“War, huh, what is it good for?” – Edwin Star, War from the album War and Peace

Well… apparently, it’s good for good times. War games are all over the map. So, to honor our ever-present source of joy and soul-crushing doom, Mac Gamer HQ presents you with a four-star general overview of the best war games for Mac.

PC/Mac/Linux Society; Good large scale multiplayer FPS games? I would say BFBC 2 because i could think of anything that is a large FPS with a lot of people playing it today.

Large Multiplayer Games Mac Free

As always, we’re going for different styles and genres, as well as different price points and system requirements. We aim to help you discover great new games and perhaps one of these will be perfect for you:

Want even more good games for Mac? These are the 100 Top Mac games you can play today.

No round-up of the best Mac war games for Mac would be complete without touching on the big franchises that have left their mark on Mac gaming, so I’ll start with two of the major ones. These are perfect for those of you who enjoy crushing your enemies under the heel of your polished and well-kept boots.

The condition of man… is a condition of war of everyone against everyone – Thomas Hobbes

War is all-encompassing and to give you the taste of blood you crave, the Total War series relies on a dual-engine approach. First, there’s a real-time war theater which allows you to command your troops’ every move on the battlefield. It lets you deploy your soldiers, define your engagement strategy, groupings, pace, and more. In between battles, there’s a turn-based strategy interface (think a very stripped down version of Sid Meier’s Civilization series) that lets you construct the whole of your war machine. Different games in the Total War franchise take you from before the birth of Christ to the end of the Napoleonic period and all over the globe.

MacGamer HQ’s head-honcho Ric is a fan of the franchise’s take on feudal japan, Total War: Shogun 2, but I’m definitely fond of the most recent release, Total War: Attila. Attila takes you to the end of the western Roman empire and puts you in control of one of the Mediterranean or Germanic tribes that carved up former Roman territory, and their enemy’s hides in the process. The game features a skirmish mode, historical battles mode (which lets you relive some epic battlefield confrontations of the period) and a campaign mode. Campaign mode features a dynasty interface that allows you to play the court game of intrigue if you’re the type that likes your war in intimate settings. You can purchase additional campaigns and culture packs if your favorite war-mongering pack of blood-thirsty maniacs isn’t in the base game.

The Wargame series, from Eugen Systems, is a real-time strategy (RTS) wargame that gives you control of Cold War Era militaries across the globe. One of the biggest selling points is Eugen’s effort to bring you as close to the real battlefield as possible, accurately reproducing hundreds of military vehicles, troops, and weapons. The campaign modes have grown with each release and the multiplayer modes are worth hundreds of hours of replay value. A unique aspect of the game is the satellite camera mode which, on its own, is little more than a cool video effect but, in reality, demonstrates the scale of the game’s battlefields.

Wargame: European Escalation, gives the player the chance to control one of the Cold War militaries in Thatcher-era Europe. The game’s sequel, Wargame: Airland Battle, takes you right back to the battlefield in a conflict between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces. But if you had to buy just one, the series’ latest, Wargame: Red Dragon, brings you near the end of the Cold War and adds a variety of the Asian communist states, expanding the theater of war to a truly global scale.

The RTS genre is dominated by war games, but the variety of styles still leaves Mac players with plenty of options for demolishing their foes.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time – Leo Tolstoy

Another Mac Gamer HQ favorite, Company of Heroes 2 is the sequel to the original Company of Heroes, released over a decade ago. The sequel takes you directly onto the Eastern Front of WWII for a close-up look at the vagaries of the war you’re waging. The Essence 3.0 engine provides a beautifully rendered war theater that utilizes a variety of in-game systems to enhance the realism of the battlefield and encourage victory by skill rather than firepower. The destructible environments never cease to amaze me and the many ways the enemy can be countered with the right units is equally impressive.

The three released DLC packs introduce more armies for single and multiplayer modes (including action on the Western Front), each of which carries their own strengths and flaws. You can pick up the CoH2: Master Collection for a tidy $39.99 and choose how you want to win and on which map to reign supreme.

