Top 111 PC Games #80-71

80. Sid Meier's Civilization IV (Firaxis Games, 2005)

Sid Meier's Civilization franchise has always been a popular one, and many fans consider IV to be the pinnacle of the series.  It isn't hard to see why, either, as it takes everything great about its predecessors and polishes it to perfection, adding in a few new mechanics without disrupting the balance (particularly the Beyond the Sword expansion, which adds in many new units, buildings, randomized events and roads to victory).  It's also highly customizable, with the player able to tweak just about every element of the game to their liking with easily-editable XML files and a publicly available SDK.  But beneath it all, it's still good ol' Civ - build cities and armies, research new technologies, build world wonders, and reach one of the win conditions before your opponents do.  Plus, it has Leonard Nimoy doing the narration; you can't argue with that kind of awesome.

79. Age of Mythology: Retold (Ensemble Studios/World's Edge/Tantalus Media/Forgotten Empires, 2002/2024)

Age of Empires was a fairly realistic take on real time strategy and city building games in antiquity, so why not make a more fantastical version with mythological creatures and powers from the ancient gods?  That's exactly what Ensemble Studios did with Age of Mythology - a game that has you take command of ancient civilizations, as well as pray to the gods to purchase hero units inspired by the legends and God Powers that can turn the tide of battle - whether calling down Zeus's lightning, summoning more resources to gather, forcing all  combat in a zone to stop temporarily, or even reviving dead units to fight once more.  Lots of fun!

78. The Secret of Monkey Island (LucasArts, 1990)

The first entry in what would become a long-running (if not exactly strong-selling) series, Secret of Monkey Island is a humorous point-and-click adventure starring the bumbling Guybrush Threepwood, who is tasked with completing three trials to become a pirate.  These take the form of some brilliantly funny puzzles - the insult-swordfighting is a particular favorite - and eventually culminate in a showdown with the vicious ghost pirate LeChuck, who would become Guybrush's recurring nemesis throughout the series.  The second half of the game does feel a bit rushed, but overall this is still a worthy adventure game and a solid start to a consistently fun and irreverent franchise.

77. Shadowrun: Dragonfall/Hong Kong (Harebrained Schemes, 2014/2015)

The second and third games in the rebooted Shadowrun franchise, and easily my favorite ones so far, expanding on everything the original brought to the table while losing nothing that made it great.  The story is nothing short of brilliant, bringing together a cast of diverse and complex characters to solve the mystery of their friend's death and the underlying conspiracy behind it.  Throughout the game, every choice you make seems to be the wrong one, making you new enemies and seemingly digging you deeper into a pit you can't escape from, while the combat only gets more intense with enemies bringing out bigger guns, setting up nastier traps and summoning bigger monsters to get in your way.  Stellar stuff all around, and a perfect example of how to do a grim, atmospheric game experience right.

76. Grim Fandango (LucasArts/Double Fine, 1998/2015)

Another highly-acclaimed adventure from Tim Schafer and Lucasarts; unfortunately critical acclaim doesn't necessarily translate to strong sales, so they began to wind down their adventure game development shortly after this one's release (only releasing one more Monkey Island game after).  Still, it attracted enough of a fan following to get a remaster and remains acclaimed for its clever premise, inventive art style and strong sense of humor.  Starring Manny Vargas, a "travel agent" for the Land of the Dead, he seeks to unravel a conspiracy and restore the natural order of the afterlife.  It does use tank controls and fixed camera angles so moving and navigation takes some getting used to, but once you get it down you're in for a high-quality adventure.

75. King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow (Sierra On-Line, 1992)

I'll readily admit I'm not the biggest fan of Sierra's adventure titles, especially King's Quest - yes they played a major role in popularizing the genre and evolving it from its crude text-based origins, but the illogical puzzles, easy softlocks and constant cheap deaths tended to make them sources of frustration more than fun.  King's Quest VI was cowritten by Jane Jensen and took the series to new heights with its intelligent dialog, smartly-designed puzzles, a high-quality presentation that included full voice acting (with professional actors, no less), and visuals that were both imaginative and showed a surprising amount of realism.  It also had a whole extended story and even an alternate ending if you paid close attention.  It's just a high-quality adventure title that's easily the best in the King's Quest series, and maybe even the entire Sierra library.

74. Out of This World (Delphine Software, 1991)

Also known as "Another World", this was a game created from the get-go to be a Dragon's Lair-esque cinematic action adventure on a much lower budget.  Utilizing vector graphics instead of drawn cels, the game's visual design had relatively little detail but very smooth animation, giving it a nicely cinematic flair regardless.  The end result was certainly distinctive and memorable, adding a grim yet beautiful aesthetic to the game and its many, many death scenes.  The gameplay was also quite solid, if heavily trial-and-error based as you tried to solve puzzles, evade enemies and figure out the correct sequence of events in order to survive another melee with aliens and see your way to the end of this strange tale.

73. Blood (Monolith, 1997)

The Build engine may have looked just a bit dated by 1997, especially since Quake was the hot new game on the market, but Blood proved that superior design could more than make up for older tech.  Blood is a master class of horror elements, with a grim, creepy atmosphere and enemies like giant spiders, gargoyles, cultists and flame-spewing cerberus dogs, all with the same immersive and surprisingly realistic level design that made Duke Nukem 3D work so well.  The weapons are equally inventive, with mundane options like a shotgun and tommy gun taking a back seat to weapons like a flare gun or a spray can/lighter to ignite enemies, a voodoo doll that inflicts extra damage to undead/magical enemies (but will damage you if you stab it when no enemies are onscreen) and a crazy-looking skull staff called the Life Leech that doubles as a stationary sentry gun.  The game was exceptionally tough (not aided by a bug that would cause the difficulty level to cycle every time one loaded a save), but the sheer inspiration behind its design is something that must be seen.  Oh, and grab the Deathwish map set too, which is a fantastic fan-made addon that rivals, if not surpasses, the main game in quality.  It's just a shame the sequel (Blood II: The Chosen) was such a mess.  As for the sequel's expansion pack... well, "avoid at all costs" is about the most apt thing that can be said for that.

72. Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game (Interplay, 1997)

Drawing heavy inspiration from their earlier hit "Wasteland" (with the license having fallen to EA years prior), Fallout's creators set out to create a bleak post-apocalyptic landscape for the player to explore, and did so admirably, combining a grim atmosphere with a sly sense of humor throughout.  What really sold the game, though, was the sheer amount of thought put into its story and design - rather than encourage the player to just mindlessly blast everything as so many RPGs of the time were wont to do, the player is given many choices to deal with every questline put before them - a combative approach, stealthy approach and even pure diplomacy will work in almost any situation.  Hell, it's even possible to complete the game without firing a single shot or witnessing a single death.  The first in a great series of games.

71. Beyond Shadowgate (Zojoi, 2024)

It took a decade to get done, but 2014's Shadowgate reboot finally got its sequel - Beyond Shadowgate.  Bearing virtually no resemblance to the action-adventure Turbografx-CD title of the same name, this is based on the originally pitched design document is very much a callback to the point-and-click style titles of the '80s, even recreating the familiar interface, dry sense of humor and pixel art with very limited animation of the classic titles.  There are also numerous callbacks to those titles, from lines of dialog to straight-up cameo locales returning, which I quite liked as a long-time fan. Thankfully they also avoid a lot of the annoying trappings of frustrating old '80s adventures, with logical puzzles and no ways to make the quest unwinnable (none that I could find at any rate).  If you're a fan of the classic ICOM titles, this is one you don't want to miss.

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