PC gaming is the best. Of course it is. You know it, I know it, and everyone else reading this website knows it. But there are a few great and potentially great games out there that are exclusive to consoles, and that burns us up. Here are a few of the console-only titles we'd love to see come to our favourite platform. Most of them probably won't, ever, but dreaming never hurt anyone. Unless they were sleep-walking at the time and fell down a hole or something.
Bloodborne
A brilliant twist on the Dark Souls series, but sadly exclusive to PlayStation 4. Bloodborne was directed by Souls mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki and made some interesting changes to the formula, namely the removal of shields. This forces you to be much more aggressive, which gives it a very different rhythm to the cautious sword-and-shield combat of Dark Souls.
Yakuza
The Yakuza series is an idiosyncratic crime epic that features both incredibly violent combat, in which bits scenery can be used in a variety of monstrous ways, and genuine heart and soul. It's funny, melodramatic, and very weird. One minute you're battering someone with a bicycle, the next you're playing golf with a government official to save an orphanage. A big PC collection of every game so far is a wild dream, but one I'll never let go of.
Persona 5
The Persona series of JRPGs are some of the finest examples of the genre. Mixing tactical turn-based combat with a unique social link system that sees you forging relationships with people to boost your powers, it's brimming with cool ideas and systems. A fantastic-looking sequel, Persona 5, is coming to PlayStation soon, and my fingers are crossed so tightly for a PC version that there's no blood flow in my hands. Oh god they're dropping off.
Ratchet & Clank
There aren't enough quality 3D platformers on PC, and Ratchet & Clank would fill the gap nicely. Although it's actually more of an arcade shooter with platforming elements. A recent remake of the PS2 original for PS4 boasted some pretty amazing, colourful visuals and modernised controls. Now think of how nice it would all look at 4K on a beefy PC. This is one of Sony's biggest exclusive IPs, so I'm not holding my breath, but I'd love to see this series on PC.
The Last Guardian
The Last Guardian is the spiritual successor to Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, a pair of beautiful, haunting adventures designed by Fumito Ueda. It's massively unlikely it will ever come to PC, being a PS4 exclusive trapped in development hell, but let me dream. The formerly PS4-only Everybody's Gone to the Rapture eventually came to PC, so who knows.
Red Dead Redemption
People have been crying out for a PC version of Rockstar’s best game for years, and it’s a crime there isn’t one. This Wild West adventure tells a compelling tale of revenge in a gorgeous, varied open world. From sun-baked deserts to snowy mountains, crossing it on horseback is amazingly atmospheric. Here’s a video tribute I made with the Xbox version. Now imagine that running on a modern PC. Man.
Skate
While the Tony Hawk series was all about absurd stunts and 200-metre grinds, Skate was altogether more realistic. Thanks to an intuitive twin-stick trick system and precise physics, you could easily spend an hour experimenting in one tiny corner of its open world. The sequels never lived up to the promise of the original, and there hasn’t been a new one since 2010. Surely it’s time for a reboot?
Siren: Blood Curse
Created by Keiichiro Toyama, writer/director of the original Silent Hill, Siren: Blood Curse is one of the darkest, creepiest horror games I’ve ever played. Set in rural Japan, it’s a tough survival horror with a neat ‘sight jack’ feature that lets you look through the black, bloodied eyes of enemies. PC is home to some of the best horror and survival games around, and I think Blood Curse would fit right in.
The Last of Us
Yeah, it’ll never happen, but I can dream. The Last of Us is Naughty Dog’s follow-up to their Indiana Jones-aping Uncharted series, and it couldn’t be more different. With probably the most natural virtual acting in games, it marries a tense, heartbreaking, and emotional post-apocalyptic story with brutal third-person survival horror. Gustavo Santaolalla’s haunting score is a personal highlight.
SSX
This over-the-top arcade snowboard racer is one of the best sports series EA has ever made. But apart from a so-so reboot in 2012, it has sadly faded into obscurity. Its glory days were in the early 2000s when the amazing SSX Tricky and SSX 3 were released on PlayStation 2 and GameCube. It’s time for the SSX series to make a return, and I’d love to see it make its way to PC for the first time.
Metroid Prime
Now we’re really dancing in dream land. There’s no way Nintendo would ever let one of their most iconic characters, Samus Aran, roll her way onto PC. But that doesn’t mean I still wouldn’t love to see this slick first-person reimagining of the Metroid series appear on PC. In the ‘90s I’d have laughed in your face if you told me one day Sonic would appear on a Nintendo console, so who knows...
Metal Gear Solid HD Collection
Red Dead aside, this is top of my list. Released for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita, this collection contains HD versions of MGS2: Sons of Liberty, MGS3: Snake Eater, and MGS: Peace Walker. All the games are great, but I’d be happy if Snake Eater, Hideo Kojima’s best game, was released on its own. With The Phantom Pain on the way, it seems like a good time to bring this to PC.
Monster Hunter
I can’t express the weird magic of Monster Hunter better than friend of PC Gamer Joe Skrebels in the first paragraph of this GamesRadar review. This is another Capcom RPG, along with Dragon’s Dogma, that would be very welcome on PC. Teaming up with a group of friends, hunting huge monsters, and making fancy hats out of their skins and horns is about as fun as co-op multiplayer gets.
WipEout
This stylish anti-gravity racing series has been a PlayStation favourite since the 1990s. Fans of dreadful 1995 techno-thriller Hackers will Jonny Lee Miller playing a version of it. There hasn’t been a new WipEout since 2012, but I’d love to see a PC version of 2008’s WipEout HD, which featured the brilliant, blistering Zone Mode. I don’t see Sony parting with this particular brand, sadly.
