PC Gamer Ranked are our ridiculously comprehensive lists of the best, worst, and everything in-between from every corner of PC gaming.
Videogames and good food are the oldest of pals. Since the days of Castlevania's infamous wall chicken, developers have been putting some tasty looking—and at times horrifying—meals into their digital worlds. One recurring favorite: the noble sandwich.
Two pieces of bread, and in between a garden of delights: meats, veggies, condiments, or perhaps something truly exotic. Even the fried chicken and Flaming Hot Cheetos sandwich is a labor of love—or maybe vengeance against your lower intestine. Ranking them is a great responsibility, but after hours of research and frequent snack breaks, I've collected the best sandwiches known to PC gaming and compiled them into this list for your salivating pleasure.
The Criteria
Looks: How good does that sammich look? Can I see the sesame seeds dotting that bun? Can I see that bread stretching and breaking like a fluffy cloud? Is that lettuce truly crisp? Does the mayo have ray tracing?
The ingredients: Is this a sandwich I'd actually eat? A perfectly-rendered tuna and ice cream sandwich is still not a good sandwich.
Where did we find this sandwich? I don't care if it has fried catfish with raspberry aioli and a fried egg on top. If I found it in a dungeon toilet, I'd have second thoughts about chowing down.
Utility: Does this sandwich give us a health boost? Does it make us wildly irresistible to NPCs? These are the important questions.
Burgers don't count: I love burgers more than life itself, but they're not sandwiches, and it would make this list several hundred pages longer.
Is this every PC gaming sandwich? Certainly not, but I'm already so full.
Ranking scale: 🌭 to 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
Reccetear's dead grandma ham sandwich
Recettear is a wonderfully pleasant item shop tycoon sim, and was also the first Japanese game released on Steam. Part of the fun is seeing what townspeople want to buy and sell at your shop. Sometimes it's adventurer's armor, sometimes it's rings and charms, and sometimes it's a ham sandwich that the seller says belonged to his late grandmother. Unfortunately, its ability to recover 120 HP did not save her from the Grim Reaper.
Ranking: 🌭🌭
Dungeons of Dredmor's Dire Sandwich
An enjoyable dungeon crawler, Dungeons of Dredmor has you rogueliking your way through randomly generated mazes to find and kill the titular Lord Dredmor. One such tool for staving off death is the Dire Sandwich. The item description reads: "This sandwich is of great stature. It has un-manned better heroes than you. Dare you feed upon its glory?" I'm not sure if this sandwich turns into a werewolf or something, but I wouldn't mind being killed by it.
Ranking: 🌭🌭🌭🌭
Yakuza: Like a Dragon's prison bread
After taking the fall for his yakuza boss' right-hand man, Ichiban Kasuga lands in prison with the promise he'll get out in a few years, but it turns out to be almost 20. When it hits Kasuga that no one is coming to save him, he finds a little solace in a single piece of bread. From there, I assume Yakuza 7's animators were secretly held at gunpoint until they created the world's most needlessly detailed animation of a human being biting into bread. Kasuga's teeth pulls at the crust and soft interior, stretching the bread like a finely tuned muscle and dropping a few crumbs. It can't rank very high since it's merely prison food, but damn, I'd take a bite of it, too.
Ranking: 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
Fallout 76's Cranberry Meatball Grinder
Originally sold by local grub shacks, the cranberry meatball grinder is now scrounged together by Fallout 76's player character. Instead of pre-apocalypse meat, you use a dead Scorchbeast, giant mutant bats made from Enclave experiments and unleashed into the wild. I guess when everything is irradiated anyway, this looks pretty good. We should really appreciate pre-apocalypse meat while we've still got it.
Ranking: 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
Eggman's oddly detailed sub sandwich in Sonic Unleashed
This sub makes a brief appearance in the latter part of Sonic Unleashed, as Eggman discusses his quickly unraveling plan to use an ancient beast named Dark Gaia to take over the world. What does Eggman do as Earth is literally torn to pieces thanks to a giant demon? He devours a sandwich that's easily twice the size of his head in seconds.
The thing about the sub is it looks like it belongs in a completely different game. Whereas Eggman and his robot minions are designed in their usual cartoony style, the sub wouldn't look out of place in Skyrim or on Subway's official website circa 2005. Either way, Sonic probably thinks a chili dog counts as a sandwich.
