straight up cash and a note saying "for games"

not a gift card, not steam credit, just real actual paper cash.

So, most of my recommendations are going to be FPS or first person. For Valve related stuff:

• Half-Life 2 is pretty much a must have along with Episodes 1 and 2.
• Black Mesa is a remake of the original.
• Entropy : Zero 2 is a fantastic fan made mod that's a good follow up after finishing Half-Life 2 and the episodes.
• The original Entropy : Zero is pretty good, but the default difficulty is hard as hell.
• Portal 1 and 2 are also a must have
• Portal: Revolution is an independent mod that's a good follow up after 2.

As for non-Valve games and related:

• Crab Champions - fast paced, third-person, rogue-like shooter.
• Talos Principle 1 and 2 - first-person puzzles with a serious philosophical scifi story. It actually gets a bit heavy when it discusses mortality and death. 1 is being remade into a "definitive edition".
• Untitled Goose Game - Honk!
• Gnorp Apologue - fun little game
• Pineapple on pizza - it's free. I would describe it as games-as-art.
• Any of the Serious Sam games. They were made for PC.
• Fallen Aces is still in early access, but a good story driven retro FPS with sprites and multiple ways of navigating each level.
• Trepang2 - a bit of an odd FPS with bullet time.
• Roboquest - rogue like FPS
• Exit 8 - horror walking simulator. Kinda short once you figure it out.
• APE OUT - Ape smash! Top down "shooter".
• Hotline Miami 1 and 2 - top down shooters with fast deaths and excellent soundtracks
• The Binding of Isaac - has always been popular if a little dated
• Gunpoint - stealth puzzle third person. Came out a decade ago, but a good game.
• Party Hard - little indie murder-everyone-and-don't-get-caught.
• The Stanley Parable - walking simulator with some interesting dialog and interactions. 9-to-5 office people can relate.
• Dusk - awesome boomer shooter
• Antichamber - came out a decade ago, but it's mind bending first-person puzzles.
• Hades and Hades 2 which is in early access. Third person isometric rogue-like.
• The Invincible - Story driven walking simulator based off the book of the same name. Good story.
• Firewatch - story driven walking simulator
• Deep Rock Galactic - wasn't my pint of beer, but a lot of people like it.

Skyrim for the mods.

I usually gift Wallpaper engine. Not a game but it's a fantastic tool for personalization.

Untitled Goose Game

Hunt Showdown & Doom Eternal

Gift him a Starsector code or share your own if already have one.

Gift any super moddable games he likes. If he enjoys Bethesda games on consoles, he will definitely love PC only mods. Also explain to him what Big Picture Mode on Steam is. I wish I knew it existed when I started. Get the same console experience and seamless controller integration even if the game doesn't officially support it.

Edit: Also any super pretty games would probably be a nice gift. Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the first I installed. Really nice realizing how much better looking games can be with a powerful computer.

XCOM 2

Instead just buy something he wants to play so you can play it together. Or at least talk about it.

Big shout out to Beyond All Reason. It's an RTS game that's free and open source that I've been playing with my friends for a few weeks now. Not even a fan of RTS games, but it's a lot of fun to play co-op matches against AI.
https://www.beyondallreason.info

• Nioh 2
• Witchfire
• Devil Slayer Raksasi
• Curse of the Dead Gods
• Metal Mutation
• Cavity Busters
• Waves (free, but still)
• BlazBlue Entropy Effect
• 30XX
• Nova Drift
• Quantum Protocol
• Deep Rock Galactic
• Hellsinker
• Twin Ruin
• Devader
• Arboria
• Bloody Spell
• Aura of Worlds

Also, if he's a bit of a tinkerer, he might be interested in trying shooters using gyro+flick-stick, which he probably didn't have access to before. Witchfire, Deep Rock Galactic, and Deadlink can readily play that way once set up in Steam Input. Some games you only need to set up the gyro-to-mouse and flick-stick, whereas others (eg Vermintide 2) you have to map the entire controller manually.

The Sonic Racing games are the best counterpart to Mario Kart available on PC. Sonic Racing Transformed is the best of the 3 games (and bundles the very first game) but sometimes gets confused when switching up controllers, so you must delete the config file, so maybe because of that not the best introduction to PC. Team Sonic Racing is a bit less good but that input bug is gone.

