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The best free PC games: Summer | PC Gamer - 25. Paladins

 

There are still terrible, exploitative free-to-play games on the market—more every day, in fact. But occasionally— occasionally —we get something…miraculous. You can play the majority of the game without ever feeling the need to open up your wallet, and better yet, Genshin Impact is a good game. The developer has been actively supporting the game since launch, as well, so it gets new content often. This massively multiplayer, squad-based World War II shooter feels a lot like Battlefield , only tuned more towards historical accuracy than arcade-like hijinks.

That realism makes Enlisted feel a lot more deliberate and patient than most other shooters you can find today, in a refreshing-if-you-dig-that sort of way. A single rifle shot can take you out—but to even the odds, you command a squad of AI bots fully under your command, issuing kill orders or bossing them into different positions.

If that sounds even remotely interesting, be sure to check it out. The creators of League of Legends finally did it. After uh…over a decade, Riot finally put out another game.

And you know what? It was worth the wait, because Valorant is pretty phenomenal. Wearing its Counter-Strike and Overwatch inspirations on its sleeve, Valorant is nevertheless one of the tensest and tightest shooters released this past decade, combining twitchy firefights with a fairly standard litany of hero abilities.

It works, and it works well. The only aspect that gives me pause? Is it a security risk? In the ensuing years, Fortnite has become the largest game in the world, boasting hundreds of millions registered accounts and a peak of over 15 million concurrent players. It hosted virtual concerts and special events attended by millions. It even earned enough to allow Epic to open its own Steam competitor, and dole out plenty of money for exclusive games on top.

Epic continues to update the game at a prodigious rate, changing the map, the guns, the skins, the emotes, the core mechanics, basically everything on a regular basis. You could call it an ultra-complex, open-ended, randomly-generated colony management game. But really Dwarf Fortress is an endless generator of absolutely wild tales, just like Crusader Kings. Players pick a hero and battle it out against the other team, competing to bring down the enemy base by out-maneuvering foes with skillful tactics.

Or, more likely, you pick a hero and mess something up five minutes in, and your entire team gets angry because they know you just lost them the game.

Good luck. And like Dota 2 , the people who are still playing it tend to be very invested at this point. You want to play a MOBA. Hell, you need to play a MOBA. In that case, why choose League of Legends over Dota 2? The truth is you should just pick whichever one your friends are playing or whichever art style appeals more, and jump in. Warframe should be one of the bad free-to-play games. It gets repetitive. There are major balance issues.

It is, in other words, a predatory free-to-play game. But for some reason none of that matters. In many ways, Warframe fulfills the promise of Destiny — excellent mechanics supporting an excellent feedback loop. You grind, sure.

Credit to Digital Extremes for supporting the game, too. Pretty impressive for a game that helped kick off this entire console generation. The Bungie-Activision divorce had a huge impact on Destiny 2 in , but the biggest change of all?

Not the entire game, but Bungie did open a substantial chunk of it. Dubbed Destiny 2: New Light , the entire first year of content is free as of last October, plus all planetary locations and Crucible content. The meatier follow-on expansions are only a single purchase away too, if you decide to dig the hole deeper—and you should. And why not? But even more impressive is that developer Grinding Gear continues to add a staggering amount of content to the game.

Highly recommended for fans of click-click-click combat—though Path of Exile 2 should be released any day now. It started as a whisper. But just as the original Defense of the Ancients mod birthed a genre, the Dota Auto Chess mod birthed another.

Then Respawn surprise-released Apex Legends in February of and it became an overnight success. Apex also integrated elements of the hero-shooter genre, with healers, tanks, ultra-mobile robots, and so on, which gave it more personality than the bevy of PUBG clones.

I like the characters though, and Apex still has the best movement in any battle royale game. And for good reason! The standout feature is probably The Gulag though. A significant number of its fans have played some iteration of Counter-Strike for nearly two decades now.

Download, grab a few friends, enjoy. Matches support up to eight players, which is suitably chaotic. Those who want to go deeper? Like any fighting game and most multiplayer games, really , the community can be unwelcoming at times. For reference: Brood War was twelve when Wings of Liberty released.

