Short Circuits: 10 Best New PC Games

 

Fallout 4 (Bethesda Softworks)

Highly recommended: ROG Matrix GTX 980 Ti / Strix R9 Fury

It's the end of the world as we know it, and after playing this redonkulously huge post-apocalyptic action, role-playing epic, you'll feel fine indeed. Set in the year 2287 — some 210 years after a nuclear war — it invites you to explore a living, breathing Mad Max–style sci-fi world full of mutant monstrosities and starving scavengers, as, after emerging from an underground bunker located in Boston, you set out to rebuild civilization. The latest in one of today's most celebrated mature-audience RPG franchises, Fallout 4 makes good use of the Creation Engine to present the devastated world in a way that is both eerie and inspiring, while the game offers the chance to explore the wasteland from both first- and third-person perspectives. The reason so many players queued up to make the title an instant bestseller? As with past editions, its open-world setting and nonlinear gameplay allow for endless opportunities to start a brave new world — that is, if you can survive attacks from super-sized desert horrors, nihilistic militia, and other genetically warped horrors that come with the nuclear fallout!

 

Star Wars Battlefront (Electronic Arts)

Highly recommended: Strix GTX 980 Ti / Strix R9 Fury

This reboot of EA's classic Star Wars multiplayer action shooter lets you interact with and even control several characters from the film, including Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Boba Fett, and Darth Vader. Designed around the Frostbite 3 graphics engine (which pumps out insanely high-quality visuals so hyperrealistic you can practically smell the ozone from every blaster shot), Star Wars Battlefront is playable in first- or third-person mode, and it offers the chance to control a wide variety of air- and land-based vehicles — speeder bikes and even massive AT-ATs, for starters — as well as lone soldiers. You can choose the light side and lead the Rebel Alliance to victory and restore the Republic, or embrace the dark side and bring order to the galaxy swiftly and surely through other means, either in single-player or multiplayer mode. And, of course, find lots of opportunities to hand buddies their stormtrooper helmets in crazy-sweet, grand-scale multiplayer match-ups along the way.

 

Dirt Rally (Codemasters)

Highly recommended: Strix GTX 970 in SLI or Strix R9 Fury in CrossFire for triple-display action, need to see that next corner coming up while drifting sideways! 

Many racing games are about taking pretty cars for test drives around immaculately rendered real-world tracks. That's all well and good, but this one also lets you get down and dirty as you compete in timed stage events on tarmac and off-road terrain. It isn't all dusty roads, however, as varying weather conditions are present to add to the fun and present new challenges. Dirt Rally features 17 cars, giving you your pick of modern rally and Rallycross race machines, as well as retro vehicles from the 1960s, '70s, and '80s. There are 36 stages from the three real-world locations of Baumholder, Powys, and Arolis. Best of all, the game's physics model has been built from the ground up to ensure that playing feels as close as possible to driving an actual rally car without having to clean chunks of mud out of your grille afterward.

 

Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege (Ubisoft)

Highly recommended: ROG Poseidon GTX 980 Ti / Strix R9 Fury

Prefer your tactical first-person shooters with a bit of intrigue? Look no further. Here, the international counter-terrorist team Rainbow is back in action and under a new leader known only as "Six." But the crew's latest outing isn't a simple, straightforward run-and-gun exercise — just as any good spec ops team knows, cooperation is also a must to ensure a mission's success. Planning, stealth, cunning, and teamwork prove just as crucial to victory as brute force in this more cerebral approach to breaching and clearing areas of armed adversaries. What's more, the AnvilNext graphics engine brings this one to life with stunning detail, while the ability to play as different team members — each with their own skills, abilities, and equipment — offers endless options to take down the bad guys and save the day!

 

Anno 2205 (Ubisoft)

Highly recommended: ASUS GTX 960 Turbo / Strix R9 380X

City building has gone to space. In Anno 2205, the forward-thinking sixth title in the famed Anno strategy series, players can set up and manage colonies on not only the Earth, but the moon as well. This city-building sim combines elements from economic simulations with real-time strategy elements such as resource management, making it about much more than just creating a colony and allowing it to grow. In fact, players must also contend with rival corporations, build goods, and enhance their colonies' infrastructure. The race for space will be won or lost based on balancing supply and demand, and ensuring stability and happiness through steady growth. Needless to say, it's not your average tactical mindbender: slackers and lower management types need not apply.

