Best Free City Building Games in 2024, Do you want to play the best city building games for Windows PC? In this comprehensive article, you will learn 8 most popular city building games to play in 2024. Read on to the entire article for complete information.
In the course of playing one of the top city-building games, you will find yourself wasting many hours growing your city, perfecting your infrastructure, and concentrating on your trade. You may construct magnificent cities and give them your own personal touch. Whether you want to construct a modest mountain village, a future tech center, or an ancient empire, you will find what you are searching for in the list that is provided here. Although city-building games often have a high learning curve and a large amount of material, novice players may enjoy themselves by playing any of the games on our list from the beginning.
Top 8 Best Free City Building Games For PC in 2024
Currently, the following are the best city building games that are available for play on computers:
1. Cities: Skylines
For the complete and utter delight of any person’s inner-city planner, this immediate classic captured the essence of SimCity series and boosted it up to a higher level. Create the most popular seaside clubbing zone in the area by devoting a significant amount of time to refining your highway swaps or by using specialized zoning rules.
Players have godlike influence over every area of life, from budgets to bus timetables, so it is easy to spend hours geeking out in the weeds as your city expands. Players have the ability to regulate every aspect of existence. Cities: Skylines – An absolute need for everyone who is passionate about the genre. There are over ten expansion packs available for Skylines, ranging from Parklife to Mass Transit, allowing players to keep things exciting. Overall, it is one of the best city building games that you can play on your PC.
There is a possibility that this city building game is the ideal choice for you if you are someone who enjoys dark role-playing narratives. Frostpunk is a work of historical fiction that takes place in the late 1800s, after the cataclysmic explosions carried out by two stratovolcanoes, Mount Tambora and Krakatoa, had induced a global volcanic winter.
Constructing a camp for refugees and maintaining civilization is your task as the commander of an institution located in the coal-rich northern region of the country. The repercussions of imposing child labor and 24-hour work shifts while also keeping a restless populace at bay are something that you will have to think about in Frostpunk, in contrast to other top-rated city-building games that may have you focusing on things like commercial and residential taxation.
Create a time machine since this cool city building game is perfect for those who are interested in history as well as those who create cities. This seventh entry in the Anno series, titled Anno 1800, takes place during the time period known as the Industrial Revolution, which, for those of you who skipped history class, corresponds to the 19th century.
While you are concentrating on the strategy of your craftsmen and inhabitants, who are obsessed with production and consumption, you will need to manage the delicate supply-demand balance that exists between your Old World city and a parallel New World metropolis and manage it. You will be able to minimize the spread of industrialized industries in your city while enjoying the whimsical architecture of the period. However, the drawback of this great city building game is that the PC users are the only ones who can access it.
You will have another opportunity to manage, influence, and construct your very own banana republic this time around since El Presidente has returned to Tropico 6. The Tropico games are city builders, and if you haven’t played one before, you should know that they let you engage in all of the devious and corrupt activities that you are not meant to do when you are constructing a city. As the undisputed monarch of your island, it is your responsibility to deliver brilliant speeches in order to maintain the happiness of your people while simultaneously maximizing the value of the land and the resources available to you.
Tropico 6 is a game that is a lot of fun to play, not only because it is so insane, but also because it is a city builder that is very enjoyable. DLC, on the other hand, makes it even more enjoyable.
Playing Tropico 6 is such a delightful experience that it is difficult to overstate how much fun it is. Give Tropico 6 a try if you find that the icy industry of Anno 1800 and the dismal survival of Frostpunk are simply too much for you to handle. In short, it is one of the best games for city building available on this list.
The SimCity series has indeed been around for over twenty years, but no list of good city building games would be complete without including it, even if it were just in an honorary capacity. Despite being the finest game in the series, SimCity 4 was the pinnacle of the genre at the time it was released. It also served as a model for all subsequent games in the series.
This realistic builder, much like its spiritual sequel Cities: Skylines, has a strong emphasis on city planning and challenges players to strike a balance between the many requirements of a developing city and the resources that are available. On the other hand, this best city making game was exceptional for two distinct reasons: Players were able to import their very own Sims into their city, and it was the first game in the genre to allow for 3D rendering.
The next best free city building game that you can play is RimWorld. This is basically a colony simulator; a place where almost anything may take place. You take the helm of a new colony that is being established on a rim world, which is a planet that is situated on the periphery of known space.
RimWorld is one of the greatest simulation games now available on the market, and it is also a game that creates gaming experiences that are both distinctive and unforgettable.
Every single one of your colonists comes with a set of characteristics that are rolled at random and determine how they behave. You can have a genius who is fast to learn but is susceptible to having a mental breakdown, or you might have someone with bloodlust who gets a mood boost from murdering strangers and manufacturing garments out of their flesh. That’s right. All of the characteristics are tongue-in-cheek, regardless of how serious they may get (for instance, nudists receive a mood boost regardless of whether or not they are nude).
The mix of characteristics that are present throughout your colony provides you with an experience that is completely one of a kind each time you open up the game. The character attributes of your colonists will determine how they interact with one another, and this interaction will constitute a significant portion of the foundation for the gameplay. In addition to that, an artificial intelligence (AI) narrator will guide you through your adventure, supplying you with random occurrences depending on the level of difficulty you choose and the settings you choose for the game.
RimWorld is a story generator. It’s designed to co-author tragic, twisted, and triumphant stories about imprisoned pirates, desperate colonists, starvation and survival. It works by controlling the “random” events that the world throws at you. Every thunderstorm, pirate raid, and traveling salesman is a card dealt into your story by the AI Storyteller. There are several storytellers to choose from. Randy Random does crazy stuff, Cassandra Classic goes for rising tension, and Phoebe Chillax likes to relax.
Your colonists are not professional settlers – they’re crash-landed survivors from a passenger liner destroyed in orbit. You can end up with a nobleman, an accountant, and a housewife. You’ll acquire more colonists by capturing them in combat and turning them to your side, buying them from slave traders, or taking in refugees. So your colony will always be a motley crew.
If you are searching for a straightforward city survival game, Banished is the game for you. It does not include a lot of the backstory, bells, or whistles that you will find in more elaborate games. This great city building game considers its residents less as denizens and more as a means to a goal despite the fact that it is an exercise in working (and presumably succeeding) inside the architecture of a planned economy.
In your role as the leader of a community of exiled people, it is your responsibility to delegate responsibilities to the inhabitants, such as fishing and construction, while maintaining a balance between the expansion of the town and the distribution of its resources. It is possible for populations to increase due to births and arrivals, but it is also possible for populations to decrease due to the aging of the population, which is a great variation of the standard paradigm. In sum, it is one of the best city building games in 2024 that you can consider.
In this city-building strategy game, you control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland.
The townspeople of Banished are your primary resource. They are born, grow older, work, have children of their own, and eventually die. Keeping them healthy, happy, and well-fed are essential to making your town grow. Building new homes is not enough—there must be enough people to move in and have families of their own.
Banished has no skill trees. Any structure can be built at any time, provided that your people have collected the resources to do so. There is no money. Instead, your hard-earned resources can be bartered away with the arrival of trade vessels. These merchants are the key to adding livestock and annual crops to the townspeople’s diet; however, their lengthy trade route comes with the risk of bringing illnesses from abroad.
There are twenty different occupations that the people in the city can perform from farming, hunting, and blacksmithing, to mining, teaching, and healing. No single strategy will succeed for every town. Some resources may be more scarce from one map to the next. The player can choose to replant forests, mine for iron, and quarry for rock, but all these choices require setting aside space into which you cannot expand.
The success or failure of a town depends on the appropriate management of risks and resources.
The next name on this list of the best free city-building games in 2024 is Aven Colony. This is a game that allows you to set up your very own city right from scratch. The game offers a variety of gameplay options for your ease. From terrestrial to extraterrestrial objects, buildings, vehicles, and more, you will find that this game is quite different than the ones offered before.
Discover Aven Prime – an alien planet of deserts, tundras, and jungles light years from earth. Aven Colony puts you in charge of humanity’s first extrasolar settlement, where you build and expand your small colonies into massive, sprawling cities while dealing with the challenges faced when settling on a new world.
Build your colony’s infrastructure, look after the well-being of your citizens, manage your resources, and guide your colony to prosperity against the backdrop of the harsh and often dangerous realities of the exotic world of Aven Prime.
KEY FEATURES:
COLONIZE AN ALIEN WORLD: Build a new home for humanity on a world with a low-oxygen atmosphere, extreme electrical storms, shard storms, dust devils, deadly toxic gas eruptions from geothermal vents, and days so long they have their own seasons. Explore a variety of biomes, from the lush wetlands environment to the much less habitable desert and arctic.
Top Rated City Building Games in 2024: Closing Words
So, these were the 7 best city building games in 2024 that you can play on your Windows PC. Hopefully, our detailed list helps you make a better choice. If you have any questions or better recommendations, please feel free to drop us a line in the comments section below.
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9 best processors for PC gaming 2024, It’s tough to find the right gaming CPU for your next PC. We’ve benchmarked dozens of processors to find the best CPU for gaming, and there’s a clear winner right now: AMD’s Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Although the latest chip from Team Red claims the crown, there are still several other great options on the market.
Whatever your needs and budgets, though, we have options from AMD and Intel that will be great performers. We’re focused on gaming here, but if you want a processor that can game and get work done, make sure to check out our list of the best processors.
Why you should buy this: It’s the fastest gaming processor you can buy, by far.
Who’s it for: Gamers who want top-tier performance and don’t need productivity power.
Why we picked the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D:
AMD is back on top of the gaming charts, but it isn’t with the flagship Ryzen 9 7950X3D. It’s with the midrange Ryzen 7 7800X3D. Through our testing, we found that the Ryzen 7 is sometimes even faster than AMD’s flagship and blows away the competition from Intel.
As we saw in the last generation, the reason why is 3D V-Cache. The Ryzen 7 7800X3D has the unique advantage of leveraging AMD’s cache tech with a single core complex (CCX), though. This, according to AMD, offers faster cache-to-cache transfers and speeds up gaming performance.
That’s what we saw in our testing. Overall, our testing revealed that it’s around 13% faster than Intel’s Core i9-13900K and a massive 20% faster than last-gen’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D. By a decent margin, it’s the fastest gaming CPU you can buy right now.
There are some trade-offs, though. Productivity performance, although solid, is still behind the flagship options from both AMD and Intel. In addition, single-core speed suffers due to the lower boost clock speed of the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. For gamers, though, those issues are easy to look past.
Why you should buy this: It’s the best value on a gaming CPU available today.
Who’s it for: Gamers who want near-flagship gaming performance without paying the high price.
Why we picked the Intel Core i5-13600K:
You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a processor for gaming, and Intel’s Core i5-13600K is proof of that. It’s the best Intel CPU you can buy right now, sporting 14 cores (6P + 8E) and 20 threads, with a boost clock that hits as high as 5.1GHz.
It’s not the fastest Intel CPU, or even quite the fastest for gaming. However, it’s so much more affordable than the 13700K and 13900K, and yet offers very comparable gaming performance — especially at resolutions above 1080p — that it delivers much more value for the money. It dominates the AMD competition, too. It is far faster for gaming than the Ryzen 5 7600X and goes toe-to-toe with the more-expensive 7700X — even exceeding it if you overclock it.
While you’ll get your best performance with the 13600K using DDR5 memory, you don’t have to. Running it on a more affordable motherboard with DDR4 memory can make upgrading to the 13600K much cheaper than the alternatives, leaving you plenty of room for upgrading your CPU and memory in the future. However, you won’t be able to move up to 14th-gen chips in the future, as Intel is moving to a new socket design with the next generation.
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
The best last-gen AMD processor for gaming
Why you should buy this: It’s competitive with some of the latest CPUs and it’s an easy upgrade.
Who’s it for: Anyone with an AM4 system who wants the best performance possible without a system overhaul.
Why we picked the Intel Ryzen 7 5800X3D:
AMD ended its Ryzen 5000 generation with a bang. The Ryzen 7 5800X3D was so good for gaming when it was released that it’s still competitive with the latest Intel and AMD CPUs, outclassing chips that cost twice as much in many cases. The fact that you can install it in motherboards that cost less than $100 with DDR4 memory makes the 5800X3D an amazing value and arguably the best bang-for-the-buck gaming CPU that AMD offers, even with its newer — and faster — Ryzen 7000 CPUs available.
It comes with the same eight Zen 3 cores as the Ryzen 7 5800X, but with an additional 64MB of L3 cache stacked on top of the chip. That extra cache is put to good use in games. Across a suite of seven titles, we found it was 6.4% faster than the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X.
It doesn’t beat out the top 7900X and 7950X in gaming, and it loses out heavily in multithreaded workloads and productivity applications, but if you’re just looking for gaming, and especially if you already have a compatible AM4 system, the 5800X3D is the best AMD CPU for gaming.
AMD Ryzen 5 7600
Best budget AMD processor for gaming
Why you should buy this: It’s an affordable new-generation gaming CPU with heaps of upgrade potential.
Who’s it for: Gamers who want to have a clear upgrade path for the future.
Why we picked the Ryzen 5 7600:
AMD’s Ryzen 5 7600 is the baby of the new generation, lacking the high core counts of its bigger siblings and the clock speed of its X-counterparts, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a great CPU. In fact, it punches well above its weight, offering comparable performance to the 7600X at its default settings – and it’s almost identical once you enable precision boost overdrive, despite running at a lower power draw.
AMD hasn’t done an affordable, overclockable CPU like this for a few generations, but it’s returned to its roots with a great option for anyone looking to build a new AM5 system without paying sky-high prices. Motherboards and DDR5 memory still aren’t cheap, but this platform will be supported for years to come, so you shouldn’t need to upgrade anything for several generations of processors.
There are more affordable options in the older Ryzen 5000 generation of processors, but they perform significantly worse than the latest AM4 designs, and you are locking yourself into a dead-end platform with no upgrade potential.
Why you should buy this: It’s the fastest gaming CPU money can buy.
Who’s it for: Gamers with deep pockets who want the absolute best gaming and productivity performance possible.
Why we picked the Intel Core i9-13900K:
You don’t need more than the Core i5-13600K for gaming, but the Core i9-13900K is a true enthusiast-class processor. It comes with 24 cores (8 performance and 16 efficient) and it can hit a staggering 5.8GHz. In a straight shootout with any other CPU, it’s the fastest, so if you need flagship performance, there isn’t any other chip worth considering. There are some caveats, however.
For starters, most other top CPUs are almost as good, especially in games where GPU power is more important. You also need a very powerful cooler, as even 360mm all-in-ones have proved unable to keep this chip cool enough to prevent thermal throttling. That’s because it uses a lot of power — over 300 watts in some cases. You’ll need to make sure your power supply is up to the task.
If you stream and game or want to edit your gaming footage, this is easily the best CPU for the job, as it is not only the fastest at gaming, but often beats even AMD’s best in video-editing performance, too.
Wondering why we didn’t pick the 14900K? Because it’s basically the same CPU. The performance difference is almost non-existent, and it’s more expensive, making the 13900K by far the better choice.
Intel Core i3-12100F
The best $100 gaming CPU
Why you should buy this: It’s the fastest CPU at around $100.
Who’s it for: Anyone building a gaming PC on a tight budget.
Why we picked the Intel Core i3-12100F:
The Core i3-12100F is an unassuming quad-core processor, but it’s hard to expect more for around $100. It’s not as powerful as the Ryzen 5 and Core i5 options, but it’s not far behind — especially considering how much less it costs.
Unlike Intel’s other 12th-generation offerings, it ditches the efficient cores for four performance cores. Overall, it’s about 10% slower than the Core i5-12600K, but it depends on the game. In some titles, it’s just as fast.
Many games don’t need more than four cores, especially when those cores can hit 4.3GHz. Because of that, many older games run great on the Core i3-12100F. Newer titles, like Horizon Zero Dawn and Red Dead Redemption 2, may not have as high of performance, however.
AMD Ryzen 5 8600G
The best processor for gaming with integrated graphics
Why you should buy this: It has some of the most powerful onboard graphics of any CPU available.
Who’s it for: Anyone building a gaming PC now, but who plans to buy a GPU later.
Why we picked the Ryzen 5 8600G:
The Ryzen 5 8600G is for the gamer who doesn’t need one of the best graphics cards. It includes Radeon graphics on the chip itself, which is powerful enough for playing even AAA games at 1080p at lighter settings, or running esports games at high frame rates for competitive play.
It’s based on the Zen 4 CPU architecture, so it has six powerful cores and a high clock speed, while the onboard graphics are an enhanced version of the excellent RDNA 3 design found in AMD’s RX 7000 series of graphics cards. While the 8700G is more powerful, it’s not by a huge leap, and the price is almost 50% higher, making it harder to recommend.
What’s great about the Ryzen 5 8600G is that you can still use a discrete graphics card. Although we recommend one of the processors above if you already have a graphics card, the Ryzen 5 8600G is a great stopgap product that allows you to game while you save up. It also has a great upgrade path ahead of it, since you’ll be able to drop in a future AM5 CPU without the need to upgrade your motherboard too.
Ryzen 9 7950X
The best CPU for gaming and streaming
Why you should buy this: It’s the processor with the most performance cores.
Who’s it for: Anyone who wants a high-powered machine for gaming and streaming.
Why we picked the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X:
AMD’s 7950X goes back and forth with Intel’s top CPUs when it comes to gaming performance, and there’s a tussle when it comes to streaming performance, but for gaming and streaming, we lean towards AMD’s flagship CPU. This 16-core, 32-thread processor has the most high-speed performance cores of any modern CPU, making scheduling far easier whether you’re on Windows 10 or Windows 11, and that means you get more consistent performance across a wider range of applications.