Ranking: 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
Deathloop's ray-traced mayo sub
Spotted by CircleToonsHD on Twitter, this meaty, mayo-laden sub sandwich looks mighty satisfying. There's the countless sesame seeds, the gentle creases of the bread, the charred texture of the meat, and dear god, that mayo. The seemingly dynamic lighting on that mayo adds a nice sheen you just don't see very often on video game props that aren't already in your hands.
Deathloop's Blackreef Island has plenty of food and Fiz-Pop laying around, as you'd hope for a party that's meant to never end. Some of that food can be found in unsavory locations, like an old mattress in a bunker, but this sandwich looks like it's in at least a slightly less questionable spot. Regardless, even if something awful were to happen to the sandwich, you'd still be able to return to it on the next day and eat it all over again.
Gorgeous as it is, it's still not quite a fully filled-out sandwich. Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of plain meat and bread, but a truly great sandwich should sing with a full orchestra of ingredients backing it up. Strangely you can't eat any of the food in Deathloop, only the Fiz-Pop canisters.
This sandwich also makes me wonder what psychopath on Blackreef wanted to eat it every day for eternity? If we're being honest, it's probably Aleksis.
Ranking: 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
Genshin Impact's Adventurer's Breakfast Sandwich
While most of us are content to slug down a bowl of cereal, Genshin Impact is out here reminding us that breakfast can be a treat of its own. This breakfast sandwich contains a runny poached egg toast, ham slices, and luxurious mayo.
It's not called the Adventurer's Breakfast Sandwich for nothing, either. The basic version increases the attack of all party members by 194 for 300 seconds. The only thing eggs increase in me is flatulence.
Ranking: 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
Team Fortress 2's 'The Sandvich'
Perhaps one of PC gaming's most popular bites thanks to TF2's meme-loving playerbase, the Sandvich Edible Device is a feast of form and function. As the Heavy, you can whip out the Sandvich for a full heal or drop it to give teammates a 50% health boost of their own.
It's a deceptively simple sandwich, too. Two slices cut into triangles, with lettuce, Swiss cheese, tomatoes, and some ham and bologna, all topped with a pimento-stuffed olive. The alternate version seen during holiday season wraps the Sandvich in red or blue gift paper.
Though simple in appearance, the Sandvich has cemented itself in the minds of PC gamers everywhere thanks in part to humorous merchandising. It's completely worked on me—must be that perfectly placed olive that elevates it to greatness. You can find the poster, the shirt, or even the toy buried around the internet.
Ranking: 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
Final Fantasy 15's Stacked Ham Sandwich
Originally known as the Fat Chocobo Triple-Decker, this behemoth would satisfy even the Adamantoise. There's four whole layers at play here, starting from the top with a toothpicked olive, sliced avocados, ¼ lb of ham, ⅛ lb turkey, salami, lettuce, cheddar, prosciutto, Japanese mayo, 15 shrimp, and several different seasonings. The unofficial recipe suggests taking bamboo sticks to keep this Leaning Tower of Eat-sa steady.
Dining in FF15 serves more purpose than filling your belly, though. The Stacked Ham Sandwich gives you a whopping 50% XP bonus when adventuring and fighting beasts. To make the in-game version of the sandwich, you'll need meat from a garula, the docile beasts that look like a cross between a buffalo and a wooly mammoth.
Thankfully you'll never have to worry about questionable plating in FF15. Your first version of this sandwich comes from a quaint roadside cafe. Once your pal and pro chef Ignis learns the recipe, he'll always be able to serve it during your nightly campouts. That's my version of roughing it.
Ranking: 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭
Honorable Mention: Jill Sandwich
🌭 for taste, 🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭🌭 for historical value.
Sandwiches: What to read next
Somehow still hungry? Check out some more of PC Gamer's hard-hitting food coverage.
- Why food may be the most powerful game design tool
- PC gaming's nicest (and nastiest) virtual foods
- The joy of RPG cooking: why games shouldn't abandon the culinary arts
- The rise of videogame bread
- What is the absolute best gaming snack?
- Gamer snacks around the world: What are the international Doritos & Dew?