 

Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide (Fatshark)

Highly recommended: ASUS GTX 960 Turbo / Strix R9 380X

Set within the Warhammer fantasy strategy role-playing universe during the "end times," it isn't wise to go it alone in this cooperative action combat epic. Instead, you'll team up with up to three other players to battle the evil Skaven, a race of rodent monsters, and help cleanse the city of Ubersriek from this insidious threat. There are five different hero classes to chose from — Witch Hunter, Empire Soldier, Dwarf Ranger, Waywatcher, and Bright Wizard — each of which has different skills to tap into, such as the ability to use ranged weapons, cast magic, or get up close and personal with brutal melee weapons. This cooperative multiplayer FPS requires that you work together and watch each other's back — least you end up as dinner for the Skaven.

 

StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void (Blizzard Entertainment)

Highly recommended: Strix GTX 960 / Strix R9 380X

This standalone expansion pack to ever-popular sci-fi real-time strategy bestseller StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the third part of Blizzard Entertainment's space opera trilogy. And both newcomers and longtime fans will find themselves pleased to discover that it's built around an expanded campaign that centers on the popular Protoss race. StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void also offers players new units, and new multiplayer modes that include the option to start with more workers but fewer resources. This means that players may have to become more aggressive more quickly if they want to ensure victory over their opponents. Or, in other words, it takes one of hardcore gaming's most hardcore experiences and — you guessed it — happily ups the ante even further.

 

Just Cause 3 (Square Enix)

Highly recommended: Strix GTX 980 Ti / Strix R9 Fury

With more than 400 square miles to explore in this sprawling third-person open-world action-adventure, expect to find its epic combat action a blast and then some. In Just Cause 3,you'll play as Rico Rodriguez and head to the fictional island of Medici to get involved in another escapade to stop the evil dictator General Sebastiano Di Ravello from his plots of world conquest. This means even more extended chaos and exaggerated physics, where — in addition to enjoying fast-paced military combat action alongside a signature grappling hook and parachute — you'll gain access to a wingsuit that allows Rico to glide across a gasoline-soaked world. But not all of your adventures will be sky high. This time around, players can also explore subterranean caverns and sneak through enemy bases. Expect a fast-paced, wildly over-the-top adventure that anyone who enjoys shooting first and asking questions later is sure to enjoy.

 

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide (2K Games)

Highly recommended: Strix GTX 970 / Strix R9 Fury

The first expansion pack to the interstellar game of exploration and conquest sets the bar high for any further extensions to follow. Rising Tide, which requires the original Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth to play, essentially adds several new features, notable of which are an improved diplomacy system, expanded water gameplay with floating systems, a new artifact system, and new hybrid affinities that combine overarching philosophies from different factions to allow for the unlocking of special units and upgrades. This expansion also offers two new world types — a primordial world rife with volcanic activity, and a frigid world covered with ice — ensuring that every game is truly different for countless replayability. Needless to say, strategy fans will love it.

 

Assassin's Creed Syndicate (Ubisoft)

Highly recommended: Strix GTX 980 Ti / Strix R9 Fury

The historical action-adventure series — all about offing marks as a hitman for hire, then making insanely gravity-defying acrobatic escapes — makes its latest pit stop in Victorian-era London to grand effect. Following twin assassins as they vie for control of the gritty city and wrestle it from the clutches of Templar control, it's worth playing as much for the living, breathing world it's set in as actual victim-trailing and -eliminating escapades.

Fascinatingly, instead of going about the business of murder in the imperial corridors of power behind closed doors with well-dressed men and fashionable ladies waiting in the wings, you get to ply your trade in a down-and-dirty London full of back alleys and scar-faced ruffians. Players can navigate through the fog-covered streets of seven London boroughs and cross paths with the likes of Karl Marx, Charles Dickens, Florence Nightingale, and perhaps even Queen Victoria. It only takes a quick play-through to reveal that featured thrills are as much about hunting possible marks through the gas-lit streets as they are about actually taking targets out: or, as another Victorian hero might have proclaimed, "The game is afoot!"

 

By Scott Steinberg

 

All images remain the copyright of their respective publishers.