Paradox Interactive is well known for its grand-strategy simulations. Each of their titles features an adjustable real-time clock allowing you to watch your decisions play out in a matter of minutes or extending the results of your strategic decisions to hours and days. Their games can bring you from the start of the crusades through the end of the WWII; the company’s most recent offering, Stellaris, will even take you hundreds of years into the future for galaxy-wide statecraft. Each game has it’s own idiosyncrasies and loyalists, but they’ll all give you your fix if grand strategy is your thing.

Hearts of Iron 4 is the company’s most war-oriented, giving you god-like command over pretty much any country that existed in the WWII period. An almost ridiculously complex technology system lets you guide your country’s development as you like, while diplomacy systems let you conduct trade, form and break alliances and treaties, and appoint advisors to help you turn the world from a divided battleground into one of your making. The military system provides you with the chance to specialize your battalions. Pause the game, set your plans, bump up the game-clock speed, and unpause and you can watch your grand vision bring the war to a close on your terms, or bring your country to ruin.

It would be hard to find a gamer in the world that isn’t at least aware of Blizzard’s Starcraft 2. The game extends a nearly decade and a half’s long campaign of real-time space war with an RTS system that serves as a cross between the resource acquisition of traditional 4x turn-based strategy games such as the Civilization series and the RTS battlefield play of the Total War series.

Starcraft 2 gives you control over one of three races, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, to craft a mobile war machine from, almost literally, the ground up. Nearly every aspect of your fighting force, from securing resources to front-line battle commands, is under your control and while the battlefield is yours for the taking, it’s also everyone else’s.
While Blizzard controversially released each race’s story as its own game, as opposed to the original which had all three in one package, Wings of Liberty, Legacy of the Void and Heart of the Swarm can now all be bought and played separately. With a variety of playable races, Starcraft 2 can easily satisfy any urge to dominate your fellow man … or alien.

War games in the turn-based tactical strategy genre have been relatively dry as of late, but there are some definite gems if you keep your eyes open. The two below are some of the better known.

Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

XCOM 2 follows the events of the first XCOM release of the new era, placing you in command of an XCOM team living on the run in a world controlled by the alien forces. The open-ended campaign mode lets you pick and choose what to do, and where and when to do it as you regain control of Earth.

The tactical combat system provides turn-by-turn control over 5 classes of warriors that you can tailor to your own strategy. The technology system of the previous game remains, in expanded form, giving you control over how you’ll exterminate your alien overlords. A greater cast of friends, foes, NPC’s, and increased diversity in weapons and gear complete the game’s customization options, giving you total control over your forces in both the campaign and multiplayer mode. With XCOM 2, you are humanity’s last stand, again, after the first last stand against alien invasion forces failed.

Easily one of the most highly regarded series’ on Mac, The Banner Saga takes you into a fantasy Viking world for an RPG epic story. A turn-based tactical battle system gives you control of 25 customizable characters, each of 2 different races and 7 different classes, in both the campaign story mode and multiplayer skirmish modes. The narrative is an important aspect of this series and each of your choices over the course of the game affects the rest of your experience in an open-ended story-mode that requires strategic decisions on the battlefield but also outside.

The 2-D graphics call to mind the old-school style of Dragon’s Lair with beautifully animated battlefields and story animations. The campaign mode is currently 2 games deep, with a third episode in development, and since decisions made in the first game carry over to the second, I recommend you start with part one and play through the second.

No look at the top war games would be complete without a look at the First Person Shooters (FPS) that put you right onto the front lines in the muck and the mire of warfare. The three discussed here are just a sample of the FPS war games available for Mac gamers.

I’m better when it’s breathing. – Chris, American Sniper

In truth, it’s hard to find anything to say about the Call of Duty series. After all, who isn’t familiar with Call of Duty’s trademark fast gameplay and shoot everything that moves style. But of all the versions available for Mac gamers, Modern Warfare 3 is the one Mac Gamer HQ head honcho Ric recommends. MW3 is on Steam, features cross-platform multiplayer, a spec ops co-op mode and survival modes. Call of Duty games all have fun campaigns with production values worthy of a Michael Bay film. Yet Multiplayer is where they all shine and MW 3’s cross-platform multiplayer makes it the best Mac alternative.

