Digital Foundry's PC tech showcases for 2024
State-of-the-art visual experiences - and the hardware you'll need to run them well.
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2024 has been both a fun and maddening year to cover PC games, with some fantastic releases that push graphics tech and gameplay systems in exciting and often unexpected directions, as well as some truly disappointing efforts blighted with major technical failings. Today we're focusing on the highlights though, with a roundup of eight technically accomplished titles, sponsored by Asus and its range of GeForce RTX 40-series graphics cards.
These eight games are our choices for the year's PC gaming releases that have gone above and beyond in terms of their tech. The trick is balancing ambition and execution to deliver something that's commendable - even if not every element is perfect.
For each game, we'll describe their technical strengths, any failings, and what sort of PC hardware you'll need to take advantage of their more advanced features - including graphics cards and CPUs where relevant. These are also some of the titles we'd most recommend trying to get a sense of the direction of travel in the industry at large. Enjoy!
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
Indy returns in one of the best licensed games of all time, a true adventure title that sets itself apart from the similarly themed Uncharted franchise with slower-paced investigation and less frequent combat. The game replicates some of the most iconic moments from the 1981 film perfectly, and its impressively realised locales and expert storytelling are a joy to experience. If you enjoy playing Hitman or the original Chronicles of Riddick, this will be right up your alley.
On a technical level, the game is one of the few that requires a graphics card with hardware RT support, delivering in exchange some impressive ray-traced reflections, shadows and global illumination (RTGI). A recent patch has also added full ray tracing (aka path tracing), offering even better visuals for those with more capable graphics hardware. In layman's terms, if you're still using a 10-series Nvidia card, an upgrade is mandatory - and if you're looking to tap into path-tracing features, the Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Evo OC is a good starting point.
Including ray tracing features isn't cause for celebration by itself, but the id Tech 7 backings of this game allow for a winning combination of fidelity and performance. The game runs darn well even on low-end PC hardware without huge settings sacrifices, only requiring tweaks to the texture cache, shadow and hair quality options on lower-end cards. Best of all, there are none of the bugbears we'd expect from Unreal Engine titles targeting similar levels of fidelity: no traversal stutter, no shader compilation stutter, just smooth performance with better-than-console graphics.
However, the recently released full ray tracing upgrade for the game poses sterner technological challenges - the benefit being massively improved lighting and fidelity. The Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Evo therefore becomes the entry point for this taxing feature. This class of cards will get you a good path-tracing upgrade on the low full RT setting at 1440p resolution using DLSS with the 40-series cards introducing the boon of frame generation, but for increased fidelity at higher resolutions, the Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Super Tuf Gaming OC or Asus GeForce RTX 4090 Tuf Gaming OC provide the best experience.
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Stalker 2 lives up to its predecessor in almost every way, combining a living and breathing open world around the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone with impressive graphical effects, superb art direction and uncompromising gameplay. This game is freeform, punishing and atmospheric - and it can also be absolutely gorgeous at the right time of day.
The game isn't without its problems - and the initial version seeded to reviewers was particularly poor in terms of performance and stability - but GSC Game World has released a succession of patches that have already improved matters substantially, and as of version 1.1 we'd say the game is now safe to play in terms of stability and performance.
Stalker 2 is also a game that scales well on higher-end PCs, offering a significant boost to image quality, frame-rate and effects over the console versions on Xbox Series X and Series S - though it could go even further if it offered support for hardware Lumen global illumination which we hope will eventually be added. There's also frame generation available to boost visual fluidity further, at the expense of input lag. Given that this is a single-player title, this can be an option worth exploring.
The game remains CPU-heavy in areas with lots of NPCs despite recent updates, so machines with a fast gaming CPU are worth considering if you're targeting high frame-rates. In terms of graphics cards, you're looking at an Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Evo OC or above for playing at 1440p 60fps at high (developer recommended) settings, while the Asus Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Super Tuf Gaming OC or better is a smart pick for 4K 60fps.
