The Best PC Game of 2023

ign.com:

In a time when just about everything (other than Nintendo games) is coming out on PC alongside the Xbox and PlayStation (eventually), it’s become the great intersectional platform. There are games that are only on PC, games that are on PC and Xbox but not PlayStation, games that are on PC and PlayStation and not Xbox, and games that are on PC and Switch but neither Xbox nor PlayStation. That means there was a terrifically wide range of nominees in the running for PC Game of the Year for 2023 – including quite a few that would’ve easily made this list if they’d come out in any of the past several years instead. What stands out is that, in a conversation that spanned all genres, RPG dominated the top of the list almost entirely – but each of them is wildly different from the others.

What a run Cyberpunk 2077 has had. When you consider its initial rocky and divisive launch in the final days of 2020 (when it was very clearly at its best on PC) all the way to this past September’s near-universally acclaimed redemption thanks to its spectacular Phantom Liberty expansion – the reason it was eligible for this award – and the accompanying 2.0 revamp patch, there are only a handful of games that can claim to have won back gamers’ love after letting so many down. But this spy story, which stars the likes of Idris Elba and features the return of Keanu “No, You’re Amazing” Reeves, earned that label by touching on the mature themes of near-future technological paranoia in its many morally gray scenarios you must weigh in on. All of that takes place in a brand-new section of Night City that’s loaded with environmental storytelling and hidden quests waiting to be uncovered, and all of it makes a replay of the entire original story –