The entire MW series (CoD4MW+MW2+MW3) is also available on Steam in one bundle that puts all of Modern Warfare in your hands, along with DLC, for a reasonably tidy sum. There’s really not a lot to say about it. It’s Call of Duty, but on Mac hardware. Just aim, run, and shoot people in the face.

Arma 3 puts you in control of a variety of battlefield soldiers and mechanical vehicles of destruction. The single-player story mode puts you in the boots of Ben Kerry for a 3 episode campaign. Single player training and scenarios help you beef up your battle-chops before you enter the sandbox multiplayer mode featuring both official and unofficial community-made maps and scenarios. Unique to the Arma 3 multiplayer mode is the Zeus mode, which gives players god-like influence over other players and the contingencies of the battlefield. A content editor also gives you the chance to design your own maps and scenarios for both the community and yourself. The Mac version of the game is currently in

The Mac version of the game is currently in experimental beta mode so you might want to hold off on buying the game until it receives official support. Then again, if you really can’t wait, you can buy the Windows version and then hype your friends on the Mac beta to help the process along.

A personal favorite of Ric’s and mine, this 3rd-person shooter from Yager Development studios takes you into the darker psychological recesses of war. Taking control of Special Operations Force’s Captain Martin Walker, you lead his three-person team through a single-player campaign in post-apocalyptic Dubai in search of mysterious Colonel John Konrad. I won’t spoil the story for you, but let me just say that it’s different and unique. Call of Duty and Battlefield should both take notice.

The gameplay is good too, featuring some exploration but mostly taking cover and shooting (similar to Gears of Wars games). You’ll find yourself short of ammo, time, and patience often enough that you might end up needing a new controller in this game that, for myself, calls to mind the 1999 film Fight Club, but instead of not being about war, it’s about war. Post-script spoiler alert.

This final entry comes from 11-bit studios and is easily one of the most intriguingly heartfelt approaches to the war genre in gaming history.

Our nation exists because of the people! We exist because of them. – Cidolfas Orlandu, Final Fantasy Tactics

Another personal favorite of Ric’s and mine, this scavenger-hunt game is about choices when choices are too few. Putting you in control of three civilians trapped in a building in a war-torn town, your goal is to keep these people alive amidst sniper fire that keeps you inside during the day, and among thieves and other civilians just trying to survive at night.

Only the dead have seen the end of war – attribution questionable

Resource management, scavenging missions, and housekeeping are central to the survival of your group. Decisions on how your players behave toward remaining survivors affect the morale and health of your characters in the randomly generated world brought to life in a beautifully animated tale of survival and loss in a devastated world.

This is far from an all-encompassing list, but any of these games should provide hours of good times. MacOS war games come in all shades, styles, and sizes and there’s no end in sight to the destruction you’ll reap upon your adversaries. That being said, keep count of your ammo, your eyes on your scopes, and your wits about you and don’t forget to be at least reasonably respectful to your fellow gamers. As Einstein was fond of saying: Say what you want about me and how I play the game, you’ve at least gotta admit that I’m the guy with the rocket launcher.

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. – Albert Einstein

Disclaimer: Some of the links above are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission (this is how we pay the bills). This commission comes at no additional cost to you.

Please understand that I only mention games because I believe they’re interesting, good, and/or fun. Never because I received a free copy or to earn a small commission.

This article comes from Thomas Trono.

Sometimes it’s not the game that shines, but the players. Intricate gameplay and glistening visuals only go so far in making a standout multiplayer title; its humans that can provide surprises and schemes that transform the average first-person shooter or puzzler into a gladiatorial showdown or co-op crusade. That’s the secret to the best multiplayer games on PC.

Fast and frantic or tense and calculated, the best PvP games come in all shapes and sizes. But they’re all connected by the simple pleasure of interacting with other humans. Whether it’s a healer and a DPS attempting to solve a finicky flanking manoeuvre in Overwatch, or a tense head-to-head battle tackling terrorists in Rainbow Six Siege, these games wouldn’t be the same without a bunch of people running around killing, maiming, or, occasionally helping each other.

