Articles Black Myth: Wukong

The most demanding PC games are not the same thing as poorly optimized games. They are projects that put high-end hardware under real pressure for the sake of actual technology and visuals. The distinction matters, and this list follows it strictly. A demanding game pushes a top-tier graphics card and CPU because it is rendering expensive tech: path tracing and full ray tracing, Nanite and Lumen in Unreal Engine 5, dense world simulation, and the streaming of vast open spaces without loading screens. The drop in frame rate is compensated by a clear visual payoff: on a flagship system, these projects become showcases for what a PC can do and rank among the best-looking games of today. Crysis once set the bar, and the question “but can it run it?” became a meme for years. Today, there are far more games like that: they demand powerful hardware, but at least they justify it with their visuals.

22 most beautiful games with ray tracing share one thing: an RT graphics card finally shows what it can really do, because lighting, reflections, and shadows are calculated with physical accuracy instead of being faked through rasterization. We've rounded up 22 of the best — from titles where RT can't be switched off at all, to flagships with full path tracing, to classics that ray tracing transformed beyond recognition. When the technology first showed up in 2018, plenty of people wrote it off as a marketing gimmick — dozens of games on this list prove they were wrong.

The soulslike genre owes its existence to Demon's Souls, released by FromSoftware in 2009. A PlayStation exclusive, it first earned a cult following among hardcore players in its homeland of Japan. From its core mechanics, FromSoftware's lead designer Hidetaka Miyazaki built a new game — Dark Souls — which launched a series that became iconic the world over. Soon the "soulslikes" started arriving: games that copy the Dark Souls formula of success. An entire genre was born, built on the hallmarks of Dark Souls — punishing difficulty, "bonfires" (checkpoints for saving and leveling up), enemies that respawn on a location once you die, collecting experience ("souls"), stamina management in combat, fragmentary storytelling, and — most importantly — gruelling boss fights that force you to learn every move set.

The first half of 2026 has already dropped a stack of strong releases, and with GTA 6 and Marvel's Wolverine still to come, there's plenty to keep you busy in the meantime. This is our running list of the best games to play right now across PC, PS5, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch 2 — some brand-new, others a few years old but still at the top of their genre thanks to regular updates. We've split everything by genre, so jump to whatever you're in the mood for. One thing to set straight up front: this is a "what to play now" list, not a "came out this year" one. A few entries are older, but they keep pulling players back with new seasons, expansions and patches.

Role-playing games (RPGs) are one of the most popular genres in the industry. This list brings together the best RPGs in history — from the classics of the 90s (Fallout, Baldur's Gate 2, Planescape: Torment) to major new releases: the GOTY hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Obsidian's Avowed, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, the Chinese hit Black Myth: Wukong, and the sequel The Outer Worlds 2. We divided all role-playing games into eight themed categories: open-world RPGs, isometric CRPGs, story-driven single-player RPGs, Soulslikes, JRPGs, Diablo-likes, genre classics, and indie projects — so you can quickly find exactly the type of RPG you are looking for right now.

Some particularly successful virtual entertainment titles leave a lasting impression not only on gamers but also on developers. When an excellent game pushes an entire genre forward, it sometimes sets trends for the industry, inspires studios, and becomes a model for imitation. This article will focus on such projects — those that have influenced many modern games.

During one of the first PlayStation 5 presentations, we got our first look at Unreal Engine 5: Epic Games showcased an impressive demo with unprecedented photorealism running on PS5. Later, the technical demo The Matrix Awakens was released, further proving that current-generation consoles can indeed deliver hyper-realistic graphics. The future of Unreal Engine 5 seemed promising. However, when games on the engine finally started coming out, many gamers' enthusiasm quickly faded. Here's why some players are unhappy with Unreal 5.

Over the past few years, the graphics in games have hardly changed. We have become accustomed to high detail, high-quality textures, and realistic faces of characters. Perhaps the situation will change after the release of new video cards, but in 2024, the graphics remained at about the same level as before.

That is why, when compiling this article, we primarily paid attention not to the number of pixels in the hero's boot, but to the artistic component. Combined with advanced technologies, it is able to impress even today.

On November 7, 2024, the Pro version of PlayStation 5 was released. At the announcement stage, this device raised a lot of questions. However, in the end, even the high price did not stop users from buying it. In this article, we will figure out how the PS5 Pro differs from the standard version of the console, and whether it is worth spending almost one hundred thousand rubles on it.

Last year was full of loud releases, take for example Starfield or Baldur's Gate 3. But developers are not resting on their laurels and will soon delight us with new projects that definitely deserve your attention. Some are continuations of familiar and beloved universes, while others are something entirely new but no less interesting. We've compiled a list of the most anticipated games of the new year 2024 for PS4 and PS5, so you won't have to wonder what to play.