts this holiday season, here’s four of the hottest new releases available right now:
The Outer Worlds
Obsidian’s newest RPG The Outer Worlds has been highly anticipated. While it’s an entirely new game and not part of an existing franchise, it does evoke the vibes of Fallout New Vegas — despite being set in a steampunk sci-fi in space setting. Obsidian’s RPGs are always finely tuned and make available the full power of your PC’s latest tech. And in this quasi-open world in The Outer Worlds, you’ll likely want to have everything maxed out so that it looks its best.
Borderlands 3
Probably one of the fan-favorite games to be announced in recent years is Borderlands 3. Its art style notwithstanding, this game will be demanding on almost any PC. It’ll utilize Unreal Engine 4 and sport a look just like the previous, but it’ll take on a whole host of new improvements to shadows, lighting, and more. Know that since you’ll be going to space, and to many other planets, the visual fidelity is going to be incredible to showcase all of the new areas you’ll be exploring, looting, and shooting on.
Gears 5
While Gears 5 drops the ‘of War’ from its name, this is the fifth game in the series, continuing from the events of Gears of War 4. Now, this is a game built for the Xbox One X and Windows 10 PCs, utilizing Unreal Engine 4 once again. The Unreal Engine has always looked its best when the Gears name is attached to it, and expect nothing less. The developers known as The Coalition have already proven themselves with the PC release of Gears of War: Ultimate Edition and Gears of War 4 by supporting 4K60, I have no doubt the visual spectacle they’ve created with Gears 5 will impress and immerse in the same ways.
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint
It’s no surprise that an open-world game like Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands was a bear to run on PC. This is a massive open-world that the draw distance lets you see every square mile of it, so long as it wasn’t foggy in the game. Set in a fictional new location, Ghost Recon Breakpoint builds upon what Wildlands did so well, and I expect it to become yet another benchmark of PC gaming for years to come.
5 new-release PC games for the new year
And here are 5 more PC games to look forward to nabbing in the New Year:
Baldur’s Gate III
Larian Studios has reignited their Divinity series thanks to two successful Kickstarters. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is beloved, and considered one of the best RPGs around. It’s an absolutely beautiful game complimented by amazing turn-based combat and real-time movement. Now with the Baldur’s Gate IP in their grasp, they’ve been working on Baldur’s Gate III — the long-awaited third entry in the series that will have to live up to the hype that’s been building since the release of Baldur’s Gate II in 2000. There’s still a lot of unknowns about the project, but the engine that powered the Divinity: Original Sin games looked amazing, and the natural evolution of that engine paired with one of the most iconic computer RPGs is going to be a sight to behold.
DOOM Eternal
Whether utilizing the DirectX or Vulkan API, the idTech is a powerful gaming engine that produces incredible visuals with terrific performance. DOOM 2016 was a tour de force in terms of gameplay, sound, presentation, and performance. It scales beautifully (even so much as running on a Nintendo Switch!). So the folks at id Software are going to push the envelope even further with DOOM Eternal later this year. Rip and tear!
Dying Light 2
The game is penned by Chris Avellone, famed writer of memorable games like KOTOR 2, Pillars of Eternity, and Prey. This will be a game about choices, but what set Dying Light apart from its contemporaries is its graphical qualities. Techland uses their Chrome Engine to deliver its stunning locations. And with Dying Light 2 set to have a map four times the size of the original, prepare for a technical marvel — but maybe have a bigger speedier SSD to hold it, too.
Watch Dogs Legion
The Watch Dogs series started out a bit grim, then with Watch Dogs 2 became light-hearted among the sinister undertones. With Watch Dogs Legion, prepare for a healthy mix of both in a futuristic, post-Brexit London to toy around in, with every NPC as recruitable. This is a game that will also take advantage of NVIDIA’s RTX raytracing technology to deliver incredible visuals. Not all details have been revealed as of yet, but this technology demands an entirely new video card to handle, so trust that it’s going to be a game that’s going to demand a fast and sizeable SSD and/or hard drive to boot.
Cyberpunk 2077
CD PROJEKT RED have been known for having ambitious, sprawling, and detailed games with The Witcher series. Now that the Geralt series of games is done, they’ve been hard at work for the board game turned video game, Cyberpunk 2077. This is a game that will be on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The PC will be seeing the most benefit as the technology behind it will utilize NVIDIA’s line of RTX cards to deliver raytracing such as reflections and shadows in a realistic manner. It’s going to be the game to beat in 2020, in every way.
This list doesn’t cover every game announced — there are so many other notable PC releases like Wasteland 3, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Quarantine, and Microsoft Flight Simulator, to name just a few.
For the remainder of this year and into next year, we’re going to see some very demanding PC games that are going to benefit from the latest gear. So while you might prepare your rig with a new CPU, GPU, motherboard, and more RAM, do remember to outfit your gaming PC with a best-in-class SSD like Seagate’s FireCuda 520 NVMe SSD to prevent any unnecessary slowdowns or bottlenecks that keep you from loading into Windows and your games faster.
