The best free PC games

Rocket League is a weird amalgam of racing and soccer. After tricking out your car, you’ll head to the soccer pitch as you attempt to ram a giant ball into the other team’s goal. To make things even weirder, your car is equipped with rockets that can propel it into the air. It’s a ridiculous premise, but the final product is unlike anything else on the market. And now that it’s free to play, there’s nothing stopping you from joining in on the fun.

Dauntless is basically free-to-play Monster Hunter, just much more approachable. The reasons die-hard fans love Monster Hunter are the same reasons why newcomers often turn away from the series. Monster Hunter is slow, progression is complex, and failure is ingrained in the game. Enter Dauntless. Not only is Dauntless free, it’s much easier than Monster Hunter World to pick up and play. Combat is more reminiscent of a hack-and-slash, and although genre staples like stamina management and the lack of animation cancel are present, they’re much more forgiving in Dauntless. 

Brawlhalla is an arena-based fighting game for up to eight players that takes a lot of notes from a certain mascot-ridden Nintendo franchise. Gameplay-wise, Brawlhalla doesn’t do anything new. You’ll use your tiny character to beat up the other tiny characters and hope they fly off the map. It’s Brawlhalla‘s unique monetization model that sets it apart. There are cosmetic microtransactions, but they take a backseat to the characters. There are more than 50 playable characters in the game, and each week, eight of those characters are cycled through the free roster. You can buy all of the characters for $20 — pocket change compared to Smash Bros. — but Brawlhalla‘s cycling model allows you to try all of the characters before spending any money. If you have no particular affiliation, you can easily just use the free roster. None of the characters have any distinct advantages.

Guild Wars 2 has kept a steady pace over the last eight years, which is a feat for any free MMORPG. Upon its release in 2012, Guild Wars 2 distinguished itself by lacking a subscription fee (par for the course for MMOs at the time). With games like Elder Scrolls Online following suit, developer ArenaNet dropped the price tag, offering the base Guild Wars 2 experience for free. And there’s a lot to experience. Vanilla Guild Wars 2 offers around 70 hours of gameplay, with each expansion offering an additional 80 or so hours. 

Eve Online earns the “massive” bit of massively multiplayer. It’s a community-driven space exploration game with unmatched scale. Judging the actual size of space in Eve Online is tough — one player spent a decade exploring and still couldn’t discover everything. More space doesn’t just offer more content, but more experiences. Eve Online is a game about exploration until the moment you stumble upon other ships. With its scale, it’s easy to forget that you’re in space with other players, making teaming up with or against them all the more satisfying.