The 7950X is also a monstrously powerful CPU in its own right, whether you’re gaming or streaming — or both. It offers heaps of cache and a near-6GHz clock speed. It is pricey, and you’ll need to factor in the cost of a high-end motherboard and DDR5, but if you want a powerful machine for gaming and streaming, there’s nothing quite like AMD’s 7950X. Recent price cuts have made it far more attainable, too.
Intel Core i5-13400
Best affordable gaming CPU
Why you should buy this: It has 12600K-level gaming performance for a cheaper price.
Who’s it for: Anyone who wants impressive multithreaded and gaming performance at an affordable price.
Why we picked the Intel Core i5-13400
The Intel Core i5-13400 hasn’t received much fanfare, but it should. It has 10 cores for around $250, which is incredible considering just three generations ago, you had to buy the top Core i9 CPU to get such multi-threaded capabilities. It doesn’t hit the high clock speeds of the other 13th-gen CPUs, but it still manages 4.6GHz across multiple cores at once, making it great for gaming at any resolution.
This CPU offers the kind of gaming performance you’d typically see on a Core i5-12600K, a CPU with higher clock speeds and much higher demands on power and cooling. The Core i5-13400 is relatively pedestrian with its 65-watt thermal design power (TDP) — a rarity in Intel’s latest processors.
If you’re building an affordable gaming PC, or you want good gaming performance in a compact, low-power system, the Core i5-13400 is a great choice.
Although you don’t need a top-shelf processor for gaming, your CPU still plays a significant role in how well your games run. Picking the right gaming CPU for you is an important choice to make.
Once you’ve decided on it and hit the buy button, check out our guide on how to install a CPU, so you’re prepared when it arrives.
20+ Must-Have Software For Windows10-11, If you are a computer-savvy person, know about the must-have software for Windows 10 you should use in 2024 to make the most out of your brand new PC and laptop.Microsoft’s beloved operating system – Windows 10 – comes with an array of most up-to-date features and functionality to give you a better and personalized computing experience. From work to gaming, we rely on a bunch of Windows 10 apps to cater to all our computer needs.
In spite of that, every now and then you may find yourself on the lookout for some additional apps for Windows 10 depending upon your requirements.
To solve this problem once and for all, you should start loading your system with all the essential and useful Windows 10 programs that would create a great impact on your work and play.
Keeping all this in mind, below we have mentioned some of the essential apps for Windows 10 that you need to make a note of ASAP. Move down the list and download the must have software for Windows 10, 11, or older version devices.
What Are the Must-Have Software For Windows 10, 11 In 2024?
Here we present you our curated list of must-have apps for Windows 10 and 11 that everyone should install on their PC right away. Let’s check out the best PC programs for Windows 10.
1. Win Riser- The Best PC Optimizer and Booster
Let us introduce you to Win Riser. It is a program you will find extremely useful to speed up your computer and optimize its performance. Win Riser is among the top most-used Windows PC software for its brilliant PC cleaning and optimization capabilities. It is well-known for its deep scan and removal of accumulated junk, invalid and faulty Registry remover, integrated driver updater, and the following delightful features.
•Deeply scans your PC for driver updates, junk files, or problems impacting its performance
•Creates a backup of existing drivers and allows their easy restoration whenever you want
•Creation of a system restore point, allowing you to restore your system if anything goes wrong
•Boasts an integrated tool to manage your device’s startup items
•You can customize the paths, apps, locations, etc., for scanning
•Allows you to ignore the registry items or drivers you do not wish to scan
•You can schedule the computer scans
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2. Driver Update Software
“A must have program for Windows 10 to update outdated drivers”
A driver or a device driver is a computer program (also known as cluster of files) that allows one or more hardware devices such as speaker, printer, graphic card, etc. to build connectivity and communicate with the computer’s operating system.
Without the correct drivers, the operating system would not be able to know what kind of a device is attached to the computer and how to operate or control its functions.
Therefore, it is extremely important to keep your Windows drivers up-to-date always for a smooth and healthy functioning of hardware components.
Using corrupt or out-of-date system drivers, you may face various compatibility or driver-related issues such as no sound, blue screen of death, shuttering or crashing problems, Wi-Fi connectivity issues, or some of the devices like printer may completely stop working.
The safest and easiest way to prevent such device conflicts is to use the best free driver updater software for your Windows 10 PC. Moreover, the driver updater is also an important software for Laptop Windows 10, 11, or older versions.
It is a powerful and extremely user-friendly utility that effortlessly auto-scans your entire PC and helps users install the latest, manufacturer-recommended drivers in just a blink of an eye.
Taking all the essential features of an ideal driver update into consideration, we suggest using Bit Driver Updater that can not only takes care of all driver-related issues but also maximizes the performance and processing speed of your computer. The best software for Windows 10, 11, 8 or 7 updates drivers on your system with minimal effort.
The best thing about this product is that you don’t need to shell out a fortune for it, it’s FREE!
“A must-have program for Windows 10 to clean duplicate photos”
With the rise of widespread adoption of smartphone technology, taking selfies and pictures of everything that catches our attention has become more than just a trend.
However, these identical-looking selfies and duplicate photos tend to get piled up over time, consumes up to gigabytes of disk space, and makes it extremely difficult to manage your digital collection of albums. What if you find out basic software for Windows 10 or other versions that can clear up all the clutter and duplicate data from your device automatically?
To keep your photo gallery and system optimized, all you need is a dedicated duplicate photo cleaner software.
Since Windows 10 PC doesn’t come with an in-built duplicate photo remover tool, it is important to add this utility to your list of must-have apps for Windows 10.
Quick Photo Finder is one of those nifty, renowned software available in the marketplace that can make your job much easier.
It effortlessly finds and removes the multiple copies of duplicate ones, plus also helps you recover a significant amount of lost storage space that you forgot you ever had, all in just a matter of seconds!
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4. VPN (Virtual Private Network)
“A must-have software for Windows 10 to keep online identity secure”
Next on our list of essential software for PC is NordVPN. Depending on the country you reside in, there is a chance you might have to put up with geo-restricted content or your government blocking certain websites.
What if the list contains your favorite social media platforms or movie streaming sites?
So, have you ever wondered that your IP address, browsing activity, location, and online identity could be at risk? Well, cybercriminals and spies around the world can see everything you do online such as the websites you’ve searched for, the pictures you’re posting, the movies you’ve been watching, and lots more.
Therefore, it is important to use a good VPN service to hide your IP address and encrypt sensitive data to keep it secure from prying eyes.
The best thing about VPN is that it not only provides a safe passage for your internet traffic but also lets you bypass the censorship to access blocked websites from anywhere in the world along with superfast streaming and unlimited bandwidth.
“A must-have software for Windows 10 to unleash its maximum performance”
Cleaner Software is another must have programs for Windows 10. You don’t even want to know the amount of junk your computer can store up and how it can make your system lag behind in its functioning. All those files, caches, and digital debris that you most definitely don’t need.
To avoid that, you need an effective cleaner software. To save you from the hassle of finding one, we have below mentioned a couple of best Windows 10 software which are a must-have Windows applications for cleaning your PC and laptop efficiently.
When the talk is about the best cleaning apps that you must have on Windows, we cannot skip IObit Advanced SystemCare. The best Windows software is a powerful and easy-to-use software has many interesting features, such as more than 30 troubleshooters ( for example, AI Mode, firewall protection, anti-tracking, and large file cleaner) to clean, protect, and speed up your computer.
You can make a click on the link below to download this cleaner-cum-booster to get the ultimate PC performance.
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CleanMyPC
CleanMyPC is a powerful tune-up utility tool developed by MacPaw Inc. to help you get a safer and cleaner PC. With the help of this tool, you can effortlessly scan every nook and cranny of your computer to delete megatons of junk files and boost the speed and overall performance of your PC.
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CCleaner
This powerful cleaning utility from Piriform is one of the best PC software on the face of the earth. It automatically deletes broken Windows registry entries and the temporary files. It also detects and identifies all the software that your system doesn’t require.
Bid those extra bits and bobs goodbye, and work with a fast functioning computer.
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6. File & Photo Recovery Software
“An essential app for Windows 10 to recover lost or deleted data”
It happens a lot of times that we delete some important files obliviously and then regret this action for quite a long time.
But we might just have something that would ensure that this doesn’t happen again.
Whenever you delete a file, even from the Recycle Bin, the file isn’t actually wiped off the face of the earth. Its sector is still on the hard drive, and you can use that to recover your file (Yay!).
Now, let’s take a look at some of the file/ data recovery software & programs that you must have in Windows 10.
The next on our list of PC software list for most essential apps os Stellar Data Recovery. It is one of the most capable and popular software used by Windows users to recover lost or deleted data. With the help of the free version of this program, you can easily retrieve up to 1 GB of lost or deleted files from Windows PC, laptop, USB stick, hard drive, etc.
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Recuva
Image source: Cloudwards
Recuva, a file recovery tool, assists the user to recover and restore her/his deleted files in the system.
After loading the software, the user just needs to choose which file she/he wishes to recover and from which location. Once the search is configured, the software will start a scan process and find the files matching the entered criterion. The user can, subsequently then, select the desired files to be recovered. There is one another file recovery software named EaseUS which also works fine.
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7. Utility Software
“Must-have Windows app for managing and improving the performance”
Another one on the list of best programs for Windows 10 is a Utility software. It is a one-stop solution for maintaining your PC. The software offers many tools which can help you in managing, optimizing, and analyzing the performance of the PC. The list of tools includes a disk defragmenter, backup utilities, disk cleaners, disk compression, network utilities, virus scanner, and many others.
By reviewing Utility software we have shortlisted the best must-have software for Windows 10 and an older version which you can install for maintaining your PC.
Revo Uninstaller Pro
Revo Uninstaller is a great software that can help you in various aspects of protecting and maintaining your PC. The best part about this software is that it can be used on mobile devices as well. It moreover offers some of the best tools like Windows app remover, force uninstaller, installation monitor, advanced scanning for residuals, logs database, and many others. We would recommend you to try this software for better performance and improve the life of the PC. All these features make Revo Uninstaller as best software for personal computer to improve the performance of your device.
Best File Copy Utility Softwares for Windows 2024, Cut, copy, paste. Sounds familiar? Millions of us, transfer and copy files almost on a daily basis. Let us find out thus, some of the best file transfer software and file copy software for Windows.
If you notice, there might be typical days when we have spent not just one but a few hours in transferring files and copying files. But, let’s say a typical file is quite large, then what happens? Of course, it takes a longer time for transfer. Several developers have come up with different data copy software applications that help you avoid the errors coming up during the transfer or copy of large files/folders from one system to another in Windows.
What Are the Best File Copy Utility Software for Windows?
Let’s look at the detailed features of each of these best file transfer tools below:
This is one of the most portable file copy software that can be used for copying and transferring the files from one system to another. This is also one of the fastest file copying apps available in the market.
The best part of using this app is that you don’t have to download the app at all; instead you have to just drag it to your desktop and then simply run it in your system. In addition to it, you can also keep the app in your pen drive or your flash drive for smooth installation into your PC anytime. The interface is highly easy-to-use and quite interactive.
Since it supports a huge number of file formats, you can copy any file into your PC comfortably with the help of this app. Newcomers and experienced PC users can all use it easily and effectively.
This is one of the most portable file copy software that can be used for copying and transferring the files from one system to another. This is also one of the fastest file copying apps available in the market.
The best part of using this app is that you don’t have to download the app at all; instead you have to just drag it to your desktop and then simply run it in your system. In addition to it, you can also keep the app in your pen drive or your flash drive for smooth installation into your PC anytime. The interface is highly easy-to-use and quite interactive.
Since it supports a huge number of file formats, you can copy any file into your PC comfortably with the help of this app. Newcomers and experienced PC users can all use it easily and effectively.
Features of File Fisher
•File Fisher offers a simple yet unique user interface
•This file copy tool does not require any installation as it is a portable tool
•You can easily transfer files from one format to another easily
•The software is compatible with all the Windows OS even with the latest ones too
Use TeraCopy as data copy software to copy files comfortably within folders or into Windows desktop. TeraCopy provides a robust and interactive interface. This app is extremely flexible and is one of the most fast running apps. TeraCopy is available freely as well as in a paid version. The free version of TeraCopy also has a lot of features that help successful copying of files from one system to another.
With TeraCopy you can comfortably evade those files that seem to be troublesome and still continue copying rather than stop for some corrupted files. If you’re wondering how would be the transfer over a network then let me tell you with the use of TeraCopy it is a lot easier and faster. You can drag and drop files that can prevent moving folders accidentally.
Features of TeraCopy
•It is one of the simplest file copy utilities
•The software automatically skips corrupted or problematic files
•It even repairs the corrupt file and recovers data
•You can easily drag and drop files from one drive to another
Reasons to use TeraCopy
•Skips corrupted files: With TeraCopy at your disposal, corrupted files cannot block the file transfer as the application skips them instead of halting the entire process.
•Fast and easy to use: The options like drag and drop, high customization, etc. make this app fast and friendly enough for both beginners and advanced users.
•Useful shell integration: TeraCopy boasts individual plugins, i.e., shell integration support to save your time and effort.
The interface of Fast Copy is not one of the most efficient ones but the app is definitely one of the most efficient fast copy software for Windows. Fast Copy is freely available as a program and helps you move the files rapidly from one network to another.
To ensure enjoying the best speed, it employs multiple threads to read, write, verify and also uses the overlapped and direct I/O systems.
Due to the interface not everyone can use the app comfortably especially if you’re a novice, however, for an experienced PC user; it is indeed a wonderful copy software for Windows.
Features of Fast Copy
•It is one of the fastest file copying tools
•The software supports UNICODE and over MAX_PATH file pathnames
•It supports UNIX wildcard
•It uses multi-threads to bring out the best speed of devices
Reasons to use Fast Copy
•NSA File Wiping Support: One of the best things about Fast Copy is that it supports data sanitization methods approved by the National Security Agency (NSA) to keep your confidential information safe.
•Resource-friendly: This application does not bug your computer with unnecessary pressure on the resources as it is lightweight.
•Command-line: For the techies out there, it has command line and UI wrapper support.
ExtremeCopy can help copy files from one system to another quickly. It can enhance the speed of the machine based on the physical structure of the machine. There are a lot of user-friendly features in the app. However, it would not support copying files from the network.
The program is capable of integrating with the Windows Explorer making it easier to use. Extreme Copy is not a software that supports file syncing but is one of the best file transfer software available.
Features of ExtremeCopy
•The software offers the freedom to pause and skip any file easily
•You can easily resume the interrupted process
•It comes with a built-in error management feature
•It is one of the best file transfer software for PC
Reasons to use ExtremeCopy
•Fast copying: It lets you copy files much faster (20% to 120% speedier) than the native Windows copy tool.
•Optimizations: ExtremeCopy can be a perfect choice for you, as it optimizes the copying speed and its resource consumption automatically.
•Efficient free version: We agree that the free version of this software has no high-end features. But, it does not reduce its functionality, and you get the same fast copying speed for free.
This app has been in use for a very long time. This file copy software functions at an enormous speed. Unstoppable Copier is a recovery solution that copies and transfers all your files from the directory.
The best part of it is that they also try to repair the faulty and damaged files. It works on any of the Windows operating systems except Windows 10. This is one of the best interactive Windows copy software that one can obtain.
Features of Unstoppable Copier
•The software lets you copy, recover and repair files easily
•It offers great speed transfer
•Being one of the oldest software it offers the best tools and speed
•It is compatible with most of the Windows OS
Reasons to use Unstoppable Copier
•Command-line support: If you are a techie who is not a fan of those graphical interfaces, you’ll be glad to know that this application supports command-line UI.
•Backup tools: There are backup options available such as creating and saving transfer lists for future use.
•Blazing fast: Unstoppable Copier is among the most high-speed copying tools available currently to copy files.
With GS RichCopy 360 copying many files from one system/folder to another is swift and quite easy.
In fact, there is a backup software with GS RichCopy 360 for MS Windows operating systems. This backup software can allow you to synchronize through the servers, Windows OS and also through various networks. You can always know and see all the copied tasks through a special Wizard interface available only with this tool.
Features of GS RichCopy 360
•It can be considered as the fastest file transfer software for Windows 7,8 and 10
•To help you check all the tasks it offers WIzard Interface
•It can easily transfer data between network
•You can share files, directories, or even drives effortlessly
Reasons to use GS RichCopy 360
•Byte-level replication: One thing that you might find highly useful in this application (that many other similar programs lack) is its ability to replicate files at the byte level.
•Supports long path names: Some files have really long path names (over 260 characters long). But, you don’t have to worry, as this software supports them all.
•Simultaneous file copying: It does not take a long time to copy files using this software as it copies files (up to 255 threads) simultaneously.
You can use this tool to copy the files from one system to another in the shortest amount of time.
If there are many files to copy from one server to another, then you know very well how long it takes to copy, if you use the default Windows copy function. Therefore, the Perigee Copy tool can offer a quicker solution.
It is an easy-to-use software with an interactive interface that is effective in so many ways. However, the drawback with Perigee is its incompatibility with Windows OS versions 8 and 10.
Features of Perigee Copy 1.7
•It offers a very easy to adapt interface which can be used by any user
•Apart from just copying files, you can delete them too
•You get many features like archive bit, overwrite, and others.
•It works perfectly for the Windows 7 and older versions
Reasons to use Perigee Copy 1.7
•Shell integration: With this software’s integration with the Windows menu, you can perform copy-paste tasks much more easily.