So banish those bots, break out your friends list, put on your most sociable face, and prepare to embrace the best multiplayer games on PC.

The best PC multiplayer games are:

War Thunder

War Thunder is a free-to-play multiplayer game all about military vehicles knocking seven bells out of one another, whether that’s in aerial dog fights, sprawling tank battles, or naval skirmishes. That pitch might sound familiar, but no free MMO has achieved what War Thunder has in terms of quality, balancing, and the sheer scope of vehicles waiting to be unlocked. While the multiplayer game started out with a humble suite of aircraft and ground vehicles you’ll recognise from WW2 games, it’s myriad tech trees now encompass the military histories – past and present – of several nations, from global superpowers to smaller nations famed for punching above their weight.

What separates this war game from its competitors are its incredibly detailed ballistics modelling and simulation game modes. A 1v1 between two tanks can be affected by countless factors, as armour thickness, armour angle, material, shell size and type, and distance from target can be the difference between a shot ricocheting and dealing no damage, or piercing and wiping out the entire enemy crew. The more you play the more you learn to spot different types of vehicles so you can exploit their weak points and win the fight with a single well-placed shot. It’s an endlessly satisfying loop, and with hundreds of vehicles to earn, it will be a long time before you run out of new content.

Destiny 2

Whether you want to squad up for gargantuan PvE raids, duke it out against others in PvP, or even combine elements of both in PvPvE, Destiny 2 ticks all of the boxes when it comes to the best multiplayer games. A few years since launch and Destiny 2 is better than ever, with the Forsaken expansion addressing plenty of foibles and a free-to-play launch on Steam bringing the game to new audiences.

Read more: All you need to know about Destiny 2 classes

Loot ties all of the multiplayer arms together, so no matter how you’re playing Destiny 2, your goal is always to acquire powerful new weapons and armour like Destiny 2 Exotics. Every mission completed, miniboss slain, and PvP match won contributes by rewarding you with mightier gear, creating an ongoing, near endless power fantasy.

Apex Legends

From hyper-mobile gameplay that lends itself to flanking manoeuvres to respawn beacons that bring your mates back into the fight after death, Respawn’s nimble shooter boasts all the usual trimmings of the best multiplayer games.

Where it truly excels, however, is its ability to bring everyone into the fold with its ping system. Should you feel uncomfortable talking to strangers with your microphone or simply don’t want to, you can still contribute by pinging enemies, locations of interest, and even the best Apex Legends weapons you want or think others may find useful.

The post-apocalyptic shooter is also early in its life cycle, meaning that now is an excellent time to jump in and try our Apex Legends tips. There will also be a steady stream of Apex Legends new Legends for players to sink their teeth into, which promises to freshen up the battle royale’s meta every few months. There’s also a very good chance you’ll bump into someone from this office. Be gentle, please.

Fortnite

Epic’s shooter first emerged as an intriguing mix of building, sandbox, and survival elements. The original Fortnite: Save the World mode – in which you construct fortresses to combat a severe zombie threat – has long been eclipsed by the world-conquering Fortnite Battle Royale. Thanks to some phenomenal Fortnite player numbers, and the fact it’s a good deal more polished than PUBG, Epic’s last man standing extravaganza is one of the best multiplayer games on PC.

Where you stand on the great Fortnite vs. PUBG debate depends on personal preference. Both are strong battle royale games with devoted communities, but Fortnite’s eye-catching Pixar sheen, accessibility – helped considerably by being free-to-play – and Fortnite building mechanics give it the edge for some over the detailed, deep military sim sensibilities of PUBG. We’re in no doubt, however, that Epic’s cosmetics game is far stronger: the sheer number of Fortnite skins and Fortnite Wraps (weapon and vehicle skins) is mind-boggling.