Alan Wake 2: The Lake House
Alan Wake 2 was one of the best-looking games of 2023, but its recently released Lake House DLC hits even harder thanks to its meaningful commentary about art and AI. The DLC is more horror-focused than the main game, hearkening back to the series' roots, with a satisfying progression into the depths of the titular facility.
The new, often dark setting is the perfect showcase for the game's ray tracing and path tracing, especially for players with a 40-series Nvidia GPUs capable of ray reconstruction and frame generation to boost visuals and frame-rates still further. The DLC is still challenging to run, with most of our path-traced testing taking place on hardware on par with the Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Evo, but the pay-off is worth it and again we see the game scale well beyond even the PS5 Pro.
Alan Wake 2 is scalable - it has to be, bearing in mind the support for console versions - but to see this game at its best with path-traced visuals, the Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Evo is what you might consider the baseline if you want the effects of frame generation to further increase visual fluidity. To ramp up the game to its maximum at 1440p and higher, the Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Super Tuf Gaming OC or Asus RTX 4090 Tuf Gaming OC are the preferred choices.
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 2 was released over 20 years ago, yet the kernel of the game remains as bone-chilling as ever - as proved by the 2024 remake. We've got some issues with this release but equally, the scale of Bloober Team's technological achievement here is staggeringly high. In terms of graphical features at least, Unreal Engine provides extraordinary fidelity and atmosphere and we have to express nothing but admiration for the game's audio mix - it's highly immersive.
Incredibly impressive as the audiovisuals are, performance is relatively meagre and traversal stutter is a real issue. Other limitations include cloth physics and cutscenes that run at a locked 30fps, regardless of your actual frame-rate. DLSS ray reconstruction is missing, but remarkably, that's been modded in by the community to solve the game's denoising issues.
That's a shame, as in gameplay terms there's nothing to complain about. The graphics options are reasonable enough, with the rare inclusion of console-style dynamic resolution scaling and meaningful settings upgrades beyond what's possible on base PS5 too, such as proper hardware Lumen global illumination (this is on PS5 Pro, but only in the compromised 30fps mode). Hopefully the game's updates will continue to arrive to solve these issues into 2025, as the artistry that has gone into Silent Hill 2 is substantial.
To enjoy the game with RT effects engaged, we suggest an upper-mid-tier GeForce RTX 40-series graphics card, such as the Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Evo OC or similar.
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Dragon Age: The Veilguard is an interesting release, with more streamlined (and arguably not quite as distinctive gameplay) as the original CRPGs in the series, but the PC release is nonetheless a technical triumph worth heralding. It's unfortunately rare to get a game that arrives fully-formed, but Veilguard has been more or less perfect from day one with great performance even on low-end hardware and a long list of graphical features.
The game's options menu is best-in-class with easy-to-follow explanations of the performance impact of each setting, and it's easy to turn on the graphical niceties you're interested in while keeping frame-rates up with a choice of upscalers. Image quality, performance and graphical effects scale well beyond what's possible even on PS5 Pro, while even our budget test rig using five-year-old hardware can deliver a comfortable 60fps nearly without exception.
What BioWare has achieved here in terms of scalability, features and polish is highly impressive. Good scalability not only means that you can run this well enough on older hardware but means that the more hardware you have, the better the return. The Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Evo OC offers a good level of baseline RT performance at 4K with DLSS, while the developers recommend something in a similar tier to the Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Super Tuf Gaming OC for the highest 'ultra' settings.
Star Wars Outlaws
Star Wars Outlaws is built on the same technology as Digital Foundry's 2023 graphics of the year winner Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora: Massive's Snowdrop engine. Outlaws therefore hits a lot of the same high notes, with RT global illumination for diffuse lighting and reflections, volumetric fog, clouds and sky, and extreme quality detail and texture work throughout. There's also the option for RTXDI for high-end PCs, which replaces essentially all rasterised light and shadows in the game with ray-traced versions for a huge boost to realism - albeit at a performance cost. The inclusion of ray reconstruction denoising also helps the results for owners of GeForce RTX graphics cards.