Both the campaign as well as pieces of the multiplayer experience are now freely accessible through Battle. The custom game mode Arcade is still free too, for those who prefer a less serious version of StarCraft II. And if you already own Wings of Liberty but not the expansions? Blizzard will give you a copy of follow-up Heart of the Swarm instead. But Paladins is also its own thing. Skip the spin-off Realm Royale though.

Dead game? If not…well, this might be the most expensive game you ever play. Think Second Life except somehow…weirder. Virtual reality is full of interesting free experiences, actually, which helps offset the cost of the hardware.

Doki Doki Literature Club is the first on our list, a somewhat short and story-heavy singleplayer experience. One of those types of visual novels, where all the ladies want to date you. Paradox also includes an ambitious short film, done up in the same style and which ties into the overall plot, which is a treat. Coloring Game and Coloring Pixels are very similar, essentially digital paint-by-numbers games that let you fill in gridded artwork with the correct colors, one pixel at a time.

Of the two, Coloring Pixels pictured is more relaxing—quiet piano music, and artwork that spans from simple three-color symbols up to by works of art.

Regardless of which you choose, both are great when you just want to throw on a podcast and zone out. We all could use that sometimes. Most of these free PC games should run just fine on a wide spectrum of hardware, but if you find frame rates lagging, an upgrade might be in order. Image by miHoYo. Image by Gaijin Entertainment. Image by Riot. Image by Epic Games. Image by Bay 12 Games. Image by Valve. Image by Riot Games. Image by Warframe. Image by Bungie.

Image by Path of Exile. Image by Respawn. Image by Activision. Image by Brawlhalla. Image by EVE Online. Image by Blizzard. Image by Paladins. Image by VRChat. Image by Doki Doki Literature Club. Image by Cube Escape: Paradox. Image by Coloring Pixels.

 

Best game in the world for pc free

 

CCP's huge space sim is home to one of the most fascinating communities you'll find anywhere in the world, complete with its own economy, warring political factions, and pitched space battles that seem like they're straight out of a Star Wars film.

Destiny 2's base game, alongside two of its early expansions are available for free, offering access to developer Bungie's exceptional gunplay and many of its competitive modes, as well access to a sprawling and ambitious storyline. Whether you're looking to outshine your opponents in PvP, smash hordes of enemies in PvE, or just make sure you've got the shiniest space armour out there, you'll find hundreds of hours of entertainment in Destiny 2.

The most recent iteration of Valve's classic tactical shooter series might not be the newest kid on the block anymore, but it remains the quintessential example of the genre. There are no flashy abilities to hide behind here - success lies in your knowledge of the map and the mastery of the weapon in your hands.

But while CS:GO is somewhat pared down in comparison to its new competitors, it remains one of the most clinical modern shooters out there, at an entirely unmatched price point.

Ok, it might not be Titanfall 3, but Apex Legends is a worthy alternative. Set in the same world as Respawn's mech-based shooter, the Apex Games blend classic battle royale with the character-based skills of the hero shooter, for an end product that manages to be the best of both worlds.

After a slight lull in the wake of its epic launch, Apex is currently in a great spot, with a hugely diverse roster and a rotating schedule of three brilliantly detailed arenas. From humble beginnings, League of Legends grew quickly into one of the biggest games in the world, and has stayed there for years. The aim of the 5v5 MOBA is simple - destroy your opponents' base, or Nexus, before they can destroy yours - but with more than champions, there's a huge amount to learn. That learning curve is seriously steep, so if you're starting out, find a champion you like and master them first.

Once you're over that initial hill, however, there's also a huge global esports scene, novels of lore, and a constantly-evolving competitive environment to get lost in.

Premium currency can help you unlock new characters faster, but is mostly reserved for cosmetics. Fortnite might not be at the peak of its power anymore, but it's impossible to deny the phenomenal impact that Epic's battle royale has had. After a swift pivot away from the original Save the World, Fortnite became a family-friendly alternative to the rapidly-growing last-man-standing genre, complete with its iconic building mechanic.

Since then, it's set a new benchmark for the pace of change for evolving games, with an ever-deepening narrative, ambitious crossover events, and in-game virtual concerts that draw in audiences in the millions.

Premium currency 'V-bucks' is reserved solely for cosmetic purchases. I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar.

As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit. Total Film. Ali Jones opens in new tab. Gwent was a fun diversion in The Witcher 3, but as a fully-fledged spin-off that has evolved over the years, the current product is one of the best games built around collecting cards, building strategies, and seeing how far they'll go in actual competition.