•Security: You get a confirmation message whenever you perform any action to inform you about the files that are going to be affected to take care of their security.
•Feature-rich: If you are looking for software that is a complete package with all essential features, like overwrite, etc., this program can be your best choice.
For those users who are always transferring multiple files from one system to the other, Copy Handler can help immensely in transferring bulk files in less time.
It is a free to use app. Copy Handler operates at a faster rate, and aids in pausing, resuming, restarting and cancelling the different functionalities. It supports many languages at a time. You can transfer files between drives and computers in quite a less amount of time.
Drag and drop functions are also supported by the copy handler. To note, Copy Handler would resume the paused and unfinished copying of all files with a system restart. It is an extremely easy-to-use app and its effectiveness and flexibility is worth applauding.
Features of Copy Handler
•You can easily copy files in bulk using this best file copy software
•Easy drag and drop functionality for copying and moving files
•Even when the PC shutdown it pauses the process and can be easily resumed
•The software offers detailed statistics to help you understand better
Reasons to use Copy Handler
•Open source: One of the best things that make Copy Handler a perfect pick is that you can examine its code if the techie in you wants to do it.
•Complete control: You get full control over the entire copy/paste process and its speed.
•Queue support: Copy Handler has a unique feature that allows you to carry out multiple tasks at once in a specific order.
Robo Copy is not an app in actuality but rather a command-line utility to copy and transfer files from one server to another many times. Robo Copy replaces XCopy and has more offerings as a data copy software. If you have to run this utility, your command would be called Robo Copy.
It can work on Windows Vista and also on Windows 8. Robo Copy does not work on all PC’s as it does not have an interactive GUI.
Features of Robocopy
•Robocopy requires no additional tool for copying or transferring files
•Even when the network is interrupted the software performs great. It resumes when the connection is better
•Using the software you can skip files that are already copied
•You can easily transfer files and data from one server to another
Reasons to use Robocopy
•Error-free copying: Robocopy is a Windows command that does not make any error even when copying paths with over 259 to 32,000 characters.
•/MT feature: With this command, you can perform file copying in multithreaded mode.
•Wide availability: Being portable and compatible with almost all Windows versions, this tool is widely available.
You can call it more like a drive cleaner since it copies a drive to another drive. EaseUS disk is quite fast as a data copy software and the best versions for file copy are available for Windows 7, 8 and 10.
It is an extremely precise app and can clone the entire disk with perfect precision and accuracy.
Features of EaseUS Disk Copy
•The software is compatible with all major Windows OS
•It is a fast software for copying or cloning the whole disk to a new location
•You can easily create a bootable disk with this software
•The software is accurate and performs copying with 100% accuracy
Reasons to use EaseUS Disk Copy
•Ease of use: To copy/paste files with this software, all you need to do is follow a simple three-step process.
•One-click migration: Using this software, you can migrate your data, apps, and complete OS to a new hard drive safely with just a click.
•Easy replacement: You can get EaseUS Disk Copy to use SSD instead of an HDD effortlessly.
UltraCopier is an open source file copy software used to copy files. UltraCopier is very simple to use and has a multitude of premium features at your disposal for free. No matter how less versed you’re with a computer, you can always use this particular software without any difficulty.
There are some features like start, stop, resume that you can navigate through comfortably. You can perform a multitude of copy tasks from one server to another. It is also compatible with Linux and macOS.
Features of UltraCopier
•The software offers advanced features like speed limitations, pause, resume and stop
•You can easily perform multi-copy tasks
•It is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux
•UltraCopier has a built-in error management feature
Reasons to use UltraCopier
•Useful features: It offers some of the high-end features, such as speed controls and functionality to search in the copy lists.
•Customizations: If you are looking for a straightforward and customizable (with the plugin support) file copy utility, UltraCopier can be the best choice.
•Multilingual: UltraCopier boasts support for multiple languages and a portable form of the software.
MiniCopier, a super-fast utility to copy files very quickly. It is a completely automatic utility for copying files. All you need to get started is – just drag and drop the files that you want to copy, in the red basket presented in the software’s window. And, then it will begin the rest procedure automatically. It has the standard buttons as well such as Pause and Start.
Though the user interface of this application is very simple, at the same time, it is very effective and productive too. Apart from this, it also keeps records of those transfers as well which gets dismissed. Overall, it is the best way to copy or paste files and folders in no time.
Features of MiniCopier
•You can queue all the transfers easily on this software
•The transfer speed can be set easily with MiniCopier
•You can pause and resume the process anytime
•Using the software you can easily change the name of the file
Reasons to use MiniCopier
•Queue support: The software supports queuing, where you can add a transfer to the queue when current transfers are ongoing.
•Greater control: With options like limiting the copy and transfer speed of files, MiniCopier lets you be in charge of the process.
•Behavior setting: MiniCopier allows you to specify a default target file behavior.
The next best file copy utility software for Windows in our list is FF Copy. It is a file transfer utility for Windows users. With this, you just only need to copy or paste the file to a transfer queue and then it will be copied in the sequence. Comparatively, it is way faster than other such kinds of utilities. FF Copy lets you transfer multiple files or folders simultaneously.
Just in case, if the source becomes unavailable then FF Copy automatically re-generates the source and starts transferring the files after a while. It allocates the disk space and eliminates disk fragmentation. FF Copy is highly capable of boosting the speed of the entire process. Undoubtedly, if you are searching for the best way to copy files pretty instantly then you should rely on this amazing utility.
Features of FF Copy
•The software offers a feature to add files in queue for ease
•You can easily pause and resume the process as per requirements
•During file transfer issue you can easily skip to the next file transfer
•It offers a detailed description of the process
Reasons to use FF Copy
•Portability: FF Copy is a portable software, hence no installation is required to run it.
•System friendly: This software does not burden your system unnecessarily, as its memory and CPU utilization remains low.
•Fast speed: With features such as queue support, this software lets you copy/transfer multiple files really quickly.
KillCopy is an excellent and fastest file-transferring software available for Windows PC. This utility tool makes the overall process of file copying much easier with a drag-and-drop feature. In order to ensure an error-free file-transferring process, KillCopy utilizes a high-speed verification mode.
Features of KillCopy
•It comes with a KillDelete option to erase the source file, once the copying process completes.
•Has a feature called Auto Resume functionality that automatically starts the file transfer process when the process abruptly stops.
•It’s Turbo Mode enhances the copying speed of large files.
Reasons to Use:
•Parallel: This mode boosts copy speed when copying files between different physical devices.
•Speed Limit: This feature lets you limit the maximum copy transfer speed in Kbps units.
•Turbo Mode: This mode can improve the overall speed of the file copying process, especially when copying large files between local disks.
The next on our list of the best utilities to copy files and folders with NiceCopier. It is a quick and easy-to-use software that allows you to copy and paste data hassle-freely.
Moreover, it boasts many outstanding features, such as pausing and resuming the copy/paste process, an option to change the settings like running at startup, and much more.
Furthermore, below are its other features, pros, cons, and reasons to use it.
Features of NiceCopier
•A single window displays all the running tasks
•Calculates the best file copying speed
•Task queue creation to improve software performance
•Allows you to perform check-sum-based verification of files after copying them
Reasons to use
•Portable: One of the top reasons you should use NiceCopier is its portability. You can carry it in a flash drive and use it without downloading anything on the computer.
•Lightweight: NiceCopier does not pressurize your system resources and consumes very little space on the device.
Allow us to conclude this entire list of the best file copy utility software with Total Commander. Total Commander is not merely a copy utility but a smart file manager. With the help of the tool, you can run two windows side by side and use them to copy and move the data within the system and its storage. Let’s know more about this tool from the information below.
Features of Total Commander
•Custom columns
•Quick View panel
•Tabbed interface
•Built-in FTP client
•Thumbnails view
Reasons to use
•Thumbnail: One of the main reasons why you should download the Total Commander tool is that the tool offers a preview of the files in the form of thumbnails for ease of decision-making.
•Supports Multiple Archives: Total Commander supports various extensions of Archive files like CAB, ACE, TAR, GZ, RAR, UC2, ZIP, 7ZIP, etc.
Copywhiz is another best file copy utility software that you can try. Just like any other software on this list, Copywhiz is a very advanced and a great utility to enjoy copying data smartly.
Features of Copywhiz
•Easy copying
•Handles multiple files
•Integration is possible
•Smart UI
Reasons to use
•Recent Files: The software allows you to copy and manage recently modified or added files with ease.
•Personalized: Copywhiz allows you to look for files and copy them according to the name or extension of the file.
The next name on this list of the best file copy utility software for Windows 10/11 is SuperCopier. This is a simple tool that makes it feasible for you to copy data from one location to the other.
Features of Copywhiz
•Simplest file copying
•Smart UI
•Personalizable interface
Reasons to use
•Effective Performance: The software allows you to move or copy multiple files at once. Moreover, you also get lightning-fast copying speed with the tool.
•Smart UI: The user interface of SuperCopier is quite simple yet smart. Even a beginner can get the most out of the tool with ease.
Here’s another addition to this list of the best file copy utility software for Windows. OrganizerMaX is multiple levels better than the traditional copy utility of Windows. Using this tool, you can add tags, copy and paste, search for files, and do a lot more with ease.
Features of OrganizerMaX
•Simple interface
•Modifiable
Reasons to use
•Reliability: The software offers some of the most advanced features for a copy utility.
•Fast: OrganizerMaX is quite fast as compared to any other tool offered in this list.
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Final Words
These are some of the best file copy utility software available for Windows in 2024. Most apps are quite efficient in handling the speed with which the files are transferred from one server to the other or from one network to the other.
Bulk file transfers and copying is possible with some of these apps as well. Some can also help you transfer an entire folder from one server to another. With some apps you can avail many premium features whereas with other open source platforms you can enjoy splendid features free of cost.
The 27 best football games of all time, It’s a sad fact that most of us won’t ever be any good at football. But whether on console or PC, the best games can take you into a fantasy world in which you’re a world beater.
Amazingly, that applies whether you’re controlling a stick figure on an 8-bit computer or a fully realised 3D model with ultra-realistic stubble on a PS5. Seriously – we’ve shed real tears at a line of text on a screen describing how the opposition stick figure has just put us out of the cup.
But then that’s football: it has the power to reduce otherwise sensible people to mere shells of their former selves. And game makers soon realised they were on to something good when they created the first footie sims, because in no time they were flying off the shelf.
The 27 best football games of all time
As a result, there have been hundreds of football games over the years – so many, in fact, that narrowing down our selection to a mere 28 titles was near impossible. Arguments raged across the office – FIFA or Pro Evo?Sensi or Kick Off? – and that’s exactly as it should be. After nearly 30 years, EA and FIFA have now officially cut ties so will EA Sports FC be gracing this list in the future?
Whether you agree or disagree with our list, we hope it’ll spark plenty of memories. Let the arguments begin.
People weren’t sure what to make of this oddball at the time of release. Part management game, part board game, you aimed to take a kid from the old fourth division to the glory of cup finals and Division One.
Success was mostly down to scoring goals in arcade sequences; chances were bought with ‘goal cards’ purchased in-game, and ‘incident cards’ enabled you to delve further into your young player’s life. If this all sounds a bit familiar, FOTY was a big influence on New Star Soccer creator Simon Read…
We’re not sure how you manage a tracksuit; stupid name aside, this Goliath Games effort was an impressive management game with depth. You arrived just as your team (England by default) had a disastrous World Cup (so, pretty accurate), and had to figure out a road to success.
Highlights were akin to the running commentary you’d today see on a news website, and while that lacked visual impact, it provided plenty of insight into who was providing the goods for your team, and who to send for an early bath.
25) International Soccer (1983, C64)
This C64 classic was the first truly great soccer game. Inspired by the earlier Intellivision Soccer, it utilised a side-on viewpoint, and had two seven-a-side teams battling it out for a chunky, pixelated cup.
Despite creator Andrew Spencer not being a fan of football, he captured the feel of the sport, and squeezed throw-ins, corners and goal-kicks into the cartridge’s tiny memory. It’s also the one football game where you can sometimes head a ball half the length of the field – a bug Spencer noticed but left in because he thought it was funny.
24) Match Day 2 (1987, ZX Spectrum)
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Knowing a good thing when they saw it, Jon Ritman and Ocean teamed up for a sequel to Ritman’s original Spectrum smash hit. This time, the players looked a lot like bodybuilders, and the underlying mechanics had been suitably beefed up: along with a far superior deflection system, there was a league format, volleys, flicks and jumping.
Shot strength was determined by a slightly awkward oscillating ‘kickometer’ and the pace was again slow, but this merely made for more strategic play.
Look, we adore the beautiful game, but sometimes it feels like the sport takes itself a little bit too seriously. Watching a gaggle of shouty adults boot a ball around a field for 90 minutes is hugely entertaining, but it’s also not that important in the grand scheme of things. Behold the Kickmen is here to remind you of that.
This is football as seen through the eyes of someone with absolutely zero interest in the laws and rules of the sport (or physics, for that matter). Kicking, tackling, passing, shooting, and scoring – it’s all here but dialled up to 11 in the most nonsensical way imaginable. In striving to make a complete mockery of football, developer Size Five Games has created one of the most comical and outrageous takes on the sport we’ve ever encountered.
Its name and tagline may have been a shot across Sega‘s bows (“There’s nothing virtual about Actua“), but Gremlin Interactive’s title was noteworthy for more than just a bit of snide trollery: it was the very first console football game to offer fully 3D players. These were motion-capped from Sheffield Wednesday stalwarts Chris Woods, Andy Sinton and Graham Hyde, providing a level of clogger realism never before witnessed on consoles. The original featured only national teams, but a Club Edition featuring all 20 teams from the 96/97 Premier League season was released a year later.
21) Ultimate Soccer Manager (1995, Amiga)
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For all of Championship Manager‘s statistical goodness, nothing immersed you in a mid-’90s football world like the USM series. Transfers and team selection almost became minor distractions, as you reclined in your office next to a fax machine and Teletext.
There were advertising deals to negotiate, a stadium complex to build, and even bungs to offer the opposition. Yes, this was the George Graham era, when managers were unimpeachable emperors, and USM put you right on the throne with a hotline to football’s dark side.
20) Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 (2016, PS4/Xbox One)
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Having spent years in FIFA’s shadow, Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 finally offered a genuine alternative to EA’s annual juggernaut. PES 2017 was a slower, more considered version of the beautiful game, with less emphasis on beating players for pace and more on patient build-up play, but when everything fell into place and you unlocked a defence the sense of satisfaction was glorious. Its lack of official licenses and a fundamentally flawed online mode still made it very hard to convince most FIFA fans to jump ship, and things seem to have gone backwards since then, but for one short year PES‘s glory days were back.
19) Kick Off (1989, Amiga)
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Dino Dini’s 16-bit classic added an ingredient that hadn’t really been seen before in football games: speed. The little players darted about the pitch like they were dosed-up on something decidedly not allowed under FIFA’s code, and the ball was initially impossible to control, given that it didn’t remain glued to your feet.
But once mastered, Kick Off made every other football game suddenly seem dull and dated by comparison, even if it was at times the football game equivalent of juggling bars of soap while riding a unicycle down a hill.
18) World Cup 98 (1997, PS1)
EA’s FIFA series has ruled the football gaming world like some kind of digital Sepp Blatter (before all the dodgy payments stuff), but it wasn’t always thus. Back in 1998 it was merely one of several games vying for the hearts and minds of floppy fringed teens, and it was far from being the best.
The previous edition, 1997’s Road To World Cup 98, had marked a big improvement though – while FIFA had always had the official licences, it finally had the gameplay to go with them too. World Cup 98 built on that in some style, keeping the free-flowing football of the previous title and adding in-game tactical changes.
It was all wrapped up in a slick World Cup skin that no other game at the time came close to, complete with commentary and unlockable classic games. Shame we had to put up with Chumbawamba’s execrable Tubthumping every time it loaded though.
17) Football Manager (1982, ZX Spectrum)
Kevin Toms graced the front of Addictive’s Football Manager cover, enticing you to buy the game with his charm and beard. And what a game it was: on your little Spectrum, you could buy and sell players, pick a team, and watch highlights on pitches with comically large goals.
Today, it all looks a bit primitive (the C64 conversion was at least a bit prettier), and yet its simple gameplay remains surprisingly compelling in an era of over-complicated (micro) management sims. If you fancy a go on your smartphone, check out Toms’s remakes for Android and iOS.
Tehkan World Cup wasn’t the first overhead football game (that accolade probably goes to Exciting Soccer), but it was the first to make that viewpoint work. This was a fast game, in part down to the trackball controls, and decent goalies also ensured that matches were often frantic end-to-end battles.
The game very heavily influenced Sensible Software, and more or less came to the C64 in the form of Microprose Soccer, but its legacy was really being the grandfather to the outstanding Sensible Soccer series.
15) New Star Soccer (2012, iOS/Android)
In answering the question “How do you create an in-depth career-long football game for mobile devices?”, New Star Soccer said “You don’t!”, and instead served up a selection of mini-games draped over a basic framework that wasn’t a million miles from 1986’s Footballer Of The Year.
Although a touch IAP-hungry, it became a mobile classic, having you balance a kind of hyper-real version of a young footballer’s life (Buy a car! And now a TANK!) with pitch-based exploits and the demands of a boss, advertisers and a nagging partner.
Its successor, New Star Manager, is more in-depth, but lacks the addictive simplicity of the original.
14) FIFA 10 (2009, PS3/Xbox 360)
Like a footballing version of Rocky Balboa vs Apollo Creed, the FIFA and Pro Evolution Soccer games slugged it out relentlessly throughout the ’00s without either landing a final knockout punch. Pro Evo was generally the better game, but FIFA retained a strong following by virtue of its proper team and player names and presentation nous. But with FIFA 10 that winning uppercut finally connected.
