9 games worth upgrading your PC for
One of the great things about the PC as a gaming platform is that you don’t need to buy a new one every time a fancier-looking game comes out. You can keep most of the machine the same for quite a long time, swapping out graphics cards, processors, and RAM as the years go buy. But buying a new GPU costs money too, of course. Is it worth it? I’d argue that right now is a great time to update your PC. Here are nine games that’ll make you realize it’s time to pick up a shiny new graphics card.
1. The Witcher series
The Witcher 2 is, to this day, probably the best-looking game I’ve ever played. The graphical fidelity is incredible, and the attention to detail makes it all feel very real. But when The Witcher 3 comes out early next year, I have a feeling it’s going to be even better. And since the game is going to be massively long and have dozens of endings, you’ll want to be playing it in full HD if you can. If you’re going to spend that much time in a game’s world, you want it to look pretty!
2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (plus mods)
Vanilla Skyrim is already a pretty gorgeous game, but in the years since the game’s release, the PC modding community has taken its visuals to a whole other level. Virtually every texture and model in the game has been reworked or remade to look better by some enterprising modder, and if you put all those mods together, the results can be incredible. You’re going to need a PC with some serious power to run the game with all those mods, though! (If you do dive into modded Skyrim, don’t miss the Realistic Lighting mod. It gives the game’s interiors a whole new feel, and now I can’t imagine playing without it).
3. The Far Cry series
Far Cry 3 returned to the series’ roots, allowing players to explore a gorgeous tropical island full of deadly lunatics and altogether too many crocodiles. The game looks damn good on max settings, and it’s reason enough to upgrade your PC, but Far Cry 4, which will take players to the heady heights of the Himalayas, looks even better.
4. Grand Theft Auto V
Grand Theft Auto V is finally coming to PC, and you’ll want a machine that can render its crazy mayhem at the highest resolution possible. Vanilla GTA V already looks quite good, but I have a feeling that the PC modding community will quickly provide additional reasons to pick up a new graphics card by modding and updating the game’s graphics if that’s at all possible. (It certainly was in the PC version of GTA IV).
(See: Cool mod turns GTA IV’s New York into a typical Chinese city)
5. Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a great game anyway, but play it on PC with HD textures at max settings? Gorgeous. I’ve never played any game that re-created the actual feel of a city as well as Sleeping Dogs gets the neon-lit chaos of Hong Kong. Play it on max on a big screen and you’ll feel like you’re actually there, going toe-to-toe with Triads. There’s even a Definitive Edition of the game coming out this fall that promises even sharper graphics. And of course, there are also graphics mods for the PC version that make it look even prettier. If you want total immersion, there’s even a first-person camera mod out there!
6. Metal Gear Solid V
OK, so the MGSV games aren’t actually available on PC yet, and The Phantom Pain hasn’t been released anywhere, but I’m just going to go out on a limb and assume a few things. First, the game will be good (it’s Hideo Kojima, after all). Second, the game will look good—the previews we’ve seen all suggest that. And finally, the game will look best on a good PC. It just seems like common sense.
7. Alien: Isolation
My colleague Iain has already gotten his hands on this one, so I feel comfortable assuming it’s going to be good. It also looks incredible, and in a game like this, how real the game looks goes a long way towards how big an effect it can actually have on you. If you don’t like being scared, you might actually want to downgrade your PC before trying to run a game like this, but if you’ve got the guts for it, level up your GPU to make sure your isolation looks very, very real.
8. The Crysis series
Crysis‘s graphics were, at the time of its release, so good that “can it run Crysis?” was a way of quickly asking how powerful someone’s PC really was. Of course, there are prettier-looking games now, but even the original Crysis still looks gorgeous at max settings, and its sequels are even better looking, even if they aren’t quite as groundbreaking as the original. If you like to shoot aliens, this is about the best-looking way to do it.
9. Metro 2033 and Last Light
The Metro games already look hauntingly real on PC at max settings. But they’re also getting a redux version next week that promises to make both look even better. And of course, there are some impressive graphics mods for both games as well, ensuring that you can give your PC a real workout in the world of Metro if you want it to look its finest.
Of course, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Anything on here that inspires you to pull out your wallet?
The post 9 games worth upgrading your PC for appeared first on Games in Asia.
The post 9 games worth upgrading your PC for appeared first on Games in Asia.
