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In 2017, my gaming PC died a brutal death, and with finals and a new job looming just around the corner, I stuck to a PS4 slim instead of investing the time, money, and effort into a full-fledged new PC. For the longest time, the console was all I needed, with its exclusives, comfort, and familiarity.
As a lifelong PC gamer, I’ve always believed that PC is the superior gaming platform. However, I noticed way too many PC-exclusive titles in my wishlist while living with a PS4, leading me to build a PC, not to chase benchmarks or frame rates, but because I kept running into games that simply weren’t playable on my console, and never would be.
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9 Black Mesa is the definitive way to play Half-Life
Half-Life is gaming royalty, and its best version is only on PC
Half-Life changed the world forever, and Black Mesa is the PC-only, fan-made love letter that dares to remake it from the ground up, and succeeds. Expanded levels, entirely redesigned areas, overhauled AI, a brilliant new voice cast, and an original soundtrack — it’s all here, powered by the Source engine working at its absolute best. The Xen chapters may have been criticized in the original game, but in Black Mesa, they are stunning and genuinely thrilling to play through. Black Mesa is no mere remaster — it’s a full remake that carries the heart and charm of the original like it’s sacred text.
It’s still baffling to me that the game is a fan-made project, because the level of polish here easily beats out so many lazy AAA remasters we have gotten in the past. The best part? It’s still available only on PC, playable on both Windows and LInus. Even better is the fact that the game is currently available for a massive discount in the Steam Summer Sale. No excuses left, everyone.
Black Mesa
Systems
- Released
- March 6, 2020
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- Crowbar Collective
- Publisher(s)
- Crowbar Collective
- Engine
- Source
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
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8 GTFO is the game I built my PC for
After years of sticking with a PS4, GTFO made me build a PC
I still remember GTFO‘s reveal at the 2017 Game Awards. I had a PlayStation 4 Slim back then, but the moment I saw GTFO, a gritty, atmospheric co-op horror shooter, I knew I had to get back into PC gaming. 10 Chambers, the studio behind the game, talked about the gameplay, the setting, and the mechanics on their website at the time, but there was radio silence on console availability. Eight years later, it’s clear why — the game was never coming to consoles. GTFO is a PC game through-and-through, and back then, the horror co-op genre was just beginning to find its footing. Crossplay wasn’t a thing back then, or, at the very least, not as common, and GTFO felt like something new.
By December 2020, I’d finished building a medium-end gaming rig in possibly the worst time for PC hardware prices in human history, just to run GTFO (and Cyberpunk 2077, but that’s a different story altogether). Almost as tough as building the PC was convincing my friends to get a copy, but ever since, we’ve been playing the game for almost half a decade now, with no plans of stopping any time soon.
GTFO
Systems
- Released
- December 10, 2021
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- 10 Chambers
- Publisher(s)
- 10 Chambers, Level Infinite
- Engine
- Unity
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op
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7 Valorant before August 2024
I built my PC with hopes of playing Valorant, only to ditch it for GTFO
Valorant launched smack in the middle of the pandemic, in June 2020 — right when I was neck-deep in Fortnite, Warzone, and AC Origins on my PS4. Riot’s new tactical shooter meant absolutely nothing to me at launch. I was all-in on The Last of Us Part II and chewing through my single-player backlog, but Valorant really exploded on PC. It was buttery-smooth, visually distinct, and free — which meant every single friend of mine got the game… except me, the lone PlayStation user in the squad.
By the time I built my PC and installed Valorant in December that same year, I pulled off a minor miracle: I got everyone to buy GTFO instead. Sure, we played plenty of Valorant for months, but by then, the skill gap was significant, and while I appreciated the experience, I slowly realized I was growing out of loud, HUD-infested games. I’ll call that growth. Still, fond memories remain — even if the game is finally on consoles now, as of August 2024. If I’d just waited five years, huh?
Valorant
- Released
- June 2, 2020
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Blood, Language, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Riot Games
- Publisher(s)
- Riot Games
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
VALORANT is a character-based 5v5 tactical shooter set on the global stage. Outwit, outplay, and outshine your competition with tactical abilities, precise gunplay, and adaptive teamwork.