Both games introduced 360-degree player control for the first time in their 2010 editions, but FIFA 10 did it better, allowing you to expertly slide a pass through at just the right angle for your striker to run on to it. Or, more commonly, for you to expertly slide a pass straight to an opposition defender. Coupled with a wealth of game modes – from Be A Pro to Ultimate Team and Manager Mode – FIFA 10 was a more complete footballing experience than any previous title in the series and finally edged ahead of its rival too. And it hasn’t been toppled since.
13) Emlyn Hughes International Soccer (1988, C64)
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A spiritual successor to Andrew Spencer’s International Soccer, Emlyn Hughes International Soccer was the last great side-on football game of the 1980s. Brimming with options, advanced players could utilise techniques such as ‘5-direction’ passing, sliding tackles and backheels, all from a joystick with only a single fire button.
The result was the first truly fluid football game, where you could string together some genuinely breathtaking moves. The goalies were still rubbish, though, natch.
12) Retro Goal (2021, Android/iOS)
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Retro Goal is by the New Star Soccer folks, and has some similarities, in being a fusion of management and action. However, rather than veering towards management, much more of this game is played out on the pitch. Instead of full games, you play out highlights, using gestural controls (with the aid of Matrix-style slo-mo) to bury the ball in the back of the net.
We’ve seen grumbles that the game is pay-to-win, but we’ve won everything you can win in the game, without doing a Manchester City. You just need some patience, and to power up couple of strikers so they’ve got enough welly. If you’re not sure, you get ten games for free, whereaand even unlocking the entire game costs a pittance.
Retro Goal is a beautiful throwback to the SEGA days of football games and features such star names as Garrido, Hough and Frezza (not actual players, of course). The convenience of being handheld makes it all the better, too. The first 10 matches of Retro Goal can be played for free. Unlocking the rest costs a quid. Barg.
11) FIFA Street (2005, PS2)
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There’s something beautifully nostalgic about FIFA Street. For those who played the 4-a-side street football game in 2005, the game conjures up memories of committing devastating flicks and tricks in favelas and English football pitches. It also came with a soundtrack that has seldom been beaten since, bringing the local sounds of soca, grime, jungle and more to global players.
FIFA Street’s newest form, VOLTA, hasn’t managed to live up to the heights of FIFA Street (that is a tough task to achieve, though). But even playing today, FIFA Street still impresses. Few things beat the feeling of nutmegging Ronaldinho before firing a screamer into the top bins, after all.
10) Virtua Striker (1994, Arcade)
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Sega’s legendary AM2 team (also responsible for Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter) developed this groundbreaking title – the first football video game in history to use 3D player models. Being available only in arcades, Virtua Striker was designed for fast and furious action over serious simulation, but for those of us who crammed countless coins into the cabinet, it was the most realistic digital appropriation of the beautiful game we’d ever seen.
9) International Superstar Soccer (1994, SNES)
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In hindsight, this SNES classic is a bridge between classic-era side-on fare and modern football titles. A predecessor to PES, the original ISS offered a stunning array of moves – everything from feints to shoulder charges – when various buttons were combined.
Visually, it was also leagues beyond the likes of Match Day and International Soccer. Yet for all its gloss and cleverness, what made ISS appeal most was its fun and frantic nature, retaining a very arcade sensibility, in that brief period before sports titles became totally obsessed with a kind of TV-style realism.
8) Football Manager 2011 (2010, PC)
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In its divorce with Eidos, Sports Interactive lost the Championship Manager name but carried on creating the only management games still worth playing – and this edition is one of the greatest, adding a full 3D engine that, if you were so inclined, allowed you to watch every single pass, shot, tackle and horrendous goalkeeping error in a match.
Among the other innovations were press conferences – a small detail that served to add colour to an already frighteningly real football universe that featured no fewer than 117 playable leagues.
7) Kick Off 2 (1990, Amiga)
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Kick Off 2 looked an awful lot like its predecessor, and it was really a combination of Kick Off and a couple of expansion disks, all carefully refined. But that attention to detail transformed an enjoyable but occasionally uncontrollable knockabout title into a product that demanded a lot more skill.
Along with tournaments, refs with varying moods and – crucially – fewer bugs, this Amiga sequel dropped the pace and boosted the controls, copious use of ‘aftertouch’ enabling you to fashion the kind of dazzlingly audacious shots of which even Matt Le Tissier would have been proud.
6) Sensible Soccer (1992, Amiga)
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Sensible Software were fans of Kick Off 2 and football, but were irritated by the former’s shortcomings that didn’t – as they saw it – do justice to the latter. Sensible Soccer was their attempt to bring to gaming the feeling of how you imagined playing professional football would be, coupled with the kind of attention to detail only a true football geek possesses (including correct hair and skin colour for each of the players).
The game zoomed the viewpoint out, showing more of the pitch and enabling it to dispense with a Kick Off-style radar; passing and shooting was simplified and streamlined and everything was done on the frame, making the game extremely responsive. Until sequel SWOS arrived, this was the pinnacle of the genre.
5) ISS Pro Evolution (1999, PS1)
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Ah, the Master League: just how many hours have we spent cocooned in your comforting embrace, steadily building up a team of honest pros and turning them into world beaters? Probably several thousand – and that’s no exaggeration. And it was here that it first appeared.
Although at this stage a relatively basic affair, the Pro Evo Master League still bolted a decent career sim on to an already superb football game. You could buy and sell players, but you used points earnt by winning games, rather than money, and there was none of the complicated day-to-day running of the club that you’d have to endure in Championship Manager. Instead, it gave you the chance to shape the team of your dreams, packing it with attacking midfielders if you chose, or instead making sure you had a Mourinho-solid defence.
While the Master League was a great addition to the series, it would have meant nothing if the gameplay hadn’t matched up to it. But in truth ISS Pro Evolution was already creeping ahead of FIFA by this time; it was more realistic yet also more playable – and that’s a winning combination in any game.
4) Championship Manager: Season 97/98 (1997, PC)
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Sports Interactive’s series looms like a Colossus over all management games.
Despite being derided by small-minded dullards as a glorified Excel spreadsheet, Championship Manager‘s masterful tactical engine, reams of accurate data (this was the first instalment allowing you to run more than one league simultaneously) and giant player database wove together a rich, convincing football universe that sat parallel to our own – and it fired the imagination like no other game around.
And it was so, so addictive: the game’s official forums were full of tales of lives all but lost to Champ’s particular brand of “just one more game”-itis, or grown men so proud of taking a lower league team to the FA Cup final that they would don a suit for the occasion.
3) FIFA 21 (2020, PS4/Xbox One)
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Recent FIFA games have been all about tweaking a winning formula rather than any major overhauls, but considering the series has been building from a leading position since FIFA 10, that’s no bad thing.
While FIFA 21 only makes very minor changes to its predecessor and certainly isn’t without its faults – defending is very much a secondary concern to scoring goals, there’s far too much showboating online, and goalkeepers punch so often they must all be wearing buttered gloves – it remains the best virtual approximation of the beautiful game.
2) Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (2005, PS2)
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There are times in popular culture when a thing – band, TV series, game, whatever – reaches such a peak, you think it can’t possibly stay there. But then it does – for year after year after year. The Simpsons did that from about season 3 to season 9, for instance, but it’s pretty rare. Well, Pro Evolution Soccer managed the same feat.
That its standards did eventually drop was inevitable, but it doesn’t make the glory years from 2002-2005 any less special. We could have picked any of the four games from Pro Evo 2 to Pro Evo 5 and made a case for its inclusion. Frankly, we could have had all of them in this list. But that would be silly, so instead we’ve picked the probable highest point in a series of very high ones.
What made it so special? Just… everything. The Master League had by now developed into a proper four-division set-up, with promotion, relegation and a Champions League equivalent and there were even, finally, proper player names. On the gameplay side, it was as fluid and playable as football games get. Not quite as frantically insane as Sensible Soccer, not quite as gloriously detailed as FIFA 18, but instead a wonderful mid-way between the two extremes.
You could score screamers from 40 yards or tap-ins after a goalmouth scramble. You could waltz through five tackles, if you had a skillful enough player, but you couldn’t get away with just running the ball into the net. In short, it was beautifully balanced.
It couldn’t last, of course – but boy was it fun while it did.
1) Sensible World Of Soccer (1994, Amiga)
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Almost 30 years young, SWOS is still top of the league. It took everything that was great about Sensible Soccer and just ran with it. You got the same fantastic arcade-oriented gameplay, but the title comprehensively acknowledged the rest of the world’s existence, with the kind of slavish devotion of a true footballing aficionado.
Management features and player trading were boosted by the inclusion of a whopping 1500 teams and 27,000 players. It should have been the start of something great, but SWOS was somehow allowed to be eclipsed by FIFA and PES. Still, dedicated fans keep the flame alive with leagues, events, and patched versions of the game that incorporate modern data – the wonderful, crazy nutters.
Can it compete with FIFA for realistic gameplay or Football Manager for exhaustive statdom? No, obviously not. And for many people, the classic mid-’00s era Pro Evo beats it as an all-round football game; it’s definitely split this office at any rate.
But for sheer “JUST LOOK AT THAT GOAL! THAT WAS LIQUID FOOTBALL!” joy, it will never be bettered. Go on, then, just one more game.
The best co-op games on PC in 2024, Playing games with other people is one of the beloved traditions of liking video games at all, and if you’re the friendly type like us at RPS, then you’ll enjoy games where you work with others, rather than against them. That’s why we’ve put together our list of the best co-op games on PC for you to find common ground with your besties. Whether you want to shoot monsters together, shoot robots together, or get a divorcing couple to work together as they run around their own home as tiny doll versions of themselves, then you can find something to enjoy on this list of co-op games.
We have broad tastes and definitions sometimes, but key for a co-op game is that you can play with a pal without fighting against each other – even if there might be friendly fire. This means you won’t find any team-based competitive games on this list, such as Dota or Counter-Strike, for example. That’s what our best multiplayer games list is for. We’ve also excluded games that switch between PvP and PvE like Sea Of Thieves of DayZ. They’re all great games, but they belong on a different list.
The best co-op games on PC
Here’s our full list of the best co-op games on PC. You can have a casual scroll through or click the links below to be directed straight to the game in question.
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25. Monster Hunter Rise
After Monster Hunter World rampaged onto PC, the bar for Capcom’s next entry in the dino-adjacent beast-hunting series was high, but Monster Hunter Rise is every bit its predecessor’s equal and makes for a thrilling co-op adventure. That’s why we’ve booted World off the list and replaced it with Rise. That’s evolution, baby.
If you’re not familiar with Monster Hunter, it’s essentially a giant playpen where you and your friends can go out and, well, hunt monsters. The biggest appeal is a group of you wailing on some titan, but there’s a comradery and teamwork in Monster Hunter Rise that is different from other co-ops. You all have to meet in a tavern, eat a big hearty meal before you set off, make sure you all have everything you need, and then off you go, skipping into the deep dark woods where the scary monsters await. It’s these little rituals that really make it shine as a co-op.
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24. Lethal Company (early access)
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Steam always has to have at least one co-op ghosty game in early access, over which people are going bananas. Right now that game is Lethal Company, and not without reason. It’s a bit of a horror game, as you form up in teams for some good old PVE. As contractors for the Company, you collect scrap from abandoned haunted moons that used to be industrial centres. Successfully salvaging enough scrap earns you cash, which you can use to jet off to new moons with more rewards. The trade off, of course, is higher risk.
There are mundane risks like traps, which one player can spot from the ship scanner and call out to those on the mission. But there are, of course, monsters to contend with, especially at night. Some you’ll only find indoors, while others stalk you on open ground. It’s a great mix of learning a bestiary and knowing what to do in different situations, with having a concrete goal (get salvage), and there are many and varied ways to die, so you learn quickly. If you got tired of Phasmophobia and are looking for something new in the same vein, this is it.
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23. Escape Academy
Escape rooms in real life are a lot of fun but extremely expensive for it. Escape Academy combines the twin benefits of being comparatively cheap and being designed by developers who made escape rooms in real life! It’s a great co-op game, whether you’re playing online or via asymmetrical couch co-op (i.e. one of you playing the game and the other writing things down and shouting).
The titular academy is a school where the entire curriculum is based around room escapes. Even art, which seems like a stretch. Each level is a timed escape, often in somewhat dangerous circumstances that you’d imagine would drive the school’s insurance premiums up, with secret codes, cryptic clues, and much frantic running around a library or a locked office as you collect special books, or put post-it notes in the right order.
It’s the right balance of fun and tense, and gets you all reacting exactly as you would if thrown into the Crystal Maze, fruitlessly telling each other you’ve found a paint tin, is that anything? The big, colourful 3D world is non-violent but successfully thrilling, and there are a bunch of DLCs to get stuck into, too.
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22. V Rising
V-rising casts you as a freshly awoken vampire on a quest to conquer the human world. It’s an open-world survival game where you and your vampire squad reap havoc on neighbouring towns in search of blood, all while building a lavish castle and exploring the surrounding gothic world.
Crafting and combat are easily accessible – this isn’t a mega difficult survival game – and gaining your vampiric powers (the best part of the game) is quick work, since V Rising’s boss-focused progression is easy enough to follow. You can decide to join PVP or PVE, but if you’d rather have your vampire rule their own little slice of the human world, you can set up your own world and invite your mates to join. V Rising is highly recommended for folks who are looking for a breezy survival sim, but with just enough meat to sink your teeth into.
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21. Overcooked 2
Overcooked and its sequel Overcooked 2 are both are silly games of simmering and sizzling, the physical manifestation of the phrase “too many cooks spoil the broth”. You’re in a kitchen with up to three other players, and you have to make food to order by preparing and combining certain ingredients. To get this done properly, everyone needs to carry out their appointed tasks pronto. Thing is, it doesn’t always work out that way.
The kitchens of Overcooked are constantly changing. Narrow spaces mean players get in each other’s way. Sometimes the whole level shifts. Benches on a ship will slide down the deck with each large wave, altering the layout entirely, while cooking in two trucks means that one part of the kitchen will occasionally accelerate, suddenly becoming off-limits. How will you get the chow off the hob before it boils into an inedible paste? By shouting at your fellow chefs, of course.
Overcooked 1 and 2 are much the same, but it’s 2 we’d recommend. For one, it’s now got online multiplayer as well as local, letting you play with those geographically distant friends. For two, you can now throw ingredients back and forth between chefs. Your co-chef needs more mushrooms? Maybe he’ll catch the one you just threw to him; maybe it’ll bonk him right in the face.
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20. Stardew Valley
There is a lot of shooting and adventuring on this list, but very few opportunities to hang out in a turnip field. Stardew Valley lets you live out an alternate life as a farmer, away from the hustle and bustle of cities and video games with guns. It’s about escape. Ever since the multiplayer update, you can now escape with friends.
It provides a place to be rather than a challenge to overcome. Each of you gets to dodder around town, either working together and divvying up tasks or ploughing away at individual farms. It’s not that the Valley feels sterile without other humans, but there are only so many blackberries you can hand over to your NPC neighbours before your relationships start feeling one dimensional. With real people in the mix, you get an actual community. Maybe your pal has a spare melon you can give to Penny for her birthday. Maybe they’ll bake you a cake. Or steal your chickens.
People breathe warmth and life into this farming game fantasy that’s already about those things. You’ve got the freedom to pursue whatever charming humdrum activity takes your fancy. Go fishing. Comb the beach. Or, if you want, mercilessly compete to see who can optimise profits. It’s your farm.
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19. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
You can play through the whole of Vegas 2’s brilliant but flawed campaign with a friend, rappelling down walls, breaching windows and taking out terrorists in unison. While that will keep you busy a while, it’s Terrorist Hunt – a mode where you team up with three buddies to hunt down a set amount of enemies across large sandbox maps – that will keep you coming back.
Guns are powerful and fast; death comes faster. This makes methodically creeping through the maps as a unit, covering corners and assaulting defended positions, an incredibly tense affair. This only ramps up when your squad inevitably gets picked apart on the harder difficulties, right up until three of you are sat watching the lone survivor, the whole success of the mission pinned on them scraping through. It could even be down to you and you’ll feel the tension ramp up as you suddenly become aware of being judged.
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18. Payday 2
If you’ve never played Payday 2 or its predecessor, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was about perfect planning, stealth and crowd control. The reality is a bit different, and it usually goes like this: the four of you excitedly chat about how you’re going to approach a heist, you split up, someone fudges it almost instantly and every police officer in the world turns up to shoot you all in the head.
It’s more wave defense than precision stealth, with each player setting up traps, sharing ammo and trying to keep the police at bay as a timer ticks down. It’s chaotic and messy, but the shooting is weighty enough and the skill trees are satisfying to advance through. It’s possible get through each of the heists without raising an alarm, but it’s bloody hard and you stand very little chance until you’ve unlocked some of the more advanced skills. Still, the possibility hangs there like a 24 carat carrot, nudging you all to have another go until you’ve perfected every scenario.
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17. Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes
The best example of asymmetry in co-op. It involves at least two players – one of you is defusing a bomb with judicious mouse clicks and cautious wire snips, the other is giving instructions from a bomb-defusing manual. Neither player can look at what the other is doing. It’s one of the most perfect set-ups for the destruction of a healthy relationship and a fantastic example of leaving the screen itself behind.
