PC Gaming

If you don't have an Epic Games account, you should make one to take advantage of their weekly free games. Thoughts about the company aside, you occasionally get access to some great games like Borderlands 3 and Prey.

I recommend Daniel Mullins games if you like games that challenge the forth wall. Pony Island and Inscryption were fun. I've bought The Hex but haven't sat down and committed the time to it yet, but it was very highly recommended to me.

If you like games like Undertale, it's sequel Deltarune is free on Windows. Two chapters out so far.

If you happen to be a Pokémon fan, it's not really AAA stuff that needs a gaming machine, but I recommend Pokémon Reborn. It's a fully complete fan game that I've been following for years during development. It's also free to download and supports online PvP and wonder trade.

Congratulations on your gaming pc!

Check out the Factorio Demo. It's free and the biggest Demo I know. You can probably get 10-20 hrs in it alone and if it's fun you can buy the full game for 35 bucks

In case you never modded your consoles, now is a great time to try rom hacks. Emulate your favorite games in a whole new light.

What do you like to play?

The metro games. It is a survival horror genre, the first 2 games being linear and the last one open world (not ubisoft bullshit openworld, but an actual good one). The story, atmosphere and gameplay are all amazing, specially in Exodus.

https://www.gog.com/de/game/metro_franchise_bundle - currently 8.99 euros for me, I am 100% sure you will enjoy it for the price, all 3 are fucking amazing.

grabbing the valve complete pack when it goes on sale nets you a billion S tier games for like $5

You can get Fallout 4 and Metro Franchise Bundle for $19.58 at GOG.

Borderlands 2 game of the year edition frequently goes on sale for $8 or so, it's totally fun to play single player but even better if you can get a friend or 2.

Warthunder for tanks and planes, World of Warships for the boats.

Might not be your thing, but both are free and have some fun gameplay.

Here are my recommandations on what is better on PC because of the advantage of mouse and keyboard vs controller by genre:

Strategy: the first thing I wanted to do when I bought my PC is to play Age of Empire 2 and Starcraft 2 and they still are the top games of the genre. It's night and day compared to their console games like Halo Wars. I recommend also the Civilisation series.

Simulators: Cities Skylines and Microsoft flight simulator are fun games and nothing looks like it on console.

MOBA: AFAIK, MOBAs like DOTA 2 and League of Legends only exist on PC because it's unplayable on controller. I don't like these kinds of games, but it's still something that you won't find on console.

FPS: A mouse let you have better control on your aim, but it's less relevant in games with crossplay multiplayer where the aim assist on controller is strong like in Apex Legends and Halo Infinite. Recently, a lot of people enjoy Battlebit.

Warframe was mentioned, but another good game to try if you like MMOs (or want to try MMOs) is Guild Wars 2. It's F2P with B2P options.

Also, since you mentioned new chair, do set your station in line with ergonomic best practices.

Warthunder is free, though once you get pretty into it playing free is insanely grindy.

It's a.. war vehicle simulator, I guess? I mostly play planes, but tanks and boats also exist.

Someone else mentioned DCS. Planes in Warthunder are significantly less simulator, but they're still not particularly arcade-y unless you're playing the Arcade mode.

Warframe is also free. It's kinda hit or miss, but if it hits it really hits.

Emulators are also cool- PCSX2 is a solid PS2 emulator, and RPCS3 is a fantastic PS3 emulator.

0 AD

Xonotic

Heroes of the Storm

Wakfu

Super Tux

Super Tux Kart

Tuxmon

Pokémon rom hacks

The Battle for Wesnoth

OpenRA

OpenTTD

OpenRCT2

FreeDoom

FreeCiv

Warsow

Metro Exodus/Divinity 2 if you like making your own content (SDK available)

Hedgewars

Golf with Friends

The Dark Mod

Oolite

I feel I covered whatever game niche you prefer

The Witcher 3 when it's on sale (like 7$ for 120 hours of story content)

Portal 1 & 2 are really great games

If you have Amazon Prime you can go to https://gaming.amazon.com/home click on Weekly Game, and claim The Force Unleashed 2 and other games right now, free to keep.

This is a list of "free to play" games on Steam, you can read reviews and discussions: https://store.steampowered.com/search/?category1=998&genre=Free%20to%20Play

Some good free games are Planetside 2, Warframe, Brawlhalla, and Lord of the Rings Online if you like MMORPGs.

If you like driving games and open world, Forza Horizon 5 is on sale for $29.99 on Steam.

If you like city builders, Cities Skylines is well regarded.

If you want a sort of "Minecraft in space" where you can build and fly spaceships and visit entire solar systems each with several huge planets, look at Empyrion Galactic Survival.

When shopping for games I find it useful to search youtube for something like: empyrion gameplay

Watch some gameplay to see if it looks like your sort of game.

Go to https://isthereanydeal.com and sign up for alerts for game giveaways, they will email you. You can gradually build a BIG library just by claiming freebies.

I could potentially make some recommendations, but it would be much easier if I knew what kind of games you like to play.

ive been binging satisfactory the past few weeks.

I finished elden ring and have now moved onto dark souls, you might not hate yourself as much as I do though.

If your graphics card is an RTX, get the game Control. It's god damn amazing.

If you enjoy aviation then Warthunder is a really fun and free game.

World of Warcraft has a free trial, as does Eve Online.

Been a huge borderlands fan for years. Love love love it.

I appreciate the link! Checking it out now

Honestly, this close to Starfield, I'd just wait it out and save some more money for it. Make sure the reviews are good before purchasing, but I wouldn't get into anything for the next couple weeks.

Oxygen Not Included and Surviving Mars are both great colony simulators.

Avorion is a good space empire game (fly a ship, build a fleet to follow you, build stations, etc) with custom spaceships you or those on Steam Workshop can build.

Hearts of Iron IV and Stellaris are both great grand strategy games. With Civilization VI being the genre-defining 4X game.

Subnautica is a great underwater exploration game. Amazingly done visuals and a solid story to bring it together.

DCS is an amazing combat flight simulator. And it is a simulator, not an arcade game, don't expect it to hand-hold (though there are a few modules that are intentionally dumbed down to help out new players). The US Air Force literally uses it for training new A-10 pilots.

Start saving for an upgrade later.