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6 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
After years, I could resume custom map building on CS:GO
Just like Valorant, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was one of those games I’d been dying to play with my friends for years. We’d all somehow convinced our parents to buy us the game in 2016 as graduation gifts. Of course, my PC died shortly after, leaving my custom-made CS map unfinished and me console-locked in a world where CS:GO didn’t exist. I waited patiently, and when I finally built my PC in late 2020, CS:GO was one of the first games I installed back.
It was glorious — I spent weeks learning dev console commands and rebuilding my custom map of my high school. Messing around with wallhacks on friends-only private servers did get me into trouble with my squad, who could never figure out how I’d gotten that good. I never told them, and we eventually stopped playing. Still, CS:GO, now reborn as Counter-Strike 2, remains a PC-only titan. No ports, no compromises. Just pure, high-stakes dopamine.
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5 Modded Skyrim on PC is a different world entirely
Sure, consoles have some Skyrim mods, but PC modding is a whole different beast
Skyrim was a great game on consoles, but I still enjoyed both the base game and the Special Edition on my PC, thank you very much. Of course, during the pandemic era, I got the SE for dirt cheap on the PS4, and it did give me a taste of what mods could feel like. Sadly, calling that “modding” is like calling reheated pizza “cooking”. It wasn’t until I built my gaming PC that I truly entered the world — nay, universe — of modded Skyrim, and let me tell you — it’s as glorious as it is terrifying.
What started with “just one texture overhaul mod”, quickly snowballed into a hundred gigabytes of ENBs, scripted events, perk overhauls, weapon packs, and dragons transformed into old cartoons. Heck, I remember having to uninstall Warzone from my PC and reinstall it on the PS4 so I could get some storage space for Skyrim‘s mods alone. No console version can ever match the power of modded Skyrim on PC. It’s a playground for chaos, creativity, and hard-drive destruction. If you haven’t seen Thomas the Tank Engine barrel down as Alduin in 4K with ray-traced snow that threatens to blow up your GPU, have you really played Skyrim?
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
- Released
- October 28, 2016
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol
- Developer(s)
- Bethesda Game Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Bethesda Softworks
- Engine
- Creation Engine
- Franchise
- The Elder Scrolls
4 The first Witcher game remains a PC-only gem
If the rumored remake is real, it’ll be wonderful news for every platform
I’d played The Witcher 2 and 3 on my PC before it died in 2017, kicking me into a console life with a PS4 Slim. Back then, I wasn’t the biggest RPG fan, and The Witcher 2 only exacerbated my problem with the genre. The Witcher 3, however, changed everything. In hindsight, The Witcher 3 was the Elden Ring to The Witcher 2‘s Dark Souls 3 — it was wider, smoother, and far more accessible. I finished it, waiting eagerly for the expansions (which turned out to be some of the greatest DLCs of all time). During the pandemic, I even blitzed through the books, desperate for more Geralt.
That same itch led me to the first Witcher game in early 2021. With my new PC barely a couple of months old, I loaded it up… and hated it. The combat, the pacing, the swamp, it was all janky and actively challenged you to continue playing. It wasn’t like Dark Souls, but rather, the Capra Demon fight for 50 continuous hours. But then, the lockdown hit again, and suddenly, I had all the time in the world. With patience and good faith, I managed to play and appreciate this PC-exclusive gem. A remake, if the rumors are true, could do wonders for the experience’s availability on the console, as well as its accessibility.
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Systems
- Released
- September 16, 2008
- ESRB
- M // Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Violence
- Developer(s)
- CD Projekt Red
- Publisher(s)
- CD Projekt Red, 1C-SoftClub
- Franchise
- The Witcher
The Witcher is a role-playing game set in a dark fantasy world where moral ambiguity reigns. Shattering the line between good and evil, the game emphasizes story and character development, while incorporating a tactically-deep, real-time combat system.