Easy to learn and hard to master, Gwent's popularity boils down to a number of factors. Every card looks like it was produced during a forgotten magical era of the Renaissance, it's generous with all the free cards that it hands out, and the various arenas to play in will keep you hooked for hours. Read our Gwent review. Online card games had been around in some form or another for years before Hearthstone came along, but Blizzard's Warcraft spin-off quickly became one of those rare titles that redefined just what a game in a specific genre could be.

Not satisfied with just being a well-engineered card game with addictive tabletop tactics, Hearthstone was a constantly-evolving showcase of ingenuity.

It also helped that it looked like a million bucks, each card unleashing dazzling special effects on a living board that could only have been designed in a Blizzard lab. Years later, Hearthstone and its massive library of cards still remains the pinnacle of the genre and a major influence on the world around it. Read our Hearthstone review. If Hearthstone is a pitch-perfect entry into the world of tabletop gaming from Blizzard, then Heroes of the Storm is a quirky twist on the formula created by various MOBA games over the years.

The difference here is that Heroes of the Storm is a celebration of all things Blizzard, resulting in absolutely wild combinations of classic characters as they battle for control of the map. It's a solidly built title with a strong cast, plenty of variety, and excellent game modes to experiment with. Read our Heroes of the Storm review. Every king has a rival, and for years now Dota 2's position as one of the biggest giants in the MOBA landscape has been threatened by League of Legends.

While the Riot Games developed title hasn't committed any regicide just yet, it has come close to usurping Dota 2's throne and in recent years, its pop culture footprint has begun to eclipse its main competition. Outside of that slugging match though, League of Legends is still a titan that provides excellent entertainment to the beat of its own drum, as well as some of the finest esports competition on the planet. Read our League of Legends review.

Even with a sequel on the horizon, Grinding Gear Games' original stab at old-school RPG adventuring still stands as a brilliant and compelling game of isometric dungeon-crawling. While it had no shortage of bugs when it first arrived, Path of Exile in its current state is a mature and more focused venture into dark fantasy.

Though it still has some lingering issues, its content has been a thrill and expansions such as Echoes of the Atlas have grown its free-to-play world substantially. Read our Path of Exile review. Planetside 2 has always felt different to other games on the market, due to its colder nature, more obscured systems for getting the best out of the game, and brutal opinion on how fragile each player should be when they spawn into an arena.

But look past those factors, and you'll find a game that has been beloved by its audience since for providing unique gameplay moments within its world.

Fresh content such as the Chimera and Javelin updates have kept players engaged, and when you first hop in it won't be uncommon to see hundreds of people going to war against each other. Read our Planetside 2 review. If you're tired of adults ruining the hunt for new Pokemon cards, its digital equivalent is a much more relaxing alternative without any scalpers lurking in the shadows. Everything that you could possibly want from the world of Pokemon's trading card game is here, as there are plenty of cards to collect, decks to build, and real people to battle.

It's a versatile platform of card trading that provides plenty of content for free, but it won't be around for much longer with TCG Live on the horizon. Do you like war? Watch your back and be careful who you trust! Sick game! Combat in this game is satisfying as hell, with multiple weapons to pick from, you can also use terrain to your advantage, cooperate with your teammates and focus on the objectives more efficiently!

Try it out, pretty dope and an underrated game! Can this even be considered a video game? Everyone does! As terrorists, you can win by:. You can pick one out of many classes, customize your weaponry and fly around the map like a madman - the game becomes more intense as more players die and the zone gets smaller AND the best part - this game is free!

Get it today! For a game released in , this game looks gorgeous as hell. Probably the reason for that is because Crytek made it - the same guys that made the Crysis series. Wearing its Counter-Strike and Overwatch inspirations on its sleeve, Valorant is nevertheless one of the tensest and tightest shooters released this past decade, combining twitchy firefights with a fairly standard litany of hero abilities.

It works, and it works well. The only aspect that gives me pause? Is it a security risk? In the ensuing years, Fortnite has become the largest game in the world, boasting hundreds of millions registered accounts and a peak of over 15 million concurrent players. It hosted virtual concerts and special events attended by millions.