Tormented Souls was really good

Man, for a console gamer coming over this thread has a bunch of pretty terrible recommendations. I can't imagine a better way to send somebody back to console gaming than immediately dumping a bunch of fiddly mods and janky old stuff on them so they can play their OS for a while before having any fun.

I mean, if they're into competitive, hardcore console stuff they probably will want to decide if they want to go down the rabbit hole of competitive PC gaming. Checking out a couple MOBAs or fast mouse and keyboard shooters is probably a good way to start (for Steam ease of use I suppose DOTA2 and CS2 are the obvious choices). That's the fighting game equivalent stuff they're unlikely to have played already. I'd say if they aren't feeling it, it's fine to step away, though.

Depending on how beefy their gaming PC is, it may be fun to go for crazy console-crushing visuals. Path traced games like Indiana Jones or Cyberpunk may be fun to check out even if they've played the console versions, if they have a current-gen expensive GPU in there.

There are a couple of genres that are also cross-over but play best on PC, like survival sims and the like. I'm a PC controller player, but I'll switch to mouse and keyboard for, say, Satisfactory, although that's less action-packed and timing-based.

And of course there's upcoming stuff. VF 5 REVO is coming out in January, and that seems like a good chance to jump into a new thing on a gaming PC instead.

Deep Rock Galactic

He can get used to mouse and keyboad, while you cover him.

As mentioned before, gift cards are good way to go.

Honestly, we all can't be much more useful than any of the "Top 10 games of 2024" YouTube videos because we don't really know your friend or his tastes.

A Steam gift card seems like a good idea? Let him pick his own games?

In my personal opinion, the steam starter pack should be:

• Portal 1+2
• Terraria
• Gary's Mod
• Tabletop Sim
• Fallout New Vegas
• Stardew Valley

If your friend is new to PC gaming then they might not be aware of how much they can get for free. I just wrote a post (stickied in !freegames@feddit.uk) summarising all the places you can regularly get freebies, could be a good way for them to try out a lot of different things.

Shower With Your Dad Simulator

It's not as elegant, but you might be able to give them some Steam Gift Cards and recommend some games.

https://store.steampowered.com/digitalgiftcards/selectgiftcard

Get them a month (or 3) of PC Gamepass so they can play everything and find out what they like.

How powerful is the PC? Is the question more about games optimised for mouse+keyboard, or is it about demanding recent games that allows his new machine to flex its muscles?

Since you say he likes Souls-likes Black Myth Wukong probably checks both boxes - I never ended up playing it (my backlog is too long) but it looked great with stunning visuals and I heard good things about the gameplay.

Cyberpunk with full path tracing is still one of the prettiest games out there and a pretty damn good game too after the patches and expansions.

Finally, something like Fallout: London could be an interesting suggestion as mods of that nature are out of reach of the console crowd. Could give him a whiff of what he's been missing out on.

You could add them to your steam family to give them access to your library?

Otherwise, seeing as he's played a lot of console games, maybe an RTS would be a good option? Something where kB+m is a better controller layout.

The strength of pc gaming imo comes in the form of modding.

So

• modded multiplayer rimworld
• seamless co op randomizer Elden ring
• Minecraft pokemon or vault hunters
• Slay the spire downfall

Probably forgetting a lot

Outer Wilds is one of my favorite games. If he likes the explorey/other worldly feel of souls games, he might like it, but it certainly doesn't have any combat.

As for fighting, I've recently started replaying Returnal, and I really enjoy that. It's a well known console game, but I think it came out after 2020. It's a roguelike format so slightly different from souls, but I love it.

Orange box?

Anything with mods so he can accurately reflect his IRL penis length in-game

Limiting to PC only games makes things tricky. Most games on PC are available on console as well. Especially soulslike and fighting games.

But my recommendation is Ultrakill. It’s a fast paced FPS with a Devil May Cry style system. It really showcases the benefit of having a mouse and keyboard for shooters.

Edit: another is Black Mesa.

I recently started playing Hyper Light Drifter, really like it, lots of fighting, shooting. Oldschool pixel graphics.

Surroundead for single player zombie survival

Project zonboid for multiplayer zombie survival

Kingdom come deliverance for visuals and epic story

Hell let loose for FPS shooter

Deadlock for moba/fps

Risk of rain 2 for multiplayer roguelite

The raft for multiplayer survival on water

The forest for multiplayer survival on land

SCUM for pvp survival

That's all I can think of for now...the fun part of PC is gaming with friends without having to pay a shitty subscription fee.