When a graphics card that can run the latest AAA Unreal Engine 5 slop costs over $1000, it is easy to understand why players are not too happy.
The era of optimization and artistic design over brute-forcing technological advances may be over, but it left behind tons of great games that have aged like a fine wine.
If you are unable to upgrade your computer, or just unwilling to splurge that much to run a new game at 60 FPS on a good day,this list has the best AAA games for low-end PCs.
Enjoy plentiful frames, great stories, and even better memories, without having to break the bank.
10Borderlands 2
Chaotically Beautiful
Borderlands 2
Looting, shooting, and dying in hilarious ways never gets old, and neither doesBorderlands 2.
You get toventure out as one of four vault hunters in an open world that is full of treasure and peril, against a dude that goes by Handsome Jack. Yes, I’m serious.
Borderlands 2has over 95% positive reviews on Steam, and it is hard to disagree when you have the perfect blend of action gameplay, a large world to explore, and a uniquely cartoonish art style that sets it apart from almost everything in the market.
Borderlands 4 Is Cutting Back on the Franchise’s Toilet Humor
Borderlands 4 has a more serious vibe based on the trailers.
Borderlands 2only needs 2GB of RAM and 256GB of VRAM. It is also fully compatible with MacOS provided you are running Sierra or later, and happily plays on Linux too.
9Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Why Are We Here?
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
The year is 1984, Big Boss is back and itching for revenge, andHideo Kojima remains unbeatenin his ability to make camp spy games.
The plot and gameplay ofMGS5have moments of darkness intertwined with the sheer comedy of sending knocked-out enemies up with a balloon.
The Fox Engine used inMetal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Painoffersrealistic graphics without requiring a monster computer to run,which is more than you can say about mostUnreal Engine 5 titles.
You can run this game with 4GB of RAM and a 2GB graphics card, provided it supports DirectX 11. If you are rocking Nvidia hardware, this means the GTX 480. For AMD devotees, we are talking about the HD 5870.
8DmC: Devil May Cry
New World, New Hair, Same Guy
DmC: Devil May Cry
Capcom went against the grain when it releasedDmC: Devil May Cry, offering a reimagining of Dante’s story in a more modern setting where he has access to black hair dye, apparently.
The ‘DemonicSaints Row’ aura wasnot for everyone, but the resulting game isan action masterpiece that is a refreshing change from the equally great classicDevil May Crytitles.
Ninja Theory delivered a game that has very modest hardware requirements, with anything better than a dual-core CPU with 2.4 GHz, 2GB of RAM, and 512MB of VRAM doing the trick.
Funnily enough, theDevil May Cry: HD Collectionremaster of the first three titles is more demanding thanDmCon computers.
7Grand Theft Auto V
Timeless By Necessity
Grand Theft Auto 5
Rockstar pushedGrand Theft Auto Vout into the world in 2013. The game came out 5 years afterGTA IV, and as it stands, we are more than a decade on, with a sequel still reportedly on the horizon.
It is hard to explain what is so addictive aboutGTAgames. Whether you start onGTA Vor come from the school of Grove Street,you will spend your days driving, chilling, and killingto your heart’s delight.
Rockstar’sglacial paceto releaseGTA VIallows you to run a game that was at the forefront of progress for a decade without major hardware constraints.
You will need 4GB of RAM and 1GB of VRAM to roam the streets of Los Santos, and a Quad Core CPU with over 3GHz is recommended. Lower will still work, but it can lead to stutters when driving.
6Fallout: New Vegas
An Atomic Western
Fallout: New Vegas
The universe ofFalloutalready gunned for a fusion vibe by blending mid-century Cold War aesthetics with futuristic technology.
Fallout: New Vegasdecided to take this even further bytaking the nuclear wasteland and making it a gunslinging cowboy’s wet dream.
Obsidian built this gorgeous story on the shoulders ofFallout 3, which was a technologically interesting game that was lacking in substance.
That heritage allowsNew Vegasto run on legacy hardware without much issue. All you need is 2GB of RAM and 256MB of VRAM. The game is available for $10 on Steam at full price, which is a steal for one of the best stories in video game history.
5Battlefield 3
Destructible Goodness
Battlefield 3
EA and DICE may have hit it out of the park withBattlefield: Bad Company 2in 2010, but the franchise hit its peak a year later withBattlefield 3.
The game has one of the best campaigns in any FPS, withbombastic action sequences as infantry, tank commander, Russian special forces, and a US Navy Weapon Systems Officer.
Frostbite may not be as modern as Unreal 5, but it looked phenomenal if you can ignore the questionable Ambient Occlusion.
The game needs a measly 2 GHz Dual Core CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 512MB of VRAM to run. In other words, you, too, can run this without issue.
Despite being out for over a decade, none of thefollow-upBattlefieldtitleshave come anywhere close toBattlefield 3.
4Medal Of Honor (2010)
A Cinematic Masterpiece
Medal of Honor (2010)
Once upon a time, the art teams at AAA studios relied on the clever use of baked lighting to bring out photorealistic visuals that did not set a computer on fire.
As modern games move ever forward into the unoptimized ray-traced abyss that runs at 30 FPS on an RTX 4070, you can go back and enjoythe pinnacle of the good old dayswith the 2010 reboot ofMedal of Honor.
This gorgeous game isa retelling of the initial invasion of Afghanistan by American special operations unitsin 2001.
Despite being a canned shooter,Medal of Honormakes you forget about that through clever level design, which helps the game run on any old shoebox.
3The Witcher 3
From Literary to Gaming Masterpiece
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
CD Projekt Red made waves with the first two games inThe Witcherseries, but it does not come close to the success experienced withThe Witcher 3in 2015.
The game has over 700,000 reviews on Steam, of which 96% are positive.The Witcher 3hasa large and beautiful worldthat comes alive thanks to the fleshed-out characters and enticing story.
The Witcher 3is a window into Poland’s biggest fantasy series, written by Andrzej Sapkowski in the 1990s.
The game’s requirements are a little more demanding than most titles here, with 6GB of RAM and 2GB of VRAM, but the game is generous enough to run if you are a little below the target specs.
2Alien: Isolation
An Ode to Fear
Alien: Isolation
You don’t know the true meaning of fear until you’ve sat through a playthrough ofAlien: Isolation.
This 2014 release runs on most low-end gaming computers, provided you can feed it about 1GB of VRAM and 4GB of RAM.
Rather than leaning on the action direction that Ridley Scott has taken the franchise into recently,Alien: Isolationperfectly executes terrifying stealth gameplay inspired by the firstAlienfilm.
In this game,a xenomorph is not just another enemy, but your worst nightmare. The art direction forAlien: Isolationlends itself well to lower rigs as it does not lean on aggressive photorealism to deliver, keeping it intense even at low settings.
1Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
All Ghillied Up
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007)
The FPS landscape changed forever in 2007 when Activision releasedCall of Duty 4: Modern Warfare.
The game was the first brave enough to break from theWorld War 2 spamthat gamers had been progressively getting sicker of since the turn of the century, and it executed the concept masterfully.
Modern Warfaregave playersa taste of contemporary covert warfare in ways we could only have dreamed of before, and it offered the perfect pairing to the line soldier experience you got withBattlefield 2in 2005.
Missions like All Ghillied Up have become so influential that theyearned tributesin different franchises likeSTALKER 2, and for good reason.
If you have at least 2GB of VRAM, you can jump into the 2017Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remasterfor an even better rendition of this beautiful campaign.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered Experiences Inexplicable Surge in Popularity
A new mode completely changes the COD: Modern Warfare Remastered experience.