You don’t have to print out the manual to read from it (you could just read the PDF file from a laptop) but we think it’s the best way to play. You flip hurriedly through pages, trying to decipher the theory of these explosive devices. Then comes the challenge of communicating the quirks and symbols of the page in a way that won’t be misunderstood. As the bomb handler, you’re consistently double-checking and second-guessing your team mate as they stammer out their directions. In the end, you’ve just got to trust them.
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16. Arma 3
Arma 3 takes place on a pair beautiful fictional Greek islands. It does have a single-player campaign, but it’s that island, the vehicles, guns and mechanics, and the painstaking attention to detail, that makes Arma 3 great. It’s a platform for the community to create their own games upon, and there’s enough community made content that if you get into it, you could be playing Arma 3’s cooperative mode to the exclusion of any other game.
There’s something about Arma’s design philosophy that makes it especially well suited to playing with other people. Partly there’s the realism, which obviously lends itself well to the kinds of genuine squad tactics you can enact when playing with some dedicated friends or a committed community like ShackTac. Partly it’s the way in which the islands are designed in spite of you, not in service to you, making your steady journeys across the landscape with another person feel more satisfying than overcoming a set of contrived obstacles. Hopefully one of you is a good pilot.
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15. Dead by Daylight
This is one for folks who love playing as the monster. Dead By Daylight is an asymmetrical survival horror sim not for the squeamish. In this 4vs1 co-op, three players take on the role of survivors and one player the killer, in a cat-and-mouse style multiplayer game with simple goals. Survivors must repair five out of seven generators scattered throughout a level to power the exit and escape. The killer, meanwhile, is hunting them, and can strike survivors with a weapon, and then drag them to a hanging hook and impale them on it. Ew.
Skills and abilities are balanced between the survivors and the killer; the killer, for example, is faster than the survivors in general, but is slower at specific tasks, like having to destroy obstacles instead of vaulting over them. With a spookily long list of Killers to play as (including horror film and game favourites like Ghost Face, Pyramid Head, and Michael Myers) there’s plenty of spooky fun to be found with this one.
Here’s a good ol’ fashioned beat-em-up, courtesy of Tribute Games. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge is an old-school side-scroller that pays homage to the TMNT games of bygones past. If you’re a fan of the sewer-dwelling reptiles then you’ll love the pixelart renditions of favourite characters from the series, both heroes and villains alike.
This entry is a little different from others on our co-op list, in that its co-op playstyle is much more laid-back than many others of its stress-inducing co-op cohort. What’s great about Shredder’s Revenge that its undemanding basic button-mashing becomes one of its biggest strengths, making it perfect for groups of friends who just want an arcadey jaunt while also having a nice chinwag surrounded by empty pizza boxes.
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13. Valheim
Valhiem’s Steam page describes it as “brutal” but I actually think this is one of the most relaxing co-op games on this list. There’s something for everyone here. If you’d like to focus on laid-back Viking settlement building and boar hunting in a peaceful environment you can hang out in the sandbox’s first area and do exactly that; if you and your friends are looking for some proper Viking action, you can head off into the world and get your butt beaten by skeletons, grey dwarfs, trolls, and its beastly Norse-themed bosses.
Valheim is still in early access, but there is already loads stuffed into its open world for you to dive into. A beginner’s tip: watch out for falling trees. Seriously, they can straight-up kill you in one splat.
It’s a simple pitch: a group of dwarven friends with class-based skills walk into an asteroid, mine for materials, and fight back the critters who fancy them for dinner. What complicates matters is the need to leave again: once their pockets are full, the dwarves have got five minutes to down pickaxes and reach an escape pod before it leaves without them.
This is even more complicated than it seems, because the asteroid’s tunnels and caverns are a twisting warren interspersed with enormous drops. Re-trace your path inwards in reverse, in a rush, and it’s easy to get lost – and those drops are now, of course, climbs. If you thought to make your ad hoc constructions two-way when you threw them up on the way in, then no problem. If you were hasty, or if your platforms were destroyed by explosive enemies, then you’re going to need to construct a new route. The adrenaline rush of your extraction is a thrill with friends over voice comms all panicking together.
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11. Diablo 4
Like Diablos before it (notably Diablo 3), Diablo 4 is a muddy, grim fantasy world beset by demons, which means it’s sensible to take a friend or two. And, again like previous Diablo games, it’s playable with a squad of four from start fo finish, with drop in multiplayer that tracks progress you made so you can go back to it in single-player if you want. But why would you bother! Exploding skeletons and werewolf monsters is a breeze in Diablo 4, requiring a lot of clicking and spamming your favourite DOT spells, but little else. This means you have a lot of time to bond with your friends.
That’s maybe reductive; one of the best things about Diablo 4 is that it has an admirably freeing levelling system for all the classes, so you can respec on the fly to suit whoever you’re playing with. And if a particular boss is giving you trouble, you can change tactics. Get your Rogue a spell to go invisible so you can more easily res your colleagues, while you can change your Necromancer’s spell path to have more debuffing spells, giving your Barbarian attacks more bite, and you’re on your way to victory.
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10. Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 is classic “bigger is better” sequel design: everything you liked in Borderlands 2 (still a great co-op romp in itself) but with more. More gun variables, more character abilities, more locations, more vehicles, more rifles that grow legs and run around as a lead-spewing sidekick. The only thing it has less of is Claptrap, which is a blessing. And so it makes sense that co-op is the way to go in this bombastic FPS game.
At any one time one friend could be ordering a giant battle ant into the fray while another hops into a Titanfall-ish mech suit, a third activates a drone and a holographic double and the fourth performs psychic powerbombs in the middle of it all. The way these character skills can be further differentiated means you never really know which version of each character you’ll be rubbing shoulders with, turning co-operative sessions into a showcase for builds. Of course, the main takeaway is always: I want my own battle ant.
Importantly, it’s a friendlier co-op game than Borderlands 2, too. With instanced loot drops, players don’t have to fight over the same spoils of war, and the difficulty scales to each combatant, so a casual dabbler can comfortably leap into an old pro’s game.
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9. It Takes Two
Hazelight have a knack for designing clever, co-op-only puzzle games, and It Takes Two is definitely their best yet. You and a mate play as bickering couple May and Cody, who get turned into tiny doll versions of themselves after upsetting their daughter. Despite their relationship being the verge of a big divorce bust-up, they must work together to get back to their normal selves, and maybe learn a few life lessons along the way.
It’s not the happiest of stories, all told (and features some truly horrifying moments involving stuffed toys and broken vacuum cleaners), but its puzzles are absolutely top notch. Players must really work together to conquer It Takes Two’s imaginative obstacle courses, and its range of ideas is a clear step up from Hazelight’s first co-op-only game, A Way Out. Even better, only one person needs to actually buy the game, as every copy comes with a free friend pass for your player two.
While many are purists when it comes to From Software‘s masterful action RPG, refusing to summon help or forcing themselves to equip just underwear whilst wielding only an overgrown twig, Dark Souls is fantastic in co-op. You can jump in with a friend, with a bit of planning, taking turns to help each other through each section. Even without friends, though, Dark Souls will have you forming bonds with silent strangers.
There’s an unwritten etiquette to the Souls games that sees people treating each other with respect, bowing to each other once summoned and waving each other off or cheering after a defeated boss. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of relief when a summoned co-op partner helps you finally beat Ornstein and Smough – the only thing that comes close is paying it back later, becoming the saviour in someone else’s story. Adam said it best in our review: “It’s superb, populating an already haunted world with phantoms and memories, and providing an eventual gateway by which to become an all-but anonymous hero or villain.”
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7. Spelunky
Spelunky is a moreish 2D platformer with roguelike elements that kicks your arse until it straightens your spine. Although the geometry might be constantly shifting with each frequent death, the rules that govern the enemy types remain constant. After a while, reflexes handle the enemies of The Mines – it’s like peeking into another dimension, but instead of losing your mind you become Neo. Can you dodge bullets? Yes.
Co-op changes the rules, making it perfect for seasoned players to team up. You might think things would be easier with more health and attack power, but stunning, whipping and blowing each other up will be a regular occurrence in the claustrophobic confines of the levels. More players only add more complication and four player co-op is chaos, creating more hilarious ways to fail. Timing, as ever, is key. Now see if you can make it to Hell with friends.
Los Santos is a gorgeous playground, each bend in the road bringing you level with a postcard view – every angle feels scrutinised. Trace a route from the peak of Mt. Chiliad, driving down through the dusty plains of the Grand Senora Desert, snaking by the hilltop mansions of Vinewood Hills, cruising on through the twinkling city itself and finally coming to stop at Vespucci Beach – all this, including the skies above and the sea beyond, is your online playground.
Grand Theft Auto Online is stuffed full of co-op scenarios, but the best experiences are found in the Heists. These multi-part missions ask you and three other players to take part in everything from the setup – casing the joint and grabbing getaway vehicles – all the way to the caper itself. While not all of them are literal heists, each one does an incredible job of making sure all four players are busy.
Everyone has their own job to do, sometimes all together, sometimes in pairs and sometimes alone. This, along with the randomness of the open-world’s systems, gives each one massive replay value. The only real downside is that you really need to play with three friends to get the most out of it. With each heist taking a couple of hours from setup to execution, it can be as difficult to organise as an actual heist.
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5. Minecraft
Nobody knew how huge Minecraft would be when the alpha released in 2010, but there were hints of it even from the first few hours, when the game’s initial players started building rudimentary shapes and sharing screenshots of what they’d created.
Today, Minecraft is played by people of all ages. Part of its appeal, aside from its openness, is the social aspect. Whether helping your child stave off monsters as you build a fantasy land together or collaborating with a group of adults to make a working hard drive, there’s something for everyone.
You can even play it as an RPG, killing mobs with your co-op partner, levelling up and building equipment to grow stronger, with the eventual goal of taking on the final boss, the Ender Dragon. Minecraft is whatever you want it to be and you can play it all with friends.
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4. Baldur’s Gate 3
Baldur’s Gate 3 is based on the Dungeons & Dragons world and ruleset, and that’s a party-based tabletop roleplaying game – so why wouldn’t you want to make it a party in its digi-form? BG3 is the tale of a rag-tag bag of heroes saving a lush fantasy world, getting into scrapes, meeting weird NPCs, and engaging in huge turn-based battles against monsters and ghouls. Much of this, like Larian’s Divinity games, is based on using the different skillsets and abilities of your characters effectively, and that’s much easier to do when the different characters are specced and controlled by other people, rather than you juggling it all yourself.
Unlike other co-op games, Baldur’s Gate’s co-op is tied to a single save and campaign. No fairweather dropping in and out! But this makes it feel like more of a collegiate story that you’re telling together, like an adventure you’re having as a group. Like, in fact, a game of Dungeons & Dragons. It’s worth the effort, and the game itself is a beautiful and complex playground for you and some friends to explore.
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3. Left 4 Dead 2
Panicking with friends can be sublime. That shared fear and desperation, the yells and shrieks of people facing the same horde, each convinced they’re moments from being overwhelmed. In a sense, they already are.
Horror games reach into your lizard brain and convince your amygdala that you’re in trouble. Left 4 Dead 2 is one of the best, because it’s built around saving your friends from that state. When the necrotic tongue of a Smoker comes grasping for your mate, you get to save the day with a well placed shot. When a Hunter pounces on your pal who’s straggling at the back, there you are with a punch and shotgun blast. When a Tank jumps right into the middle of your group… well, you can’t survive every time.
That’s part of what makes triumph taste so sweet. You’re pulling together against an AI director that keeps you on your toes, sending in hordes when it thinks you can take them, but rarely throwing so much at you that it feels unfair. Every level is an appropriately intense ordeal, where cries of frustration can quickly turn into tears of laughter. Ten years on, Valve are still the kings of co-op horror. Especially if you play Versus mode, and know the Hunter tearing into you is your mate Dave.
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2. Portal 2
What happens when you take a single-player game about traversing intricate puzzle rooms with portals, and then double everything? It becomes twice as complicated and twice as satisfying. Portal 2 already expands on everything introduced in the bite-sized Portal, adding things like Excursion Funnels, Thermal Discouragement Beams, Propulsion Gel and other fancy sounding words, but the addition of another player changes things the most.
Four portals make each room more confusing to explore, especially when you consider both players need to reach the exit. In essence, many rooms require two solutions. Some puzzles require both thought and dexterity, and firing your friend across a chasm by moving a portal while they freefall through another eventually becomes as normal as walking.
There’s a lot of personality in the design of the two robotic protagonists, too – the Laurel and Hardy of shiny metal. When you’re working together, you’ll be high fiving each other’s metal hands and barking possible solutions through your headset.
If you’re not using chat, Valve were kind enough to provide lots of ways to communicate in-game, with players able to place markers and emote. Every puzzle solution is punctuated by a dance. Portal 2’s co-op is an experience you can’t quite replicate, its systems a perfect balance of cooperation and friendly rivalry. Grab a friend and become the most stupid pair of geniuses around.
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1. Helldivers 2
In like a bullet to the top of this list is the extraordinarily popular Helldivers 2. Robots to the left of you, bugs to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you, a squad of my pals, merrily immolating all the enemies before us and, quite often, each other.
Helldivers 2 combines a lot of things. Great shooting against horde-style enemies? You betcha. Improbably huge special abilities like actual nukes? Sure thing. Pretending you haven’t set off the bomb in the enemy nest and then exploding your mates for the jape? Absotively.
The titular Helldivers are teams of hard-hitting expendable soldiers sent to clear enemies on planets surrounding Earth, which is at the centre of a global war with giant bugs on one side and advanced robots on the other, so you head down in timed missions do beat them back a bit. The always-on friendly fire is a daring choice, but one players have embraced, along with furious debates over whether the Terminids or Automatons are the worse enemy to come up against.
Buried in amongst this, though, are hints that actually both murderous robots and murderous insects are both the fault of the Super-Earth, though many players enjoy the roleplay aspects of screaming “For democracy!” as they call down an airstrike on a giant monster spitting acid at your mate. Helldivers 2 is simultaneously layered and simple, and it is an instahit you’re sure to love.
Top 20 Best Co-op Games To Play With Friends on PC in 2024 | Best Multiplayer Steam Games
The Best FPS games on PC 2024, FPS games are a classic PC gaming staple, and whether you’ve been playing them since the 90s or started your journey more recently with the boom in battle royales, there are plenty to choose from when it comes to the all-time greats. To help you narrow down what to play next, we’ve created this list of the best FPS games to play right now, from single-player epics to team-based shooters you can play with mates. Heck, some don’t even necessarily have guns in them at all, and you may find the odd boomerang or bow in here too.
The 25 best FPS games on PC
You can find our list of the 25 best FPS games on PC below, which you can either browse in one big gulp, or jump straight to individual entries using the links below. And if your favourite FPS isn’t here, let us know in the comments below. It was number 26, honest.
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25. Severed Steel
Kicking off with a newbie to the list, Severed Steel is all about sick stunts. Wall runs, somersaults, dolphin dives, slick slides: if you want it, Severed Steel has it. As you run around each mission while pulling off stunts and completing objectives, you shoot voxel dudes with their voxel guns that you pick up on the go. As you shoot your guns and arm cannon, bodies and walls will explode in a glorious shower of destruction. Oh yeah, you have an arm cannon! It does big damage, and Severed Steel’s destructible voxel arenas (am I saying “voxel” enough?) become your playground when you start blasting through walls.
Severed Steel can feel disorienting at first, but it’s rather forgiving. You won’t take damage as long as you simply keep moving, so it’s all about chaining stunts together to close the distance between enemies and take them down before they land a single shot. It’s the complete opposite of Superhot’s near-constant slow-mo, but it makes you feel equally badass.
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24. Resident Evil Village
Resident Evil Village continues the journey of Ethan Winters and his unlucky hands. As he explores the titular village, you’ll fight lycans, zombies, and more with all sorts of guns. If, like me, you were also petrified by Resident Evil 7 and couldn’t muster the courage to defeat the Baker family, then rest assured that Village is a far less terrifying experience. The first run will still feel tense, and there are some horrifying moments, but overall the atmosphere isn’t as unsettling. A big reason why? Village leans into the chaotic action of Resident Evil 4 and 5, handing you plenty of powerful guns that you can use to pop heads with ease.
Village thrives on that action, and while the first half is a slower, more horror-focused experience, the latter half gives that up for an action game that fires on all cylinders. There are big boss fights, even bigger explosions, and hordes of enemies to slaughter as you see fit. If you’re hankering for more, the Mercenaries mode offers action-packed time trials that rank your combat abilities, while playing the campaign with cheats is an absolute treat. Trust us when we say infinite ammo grenade launchers are the best.
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23. Boomerang X
It’s safe to say that I was blown away by Boomerang X. As I said in my Boomerang X preview, it’s the DOOM game I’ve always wanted and it may have ruined FPS games for me. Gun are overrated – boomerangs are the new hotness.
Boy does the boomerang feel good to fling, and you’ll quickly get access to a handful of superpowers that’ll only make the wooden spinner even more fun to use. Like the ability to teleport to it mid-air, or the ability to slow-time to a crawl as you line up that perfect shot. Combat is remarkably fluid and there’s barely any downtime. It’s fast, frenetic, and a whole heap of cool. String together a flawless succession of moves, and trust me, the feeling is unrivalled.
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22. Titanfall 2
Titanfall 2 could have been the best singleplayer FPS of 2016, if it hadn’t been for the new Doom. Nonetheless, if you want straight-up action thrills with a whole lot of flash, some particularly glorious movement and impressively stressful mech-based boss fights, this is going to make you very happy. And hey, there’s a robust soldiers vs giant robo-suits multiplayer mode in there too, building on what the multiplayer-only Titanfall 1 already established.
