96 PCWorld DECEMBER 2020FEATURE BEST GAMES OF THIS GENERATION
invented it, and why the factory eventually
went out of business.
It’s an incredible piece of interactive
fiction, and one begging for repeat
playthroughs. Be an upstanding detective or
run through the story as a corrupt grifter or a
bumbling amnesiac. Disco Elysium not only
supports the latter, but even rewards failure in
ways that make it more entertaining to be
incompetent.- PREY
I’ve told this story before, but the moment I
knew I’d love Prey (go.pcworld.com/prgm)
came at a preview event here in San
Francisco. I was lost in thought, mulling over
an elevator shaft I’d missed out on during my
hands-on time because I lacked the skills to
repair it. Then I heard someone mention
they’d made it to the top—by force, using
Prey’s GLOO Cannon to create platforms they
could hop up.
That sort of systems-driven ingenuity is
what I love most in Arkane’s games, and hell,
in games in general. And Prey didn’t
disappoint (go.pcworld.com/prrv).
Somewhere, someone is (probably) still
working on a proper System Shock 3, but for
my money we already got it. Talos I is up there
with Alien: Isolation’s Sevastopol for this
generation’s best-realized environments, and
the open-ended (almost Metroid-esque)
nature of Prey made it a joy to explore, from
its Art Deco offices to its industrial
underpinnings.
I loved the story as well, from5.