It even earned enough to allow Epic to open its own Steam competitor, and dole out plenty of money for exclusive games on top. Epic continues to update the game at a prodigious rate, changing the map, the guns, the skins, the emotes, the core mechanics, basically everything on a regular basis. You could call it an ultra-complex, open-ended, randomly-generated colony management game. But really Dwarf Fortress is an endless generator of absolutely wild tales, just like Crusader Kings.

Players pick a hero and battle it out against the other team, competing to bring down the enemy base by out-maneuvering foes with skillful tactics. Or, more likely, you pick a hero and mess something up five minutes in, and your entire team gets angry because they know you just lost them the game.

Good luck. And like Dota 2 , the people who are still playing it tend to be very invested at this point. You want to play a MOBA. Hell, you need to play a MOBA. In that case, why choose League of Legends over Dota 2? The truth is you should just pick whichever one your friends are playing or whichever art style appeals more, and jump in.

Warframe should be one of the bad free-to-play games. It gets repetitive. There are major balance issues. It is, in other words, a predatory free-to-play game. But for some reason none of that matters. In many ways, Warframe fulfills the promise of Destiny — excellent mechanics supporting an excellent feedback loop.

   

 

Best Free PC Games In 20 Great Free-To-Play Games - GameSpot.

   

A lot of these free games are offered up to entice you into signing up for the full experience, but no one says you have to, and the games are good enough that you probably would mind if you did.

The high fantasy setting sees adventurers locked in a civilizational struggle with an invasion of otherworldly demons, with seven mysterious Arks holding the potential to turn the tide of the war in humanity's favor. The quest structure can get a bit repetitive and the story is something of a mixed bag, but the diversity of classes and impressive production value makes this free game a real standout.

It's a mix of free-to-play and subscription service, like many MMOs nowadays, but it costs nothing to get started , so there's nothing wrong with giving it a whirl yourself. You've heard the meme , but now might be the time to dive into one of the best PC games ever made, period. The game itself might not exactly be 'new', since it was originally released several years ago, but it's gotten a new lease of life lately thanks to a dedicated community that avoids a lot of the toxicity you can find in other online games.

Given the online environment today, it's little wonder that Final Fantasy XIV has built up such a devoted following. Unlike a lot of other free-to-play MMORPGs, you can level your character all the way up to level 60 multiple times, even and enjoy the game's award-winning expansion Heavensward for free, with no restrictions on play time.

Meme or no, you can enjoy the best that Eorzea and beyond has to offer at no cost to you. So, climb aboard your Chocobo, work your way through the game's impressive roster of professions and outstanding story arc, and see what all the fuss is about. Originally designed as a kind of add-on for Fortnite, Battle Royale blew up in a way that nobody expected, fast becoming among the best free games around.

Because of its meteoric success, Epic Games is working hard to steadily integrate new game modes and fresh features. Take Playground mode, for example — it drops you in the map and lets you build up structures for a set amount of time before the floodgates open and the carnage begins. The Dota universe may have evolved from a WarCraft 3 mod, but Dota 2 is very much its own entity, and still holds its own as one of the best free games going right now.

Thanks to its fairly light system requirements, this top-down arena battler is very dynamic without requiring the best gaming PC or the best gaming laptops in order to enjoy. While the game does draw in multimillion-dollar prize funds for serious tournament players, Dota 2 is not just for the most hardcore gamers. Don't expect a warm welcome or an easy learning curve from its complex gameplay mechanics.

However, bring a few friends, and Dota 2 will have you hooked on one of the biggest crazes in PC history. Pick your champion and charge into battle in this trailblazing free-to-play title from the folks that brought you the Warcraft III mod, Dota. It's one of the best free games has that will absolutely stand the test of time. The wacky world of esports, eh? However, it has since, like so many of the best MMO games before it, adopted the free-to-play model.

If you want to satisfy your inner Sith, this is the best way to do that, and do it for free. Subscriptions are on hand for more in-game potential and end-game content, but in true best-free-games fashion, all the story missions are still accessible for free — it just might take a bit longer now. The game mode resides within League of Legends' client, and a battle pass and cosmetics are both available for the game's premium currency.

The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit was initially released as a companion narrative ahead of the arrival of Life is Strange 2, but even if you're not familiar with Sean and Daniel's story, this is another charming outing from Dontnod, filled with as much charm and attention to detail as any of the official games. Focused on Chris, a young boy with a vivid imagination and a father struggling to cope with his grief, Captain Spirit offers a heartfelt standalone narrative from one of the best story-driven studios out there.