That is, assuming you can find opponents. Titanfall 2 suffered from something of a failure to launch, having resolutely lost the marketing wars of late 2016. It may stay alive over time thanks to word of mouth, but even if it doesn’t, definitely check it out for that singleplayer campaign. It is, however, on the brief side, so we strongly recommend playing on Hard difficulty – as well as making it last longer, it makes the mech fights particularly feel that much more satisfying once you finally claim a steel scalp.
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21. Halo Infinite
Halo Infinite landed out of nowhere with a surprise multiplayer launch in late 2021, but it disappeared equally as fast. That’s a shame, because it’s one of the best free to play games on PC right now. Sure, the progression system wasn’t great at launch and improvements were slow, but that core loop of running and gunning around arenas is Halo at its finest. With the campaign dropping a few months after (paid or on Game Pass), Halo Infinite quickly became a full Halo experience – and it might just be the best one in decades.
If you’re after something a bit bigger than Halo’s multiplayer arena shooter, then check out the sprawling open world campaign. Sure, an open world Halo might not have been on your wishlist, but careening around huge spaces in a Warthog while gunning down grunts and hoovering up collectibles is like a bigger and better version of Combat Evolved’s infamous Silent Cartographer level. If you simply miss the Halo of old, then don’t panic. Halo Infinite still has plenty of linear levels sprinkled throughout that feel like traditional Halo.
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20. Deathloop
In Deathloop, a puzzling plot sends you back through a repeating timeloop while you figure out how to assassinate eight visionaries. They’re a bunch of nasties on an island, and if you manage to kill all eight in one night, you can free yourself from the timeloop. The day is split into four sections – morning, noon, afternoon, and evening – and you can only enter one of four areas per chunk. The visionaries move between the four areas throughout the day, so the puzzle is finding a routine that lets you kill all eight. That usually involves finding the moments when they pair off, so that you can execute a sneaky double assassination.
Only, Deathloop isn’t actually that sneaky. Unlike its predecessors in Arkane’s Dishonored franchise, Deathloop seems to focus heavily on action, relishing in the FPS joys of headshotting a bunch of enemies. Time is a weird soup, after all, and death doesn’t really mean anything when you’re trapped in a loop. So, kill, die, and kill some more. It’s a liberating cycle that allows you to really go wild and experiment with playstyles, as you don’t need to worry about future repercussions of your actions if you never make it past today.
In that chaotic action, you’ll meet Julianna. She’s another assassin, but her target is you. Julianna can be controlled by an AI, but the real fun begins when another player takes on the role and invades your world. When Julianna invades, you become trapped in your current area until either one of you dies, or you manage to hack an antenna that allows you to escape. Invasions often result in a tense game of cat and mouse, followed by a huge firefight in which both players use every weapon at their disposal. It’s an explosive end to most missions that delivers frenetic action and memorable multiplayer moments.
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19. Rainbow Six Siege
Rainbow Six Siege does what Battlefield games have thus far only pretended to do: provide a multiplayer world which is destructible at a granular level. Instead of buildings collapsing when scripted levers are pulled, in Siege almost every door, window, wall, ceiling, and floor can have a hole poked in it via gunshot, grenades, battering rams and breaching charges.
It feels like technical wizardry and the consequences ripple throughout the entire experience, creating tension from the ability to be attacked from any angle, encouraging teamwork through asymmetric missions which force one team to defend themselves against the other’s attempt to breach their compound, and forcing traditional Rainbow Six tactical awareness without a planning phase by requiring you to hold a perfect mental map of the building around you at all times.
It’s equally impressive for being a team-based multiplayer shooter that feels fresh, offering something different from the Counter-Strikes and Call of Dutys while staying true to the spirit of the Rainbow Six series.
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is all about killing rat people. Slicing them with swords, whacking them with maces, chopping through them with an axe – anything goes when you’re fighting the vermin hordes. Most importantly, though, it always involves bloody carnage that feels oh-so-good. If you’re in the mood for some simple, yet chaotic melee action, then Vermintide 2 is the game for you. And, for those of you screaming about how it isn’t an FPS, every class has some kind of ranged option to try. The bow is a personal favourite of mine, but there are also spells and guns that you can use to blow the rat people to pieces.
Cutting through rat folk might seem easy at first, but when elite enemies start picking your allies off, isolating them from the group for an easy kill, you’ll realise that teamplay is the key to survival. By forcing you to stick together, Vermintide 2 perfectly captures the feeling of being part of a fantasy party. Even if you’re unfamiliar with Warhammer lore, fans of Lord of the Rings or Dungeons & Dragons should find a lot to love here. Sure, Warhammer is a little more grimdark than Middle Earth or Faerun, but when you’re cleaving through rats with an axe while your mate unleashes a volley of arrows on an incoming horde, your fantasy-adoring spark is sure to ignite.
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17. Turbo Overkill
Turbo Overkill is a retro-inspired FPS following in the footsteps of Quake and DOOM, albeit with a techno twist. You’ll charge around arenas slaughtering all sorts of enemies, but along the way you find augments that you can install to gain new powers. That could be a subtle boost, such as extra armor on getting a chainsaw kill, or something a little more chaotic, such as massive explosions whenever you hit the ground. Traversing the map to find those upgrades is a treat, too, as Turbo Overkill constantly propels you forward with incredible speed through its neon-filled streets.
We gave Turbo Overkill a bestest best when it launched in early access in late 2021. But, to reiterate one of the most salient points: you have a chainsaw for a leg. Fun times follow, as you can use that chainsaw leg to skid and slide around while tearing through baddies. They explode in violent bursts of blood, but there’s no time to stop and look at your victims, as Turbo Overkill is all about delivering that huge damage with speed and style.
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16. Neon White
Carrying on from Turbo Overkill, here’s another game that’s about running fast. Neon White is a speedrunning FPS in which you use cards to either kill nasty demons, or launch yourself towards the goal in hopes of shaving off half a second.
It’s that second part that’s really fun, as each of Neon White’s levels quickly become complex puzzles to solve. It’s easy to get stuck in a loop of just running the same route over and over again, sure, but taking the time to step back and wander around the level to see every avenue and secret passage will give you insight into other potential paths. And then you run it and complete the mission an entire second faster. A second! Few things feel better than that.
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15. Hunt: Showdown
Hunt: Showdown‘s this mixture of PVP and PVP, underscored by serious tension. You take on the role of hunters with the express aim of assassinating an AI “boss” tucked away somewhere on the map. Trouble is, there are other squads also attempting to do the same thing. Die and you lose your equipment forever. Survive, and you’ll not only keep your stuff, but get some of the spoils too. That’s the tension for you – every single foray into the dark could spell disaster.
The audio design’s also sterling in Hunt: Showdown too, with gunshots that ring out from miles away, and the clang of chains could help you locate an enemy that’s stalking you nearby. Even swapping your weapon or reloading in quiet moments might give away your position. It’s an FPS that’s unlike anything out right now.
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14. Call Of Duty: Warzone 2
Warzone 2 may not be battle royale king like its predecessor once was, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t any good. Far from it! There’s a brand new gunsmith which lets you tinker with weapons in even greater detail, which makes for even spicier metas. The new map Al Mazrah is – in my opinion – better than Verdansk, in the way it facilitates fights and removes a lot of boring grey in favour of some actual colour.
Warzone 2 isn’t perfect by any means, but what it offers is a free-to-play, triple A shooter with COD’s brilliantly smooth FPSing. It’s also worth noting that the game often receives free updates to keep things fresh, so it’s unlikely you’ll get bored quickly.
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13. Team Fortress 2
That Team Fortress 2 is a sequel and a remake of a sober-as-a-nun multiplayer mod seems almost irrelevant now. But it’s part of what makes the game so important. Valve took years and years to settle upon a model for what has become one of the firmly-entrenched favourites of the PC gaming fraternity, and that they did so allowed it to prove that a multiplayer first-person shooter can be funny, even witty, and that constant experimentation and progression can keep a game alive and evolving long after it should have ground to a halt.
Team Fortress 2 felt like an experiment, and it still feels like an experiment, and that experiment was a success. A move to free-to-play and a hat-centric economy has kept TF2 thriving. The cost of this is that something of the original spirit was perhaps lost in this translation to gimmee, gimmee, gimmee, but we can forgive that.
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12. Devil Daggers
2016 was in many ways a vintage year for first-person shooters, and the reason for that was because they understood their past. DOOM, obviously; Overwatch returned to Team Fortress rather than COD; Titanfall 2 was the big sci-fi silliness of the noughties again and Devil Daggers… well, Devil Daggers is from an alternate timeline where Quake changed everything and was never forgotten in favour of military men and careful plots.
A beautiful hellscape of big square pixels against a midnight backdrop, monstrous things looming at you from the darkness, and the dance, the endless dance. A pure test of everything that first-person shooters ever taught us. Reflex, awareness, movement, practice, true grit and no surrender. It is about your own time and only about your own time, because that is all that matters – everything else that shooters ever added is mere fluff.
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11. DOOM Eternal
DOOM 2016 was a bloody and brilliant reintroduction to the demon-slaying franchise, but DOOM Eternal takes it to new heights. It doesn’t waste any time making you wait around, opting instead to hand you a shotgun and force you out into the demon crowds. Within moments, you’re platforming around chaotic arenas with an upgraded shotgun, machine gun, and a chainsaw doing what that DOOM guy does best. Namely, rippin’ and tearin’.
Sure, you might have done that just a few years ago in its predecessor, but Eternal pushes you to get faster and more ferocious. It has some new platforming elements that not everyone will appreciate, such as wall climbing and swinging from poles, but when it comes to tearing through arenas filled with hulking demons, DOOM Eternal does it best.
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10. Left 4 Dead 2
Zombies: in 2008 they were still very exciting. They still are today when blessed with Valve’s magic touch, which in a few, brief, cyclic co-op skits adds more life, wit and hinted-at history to its characters and its world than most of the 8 hour+ singleplayer campaigns in this list stuck together. Including Left 4 Dead 2 in the list was complicated, however, given most of what makes it to strong was work done by the previous year’s Left 4 Dead.
It’s a sequel not that different to the original, and not a game that I felt, on its first outing, really changed anything. However, it’s clear with time that Left 4 Dead 2 was a major under-the-hood upgrade, both closer to what was intended for the zombie-blasting horror game, and also a bigger move in the direction of pure co-op, which wasn’t something that even seemed possible before the let’s-all-die-together first Left 4 Dead came along.
Another strong reason to choose this over L4D1 (which still has a more memorable cast of Survivors, to my mind) is how much it’s been expanded by mods. You can stick Deadpool in there, expand it from a 4-player game to a 16-player one, turn everyone into a dinosaur or recreate pretty much the entirety of L4D1 within it. Get thee to the Steam workshop and indulge.
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9. SUPERHOT / SUPERHOT VR (2016)
There ain’t nothin’ new under the sun – a miserable claim that SUPERHOT Team disproved twice in one year. First there was SUPERHOT itself, a shooter in which time only moves when you move (or shoot) (or throw something) (or punch). Then there was SUPERHOT VR, which singlehandedly redeemed the whole concept of virtual reality and easily made it into our pick of the best VR games.
SUPERHOT is both maximum-adrenaline thrills and highly tactical – transforming the first-person shooter from a game about precision aiming and reflexive movement into one in which every twitch counted. The world is super-slow-mo until you do anything, which grants you the time to plan the move but leaves you subject to a devious puzzlebox construction in which one action leaves you vulnerable to some other threat. It is sublime, and it is impossibly cool.
Particularly in VR, where you are making those movements yourself – the ducking, the punching, the throwing, the shooting. The Matrix fantasy without any of the bilge – just superhot action. A glorious, glorious reinvention of first-person violence.
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8. Deep Rock Galactic
Deep Rock Galactic combines drunk dwarves with some complex tunnel systems and lots of nasty subterranean bugs. The result is often sheer chaos, as four players charge into the depths to mine whatever they need for the big corporation in the sky. You pick a role, each of which has a unique weapon and traversal mechanic, and zip through the caves at incredible pace, collecting ores as you head towards a main objective.
The chaos comes when you’re trying to wrap your head around these main objectives, connecting winding pipelines or powering huge machines, while fending off those blasted bugs that just won’t stop. As you go, hordes of creepy critters will charge in your direction. A rational team might fight them together, deploying traps and getting into a strong defensive formation, but I find the fun in panickedly running away and screaming. But, whether you play Deep Rock Galactic as a true co-op shooter or as a wild romp in the caverns, it’s sure to be a good time.
Hurtling down into the dark depths of GTFO‘s Rundowns (levels) is a terrifying start. What’s even more terrifying, though, is when teammates don’t work together. We tend to quickly designate a leader when I play with friends, but someone always wanders off a little too far or fails to follow orders. Lots of screaming, shooting, and swearing ensues. It’s pure chaos with a horror-filled flair, and it’s a great time online. It demands teamwork and precision if you want to survive, but that fills every encounter with a level of tension that few other FPS games reach.
That tension is only heightened by the enemy variety crawling around every level. You never know what might lie behind each door, but spotting a Scout’s tendril as you enter a new area could spell the end of a run. The thrill of needing to adapt to whatever you find, and often sneak past enemies to preserve resources, makes GTFO the best co-op survival horror on PC.
Alright, yes, you’ll need a VR headset for Half Life: Alyx, alongside a powerful enough rig to run it nicely. But, if you’ve got both of these things, then you’re in for a treat.
Graham said in his Half-Life: Alyx review that this is “the Half-Life game you’ve been waiting for, even if it’s not the one you were expecting”. And this is because the game’s been designed with VR in mind. You’re now able to reach out and touch City 17, and the motion control shooting “feels better than Half-Life’s combat ever has”.
And Half-Life: Alyx embraces horror too, with moments where you’re cowering in corners or chucking objects to distract enormous monsters. You’re even able to cover your mouth with your actual hand, and have it replicated in-game. It’s very much been lifted by VR, and not harmed by it.
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5. Half-Life 2
Of course. So much is in Half-Life 2, from an unprecedented level of architectural design to facial animation which rendered anything else obsolete overnight, to a physics system which transformed shooter environments from scenery into interactive resource, to some of gaming’s most striking baddies in the Striders and a huge step forwards in making AI companions believable and likeable.
It’s also a long, changeable journey through a beautifully, bleakly fleshed-out world, and although of course you are on the hero’s journey, it’s careful to keep you feeling like a bit player in a wider conflict. That this, plus the cliffhanger ending of Episode 2, left so much more to be told leaves PC gaming in a perpetual state of frustration that the series has, publicly at least, ground to a halt. I don’t think all of it is as striking as it once was – particularly, much of the man-shooting feels routine and slightly weightless now – but Half-Life 2 gave us more than any other first-person shooter before, and maybe even since.
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4. Dusk
DUSK is a retro-styled FPS that’s retro, but doesn’t get stuck trying to mimic retro. It has the gut-spilling impact of the genre, yet mixes it with modern twists: like picking up items to create impromptu climable routes to hidden areas, or just slinging saw blades and soap at foes.
There’s a lot of coloured-key collecting to open doors in DUSK, but it’s spread across loads of complex, batshit maps that only get better as you barrel through through its campaign. There is, of course, a metal soundtrack paired with a level of spookiness designed to make you both enjoy the riff and jump out of your chair within five seconds of one another. Please don’t skip out on this.
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3. Valorant
There’s no elegant way to put this: Valorant is Counter: Strike but with wizards and ninjas. One team wants to plant a bomb, the other needs to stop this from happening. How? By inching around corners, having decent aim, and making strong callouts in the team chat. Patience is rewarded here, as is coordinating with your team to control each map.
If Valorant sounds like Counter: Strike, that’s because the gunplay is pretty similar. However, where it differs is in ability usage. You can choose from a roster of Agents who each have special powers that’ll let them do stuff like teleport across short gaps, flashbang around corners, or heal allies. If this sounds aggressively unbalanced, don’t worry, almost all of these abilities feel like useful tools, as opposed to pain-bringers.
I’d say I prefer Valorant to Counter: Strike nowadays, purely because it feels more current. There’s regular updates and some invaluable tools – like an aim training map – are baked into the game, as opposed to being buried away in a “community creations” section of a store.
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2. Apex Legends
Oh my, Apex, what excellent bumslides you have. What solid shootsing you offer. What a delightful bunch of canyons and swamps you’ve plonked us in. We should have known better than to doubt the makers of Titanfall 2’s robot antics. Since its launch Apelegs has added plenty of new characters, new maps, and even a new Arenas mode.
It’s a solid murder hike every time you dive into Apex Legends, and there really is nothing that matches its pace in the Battle Royale realm.
Destiny 2 is an incredibly fluid MMO FPS with some of the best shooting around, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Whether you want to team up with others to topple big bosses, turn on your fellow players and slug them with a shotgun in Crucible’s PvP modes, or play through epic stories that span the solar system, Destiny 2 has something for everyone.
Whichever activity you prefer, you can easily sink hundreds, if not thousands, of hours into it, and the brilliant gunplay makes it a constant joy. Not only is the best FPS around, I’ll wager that Destiny 2 is also the best superhero game right now. There’s something I love about swinging electro swords and firing off a golden gun imbued with solar energy to kill massive raid bosses in a bid to save the solar system.
Destiny 2 has so much to love, but that doesn’t mean it’s without fault. The onboarding experience is incredibly awkward for newbies, with the removal of the original Red War campaign and subesquent Forsaken expansion making the story completly incomprehensible without watching oodles of lore videos. That proves a chore for even the most dedicated of Guardians, and it’s a roadblock that’s almost guaranteed to alienate new players who try to hop in for a new expansion.
