And the time has come. Believe it or not, there were a lot of optimized PC games in 2024. And yes, some of them used Unreal Engine 5. Crazy, right? How can a UE5 game be on this list? Blasphemy I tell you.
Joking aside, this has been a great year. Yes, there were some disappointments (be sure to read our Worst Optimized PC Games of 2024 list) but as you will see, there were also games that ran great on the PC.
But what do we consider an optimized PC game? Well, it’s quite simple. A well-optimized PC game is one that can scale well on multiple CPU cores, that is not plagued by ‘console-ish’ side effects (like really low FOV, controller-only on-screen indicators, awful K&M controls and mouse acceleration/smoothing issues). Moreover, it should justify its high GPU requirements, and be able to scale down on older GPUs. We also take into account the stuttering issues that affected numerous PC games in 2024.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at our Top 10 list.
10) Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is powered by the Dragon Engine and runs ridiculously well on PC. The only reason it’s not higher on the list is because its visuals are not up to what the other titles can offer. Nevertheless, this is a game that will run smoothly on a wide range of PC systems.
9) Empire of the Ants
Empire of the Ants is a third-person real-time strategy game using Unreal Engine 5. This is a perfect example of a game from a small studio that can punch above its weight. Thanks to UE5, Tower Five has managed to create a game that looks incredible. Not only that, but it does not suffer from any stutters. It can also scale well on older GPUs. This right here proves that UE5 is not the culprit for all the issues that some other UE5 games have.
8) Still Wakes the Deep
Here’s another UE5 game that performs and looks incredibly well on PC. Still Wakes the Deep is a horror game that passed under a lot of gamers’ radar. This is a story-driven horror game, inspired by The Thing (and some other horror movies). As with Empire of the Ants, it punches above its weight. Visually, it can compete with games by other bigger triple-A studios. It can also scale well on older GPUs using its graphics presets. So, if you are a fan of horror games, you should definitely check it out.
7) Tekken 8
Tekken 8 was easily the most advanced and graphically impressive fighting game of 2024. And although it uses Unreal Engine 5, it does not take advantage of Lumen or Nanite. Despite that, it looks stunning. Yes yes, it was slightly downgraded from its initial reveal trailer. However, its character models are still among the best I’ve seen. Its stages are great, the particle effects are stunning, and everything on screen looks great. Not only that but there are some cool, physics-based scripted sequences. And if the game retained that next-gen “wow” factor of its initial trailer, it would have been even higher on the list.
6) Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2
Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 was a game that pleasantly surprised me when it came out. Powered by the Swarm Engine, it pushed a lot of enemies on screen. And that was its biggest feature. At launch, its textures did not look that great but Saber has released an HD Texture Pack to address this. It looks and runs great, so kudos to the devs for creating a game that runs this well with all those enemies on screen.
5) Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
Hellblade 2 is visually a true next-gen experience. Thanks to Lumen, its lighting is consistent at any given time and thanks to Nanite, there aren’t any noticeable pop-ins. These next-gen visuals justify their GPU requirements. Moreover, the game can scale on older GPUs thanks to its graphics presets. This is a true showcase of what next-gen games can look like on Unreal Engine 5. And, if it didn’t have some traversal stutters, it would have been higher on the list.
4) Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
Another year, another COD. Contrary to last year’s offering, though, this time we got a proper single-player campaign. And, as I’ve said, the SP of Black Ops 6 is a mixed bag. While its character models and lighting have been improved, its environments can sometimes feel really old-gen-ish and empty. The Call of Duty games have been graphical powerhouses and, to some extent, this feels like a step down. It’s not looking bad. However, it’s a shame it’s not THE graphical showcase like it used to be. But hey. At least it still runs silky smooth.
3) God of War: Ragnarok
God of War: Ragnarok is by far the most optimized PS4/PS5 game we’ve seen on PC. Although it’s not as visually impressive as Horizon: Forbidden West, it runs way better than it, and it does not suffer from any of its optimization issues. All of the 3D character models look amazing, and the environments look great. Object pop-ins are also kept to a minimum. The game would benefit from some RT Reflections or Shadows. However, it at least runs great.
2) Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
With Path Tracing, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is the best-looking PC game of 2024. However, with PT, the game can only run well on high-end GPUs. It cannot scale well on older GPUs. So, for this list, we’re judging its non-PT version. The good news here is that even without Path Tracing, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle can look great on PC. It also runs incredibly well on numerous PC systems. However, there are a few annoying visual issues without PT. Without PT, you’ll get major shadow pop-ins. Plus, the draw distance is also a bit low and you’ll get major pop-ins in Shanghai. Nevertheless, it’s one of the most optimized PC games of 2024.
1) Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Dragon Age: The Veilguard was one of the most optimized PC games of 2024. This new DA game looked and ran incredibly well on PC. It did not suffer from any stutters, it could scale on older GPUs, and it looked amazing. BioWare has also used the hair strands system that EA first introduced in the FIFA series, making a lot of characters look glorious. This is a showcase for the Frostbite Engine, so kudos to the devs for offering such a polished product.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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I disagree with only one Indiana Jones and the Great Circle path tracing with frame generation 1080p on rtx 4070 and still slow and worse with frame generation cyberpunk path tracing max 1440p perfect.
4070 is a midrange GPU, offcourse it cannot run path tracing with good FPS
Sure it can. You can turn down other graphics settings while using path tracing. And there's dlss. It's definitely possible to get good frame rates. I have a 4070. I played this game with full path tracing on and the other graphics on the high preset in 1440p.
the fact a 550-600 plus graphics cards is now "mid" is crazy to me.
Just wait until the prices for the 5000 series are released.
You have to see AI "influencers" and have a nice laugh at them. they call every card below 16GB vram "low end".
at this rate in a few years they wont be wrong.
These lists are kinda garbage
Space Marine 2 and DA4 were the first 2 games over the last 5 years that ran like crap because of my older CPU.
Optimized doesnt mean "Runs well only the latest hardware"
Any game should run well on the latest hardware.
Stop using i7 4790k lol
was actually an i7700k, over clocked. But yeah, still was old.
Hadnt had any issues running games smoothly with it until DA4 and SM2.
i7 7700K is an i3 12100 level of performance nowadays. You can't expect to run games on that forever.
yeah i agree this is what "optimized" means now.
3 games on this list that run unexpectedly slow on AMD GPUs vs their equivalent tier Nvidia GPU (God of War, Space Marine 2 and Dragon Age), but they're on the most optimized list and the AMD part is not acknowledged.
Right.
Since you are dual-booting Linux, have you tried anyone of those games on there, too?
Also, which distro are you currently running?
Note that in order to get a decent Linux gaming experience out-of-the-box, I would recommend that you try out Bazzite if you haven't already, because they are good at mimicking the SteamOS experience on your PC.
Still, don't expect perfection just yet, because there is alot of work that needs to be done before I would consider gaming on Linux to be ready for prime-time…
I haven’t tried much gaming yet on Fedora since getting the 7900 XTX. It’s on a ToDo List.
I would highly recommend that you switch from Fedora to Bazzite, which is actually based on Fedora but optimized for a nice gaming experience by default.
Also, don't be confused by the term "cloud native" that Bazzite uses to describe itself on its homepage:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d04123b38aab293f2eaf9f27626cfc81552be86ceecaa2429f5935035d9be62a.png
IMHO, it's a poor choice of words because it gives the impression as though Bazzite somehow needs to connect to the "cloud" in order to function.
What they actually mean is that Bazzite uses the same underlying tech which all the major hyperscalers (think Google, Meta and even Microsoft's Azure) are using to power their Linux-based cloud infrastructure.
It's a really neat system which is really hard to break, and even if you manage to break it somehow, you can just rollback to a working snapshot of the OS easily.
Please feel free to give it a try, since Bazzite will give you a noticeably better gaming experience than a stock Fedora setup.
Cheers!
Linux gaming system is called fedora?
the jokes write themselves
The fact you are uninformed about a mainstream Linux distro is a you problem really.
TrashMD has no reason to exist realistically speaking. They're selling an inferior product with 0 upsides at only a slightly lower price.
lol if there was no AMD im sure Nvidia would still be selling 4gb gpus named rtx 4050 with a price tag of $500
based competition hating r&tard
plus i think it should be taken into consideration what "optimized" means in this instance
if a game comes out and is an incomplete mess requiring multiple patches to perform then it should not be considered optimized even if achieves a playable state eventually down the road
otherwise, most games will meet (hopefully) a baseline minimum performance threshold at some point in their lives in the future, so what is the point to argument for optimization?
the "optimized game" title should be given to games that are made with old school philosophy: finished games, pushed out of the door, ready to go, performant
i don't think space marine 2 and gow should be on this list because of that
That's one of many downsides of this game.