Once upon a time, it might have been easy to write off Roblox as another blocky kids game just ripping off Minecraft. Not only have those days long since passed, that criticism is now entirely incorrect - as well as being a multibillion dollar title drawing in tens of millions of players every day, Roblox is slowly becoming an increasingly respected game development tool.

The most high-profile example is VVVVVV creator Terry Cavanagh's recent foray onto the platform, but a suite of creators has been using its tools and making a decent income from them for years. As the attention offered to it grows, Roblox's own development could be fascinating to be a part of. Crusader Kings 3 might have replaced its older brother at the top of the Paradox pecking order, but if you're looking for grand strategy on a budget, this is easily the best place to start.

The base game, which puts you in charge of your own portion of medieval Europe, is now entirely free. War Thunder is a little more casual than the truly hardcore military sims out there, but if you're looking for some dogfights or tank skirmishes with some genuine depth, there's a huge degree of mastery on offer.

Fans of ground, air, and naval combat are all catered to, with a wide roster of vehicles stretching back decades from some of the world's biggest military powers, and detailed customisation means you can pick a style to suit you and really dominate your opponents.

Paid DLC does offer a way to unlock new vehicles faster, but they can also be earned with in-game currency. The blend of football and rocket-powered RC cars might once have seemed peculiar, but after Rocket League's arrival in , any doubts were immediately assuaged.

A premium release has since made way for a free-to-play model funded by cosmetics inspired by an increasing number of crossovers, from F1 to Jurassic Park. As well as pixel-perfect gameplay that makes Psyonix's offering one of the best sport games out there, a massive skill ceiling and plenty of interesting variant modes ensures that there's enough to keep you playing for years at basically no cost. If you've been itching to try out the indie phenomenon but don't fancy paying for the privilege of dying over and over and over again, the original Spelunky is a free, pixel-art predecessor to the smash hit and its recent sequel.

Controlling a fedora and bullwhip-wielding spelunker, the aim is to make it past the dangers that await in a giant, procedurally-generated cave, collecting as much treasure as you can on your way down.

Despite its adorable aesthetic, however, Spelunky is hiding a dark side, with enough ways to kill you that you'll still be learning its secrets dozens of hours in. Sadly, you won't be able to play Super Smash Bros on PC any time soon, but there are plenty of alternative platform fighters available.

Of those, Brawlhalla is arguably the leader of the pack, with regular season updates, a huge and growing roster of fighters, and plenty of weapons and gadgets to ensure that fights always feel fresh and that there's ample opportunity to master your favourite styles.

Cosmetic items and new characters can be purchased with premium currency, but there's also an in-game currency to help you progress. The game that arguably kickstarted the esports craze, StarCraft II maintains a thriving competitive scene more than a decade on from its original release.

Following on from the events of 's Brood War expansion of the original game, the sequel continues Blizzard's epic space opera, featuring the return of its three iconic factions. Pinball FX3 is a proper simulator, fitted with leagues, one-on-one multiplayer, and community-generated tournaments. For occasional players who want to play recreationally in their spare time, FX3 offers traditional single-player games as well.

Heavily inspired by the Diablo series, Path of Exile is an excellent online action RPG with a great loop and tons of fun and free! Designed by Grinding Gear Games, Path of Exile was released in to positive critical reception, but it has only improved since with new expansions, adding new items, skills, and story content. Players pick between one of seven classes — Witch, Shadow, Ranger, Marauder, Duelist, Templar, and Scion — each of which has its own movesets, strengths, and weaknesses.

Path of Exile plays with an isometric just like Diablo , along with having a similar interface and default control scheme. The main difference, which helps give Path of Exile its legs, is the random generation. Besides camps, all of the dungeons and open areas are randomly generated, so each time you replay a section, it will be set up differently. Unlike its older rival, Dauntless is a much more accessible title — instead of spending hours pouring of stats and customizing your inventory, this free-to-play game offers a streamlined monster hunting experience.

Beyond offering a streamlined hunting experience, Dauntless also gives you a quirky cast of characters to learn about, along with a fair monetization scheme that lets you enjoy much of what it has to offer without dropping a dime. Nearly two decades after the release of the original game, Microsoft and Double Helix relaunched Killer Instinct as a tough-as-nails fighter with enough style to give Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter a run for their money.