However, it’s a testament to Destiny 2’s strengths that we still recommend it so highly. It’s a masterful FPS with so much fun to be had, regardless of whether you prefer PvE or PvP. And, with so much content available for free, there’s no really no reason not to give it a go. So, off you pop, go decrypt some engrams, get some snazzy armor, and start shooting aliens. Eyes up. Guardian.
Best Android Launchers in 2024, Android launchers are one of the most useful apps for customization. It can entirely change the look of your home screen and how it behaves. It can even change things like icons and themes and offer a variety of other personalization features for your device. Most legacy Android launchers have the same stock Android theme, which may seem a bit too cluttered. But now, many newer launchers are going for a minimal aesthetic. Here are the best Android launchers available right now.
We’d also like to give an honorable mention to Flauncher (Google Play). It officially launched in 2022 and is easily one of the best Android TV launchers on Google Play.
AIO Launcher
Price: Free /In-app purchases ($0.99 – $9.99 per item)
AIO Launcher does it differently than many Android launcher apps. It does away with the standard home screen in favor of an information-packed list of stuff. It shows things like your latest SMS and missed calls, your media player, your system info (RAM, battery, storage, etc.), and even stuff like news, Bitcoin price, Twitter, and more. The list is actually quite extensive.
The premium version also includes integration for Telegram and your regular widgets from other apps. Not everything has to look like stock Android, and AIO Launcher certainly shows that it can be done effectively. Luckily, most of the features are free, and the free version doesn’t seem to have ads.
If you like the look and feel of the iOS UI, this app’s for you. This launcher gives your Android phone a look similar to iOS 17. This includes a lock screen, a control center, many animations, different wallpapers, and widgets. It has a ton of customization options. There are some features, like lock screens, notifications, a control center, and assistive touch, that you need to download separately. It does require some time to configure everything perfectly, but once everything is set up, Launcher iOS 17 makes your Android look a lot like iOS. There are a few bugs, but it works great for a free app.
Price: Free /In-app purchases ($1.99 – $5.99 per item)
Before Launcher is one of the few minimal-style launchers on the list. This one claims to help reduce interactions with your phone by up to 40%. There is also a notification filter that reduces notifications by about 80%. Some other features include a clean, easy UI and the ability to pin important apps or hide unimportant apps. It’s a bit light on customizations, but that’s pretty typical for minimal launchers. You do get support for icon packs, though.
You get the vast majority of features in the free version, which also doesn’t contain advertisements. The developers also state that the app can’t capture any data and requires no permissions to run. That’s fairly standard for Android launchers on this list, but we thought you’d still like to know.
Price: Free /In-app purchases ($1.99 – $5.99 per item)
If you like the Windows UI, then you’re going to love this app. Square Home brings the old Metro UI of Windows Phone to your Android device. It has a user-friendly interface that is both simple and visually appealing. With features like vertical scrolling within a page and smooth horizontal transitions between pages, it faithfully replicates the metro-style UI. It’s a bit different from the default Android experience. It utilizes tiles to display your notifications, calls, SMS, e-mails, and more. Square Home also boasts a smart app drawer that intuitively organizes your apps, which it sorts by usage.
Additionally, it offers quick access to your contacts and tons of other customization options, making it a great launcher choice. The developers address user-submitted complaints and work on them to update the app frequently. You need to pay for some premium features like animated tiles, a media controller, infinite scrolling, 3D effects for horizontal scrolling, and others. There are monthly subscription plans of $1.99 and a lifetime subscription priced at $5.99 too.
Olauncher is a great choice for minimalist lovers. This launcher offers a clean, clutter-free experience with its extensive customization options. It’s also open source. The most basic features allow you to do everything, from resizing text to renaming apps and even controlling the visibility of the status bar. It has gestures, wallpapers, dark and light theme support, dual app support, work profile compatibility, automatic app launch, and more. The best part is that it’s completely free and has no ads.
Lawnchair Launcher is an excellent Android launcher for fans of minimalism. It’s an open-source project that mimics much of the look and feel of the Pixel Launcher. The app features adaptive icons, a fun icon pack, an “At a Glance” feature that uses notification dots for quick access, and a drawer category function to neatly organize your apps. You can also choose between a light and dark mode for your system. It integrates with Google Feed and Homefeeder to provide a comprehensive Android launcher experience. It’s also completely free. This app used to be one of the most popular launchers, but now it has many bad reviews because the developers have stopped updating the app.
Price: Free /In-app purchases ($1.99 – $5.99 per item)
Total Launcher is an older launcher app. It offers a lot of customization options and is suited for both those who prefer a clutter-free experience and those who want tons of widgets. It has a simple UI, so it’s really easy to use and setup. It features various themes, wallpapers, icon packs, and much more.
Total Launcher is free to use, but you’ll need to pay for premium features like folder search and hidden apps. There are monthly subscriptions of $1.99 and a lifetime subscription of $5.99. It’s a worthwhile investment considering the rich customization and functionality it brings to your Android experience.
Microsoft Launcher is one of the most popular launcher apps available on Android. The app features custom icon packs, daily Bing wallpapers, and a dark theme for low-light use. It simplifies phone transitions with Backup and Restore, enabling local or cloud backups. Intuitive gestures, like swiping and tapping, streamline navigation. Plus, it ensures accessibility with screen lock and recent apps view gestures. It also has integration with many Microsoft services, including their calendar, email, to-do list app, and direct integration with Microsoft PCs.
Price: Free/ In-app Purchases ($0.99 – $29.99 per item)
Niagara Launcher offers a user-friendly, ergonomic experience for Android users. It has an adaptive list layout that shows you essential information like messages and calendar events, and it even has support for media players. It has unique wave alphabet navigation with embedded notifications. The app is ad-free, lightweight, and embraces Material You Theming for customization. The developers are still frequently updating the app.
It doesn’t get better than Nova Launcher. Nova Launcher has been around for quite some time, but it is still one of the best Android launcher app options available. It has a laundry list of customization features that include gesture support, the ability to customize the look and feel of the app, icon pack support, themes, and much, much more. The app also gets updated at a breakneck pace, which means bugs generally get squished quickly and new features are added consistently. It also comes with the ability to backup and restore your home screen layouts for when you eventually switch to a new phone. It’s the one we’d recommend you try first.
Price: Free /In-app purchases ($2.99 – $49.99 per item)
Wide Launcher is a newer app that offers a unique Android experience with a home screen that’s three times wider than standard launchers. It allows you to place items anywhere and provides a wide range of palettes and mini-apps for enhanced smartphone use. You can personalize your home screen with a variety of selected wallpapers, stickers, app icon styles, and picture frames. The launcher features intelligent organization and smart widgets called applets. There’s a fun feature that allows you to have virtual pets running on your screen called Hellopets. It’s also ad-free.
Rootless Launcher is a decent, stock Android-style launcher from 2018. It’s actually a fairly basic experience. You get a stock Android look and feel with some additional customization elements to complete the look. Some of the features include icon pack support, adaptive icon pack support, an icon shape selector, themes based on your wallpaper, and the ability to change the location of the search bar. You can also get Google Feed working on this launcher, but like most, it requires an extra plug-in download and installation. The website with the instructions for that is in the Google Play description.
Price: Free /In-app purchases ($0.99 – $26.99 per item)
Smart Launcher is another famous and quite old launcher app for Android. It has features like automatic app sorting and an ambient theme that dynamically adapts to your wallpaper. There’s an option to hide the navigation bar, and you can even protect sensitive apps with a PIN. Its UI is designed for one-handed use, and essential elements are conveniently placed at the bottom of the screen.
The launcher provides responsive built-in widgets and extensive customization options, allowing you to personalize themes and fonts. It also has a smart search bar, which simplifies tasks like finding contacts or searching the web. The problem with this launcher is that it feels like some of the features are forced; there’s no option to disable them.
Lynx Launcher is a new launcher app that offers a clean and distraction-free Android experience. The app supports theming, allowing you to change icons and even the entire theme, with the option to toggle dark mode based on your preferences. It has tons of customization features that allow you to tweak everything from the dock’s position to text size and notification dots. It also lets you hide non-removable apps. There are gestures that give you quick access to apps, contacts, and settings. A favorites screen shows your most-used apps and contacts for easy access.
Best Android Root Apps in 2024, Rooting your Android device allows you to get complete control of your phone. It unlocks your device entirely so that you can perform more advanced and complicated tasks (for instance, bloatware removal), not meant for general users. Moreover, the best Android root apps help you make the most of your phone.
The best apps to root an Android phone help you do all the heavy lifting, save battery, get new applications, and improve your phone’s performance. However, the opposite may happen if you use a wrong and unreliable rooting app.
Therefore, you must be extremely careful when picking a root app. However, since you have arrived at this article, it will be a cakewalk for you to choose the proper application.
Through this article, we share a rooted apps list. The applications in this list are selected after thorough research and analysis of the available options in the market. Let us walk you through it without ado.
9 Best Android Root Apps for Your Phone in 2024
Following are some of the best root apps for Android.
1. AdAway
Let us first introduce you to AdAway. It is a perfect choice for users who want to block ads on their devices. With this free and open-source application, you can block all ad-serving hostnames using the hosts’ file. It keeps you updated with the ad-serving networks and redirects these networks to your phone, i.e, the local host. Hence, these requests do not lead to any ads.
Next, we have Magisk Manager on our list of the best Android root apps. The most advantageous feature of this app is that, unlike the traditional methods, it does not require you to make system partition changes. Moreover, it helps you hide root permissions from applications like Android Pay, Pokemon Go, etc.
Furthermore, it allows you to get OTA updates to your operating system. However, sadly, this app is unavailable on Google Play and you need to download it as apk from the official website.
Let us take a look at Quick Reboot. This application allows you to reboot your device with a single tap on the button to do so. Moreover, there are several reboot options like recovery mode, fastboot, and safe mode. It comes in handy when you want all your reboot settings in one location and do not wish to use ADB or hardware key combinations to reboot your device.
The next name on our list of the best Android root applications is OneClick Root. It helps improve your device’s battery life and speed. Moreover, you can use this application to download apps that are unavailable in your country and perform byte by byte mobile data backup.
Furthermore, OneClickRoot supports free wireless tethering, installation of apps incompatible with your device, and access to crucial hidden files.
The discussion about the best Android root apps cannot be complete without Rescue Root. It is among the top applications to backup your device and protect it hassle-freely. With this app, you can perform customized roots for specific devices and restore your phone to an earlier rooted state.
Additionally, round-the-clock support, availability for all Android devices, and unlimited restoration of data make Rescue Root one of the best rooting apps.
Here comes the best application for all those wanting to customize their device without any hassle. It offers a one-click device root. Additionally, it boasts compatibility with a wide range of devices and a beginner-friendly interface.
Furthermore, speeding up the device performance, easy Android streamlining, and Android root using PC are its other noteworthy features.
Let us now talk about the Root Essentials. Available for phone, tablet, and Android wear. This app lets you manage all applications on your device without any cumbersome effort, check the battery status, and check the phone for rooting access.
Moreover, it allows you to edit LCD density, view device information, change the phone’s emoji, select from over 700 fonts, and change your phone’s system language.
Are you looking for a multi-purpose booting app? Then, ROM Toolbox Pro is a perfect choice for you. With ROM Toolbox Pro, you can easily manage your files or folders along with changing your device settings completely.
The app lets you utilize the custom fonts from an external SD Card. Additionally, using this Android Root App you can effortlessly move, delete, and rename files. Along with the ownership of files, you can also modify the permissions of any desired file. Overall, ROM Toolbox Pro is the must-have app for every root user out there.
Let us introduce you to LiveBoot. It is among the best root apps for Android because of its device health checking to determine whether or not you should root it. Moreover, it boasts many interesting features like access to the System Message Registry, commands to debug Android applications, and an option to view apps running in the background during boot.
This article acquainted you with the best Android root apps to help you use your device to the maximum potential. You can choose any app from the above list depending on your requirements.
If there is any application you would like to add to the above list, if you have any other suggestions/questions about this post, please drop them in the comment box. We will be delighted to address your queries.
Root Android: Everything you need to know!
One of the best things about Android is its customization and flexibility. Android lets you use it the way you want to, whether that means changing the launcher, or setting up a host of unique automatic functions with Tasker. But for some, that isn’t enough. You can gain near-total control of the OS if you root Android.
This isn’t as common as it once was, but there are still benefits to rooting Android, such as removing bloatware, full system backups, overclocking, specialized settings, and more. If you like the sounds of that, but find yourself feeling a little anxious about “hacking” your much-loved (and probably expensive) device, then read on to learn everything you need to know about rooting Android. It’s actually easier than you might think.
Editor’s note: Rooting Android devices requires a high level of tinkering and modifying your phone’s software. This can be risky, and there is a chance you’ll damage your handset. This is terrible news, considering rooting Android may void your warranty. Always do your research and be confident about the steps you’re taking, as no one but you will be responsible should anything happen to your device.
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What is rooting?
While it might sound scary, rooting refers to obtaining access to commands, system files, and folder locations that are usually locked off. Rooting Android can be thought of as promoting yourself from a system user to an administrator, with the additional freedom and risks that come from more control over the deeper workings of your device. With great power comes great responsibility and all that!
More specifically, adding root to Android means becoming a superuser, which is a Linux function you may be familiar with. In many ways, you could view this more as restoring a function that should have been there, to begin with!
Users can install and run applications on rooted Android phones and tablets that require special privileges, bypass carrier-installed software, and even remove bloatware applications (as opposed to simply disabling them). Root access is even needed if you want to install trivial things like certain custom fonts, and rooting Android can also unlock new features in certain apps and launchers.
If you’re comfortable with coding, you can even go as far as creating your own custom ROMs.
Handy rooting terminology:
•Bootloader:Lowest level software on your phone that starts up recoveries and then the main operating system.
•Recovery: Low-level software that can create and restore full system backups. It is accessed before the main OS.
•ADB (Android Debug Bridge): A command-line tool that is part of the Android SDK, which supports communication between a computer and an Android device.
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To root or not to root?
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
The next question is whether you should root Android or leave it as it is. That, of course, is a matter of personal preference, but there are some compelling arguments both for and against it.
On the plus side, it gives you more access to several cool apps and customization options. It also lets you upgrade older phones to newer Android versions long after your manufacturer and carrier have stopped supporting it. As mentioned, rooting Android will let you change things that you otherwise Wouldn’t be able to, and it will also allow you to use a host of cool apps.
Android root apps and options
Here are just a few things you can do with a rooted Android device:
•Overclock or underclock the CPU.
•Increase battery life.
•It greatly enhances the power of Tasker.
•Remove preinstalled bloatware apps.
•Make real backups.
•Install custom ROMs.
•Further customize your phone’s looks.
•Install apps that do more than basic ones.
•You can even do things like installing Ubuntu for desktop.
For some people, rooting Android is also something of a statement. You paid for this device, so why shouldn’t you use it exactly as you wish? Especially if it means removing cynical and unhelpful bloatware. There’s also a certain status that comes from it, and a great sense of accomplishment when you achieve root access for the first time.
If you’re a developer hoping to create your own root apps, you need to start somewhere!
Will you damage your device?
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Pixel 8
That said, there are also some potential downsides to rooting.
Even once you know how to root Android, some risks are involved. If you get this wrong, there is a chance of bricking your device (it’s happened to me). It’s easier and safer on some devices than others, but if you’re not overly confident with your tech wizardry, you may prefer to leave your phone be.
Furthermore, rooting can cause some issues with official OTA handset updates — but it is usually fine to install new software manually once you’re rooted. Updating will often cause root permissions to be lost, in which case the procedure will need to be performed again. Occasionally, an update will block old root methods, and sometimes rooted devices will fail to install updates. If your device stops booting after an attempted root exploit, you can usually restore it to factory specifications relatively easily.
Warranties and legalities — is rooting legal?
This leads us nicely onto warranties, which is another grey area in the world of rooting. While carriers don’t like you tampering with their hardware and software, some manufacturers have become kinder to rooters and even those who install third-party software. However, few have a clear stance on what software tweaks will void your warranty, and you certainly can’t count on having your rooted handset fixed if something goes wrong. Devices with locked bootloaders, the very low-level software that starts up your phone, are explicitly designed to prevent rooting, so don’t expect sympathy from these companies.
In the US, rooting is perfectly legal.
Thanks to clues like Knox on Samsung, manufacturers and sellers can often identify rooted devices, even after you unroot them. Note that there are ways to hide evidence of having rooted your device, but these won’t always work. There’s a kind of arms race between hackers and manufacturers, and your chances of unrooting and covering your tracks will often come down to who is winning at the time! This is why many people only root older phones already out of warranty.
This might also make you wonder whether rooting your device is even legal. This is tough to answer as it depends on your country’s laws. Many countries allow for bypassing digital rights management and locks, providing that this is not used for other illegal purposes, such as circumventing copyrights. Rooting has been legal in the USA since 2013.
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
It’s also worth noting that some apps and features will stop working once you root. For example, banking apps will often stop working due to the perceived security risk. Even Snapchat and Pokemon Go take issue with root! There are also often countermeasures to these limitations — though your mileage may vary. You can probably tell by now that rooting typically means creating more work for yourself, but it can be enjoyable work!
Rooting your phone can open up your device to more dangerous pieces of malware.Adam Sinicki
The final major point to be aware of is security. With greater control comes a greater level of risk, and rooting your phone can open up your device to more dangerous pieces of malware. This is where governor applications come in, which monitor and control which processes get root permissions. You may be familiar with SuperSU or other similar apps. These are very straightforward to use and simply display a pop-up whenever an app or process wants root access, which you can either deny or allow and save your preference if you trust the app.
