25 Years Of PC Gaming

Enduring classics from PC Gamers first five years.

1994-1998

Enduring classics from PC Gamer’s first five years.

Phil: Team! I have gathered you here for an important task: deciding which of PCG’s highest-rated games are the best in each of the five-year-long eras I have arbitrarily grouped them into. The rules are simple: for each era, we’ll pick one winner, based on a whatever factor you decide to argue. Perhaps it’s an important historical milestone that changed the landscape of the games industry. Maybe it became a key part of PC Gamer’s identity, and shifted the way we think and write about games. It could even be that it’s just fun to play. First up, it’s the ten highest-rated games from the first 62 issues of the magazine.

Pip: I’d like to put in an immediate vote for Grim Fandango. It’s kinda clunky to play now, but I love the world it describes and the characters so much. It also tells a story which has stayed with me over the years. Given my atrocious memory, that’s no mean feat.

Andy: Grim Fandango is still magic. That combination of film noir, Art Deco, Aztec mythology and the Day of the Dead is unbelievably stylish. There are some real low points – the underwater section, the petrified forest – but that year Manny spends wandering the streets of Rubacava is about as good as adventure gaming gets for me. In terms of puzzles it’s probably one of LucasArts’ weaker efforts, but as Pip says, the story really sticks with you, and it’s just a delightful world to (not) exist in.

Tom: Agreed, Grim Fandango is brill, and the remastered version means it’s easier to get running than some of the other games here.