TOP-10 Most Hardware-Demanding PC Games of 2024

The fourth year of the ninth console generation, 2024, has clearly shown that the performance of gaming systems has once again become a bottleneck for PC game development. While in 2022 and 2023 developers amazed us with cutting-edge graphics technologies and occasional innovations, the past year's major releases seemed to abandon the race for visual revolution. However, we’ve still found 10 games capable of pushing any modern PC to its limits.

Most projects on our list stand out primarily due to their high-quality art design, unique style, and high level of detail. Photorealism is no longer the sole focus. The industry has reached a "plateau" where visual sophistication gives way to bold artistic experiments and innovative storytelling approaches. This shift has led to the emergence of more memorable worlds that captivate not just with their graphics but with their overall atmosphere. So, let’s dive in!

The highly anticipated PC remaster of Horizon Zero Dawn was released on October 31, 2024, offering an updated version of the iconic PlayStation exclusive. The events unfold in a distant post-apocalyptic future where humanity, once a highly advanced civilization, has regressed to the level of semi-primitive tribes, forced to battle mechanical dinosaurs. Players take control of the slender, rosy-cheeked huntress Aloy, engaging in action/RPG combat and uncovering the secrets of the past in a vast open world.

The porting was handled by the renowned studio Nixxes, which managed to get the most out of Guerrilla Games' proprietary Decima game engine, at least in terms of the remaster. After all, the regular version of Horizon Forbidden West was released on PC in March 2024 without any significant improvements.

Visually, Zero Dawn is one of Sony's most beautiful remasters, offering a detailed and vibrant world that surpasses many modern games. The game supports ultra-wide monitors and 4K resolution, ultra-high-resolution textures, and ray tracing, which enhances realism in lighting and shadows. The inclusion of 3D audio and haptic feedback on DualSense controllers further immerses players. Character animations and models have also been improved for greater realism.

The press reviews have been overwhelmingly positive.

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What can be improved in a game already considered the gold standard of flight simulators? As it turns out, quite a lot. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is striking in its scale and detail. The rural areas alone cover over 100,000 square kilometers, created using photogrammetry. And you can even add mods with city photogrammetry! But even without them, the game features hundreds of airports and airfields, thousands of helipads, and unique landmarks drawn by hand.

Technologically, the new Flight Simulator has taken a significant leap forward, fully transitioning to DirectX 12. This required considerable effort from Asobo Studios, as they use their own proprietary engine. This is most noticeable in the 3D generation of surfaces, rocks, trees, and grass. All of this now looks realistic and boasts a high level of detail. Each biome (and there are 27 of them) comes to life thanks to hundreds of species of vegetation, dozens of animal species, and dynamically generated content—from grass to flowering meadows and rocky landscapes.

But, most importantly, there are the enchanting views in the sky while you fly and the breathtaking views looking down at the earth, weather permitting. And here, the improved particle system is more relevant than ever. It creates impressively realistic clouds, smoke, fog, rain, and snow in the sky, as well as atmospheric phenomena such as auroras. With out-of-the-box support for ultra-wide monitors and virtual reality headsets, players can literally feel like a pilot!

The game became a source for the memes, which speaks to its high popularity within the community.

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The action RPG The Veilguard, despite generating a wave of criticism, mixed reviews, and questions about its connection to the Dragon Age franchise, turned out to be a surprisingly solid game. To a large extent, this is due to the great graphics still provided by Frostbite. The DICE engine has been significantly reworked to support modern graphics technologies, including DirectX 12, NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR, ray tracing, volumetric water, and other effects.

BioWare's specialists have achieved outstanding art direction, skillfully playing on strong visual contrasts. On one hand, there are the lavish cities of Tevinter; on the other, villages ravaged by the Blight and the grim, oppressive atmosphere of the Deep Roads.

A standout feature of The Veilguard is the hair and fur rendering technology borrowed from FIFA and Madden. Attentive players will notice that the characters' long hair and complex hairstyles realistically react to movement and the environment. The quality of facial animation has also been improved — there's no longer the "uncanny valley" effect that was unpleasantly surprising in the release of Mass Effect: Andromeda. The characters still convey emotions using the engine, but now it's natural and easily readable.

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This third-person shooter with a strong hack-and-slash influence transports players to the grim darkness of the 41st millennium. Captain Titus of the Ultramarines Chapter faces a battle against the relentless hordes of Tyranids, who are capable of coordinated and organized attacks. The glorious past and present of the renowned captain are revealed through large-scale battles on devastated planets, taking place in both urban environments and open terrain.

To maintain the scale and display hundreds of enemies on screen simultaneously, Saber Interactive used the Swarm Engine, specifically developed for Space Marine 2 and World War Z. The engine's key feature is the simulation of «swarm behavior»: when diverse and differently sized mobs act as a single organism, combined with high per-frame performance. Realistic interaction of objects and the environment is achieved through the integration of the Havok physics engine.

Graphically, Space Marine 2 impresses with ultra-high-resolution textures, dynamic lighting and shadows, as well as a modern particle system that adds depth to every explosion and destruction. The Swarm Engine supports modern graphics technologies such as ray tracing, providing more realistic reflections. Enabling NVIDIA DLSS or AMD FSR will allow achieving high performance and image quality even on less powerful systems.

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The past year was rich in quasi-RPG games, but Dragon's Dogma 2 stands out with its classic approach to the RPG genre. Its open world is filled with characters, intricate stories, and epic battles. As the Arisen — a hero destined to fight hordes of monsters and beasts — the player must free the local world from the tyranny of a dragon. The game features a deep progression system, customizable abilities, and choices that genuinely affect the world and the plot.