Classic characters such as Jago, TJ Combo, and Sabrewulf make their return, and the game has remained a staple in the competitive fighting scene since it launched in After spending a couple of years in early access, Brawhlhalla , a fighting game that can only really be compared to Super Smash Bros. In , Blue Mammoth Games, the studio behind the peculiar brawler, was acquired by Ubisoft. From a core gameplay perspective, Brawlhalla mirrors Smash in that the goal is to knock other fighters off the map.

It features a simple control scheme that lets new players jump in quickly, which is perfect for a free-to-play game. Additionally, a myriad of interesting game modes, a plethora of maps, and a robust roster of fighters keep the experience fresh.

And yes, weapons fall from the sky just like in Smash. In the free-to-play model, Brawlhalla lets players play as six different fighters each week.

This entry is cheating just a bit. Among Us is one of the most popular games in the U. Among Us is a simple social deduction game where up to 10 players team up to complete a range of small tasks.

Among Us offers endless hours of fun, and with its pick-up-and-play design, anyone can jump in on the action. Blizzard is the master of polish, and this was never more apparent than when the developer released Hearthstone in New cards, which can be purchased using gold earned through normal play, help you develop your own custom decks. You can also get cards more quickly by spending real money, though gold is given out at such a liberal rate that you can stick with playing free if you hone in on a single competitive deck.

Known for popularizing, if not straight up creating, the collectible card game genre, Magic has a storied history. Although more involved than the other card games listed here, the core premise of Magic is simple. Lands produce mana, which you can use to cast spells, and you can play one land per turn. You actually have to have a land in hand in order to get mana for that turn, whereas most other digital card games handle the mana scaling automatically.

The variance in Magic is one of its core tenets, allowing players with a very weak deck to win against very powerful decks if they have the right draw. The best course of action is to choose which format you want to play most. Thankfully, Arena dishes out free packs left and right, and with the wildcard system, you can craft whatever extra cards you need.

Pulled straight from The Witcher universe and developed by CD Projekt Red itself, Gwent takes the iconic mini-game and gives it the attention it deserves. The PvP card battler will see you piecing together your very own deck composed of classic characters such as Geralt and Ciri before heading online for a variety of unique game modes.

No good card game is complete without a bevy of gorgeous graphical effects, and Gwent has those in spades. No free-to-play list would be complete without League of Legends. Unlike League , all heroes are available for free in Dota 2 , including the melee-focused Earth Spirit, who resembles an odd mix of the Iron Giant and the Incredible Hulk, and the Invoker, whose appearance is similar to the elves seen in the Warcraft franchise.

The highlight of the game is the massive competitive championship called The International , where players battle for millions of dollars in prize money. You could win — well, if you spend your entire life playing the game, that is. New content is being added at a regular pace, with a variety of unlockable items and new characters launched just weeks after its arrival — and much more planned for the coming months.

With 15 maps and a slew of game modes, including ranked, unranked, and even CPU battles, Heroes of the Storm has enough content to keep you playing for the long haul. There's oodles to play with here, too. If the old maps don't suffice, you can download the hundreds created by the community, many of which include new art assets, directly from the game's interface itself.

Path Of Exile is a gore-slick and intricate action RPG with a refreshingly antipodean setting and voice cast. While it may escalate into near-fractal complexity, it starts out as simply as any Diablo or Torchlight: you walk around, you bash monsters, you level and loot, and in the process become an ever-more powerful bringer of death. The early stages of the game are an almost absurd power trip, as the huge number of options available to you all turn you into a huge machine of death.

If you want to survive the endgame however, you'll need to make some careful choices regarding your character build - or just follow a guide you found online. Thankfully the business model doesn't get in the way of your character's progress. While a loot and levelling-heavy free-to-play game could be an exploitative mess, Path Of Exile is resolutely ethical. Every class, every dungeon, every piece of loot is earned by playing normally, with no shortcuts available. Team Fortress 2 is thirteen years old, but it still feels modern because it re-made the formula for online shooters in its own image.

It's a team-based hero shooter, essentially, from a time before we knew the term "hero shooter". Two teams of whatever size do battle against one another, with each player choosing from nine available characters.

