The 8 most heartbreaking cuts from this year's PC Gamer Top 100
The thing about the PC Gamer Top 100—a facet of the list so important that we put it right there in the name—is that it only has room for 100 games. Every year, the PC Gamer team is discovering new gems, replaying old classics, and advocating for their personal favourites to make it in. And whenever one of these games enters the list, another has to leave. That's just science.
But just because a game is no longer in the Top 100, doesn't mean it's suddenly bad—and it definitely doesn't mean that we don't feel just a little bit guilty about giving it the boot.
And so this year I've asked the team to spotlight some of the games from last year's list that didn't make the cut this year—and to think a little about why exactly they fell off, and if we'll ever see them in the Top 100 again.
Marvel's Midnight Suns
2023 position: #94
Jake Tucker, Editorial Director, PC Gaming Show: If there was any justice in the world we’d already be talking about the Midnight Suns sequel. Sadly, sales and changes of personnel at Firaxis means this is likely to be remembered as a weird little one-off.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns is two games really. On one hand, it’s a tactical combat game where you can use Spider-Man to toss people into a literal portal into hell, on the other it’s a friendship simulator where you can give Iron Man comic books and suggest he’s nicer to your other super-friends. Sadly, the two parts don’t perfectly mesh. There are a lot of great ideas in here, and it’s a surprising use of the Marvel licence, but with a deluge of excellent games coming out each year, it’s likely this will remain a cult classic just off of the top 100 list forever more.
Amnesia: The Bunker
2023 position: #91
Elie Gould, News Writer: If you're looking for a horror game that'll actually terrify you beyond belief, there are few better options than Amnesia: The Bunker. While I loved that Frictional Games actually delivered on its promises of a psychological horror game, The Bunker may be too scary to recommend in a list that stands to represent all the PC games the average gamer should try out. The audience for The Bunker remains niche: hardcore horror fans who want to tread the line of giving themselves heart attacks or permanent psychological damage.
Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age
2023 position: #79
Harvey Randall, Staff Writer: FF12 is a fine JRPG with some killer voice acting and gorgeous aesthetics—better than fine, even—and its Zodiac Age version only upgrades every inch of its initial 2006 release. But it's also got the Gambit system in it, which never quite caught on in the series at large or in JRPGs overall. Essentially, you could program your fleet of heartthrobs with a series of "if > then" commands that turned it into a sort of granular auto-battler, though you could wrest control at any point.
This ruled, but I have a sense that the reason it hasn't endured as a landmark, especially for our Top 100, is that Gambits were an attempt to bridge the gap between turn-based combat and the action RPG stuff the series would later adopt—well, that was the idea. What it produced instead was a brew that's a decidedly acquired taste. Not quite pleasing either crowd, but instead a secret third gang of mechanical degenerates (me) who have been hankering for another game like it ever since. I hear good things about Unicorn Overlord, but it's a console exclusive for some unfathomable reason.
Apex Legends
2023 position: #59
Phil Savage, Global Editor-in-Chief: There was a time when Apex Legends was a sure bet for Top 100 placement. It was, for many on the team, the best battle royale out there—the perfect middle ground between PUBG's milsim roots and Fortnite's zoomer bombast. Fast, frenetic and with entertaining traversal, it was an easy pick. This year, though, the community's growing dissatisfaction became a full blown revolt—one started by Respawn's attempt to create two battle passes per season, both of them available solely for real cash money.
When the Top 100 vote happened, Respawn hadn't backtracked on this decision, which is admittedly unfortunate timing. But even if it had, I'm not sure it would have made a difference. Players' dissatisfaction with the game goes way beyond the battle pass, and runs the gamut from cheaters to matchmaking to the quality of recent seasons. It's a familiar live-service pattern: more casual players move on to other games, and the remaining hardcore start to feel like they're being asked to spend more for less. That doesn't mean this is the last we'll see of Apex in the Top 100—in the right circumstances, its core traversal and shooting is a fun time. With the right improvements and updates, it has every chance to be a contender once again.
The Sims 4
2023 position: #58
Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: It's a bummer to pull The Sims 4 off the Top 100 because there's essentially no alternative to replace it with. Not yet, anyway. I did try to pull a coup and get The Sims 3 added to the list instead but unfortunately the manoeuvre backfired on me and now there are no Sims games, sorry.
The Sims 4 is in a rough spot, so much so that earlier this year EA announced it had "assembled a team" to deal with bug fixes in the base game. There are mountains of old Live Mode bugs gumming up the works and every new DLC just adds to the growing landfill of issues. EA also recently announced that it sees The Sims 4 as the "foundation" for years more DLCs and content and won't be replacing it with a conventional sequel. Those bug fixes, and its claims about updating the technology are going to have to accomplish a lot before The Sims 4 can be the foundation for anything.
Total War: Three Kingdoms
2023 position: #52
Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: I still stand by Three K as one of the best historical Total War games Creative Assembly has ever made, and it's a height the company has struggled to reach since. But I imagine Three Kingdoms would still be in the list—like Total War: Warhammer 3—if it hadn't had its support cut so abruptly. It still rankles with me that despite its excellence, new DLC was passed over in favour of developing a sequel, one which has more than likely now been cancelled considering CA's recent downsizing.
Cities: Skylines
2023 position: #51
Christopher Livingston, Senior Editor: Ideally Cities: Skylines would have been replaced on the list by Cities: Skylines 2, but unfortunately that didn't happen (for a number of reasons). But the reason the original Skylines fell off our list this year is because the city builder genre has grown so much in the past decade that even a great urban city building game doesn't stand out as much as it used to. There are so many types of builders now: strategy, survival, puzzle, roguelike, even cozy builders, and many of them possess a depth that Skylines can't really match. It's hard to get excited about building a present-day city when other games let me build cities on the moon, at the bottom of the ocean, on a space station, or on the back of a massive dinosaur. Cities: Skylines is still great, but the genre has so much more to offer these days.
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
2023 position: #44
Joshua Wolens, News Writer: Okay, two things. One: Consider it my life's mission to reestablish this on the list until I either succeed or they stop letting me into the office. Two: I kind of get why it fell off this year. I reckon Deadfire is quietly one of the best CRPGs ever made, but it's crunchy and mechanical and uncinematic where oh, say, Baldur's Gate 3 manages to be graspable and welcoming. Plus the naval combat is completely flummoxing. Add all that to the fact that real-time-with-pause has conclusively lost the isometric RPG war—to the extent that Deadfire ended up patching in a turn-based mode a while after release—and I can't be too surprised that Pillars has slipped off our list. But hey, if you're coming off a BG3 high and want another RPG with excellent characters, hard choices, and a great story, give Deadfire a look-in.