Capcom performed a small miracle by transforming its RE Engine, known for linear games like Resident Evil 4 Remake and Street Fighter 6, into a powerful tool for a large-scale RPG. Picturesque landscapes and a living world are complemented by high-quality textures, a signature facial animation system, and the active influence of physics on the variety of combat. The particle system fills battles with dynamism and spectacle: sparks of magic, arrows piercing the air, and dust rising from swings of cold steel. A key feature of Dragon's Dogma 2 is the implementation of darkness — nights in the game are so impenetrable that moving anywhere without the flicker of light from a torch or a magic spell is deadly!

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This role-playing action game with slasher elements, inspired by the Dark Souls series, Black Myth: Wukong offers the opportunity to conquer a mythological world full of diverse enemies and bosses. Players take on the role of the Destined One, an anthropomorphic ape based on Sun Wukong from the classic Chinese novel "Journey to the West." The game features a wide selection of classes, skills, and unique abilities, with transformations that turn the hero into various creatures as a key gameplay feature.

Since the game is developed on Unreal Engine 5, you can be assured of high-quality graphics — it's all there. However, among the technologies used are some that are still quite novel. First, there's the Niagara particle system, responsible for the spectacular scenes with explosions and magic spells, for example, when the player creates a whirlwind with their staff and lifts leaves from the ground. There's also Chaos Physics, which allows for environmental destruction, interaction with objects, and seeing realistic physical reactions to the player's actions, such as footprints in the sand. This needs to be seen to be believed!

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The open-world action-adventure game Star Wars Outlaws finally allows free exploration of various planets in the Star Wars universe, including Tatooine, Kijimi, Akiva, and Cantonica. The events span the period between the films "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi." Players take on the role of Kay Vess, a young criminal seeking to pull off the biggest heist in the galaxy. The gameplay combines elements of stealth, dynamic gunfights, and control of various vehicles, including speeder bikes and spaceships.

The graphics in Star Wars Outlaws are impressive. Ubisoft has created one of the most beautiful Star Wars games in general, and especially in 2024. Incredible detail of planets and biomes, with inclusions of cities and natural locations. The game is built on the Snowdrop Engine, which is familiar to players from The Division 2 and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, but has received numerous improvements.

Full support for DirectX 12, RTX Direct Illumination (RTXDI) and Ray-Traced Global Illumination (RTGI) technologies, and an updated particle system provided stunning visual effects, natural play of light and shadow, as well as cinematic in-engine scenes. All this beauty, of course, comes at the cost of high system requirements, even for the minimum settings.

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The action-adventure game Indiana Jones and the Great Circle lets you step into the shoes of the famous adventurer, Indiana Jones, and travel back to the 1930s. Exploring ruins and natural landscapes, solving puzzles, dynamic combat and chases, as well as interacting with unique characters — all in the pursuit of ancient artifacts in the world's mysterious corners. The game features historical and mystical elements, creating the feeling of a classic adventure.

Developed on the next-gen version of the id Tech engine, known for many id Software projects, which has seen significant improvements since DOOM Eternal. The game offers photorealistic graphics with high-resolution textures. Dynamic lighting and shadows support realistic day-night cycles and glowing effects from fire, lamps, and other sources. Ray tracing is implemented for realistic lighting, reflections, and refractions. An enhanced particle system handles dust, smoke, sparks, and environmental destruction. Even the animation, though based on procedural generation, ensures smooth character movements.

In our opinion, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is one of the best games of the year. We completed it all the way through and shared our thoughts in the review.

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The first-person shooter with survival elements and RPG mechanics Heart of Chornobyl invites players to revisit the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone a few years after the events of Call of Pripyat. Players will explore a dangerous and atmospheric open world populated by mutants, anomalies, and hostile factions. The game features a nonlinear story, a rich crafting system, survival simulation, and intense firefights, creating a mix of adrenaline and immersive tension.

The game had a long development journey. Initially, GSC began development on Unreal Engine 4, but in 2021, it unexpectedly announced a shift to Unreal Engine 5. However, the game does not fully utilize all the capabilities of this engine, particularly complex systems like Niagara and Chaos. The focus was placed on lighting, the interplay of light and shadow, the Nanite geometry system, ray tracing and reflections, as well as surface wetness and volumetric water effects.

As a result, GSC was able to create stunning graphics that you can look at endlessly—but this is one of the two games this year with extremely high system requirements.

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At the top of our list is the open-world action-adventure game Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2. Based on myths and folklore, the game explores the psychological pain of the main character, Senua. The player is immersed in a dark world filled with mythical creatures and overcomes challenging obstacles such as combat and puzzle solving. The game focuses on the character's personal experiences and transformation, combining a deep story with impressive visual effects and photorealistic graphics, made possible by the use of Unreal Engine 5.

And this is one of the few games whose creators were able to use all, or almost all, of the advanced technologies that come with this engine. The Nanite system renders geometry with billions of polygons without loss of performance, which provides incredible detail of objects and textures. Lumen is responsible for dynamic global illumination, improved lighting and shadows.

The integration of the Metahuman system gave the game photorealistic characters with high detail, textures, and animation, which significantly increased the realism of the graphics. And, of course, the use of ray tracing to create improved lighting, reflections, and shadows, depending on the time of day. To see all these technologies, you will have to pay with the highest system requirements that exist at the time of writing.

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In early 2025, the 5000 series of NVIDIA graphics cards and the 9000 series from AMD will go on sale. We seem to be approaching a point where "ultra-high requirements" on PC will become a rarity. Or is this just a lull before a new technological leap? What do you think, will the industry be able to handle it? We look forward to your opinion in the comments!