THE BEST GAMES of this GENERATION

THE END OF A CONSOLE GENERATION IS ALSO THE PERFECT TIME FOR A RETROSPECTIVE.

- HAYDEN DINGMAN

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have ridden off into the sunset, replaced by the PlayStation 5 (go. pcworld.com/nv12) and Xbox Series X (go.pcworld.com/10nv). But what do we care, right? This is PCWorld, and my graphics card will function just as well (go. pcworld.com/gcls) next month as it does today, new consoles be damned.

But there’s no denying that hardware changeovers tend to drive the industry forward. Freed from the constraints of aging consoles, games leap ahead—not just in the living room, but on PC as well. By this time next year, today’s best games may well look… well, old. Time marches on, even children get older, consoles embrace modern SSDs (go. pcworld.com/mssd) and Ryzen CPUs (go. pcworld.com/rcpu), et cetera.

Thus the end of a console generation is also the perfect time for a retrospective. We’re feeling nostalgic about the last seven years and the games we played along the way, and we thought we’d celebrate those games one last time before they fade into the depths of our Steam libraries.

From Alien: Isolation to The Witcher 3, here are some of our favorite games of this generation, in no particular order.

1. ALIEN: ISOLATION

The presence of the Alien (read: Xenomorph) in Alien: Isolation (go.pcworld.com/alis) is still my least favorite part. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a marvel of artificial intelligence and a true hunter. Being its prey is as frustrating as it is fascinating though, with the Alien’s unpredictable nature a challenge that all-too-often results in your death—and a reminder that yes, you’re playing a video game. Tension broken.