Each character has their own weapons and abilities, and teams will either be attacking or defending on maps about capturing briefcases, capturing points, or pushing a payload across the map. TF2 turned its now dried-up drip-feed of new levels and weapons into a part of the game's entertainment, and in the process layered sub-classes upon those initial archetypes.

While its original appeal lay in part in its elegance, now it has depth. The Sniper is as fun to play as he always was, but now you can play him with a bow and arrow rather than his original rifle. The Demoman is as fun as ever if you're using his bombs, but you can also equip him with an enormous Claymore sword that lets you lunge towards enemies.

There are dozens of these, and enough fun to keep you entertained for months or years. As for its free-to-play trappings: its mostly hats, which are optional. You can also unlock crates for a chance at getting new weapons, but they're also craftable if you don't want to spend anything.

Remember when Valve released a game for free? Not free-to-play , just free. It's called Alien Swarm, it's a standalone follow-up to a mod, and its Valve's first released game that wasn't a first-person shooter. Instead, Alien Swarm is a four-player co-op game in which you control a character from above as you fight swarms of… yeah. You do so as one of four classes: Medic, Officer, Special Weapons and Tech, who have distinct abilities such as hacking doors, placing turrets, and healing teammates, but who all spend most of their time popping bugs with shotguns and machineguns.

Alien Swarm is simple and around three-hours long, but it's as well-crafted as everything Valve does. That's in large part due to the level design, which funnels you and your enemies into chokepoints, dramatic last stands, and achingly long waits for slow moving elevators.

And the award for most improved free-to-play game goes to Warframe. What was once a handful of level tilesets to endlessly grind through is now a proper solar system, featuring two vast open world areas, a Gundam-like suit for dogfighting missions, a hoverboard swapping resource grinding for handrail grinding , a series of AI companions ranging from a mini-Metal Gear to a full-on space wolf and a roster of 66 Warframes to learn and master.

It makes Destiny look like a tiddler. Warframe is also a great advert for itself. As long as you resist the siren call of a Platinum currency purchase, it's all the inspiration you need to put your head down and grind your way through the shopping list of required ingredients to craft those frames for yourself. In each round of World Of Tanks, small teams of players, each controlling their own tank, rush out from starting positions to do battle across mid-sized maps that alternate open areas and claustrophobic chokepoints.

The tactics required are all about positioning: how do you get an angle on an enemy without exposing the vulnerable side of the angry house you're driving? Can you position yourself on that elevated ridge such that your artillery tank can hit its target, without simultaneously exposing yourself to a half dozen enemies rolling around below?

Those artillery tanks are a particular favourite because they're basically snipers - snipers with the ability to view their targets from a magical top-down perspective. This feels like it should be ridiculously overpowered, but you're still burdened by both needing line of sight, and having to lead your shots to account for the long travel time on each shell fired. It's not just one of the best free games on PC but one of the best games within this genre available anywhere.

Brogue is an ASCII roguelike, meaning its environments are made up of the letters from your keyboard. Most games of this ilk are at best ugly and at worst impenetrable and confusing, yet Brogue is neither. Its shimmering colours depict floating gases and flowing liquids with style, while its mouse controls make it a cinch to move around and to hover over each item on screen and discover what it is.

The result is a roguelike that's, yes, about moving through caves and permanently losing your progress after each death, but one that you can't play without coming away with a story to tell. A story of a potion you slugged which cast you down into the depths. Of a frog who poisoned you and made you mistake a rat for a vampire. Of a monkey you saved, who became your ally, and then broke your heart. If you're going to play one traditional roguelike, make it this one. Butterfly Soup is a visual novel set in America about queer Asian girls playing baseball.

The lead character, Diya, is Indian-American, a high school student, and a lesbian growing to understand her feelings for her friend Min-seo. The rest of the cast is similarly inclusive, but what makes the game great is that it moves the characters beyond the labels attached to them, and depicts them as whole people. That's in part thanks to a thick streak of the relatably mundane which runs through the game: Diya is grappling with those feelings for Min-seo, but she's also stressing about school, chatting about baseball, going to the mall, and rushing excitedly towards potential dogs.

The game is mostly made up of conversations, taking place with friends around town or in IM conversations, but those conversations aren't structured around currying favour or attaining a goal. Instead, they're written with a light touch and a lot of humour.