Dota 2/League of Legends

Now before you baulk at the aggregation of these two rival beasts of the MOBA genre into a single entry, we’re intending to recommend one or the other, not both – and let’s face it, while the mechanics, items, lanes, and League of Legends Champions/Dota 2 Heroes offer different gameplay experiences, the multiplayer aspect of both these games is largely the same. Gather four friends and discover how you each cope with blame and failure, or be assigned a team of four strangers who all somehow manage to be much worse than you at the game, even though statistically they are likely to be very close to you in rank.

The competitive scene around both of these games is gargantuan – almost four million people watched the LoL Worlds Semifinals simultaneously in November 2019, and back in August 2019 the prize pool for Dota’s The International reached over $34 million, the biggest prize pool in esports history.

League of Legends is Twitch’s most watched game of 2019, and with about eight million concurrent players a day to Dota’s average of 400,000, it’s clear to see which of the two is the most popular. That doesn’t mean LoL is necessarily the better game, but the figures do make sense when you consider how Riot churn out absolute bangers to promote their MOBA.

We recommend you try a couple of matches in both games before you decide on the best MOBA for you, but if you’re looking for a game that is a totally different experience every match depending on your draft vs the opponents’ draft, meaning you and your team can enjoy a new challenge night after night – we advise getting into LoL or Dota 2.

Team Fortress 2

If you were not there when Team Fortress 2 launched, it is difficult to convey what a delirious and unexpected pleasure it was in 2007. In development longer than Pangaea, TF2 blindsided everyone when it finally arrived in its cheery and lustrous Pixar sheen. Instead of the anticipated amalgamations of biceps and military garb we expected, its cast is a brigade of slapstick comedians whose interplay provoked frequent, spirited, and genuine lols.

Each had skills and abilities that interweaved beautifully. Heavy mows down Soldier. Engineer builds sentry to mow down Heavy. Spy saps sentry. Pyro incinerates Spy. Sniper takes out Pyro. Scout bonks Sniper on his noggin and runs off. Demo obliterates Scout with his sticky bombs, then resumes flashing people. No, not like that. Medic watches that Uber gauge, and licks his lips.

It’s a very different game today, now absolutely baffling to lapsed players. Still, the rich visual design, the sheer strength of its cast, and the interplay between classes preserve it as one of the best multiplayer games around. An enduring classic… even if the emergence of Fortnite has lead to the biggest Team Fortress 2 player count drop ever.

Overwatch

Beautifully blending Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends, Overwatch remains a phenomenon and easily one of the best multiplayer games ever made. A class-based multiplayer shooter that owes much to TF2’s art style, payload maps, and asymmetrical combat, Overwatch also owes plenty to LoL’s diverse roster and essential teamplay. As our Overwatch PC review attests, its tantalising recipe for multiplayer grandeur is a mixture of popular styles, ripe with possibilities, which has captured the imaginations and evenings of the masses. That much is apparent from even a cursory visit to the fantastically busy Overwatch reddit, where you will certainly never go hungry for GIFs.

I’ve got you in my sights: check out the best sniper games on PC

Blizzard are continually updating the game and adding to their impressively diverse and colourful roster with new Overwatch heroes, too. Want to master the best Overwatch characters? Prepare to commit months to the colourful blaster. Somehow, Overwatch gets even better while maintaining a careful competitive balance.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has an underwhelming origin story. A refresh of Valve’s previous refresh of a Half-Life 1 mod, CS:GO was conceived as nothing more ambitious than a console port; an experiment to see if PlayStation and Xbox gamers would engage with the Counter-Strike name. And, if PC players fancied a go, what’s the harm? As it turns out, we got one of the best multiplayer games on PC.

Best Multiplayer Mac Games

Thanks to regular CS:GO updates, the shooter sensation is consistently one of the most played games on Steam. Its weapon skins support an entire cottage industry of trading sites. It is an ultra-competitive, high prize pool esport. You cannot move on Twitch for CS:GO streams.

Back in time: our list of the best World War 2 games

Its popularity is self-evident, but its quality requires a deeper understanding of its appeal both as a nostalgia trip and a well-supported, pacey shooter with state-of-the-art spectator tools. Valve’s masterpiece is ripe for tactical exploitation, meaning you should check out our CS:GO tips if you want to succeed. Bristling with razor-sharp weapon feedback, this FPS is more comforting than mama’s homemade apple pie.