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3 Escape the Backrooms is peak PC multiplayer gaming
On the PS4, I merely used the YouTube app to watch Backrooms games
Growing up during the peak of 9GAG and Reddit’s golden era, backrooms lore wasn’t just copypasta — it was scripture. Noclipping into a nightmare dimension was a very real, very terrifying urban legend, and when 2019’s The Backrooms Simulator came out, I was obsessed with its YouTube playthroughs. It wasn’t great, and the Steam reviews agreed, but none of that mattered. I didn’t have a gaming PC, and the more I couldn’t play it, the more I wanted to. That game stayed at the back of my mind long after the trend faded.
Fast-forward to August 2022, and Escape The Backrooms hit early access. This was the definitive Unreal Engine 4 take on that mythos, and this time, I had the rig to run it. You could finally enjoy the game with friends, and the game became all the rage over Twitch and YouTube both, and rightly so. Today, we sure are drowning in backrooms horror games, and this one — along with the original — deserves a huge part of the credit for starting the flood. Terrifying, glitchy, and incredibly atmospheric — just like the internet back then.
Escape The Backrooms
Systems
- Released
- August 11, 2022
- ESRB
- m
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4
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2 Lethal Company shows a perfect evolution of the horror co-op genre
It’s a shame the game isn’t on consoles
I stated earlier that GTFO came out at a time when the horror co-op genre was finding its footing, and Lethal Company in 2023 is a prime example of the evolution it set in motion. This game has it all — janky flashlights, terrifying aliens, deadpan comedy, and moons in space that feel alive and cursed. You and your friends take on the role of glorified scrap collectors, running heists on abandoned factories filled to the brim with weird, unpredictable nightmares. The best part? It’s all doused in a heavy posterization filter, which not only lends the game an incredibly unique personality, but also makes it insanely easy to run on significantly older hardware.
What really makes Lethal Company special is how fun it is, no matter how often you die. I could be carrying a toaster or a gas valve, while screaming over Discord, or baiting my friend into a hallway with a flesh-eating monster in it. The risk-reward loop makes every single run unforgettable, and since it’s still PC-only? It’s an absolutely killer reason to make the platform switch if you’re even halfway considering it.
Lethal Company
Systems
- Released
- October 23, 2023
- ESRB
- t
- Developer(s)
- Zeekerss
- Publisher(s)
- Zeekerss
- Engine
- Unity
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Number of Players
- 1-4
1 Escape from Tarkov makes every shooter on console pale in comparison
It was clearly only ever built for PC
There’s a very specific type of masochism that lives in every PC gamer’s soul, and I’m guilty of it, too. Escape from Tarkov is a game that finds it, nurtures it, and then breaks it in half. Over on console, I loved Call of Duty matches and hours of Warzone, but in Tarkov, I’m praying that my character doesn’t die of dehydration while reloading in a bush for five minutes. God, I love it.
There’s no HUD, no mini-map, and no second chances in Escape from Tarkov. You go in with everything you’ve got, and if you lose, it’s all gone. Every bullet in the game counts, every footstep is a clue, and every mistake is your fault, and your fault alone. This isn’t a game that just never got ported over to consoles, no. It’s clear that Escape from Tarkov was built only for PC by design, and will never come to consoles. It demands hardware, patience, and pain tolerance, and heck, it reminded me why I had grown distant from console shooters in the first place. On a good day, Escape from Tarkov is stressful. On a bad day, however, it’s character-building.
Escape from Tarkov
Systems
- Released
- July 27, 2017
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- Battlestate Games
- Publisher(s)
- Battlestate Games
- Engine
- Unity
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
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Some PC-only games really justify having both platforms
The right PC-only game calls you to migrate rather than upgrade.
It isn’t as if I’m demonizing console games or saying goodbye to my PlayStation 5. Far from it. There’s a lot to love there, and I still reach for the controller when the mood is right.
But the more time I’ve spent with a keyboard and mouse, the more I’ve realized that PC is a playground the size of an ocean compared to consoles’ ponds. Sometimes, when the right game calls you, you don’t upgrade. Instead, you migrate.