I think the biggest thing we learned from Indiana Jones is if you use RTGI only that Ray Tracing can be much more performant than the compromise of using RTGI and SSGI or other traditional lighting method at the same time. I know a lot of people griped about it but 2025 should be the year where Ray Tracing GPUs should become the standard and then we'll see Ray Tracing truly coming into it's own. My only gripe is they should have also included RT shadows because the extra hit to performance isn't all that much especially if they are RT only shadows with no compromises made to support normal shadows
i think the biggest thing we learned from it is never advertise your game as "made for a modern audience" because no one will buy it.
Gayest game has won the no. 1 spot. Good job John!
Fr, if only EA put that much love to PC version of Dead Space Remake. It's still a stuttery mess to this day. No workaround actually fixes the constant traversal stutters
but transgender toilets amirite 😂
Sorry, but Dragon Age is NOT optimized.
Sure it is. Consistent FPS (faggotry-per-second)
Dude, I didn't see that coming. If was drinking at the time, I'd have spat everything out. Way underrated comment. This needs more likes. The creativity is off the charts.
No monitor can handle the fps of Veilguard.
LOL nice one
Oh that was a good one xD
Veilgarbage as n 1? Fvck off John.
It's about optimization, not overall quality.
Learn the difference.
Fvck off BT!
Nah. I’ll be fvcking here!
Cheers!
I wonder at the review scores that rate games so highly using the reasoning that there are performance issues but that shouldn't weigh too heavily because we know the game will be patched and more polished on down the road. Two things wrong with that reasoning. One is that most will be playing the game right at release and will probably have moved on to something else by the time it is better running. Two is sometimes a developer isn't competent to patch and polish their messes. I'm looking at you Bethesda. If not for a great modding community Bethesda games would stay needing fixes.
It's absurd to see a game get 80s all the way to mid 90s when it was released to early.
The only game on this list I played last year was: Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
And the worst writing.
Pretty strong list tbh. Honestly my hat is off to some of the developers, engineers and artists at bioware because I was really shocked for Dragon Age to look as good as it did, run as well it did and for it to scale across hardware really well. Infinite Wealth is probably my personal GOTY and while its not the best on steam deck it was really good on my PC. Even with Indiana Jones playing well with less than able RT cards It was also a lot better than I expected. If only there was more game to Hellblade 2 I think it'd be regarded higher as well.
God of War Ragnarok is a joke. The game had a myriad of issues at launch and runs a lot worse on comparable PC hardware. A 1060 for PS4 performance is just lol.
Senua's Saga stutters too.
Terrible list.
but we got the gay game number one
What a F*ckin shame, Dragon age could have been Goat'd. Imagine that optimization and quality on a DA1 remake, epic. Instead 2024 gives us a Modern Slop Fire.
"That performs and looks well… "
This isn't how English works, and it's a common ESL hyper-correction. Something does not look "well" unless you're talking about its health. Something looks good. Your sister is doing well. If your sister is well, then she is in good health.
The (game) performs well and looks good.
Also, pop-in is a collective plural. It isn't "pop-ins", it's pop-in. Just like it's rice, not "rices".
The 10 best optmized games with one decent enough worth of the money spent. Warhammer!
The rest are mostly hot garbage (some are huge piles os steaming horse shït).
Games will be good again when devs return to developing games, not social media disguised as games. And that's why the indie scene is getting more and more appeal lately.
Anyway, happy 2025, lads! Let's hope this year we get less geh stuff and more true gaming stuff!
Dragon age the veilguard
clicks on triple dots don't show articles from dso gaming
i had a lot of stutter in cod bo 6 zombies, maybe is because i not restarted the game when change settings? Who knows, i played in the free week and will never play again, dont like the new zombies formula and dont care enough about multiplayer.
that gunari looks horrendous
Putting Indiana Jones in here is ridiculous. John, you need to re-evaluate what you think "optimized" looks like. The game barely hits 80 fps with DLSS balanced (all RT OFF) at 4K on a 4080. Having a target fps of 60 by the official sys reqs is ridiculous. This is the same studio that made Wolfenstein the New Order, which ran smooth as butter.
God of War: Ragnarok absolutely mops the floor with Indiana Jones & TGC. Not a single dropped frame, near perfect frame pacing. It's flawless