While Avatar looked its best in its jungle terrain, Outlaws also looks genuinely impressive throughout its often grimy and built-up areas, with the lighting options here opening up play spaces that would historically be very hard to light with traditional non-RT techniques. Of course, the game's outdoor scenes are also masterfully done. We recommend an Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Evo OC or better to see the game at its best while maintaining a good level of performance, while GPUs on the level of the Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Super Tuf Gaming OC and above are recommended for engaging the RTXDI visuals.
Star Wars Outlaws does have its limitations as well, with somewhat stilted-looking cinematics, worse aliasing than Avatar, some heavy-handed post-processing and frame-rate lurches. Despite this though, the game is still a technical tour-de-force worth celebrating.
Black Myth: Wukong
Black Myth: Wukong has been the subject of intense debate over its graphics since its first trailer in 2020 - could a relatively unknown studio really deliver such an impressive-looking game? Happily, Game Science weren't crafting bullshots, and the final product is one of the best looking action games ever produced - and even exceeds that initial trailer's promise. Wukong takes full advantage of the Unreal Engine 5 feature set, with impressive ray-traced visuals, although it also falls foul of some of this engine's classic pitfalls.
Let's discuss the good stuff first. Nanite geometry has been used to good effect, allowing for incredibly detailed objects and terrain without visible LOD transitions, though the use of UE5.1 means that foliage isn't included. Virtual Shadow Maps (VSMs) are available on the full RT setting, and Lumen ray-traced lighting and excellent particle effects work results in a realistic yet eye-catching presentation. Full RT also includes ray-traced reflections and ray-guided caustics, making surfaces from rough stone to water look highly realistic. Fantastic character rendering on the many bosses you'll face and smart environment interactions complete the picture - this is a stunning game.
The downsides are unfortunately familiar for Unreal Engine 5 titles, with annoying traversal stutter - though at least the lengthy shader compilation on game start is effective in preventing those kinds of stutters. Frame-time spikes are also introduced with the full RT option, souring the presentation for those looking to see the game at its best. Despite these flaws though, Black Myth: Wukong is well worth playing.
In terms of hardware required, this is a demanding game. The PlayStation 5 version in performance mode runs at 1080p with frame generation to hit an inconsistent 60fps, so even without using path-traced RT, our recommendation starts with an Asus GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Dual Evo OC for running at our optimised settings at 1440p using DLSS and then an Asus GeForce RTX 4070 Dual Evo OC or above to push into higher frame-rate territory. Full RT can look spectacular, but owing to some 'interesting' choices from Game Science, we can only recommend the highest RT setting - and once again, this propels you into Asus GeForce RTX 4080 Super Tuf Gaming OC or Asus GeForce RTX 4090 Tuf Gaming OC territory, with DLSS active.
Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2
Hellblade 2 may be the game with the least game on this list, but it's also one of the undisputed graphics champions of the year, delivering its narrative with extremely realistic visuals - to the extent that its designers even performed drone-based photogrammetry in Iceland to perfectly replicate the terrain they wanted. Character rendering is some of the most impressive we've ever seen, and extremely detailed post-processing is used to replicate the look of a real camera.
Like Dragon Age, Hellblade 2 is also an instructional game for other PC developers, with some of the best settings menus we've seen, with millisecond costs, granular options and real-time demonstrations of almost every setting. There's also a working shader precompilation step to prevent these stutters, and the game tends to run smoothly given its fidelity.
Hellblade 2 is also in some, more limited ways, a vision of what not to do. The game's ultra-wide presentation is forced on, though it can be changed by mods, and several camera effects cannot be disabled. There's also traversal stutter, seemingly a requirement for UE5 titles. Our recommendations start with the Asus GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Dual 16GB, with higher-end cards allowing for higher internal resolutions and quality settings.
Despite its limitations though, the game remains unlike another released this year and a showcase for what a clear, focused vision can achieve.
Wrapping up
Of course, these are just a small selection of games from what has been an excellent vintage for the PC - we could easily write a paragraph or three on the excellently bizarre Judero or the high-octane thrills of MechWarrior 5: Clans. However, we've got to stop somewhere, so let's call it there. That doesn't mean that you can't carry on the conversation in the comments below, though. Which of the games we mentioned do you rate, and which did we miss? Let us know!