Rocket League

The moment someone at Psyonix said “how about football… but with cars?” one of the best multiplayer games on PC was born. Despite the failed first attempt, Rocket League’s success is down to its streamlined design: you just push a ball across a pitch with a car. It is hardly something only hardcore petrolheads can understand.

More horsepower: The best racing games on PC

Do not mistake simplicity for a lack of depth, however. As we point out in our Rocket League PC review, mastering all the key Rocket League tips and successfully passing, shooting, and scoring is a thrilling learning curve. It leads to a career – not just for new musical talent – of a thousand near-misses and ‘almost!’ moments, your body inching forward in your seat as the tension builds. Headshots in shooters are ten-a-penny, but a goal in Rocket League is something special.

Rocket League’s exceptionally moreish online games are even better in local split-screen multiplayer. Everyone in the room will be ooh-ing and aahh-ing as the ball zooms from one end of the pitch to the other, punctuated by an obligatory elbow-to-the-ribs to prevent an inevitable goal.

Rainbow Six Siege

Despite surface-level similarities to FPS darling CS:GO, Ubisoft have made reinforcing a wall or laying barbed wire as heroic as no-scoping an enemy from two rooftops away. Perhaps more than even the best multiplayer games, Rainbow Six Siege is about planning, communication, and execution of a team-based strategy.

Rainbow Six made its name by taking a quieter, more considered approach than the bombastic shooters against which it debuted in the late nineties, and in doing so it made you feel like a highly-trained, goggle-wearing, silenced MP5-toting specialist. The latest series entry evokes that same feeling despite the meta changes presented by a barrage of Rainbow Six Siege operators with more new operators coming in regular post-launch updates. If that sounds intimidating, Ubi do offer a Rainbow Six Siege Starter Edition so you can try it at a lower price.

Although, of course, there is destruction. Great big chunks of it that can kick up fine concrete dust every round. Just make sure you don’t get it all over your posh new cosmetics. Part of being ‘good’ at Siege is knowing each map intimately, and co-ordinating your team accordingly. The depth, nail-biting tension, and tactical potential of Rainbow Six Siege makes for a memorable cat-and-mouse multiplayer experience. No wonder the future of Siege is bright. As an esport it’s going global, while still allowing inexperienced high school minnows the chance to attain the glory of a major tournament place.

Arma 3

Arma 3 is about as close to finding yourself on a real battlefield, gibbering unintelligibly as the choppers and tanks go by. The large-scale battles and ultra-realism are not the only intimidating things about Arma 3, either. Populated by a diehard community with expertise levels second to none, the game’s players know things you didn’t know you knew.

Read more: Here are the best racing games on PC

Where pretend guns are concerned, this is one of the best multiplayer games around – no wonder Arma 3 sales are into the millions. Every battle is an engrossing spectacle, peppered with complex team chat and ingenious tactical manoeuvres (if you’re on a good server). It might still be buggier than the underside of a rotten branch, but it did its bit to bring about PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Enough said.

Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2 boasts one of the best single-player FPS stories in recent memory. However, as if that wasn’t enough, Respawn’s majestic, mech-based shooter is one of the best multiplayer games around, too – make sure to read our Titanfall 2 class guide so you can meet your future robot buddies.

Titanfall 2’s intoxicating multiplayer component is all about interplay. Think David versus Goliath, except it can be Goliath against Goliath. Then, sometimes, David is inside Golia… actually, never mind.

The opening stages of an online match are redolent of Call of Duty: you start as one of five nimble pilots, using your grappling hook and other gadgets to get the jump on the opposition and rack up kills. Then, everything changes: Massive 20-foot titans with various weapons and abilities rain down and devastate the battlefield. Trading agile, dynamic traversal as a pilot to take control of the slower, but much more powerful titan imbues multiplayer rounds with an endlessly satisfying rhythm that refines the promising core of the original. If you missed Titanfall 2, rectify that now with Origin Access.