Of course, if you aren’t automatically receiving the usual updates, it also falls on you to ensure you get all the latest security patches. In theory, you could improve your privacy with the proper root apps. But it’s on you. It should also be noted that SuperSU developer Chainfire hung up his root apps, so most rooters have now switched over to Magisk.
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So, should you root Android?
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
With all that in mind, should you root your Android device?
Ultimately, that comes down to what you intend to use your device for. Do you even need to root Android? If you have a specific use-case scenario in mind and understand the risks and limitations, then there’s nothing to stop you from learning how to root Android and giving yourself that extra freedom.
On the other hand, the argument for rooting isn’t as compelling as it once was. These days, one can do many things that were once limited to root users (customizing the UI, recording your screen, and so on). Not to mention that even budget phones are fast these days, so overclocking is no longer an important reason to root Android.
These days, one can do a lot of things that were once limited to root users.Adam Sinicki
Seeing as root might also mean you lose functionality, it’s no longer a straight win across the board. It has its benefits, but it’s not as helpful as it once was.
For me, the obvious answer is to only root older devices. Keep your daily driver clean while it’s still getting new updates and patches, but root secondary gadgets that you want to tinker with. That way, you get to have your cake and eat it, too.
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How to root Android devices
Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
If you decide to proceed, you’ll probably wonder how to root Android. Let’s lead you in the right direction!
The bad news is there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution when you root Android phones and tablets. Different brands and even software versions can make the rooting process vary. Even within handset variants, you may find that some techniques work and others don’t.
The good news is that rooting is much easier than it once was in many cases. In fact, the easiest method is usually to use a simple root app. These apps let you root Android with a single tap, with some popular examples being KingRoot, KingoRoot, and OneClickRoot. Download your app of choice or access the website for more instructions. The service will check compatibility first, then root your device for you.
This is a minimum-fuss method that will work in many cases. However, it’s worth noting that some come with annoying push notifications and ads. I’d advise checking reviews before settling on which one to use. Some would even say that if you can’t figure out how to root your device without one of these apps, perhaps you shouldn’t be doing it at all (because if you encounter problems during the process, you won’t know what to do).
The good news is that in many cases, rooting is much easier than it once was.
If a one-click solution doesn’t appeal to you, things get a little more complex, and you’ll need to look for specific instructions for your device. This might mean using PC software and connecting your phone via USB. It might also mean using a custom recovery, or downloading additional software like Odin for Samsung devices. The best part about these options is that you learn a lot along the way.
I recommend either Googling “how to root [YOUR DEVICE NAME HERE]” or heading over to XDA Developers, which is a great place to start. Many of the best root apps available today were developed by members of this community. Just be sure to use the search function first before asking noob questions! And don’t forget to thank and support the devs that make rooting possible.
Before rooting your device, it’s always good to back up your phone first. Then settle in, read a lot, triple-check the instructions, and dive in. Crossing your fingers and holding your breath would be a good idea because you just took the red pill! The world of Android rooting is exciting, empowering, frustrating, and engaging — you’ll learn tons about how Android works, what your phone can do, and how awesome Android can be when you get in the driver’s seat.
Once you’ve rooted your phone, it’s time to start enjoying the best root apps for Android.
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FAQs
Rooting a device refers to obtaining superuser access to your Android system. It allows you to delve deeper into commands, system files, restricted folders, and more. This will enable you to customize things from a system level.
Rooting makes it possible to achieve much more complex customizations than you’re used to. You can control your CPU and RAM, customize your UI, remove apps you otherwise wouldn’t be able to uninstall, use apps that provide root features, and more.
Manufacturers don’t like when you tinker with their devices’ software. This can create issues, and these wouldn’t be their fault. Most manufacturers will likely avoid respecting a warranty claim if you’ve rooted a device, especially if this was the cause of whatever issue you started the claim for. That said, some argue it’s illegal to void the warranty due to rooting, in some jurisdictions. You might be able to argue this in court, but no one really wants to take a company to court for a warranty issue. At the very least, rooting your phone may cause a headache, even if you did nothing wrong.
Technically speaking, a rooted Android phone has access to system files. Regular phones lack this. This makes it possible for hackers and malware to attack you at deeper levels. Additionally, root users like grabbing apps to maximize their experience, which opens the doors to more dangers. While rooting your device can be perfectly secure, it’s also very easy to turn it into a vulnerable device. You’re no longer sticking with Google and your manufacturer’s protective arms. Not to mention, rooting can affect timely updates, which often come with security improvements.
Of course you can. The real question is whether you should. If you are to sell a rooted phone, make sure you tell the new owner about this. He can then decide if he wants to take the risk. Additionally, it’s possible to unroot a phone and take it back to its factory settings. This might be a better alternative, unless the buyer strictly wants a rooted phone.
Rooting is only worth it right now if you have a specific need for it, or if you really want to play around with your Android phone. That said, we advise most users to stick with stock software now. This is because most of the benefits we used to get from root access no longer apply. Phones used to be slow, and now even budget devices are pretty fast, so there is no dire need to overclock. Battery life is also improving, so there is no huge need to underclock. Launchers are better than ever, so custom ROMs are no longer as enticing as before. Bloatware apps can also be turned off, which at least keeps them out of view.
No. You will have to flash the stock software to remove root. In fact, this used to be seen as a feature. Some applications are able to stick around, even if you perform a factory reset. This is great for security apps.
Rooting, in and of itself, should not erase any of your data. That said, you might have to give your phone a clean install if anything goes wrong, or if the root process for your phone happens to require a factory reset.
There are multiple ways to check if a device is rooted, but if you can’t figure this out, chances are you don’t want to deal with complex methods. The easiest way to check if your phone is rooted is through an app. Root Checker is one of the most popular ones.
Best FREE Burner Phone Number Apps in 2024, You can probably imagine how frustrating it would be to juggle two mobile phones while managing your professional and personal lives. But in this circumstance, having two mobile phone lines on one device can be useful. Don’t worry! Some best free burner phone number apps can make it very simple to separate your personal and professional lives effectively.
With these free burner phone number apps, you can join several services without risking your privacy. In addition, burner phone numbers are a “must-have” for international trips because they frequently enable you to reduce roaming expenses abroad.
Online burner phone numbers may have a negative reputation due to how they are portrayed in television and movies, yet they have numerous useful functions. So, here are some best free burner phone number apps to use in 2024 to protect your safety and shield you from future spam.
Best Burner Phone Number Apps in 2024 (Android & iOS)
To assist you with adding a second line to your phone, we’ve compiled a list of the 16 best free burner phone number apps in this article. Each of the best burner phone apps listed below is brimming with useful features that will surely make your experience enjoyable.
1. Burner
Burner provides a secondary line for texting and calling without paying your provider for another connection, making it the most well-known and best free burner phone number app. In addition, it gives you a throwaway VOIP number (with local area code) which you may use for online dating, shopping, Craigslist sales, and dodging salespeople.
You don’t need to carry a second mobile device because you can text, call, and manage your contact list from the app. Additionally, you can make several private burner phone numbers whenever you wish. Burner has a 7-day trial duration and is available for free download.
In order to safeguard your privacy and hide your primary phone number, the app intercepts incoming calls and routes them to your phone. In addition, you can archive text messages and voicemails through integrations with other apps and services like Evernote, Dropbox, SoundCloud, and Slack.
Calls made with this app show up as phone calls between Burner and your own numbers on your phone bill. You cannot see the end phone number you are dialing through Burner. Incoming calls appear to be from your free Burner phone number, and you can add more numbers with an in-app subscription.
Hushed is another well-known free burner phone app for backup phone numbers. It functions similarly to Burner but provides burner phone numbers for forty different nations. Additionally, local phone numbers from more than 300 UK, Canadian, and US area codes are available.
Your activity is kept separate from your personal number from your carrier, and this burner phone application allows you to place and attend calls and send and receive an SMS on your Hushed phone number. In addition, the program will enable you to manage numerous lines, add additional numbers, and receive a secondary phone number.
Hushed provides flexible prepaid, pay-as-you-go, and long or short-term subscriptions that start at $1.99 monthly. Using a WiFi or data connection, you can call your free burner number worldwide. On all free burner phone numbers, local phone calling is possible. In several nations, MMS and SMS are accessible.
It is one best free burner phone number apps through which you can create and add many phone numbers on your phone. You can choose up to four free burner phone numbers from the US, Canada, France, the UK, Poland, and the UK. In addition, you can call overseas landlines, mobiles, and other devices using Cloud SIM.
This free burner app allows you to set up calls through the internet or a GSM network and lets you select your connection type. It makes sure that call dropouts and poor reception are never an issue. Cloud SIM includes several remarkable features, including the quality to tailor your profile as per your preferences and unique voicemails on each profile. In addition, you can choose when you are away or available with the help of the “Do-not-disturb” option.
Overall, it’s one best burner phone number apps, whether you’re meeting customers and joining up for an online selling or dating service. You can also set up an international phone number when traveling or communicating with friends abroad.
The fully-featured 2ndLine free burner app provides a free burner phone number in addition to your personal phone number. Additionally, it provides a free local calling and texting number supported by advertisements; however, the paid version also includes premium services and removes the commercials.
With 2ndLine, you can download the app, choose a phone number, and start using an additional line on your phone to make and receive unlimited calls and texts immediately. This burner phone app, accessible in the US and Canada, offers free local speaking and text and reasonable pricing for international connections.
The iOS version of 2ndLine is not yet known to be available, unlike the majority of the other best free burner phone number apps on this list. Rather than using your cellular network to provide an extra line, 2ndLine is a VoIP solution that uses your internet or WiFi connection. As a result, 2ndLine calls and texts are not recorded on your device’s regular phone bill. Your conversations voicemail can also be saved as an audio file through the service.
In contrast to the other best free burner phone number apps, Line2 is a service geared toward businesses and provides extra functionality for business users. Additional benefits include toll-free numbers for international clients, conference calls, and auto-attendants. Additionally, this free burner phone app offers free, infinite VoIP phone calls and SMS within North America.
Additionally, users of Line2 can call and message for free. Using an auto-attendant function, users can direct them to the appropriate call queues, such as sales as well as support. It is a cross-platform free burner app that works across desktop and mobile platforms. It also offers on-hold music and pre-recorded call greetings (Windows, Mac).
Users can add numerous business lines to their current phones and acquire necessary business functionality without purchasing new hardware. You can also edit, add, or remove a business phone line by communicating with the support staff. Additionally, users have call-by-call options for screening and banning.
Line2 is among the best free burner phone number apps that allow you to divide your personal and professional conversations. Additionally, it does away with the requirement to buy and carry a secondary phone.
CoverMe is one of the best free burner phone number apps that offers disappearing messages, encrypted messaging, anonymous SMS, etc., which sets itself apart from rivals. You can conceal text messages, secret call records, and personal contacts using the shake-to-lock feature. You shake the phone to lock your private messages and keep them hidden from curious eyes. According to CoverMe, everything is end-to-end encrypted.
With the help of CoverMe Private Messenger, you may conceal your primary phone number for anonymous voice calls and texts by using the US or Canadian number. Additionally, this free burner phone number app provides additional phone numbers with different area codes, which are ideal for business, online dating services, and other situations requiring increased secrecy.
Finally, it enables you to use a temporary second phone line to make secure, private phone conversations via the internet to the US, Canada, and China (VoIP). The fact that your call logs won’t appear on your phone bill is the finest part. This is one of the best burner phone number apps on this list since you may change the temporary phone number anytime.
It is another best burner phone apps for iOS and Android that generates burner phone numbers. On your current phone, it offers five alternative free burner phone numbers. Each free burner number can have any area code, and local numbers are always available. The burner phone number offers unlimited talk, text, and picture messaging.
Flyp allows you to text and calls people in over 15 major countries. By setting a “Do Not Disturb mode” for each phone number, you may also choose who can contact you. In addition, Flyp gives each burner phone number personalized voicemail greetings and unlimited calls and messages. For seven days, the initial Flyp phone number is free; each phone number costs $79.99 yearly or $7.99 monthly.
Additionally, Flyp allows you to view all your texts, voicemails, and calls in one location, saving you from going between several apps to view your communication with contacts. Additionally, it boosts reliability by only providing connections through your carrier’s cellular network. However, it appears on your monthly account and deducts from your voice allotment under your cell phone plan.
It is the first free burner phone number app since it has existed for ten years. Voicemail, SMS, and voice messages are available through Google Voice, a virtual phone service. It syncs with your devices and functions on both PCs and cell phones.
You can make and receive calls using Google Voice numbers from anywhere because they operate with mobile devices and the internet. This burner phone app also provides many benefits, including call forwarding, voicemail transcription, AI-powered spam prevention, and more.
You can view advanced voicemail transcriptions in the app or request that they be delivered to your email using Google Voice. Additionally, you can use the service to call abroad at affordable rates without paying a premium. But you can also make calls over a Google Voice access number, which uses your carrier’s cellular network, using Google Voice for Android. Therefore, it also deducts from your voice credit.
Another best free burner phone number app that gives your personal phone a business phone line and the virtual system is called Grasshopper. Grasshopper, among the biggest corporate virtual phone market players, targets mainly small enterprises. This free burner phone number app provides common features like personalized automatic greetings, Caller ID, and various extensions that make businesses more professional and profitable without spending much money.
Users can get a complete virtual system from Grasshopper for a fair fee. The app offers many US cities toll-free numbers, vanity numbers, and regular local phone numbers. You can also port an active virtual or business number to Grasshopper for free. Access to your voicemail transcription, call history, call forwarding, on-hold music, and other capabilities are significant. In order to test it before purchasing, the app also provides a 7-day trial.
Another best free burner phone number app that generates second phone numbers is MightyCall which mostly targets companies. It claims to be the finest substitute for Grasshopper, and a glance at its features explains why. MightyCall burner phone number app offers toll-free, vanity, and regular local numbers, similar to the earlier app.
Additionally, you receive other features you anticipate in this industry, such as premium (EV) SSL certificates with 256-bit encryption, personalized automated greetings, and support for various extensions for each burner phone number.
MightyCall is a VoIP + CRM solution geared toward small enterprises, with slightly more reasonable costs than Grasshopper. The prices begin at $29.99 per month, including taxes, with 5 virtual phone numbers (toll-free or local) and unlimited users available for $49.99 flat.
So naturally, MightyCall also offers a 7-day free trial to use the service before buying. Other capabilities that this free burner phone number app includes social media tracking call waiting, conference calling, voicemail transcriptions, webphones, softphones, desk phone assistance, international phone calls, and more.
TalkU is another best free burner phone number apps that you can use to send unlimited free texts and calls domestically and internationally. In addition, using the free burner phone number you receive from this software, you can freely share your videos, audio files, and images.
Of course, some requirements must be met to make the app free. You can obtain credit scores that you can use for cost-free calls and texts by, for example, watching video advertisements, logging into the app daily, finishing sponsored offers, etc.
Dingtone is one of the best burner phone number apps that lets you utilize a second phone number to make free calls and SMSs. However, it continues to be free since it uses a Gamified credit system. This has a mixed effect on Dingtone’s favor. Users must play games for credit scores, which they may use to make free calls and text messages.
On the plus side, the app’s intriguing idea keeps users interested. The drawback is that a lot of consumers can find it confusing. For example, if you don’t keep up the necessary credit score, you can also lose the Dingtone number you were given.
Finally, we have Sideline to wind up the list of the best free burner number apps. With this application, you can perform a lot of actions, such as unlimited calling and text messaging, VOIP calling, and a lot more.
Moreover, Sideline allows you to port numbers from and to other services and choose your carrier or WiFi for calling. Furthermore, there are many business-centric features, such as appointment reminders, broadcast messages, auto-replies, message templates, shared numbers, international calls, and much more.
Yet another best burner phone app free available both for iOs and Android is TextFree. The application works over WiFi and has a bunch of extraordinary options. One notable thing is you must use the number in a continuous manner. If left unused for 30 days you can end up losing it.
However, to resolve this you can switch to the Paid version. This upgrade allows you to keep the number intact even when not using it for days. The Free version has ads but the subscription plan fixes this too.
This free burner phone number online application requires no SIM card as it can work on WiFi. But some users also complained about its complicated User Interface. Also, subscription plans are comparatively costlier.
You are able to generate and add a large number of phone numbers to your phone by using this software, which is among the greatest free burner phone number applications. Free burner phone numbers from the United States of America, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, and the United Kingdom are available for selection. In addition, you may use TextNow to make calls to mobile phones, landlines, and other devices located in foreign countries.
Whether you’re meeting consumers, signing up for an online selling business, or using a dating site, it’s one of the finest burner phone number applications overall. If you are going to be traveling or talking with friends who live in other countries, you may also set up an international phone number.
By using this free burner program, you are able to set up calls using either the internet or a GSM network, and you are also able to choose the sort of connection you want to use. As a result, it eliminates the possibility of call dropouts and poor reception ever occurring. One of the many wonderful features that TextNow offers is the ability to personalize your profile according to your tastes, as well as the ability to create individual voicemails for each profile. Additionally, with the assistance of the “Do-not-disturb” option, you are able to choose when times of day you are accessible or when you are away.
Let us introduce you to Free Tone. It is among the best free second phone number apps for iOS because of its free voicemails, location sharing, group texting, and more. Additionally, it boasts many features, such as the availability of a plethora of stickers to make chats interesting, easy media file sharing, 500 minutes of free incoming calls, and a lot more.
The benefits of having the best free burner phone number apps are numerous. The burner phone apps mentioned above will familiarise you with a real number that will serve as your burner phone number, regardless of the motivation. You’ll be able to forward calls, block calls you don’t want to receive, and identify the caller of an incoming call using that free burner phone number.