Unreal Tournament

Unreal Tournament has made a huge contribution to the world of online FPS games. Chasing power-ups, armour shards, and super-weapons may have fallen out of favour since 1999, but the pace, game modes and map designs ensure Unreal Tournament remains one of the best multiplayer games you can play.

Not that anyone cared at the time, of course. We were too busy headshotting each other, cowering in the opposing towers of CTF_Face away from the best sniper rifle games had offered to date. Or scurrying over to the Redeemer for a chance to turn the tides on a poor round’s performance. It might have lost its initial graphical sparkle, but its level layout and special weapon feedback mean that Unreal Tournament remains perfectly playable all these years on.

Online Multiplayer Games Mac

Overcooked

The best multiplayer games are all about having fun with friends – and exploding the noggins of internet randoms, of course. That said, Ghost Town Games’ Overcooked will strain even the strongest of friendships.

The true chaos of this couch co-op cooking game is not revealed immediately. Shrouded beneath a cute, colourful aesthetic, you will likely fly – or should we say fry? – through your first culinary challenges in the Onion Kingdom. Each meal you cook helps save the world from a massive meatball. After your first few kitchen adventures, though, you and your staff/erstwhile friends will be screaming at each other louder than Gordon Ramsay with lego in his shoes.

Read more: Here are the best cooking games on PC

If you fail to assign clear roles and communicate effectively, beef patties will burn, dirty dishes will pile up, and customers will get cheesed off. From swaying pirate ships to lorries that split in half in the middle of the motorway, the kitchens in which you work your gastronomic magic will become increasingly treacherous as the dishes you cook grow in complexity.

The sequel, Overcooked 2, serves up online multiplayer and the ability to throw ingredients across the kitchen, which is also a great time-saving hack for real life cooking. With new Overcooked chefs and kitchens being added since the original game’s release, there’s never been a better time to try this, one of the best indie games on PC.

TowerFall Ascension

TowerFall Ascension is a game all about platforms – apart from the ill-fated Ouya platform on which it originally launched, that is. With competitive multiplayer for up to four, think Bomberman with the camera moved, and bows instead of explosives, TowerFall Ascension’s engaging appeal is easy to understand, as we found in our TowerFall Ascension PC review.

Better together: the best co-op games on PC

Best Multiplayer Games For Pc

One of the best multiplayer games for couch co-op, the simplicity of both premise and control scheme – jump, move, shoot – ensures accessibility. You might as well play it long after your friends have gone, too: the game’s refined movement and map design reward extended practice.

Worms

It is easy to be cynical about Worms, now entering its third decade with a penchant for platform proliferation. Chop a turn-based party game from Team17 in half, myth has it, and two new groups of the slippery blighters will spring writhing from its remains. But the (apple) core ensures it remains one of the best multiplayer games on PC: 30 seconds in which you must steer your pink avatar around a pockmarked landscape with the aim of blasting, batting, and Super Sheep-ing an opponent into dust before their turn starts.

On the go: Our list of the best laptop games

Free Multiplayer Games For Pc

Typically played with three or four players, Worms is a slapstick spectator sport ripe for grenade gaffes, jumping misjudgements, and an assortment of other seconds-left mistakes. The nuance offered by trajectory and wind speed – not to mention elusive mastery over the ninja rope – means there is scope for high-level play, too. It may be disarmingly cute, but Worms is still one of the best strategy games on PC.

Some say that Worms Armageddon was a spiritual high point. But we recommend the subsequent Worms World Party for the potential for customisation, or the recent Worms W.M.D to see the current vehicle-infused iteration of the formula. The latest free update to Worms W.M.D, Brimstone, takes you to the pits of hell in its new map, complete with themed hats and gravestones.

Free Multiplayer Games Mac

So there you have it, the best multiplayer games on PC. Of course, we all know playing multiplayer is only fun when you’re winning, so make sure you read our Fortnite tips for Battle Royale and check up on all the new Overwatch heroes for online success. Many of the best upcoming PC games also have exciting new multiplayer modes. It means there’s never been a better time to tap into your competitive side. Solo gaming is fine and all, but beating other gamers makes the best multiplayer modes incredibly moreish.