Home//PC Gamer/April 2020/In This Issue
PC Gamer|April 2020COUNCIL CULTUREIn the summer of 2019 a group of Olympians assembled in Atlanta, Georgia, to discuss development of the god-themed MOBA, Smite. The Olympians were players halfway through their year-long terms as council members, each there to represent player interests across Smite’s multiple modes, platforms, and community niches. The idea for using player councils originated with Smite’s sibling game Paladins in the run-up to the 2018 Hi-Rez Expo event. The Paladins team were focusing on quality and community, explains brand director Alex Cantatore. Their thinking was, “It would be great to actually just get [the community] involved in the decision-making process and give them early looks at the things that we’re doing and find out if this is something we should be doing.” There had also been a slight shift in…5 min
PC Gamer|April 2020RESIDENT EVIL 3The breakout star of the Resi 2remake was undoubtedly Mr X, the massive fedora-wearing mutant who relentlessly hunted Leon and Claire. But imagine if Mr X could jump, use weapons and choke you with slimy tentacles. You’ve just imagined Resident Evil 3’s Nemesis, whose meme-spawning predecessor seems a minor inconvenience in comparison. While the previous game was largely confined to the shadowy corridors of the Raccoon City Police Department, this remake takes the action to the streets. It’s a compelling change of scenery, with dark, claustrophobic alleyways opening up into big, open areas lit by neon signs. Set 24 hours before the events of Resident Evil 2, Jill Valentine is trapped in the city with the aforementioned Nemesis, a bio-weapon created to hunt down survivors of RPD special forces team…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020CHIVALRY 2There are many ways to swing a sword in Chivalry 2: a basic left mouse button swipe, alternate swings bound to side buttons, jabs and overhead strikes thrown with the mouse wheel, and a special attack bound to Q. There’s also a ‘yell’ key. For those moments when you need to yell. I didn’t want my time with Chivalry 2 to end. It was fun even as a sloppy newcomer to the medieval combat genre, but what got me excited was the sense that a person could get really, really good at swinging one of these swords around – that it’s grounded in physical techniques. Like its 2012 predecessor, and popular newcomer Mordhau, Chivalry 2 aims at delivering the full medieval battle experience. It’s about moshing with steel, swinging and…2 min
PC Gamer|April 2020GET THE PARTY STARTEDJesus Christ,” mutters Larian CEO Swen Vincke as another arrow hits his unconscious wizard. We’ve barely started our journey to Baldur’s Gate and we’re close to a second party wipe. Vincke gets creative. He takes off his boot and throws it at a bandit, dealing a very small amount of damage. Five minutes later, unrelated to his missing footwear, he slips on some stairs and dies. Baldur’s Gate III promises an epic yarn full of cosmic invaders, trap-filled dungeons and more characters with a mysterious past than an Agatha Christie mystery. And just like its tabletop progenitor, a few unlucky rolls and some interesting decisions can transform it into a brilliant comedy of errors. Details were slim last time we spoke to Larian about its next big RPG, but this…10 min
PC Gamer|April 2020KNOW YOUR AGENTSSOVA Sova’s ult is a blast: he fires magic arrows through walls clear across the map. PHOENIX Phoenix is all about the fire. His flashbang skill can be curved around corners. CYPHER A defensive agent, Cypher can throw tripmines and stick a camera on walls to keep watch. JETT The rare agent with a vertical leaping ability. Jett can get airborne and hurl knives for quick kills. VIPER Viper’s poison clouds are zoning tools, blinding enemies, herding them into fire.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020CONTROLLED CROUCHIt turns out Halo’s analog stick crouch doesn’t work on the digital inputs of WASD. The fix, coming soon, is noticeably faster. “You do get more freedom to crouch as you’re moving,” says Sean Swidersky. “Some users feel this is natural for sure, but I’m more curious about the competitive side of things… It’s not too outrageous, but seeing someone crouch super fast, in those older games, it just looks different.”…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020MEET THE DEVSRUBEN NAUS Last game: Labyrinth Spend half an hour climbing up a pink castle in the clouds, hunting down crystals and admiring the floaty cloth physics. TOM VAN DEN BOOGAART Last game: Blue Drifter Earn enough cash to get off a wet, gloomy world by hunting down crooks and collecting bounties. ARAN KONING Last game: Goblet Cave Travel deep inside a network of caves to find the goblet, using bombs, ropes and a suspiciously convenient shop to reach your goal. TIJMEN TIO Last game: Uniseas Squabble over the New World with your pirate fleet, fight other captains, and conquer some islands for yourself.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020All quietThe great dry spell continues this month – big budget releases remain few and far between, with the handful that were scheduled already frantically delayed to later in the year and beyond. But as with last issue, it certainly doesn’t mean there’s nothing to read in the following pages. Far from it. It just means more space for the small and the strange – from an episodic indie darling, to a stark and harrowing depiction of the rise of the Nazi party, to a turn-based strategy game based on a puppet TV show, to an adventure game portrayed entirely by that bloke who played Inspector Lestrade in those Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies. PC gaming is a rich tapestry, and over the next 28 pages, we’ve taken a good hard…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020FINAL FORMFIORA This tricky champion automatically wins the game for you if you can kill enough enemies with her. The key is keeping her alive long enough to do it. HEIMERDINGER Nice and simple: you cast spells, he gives you mech minions. Cast enough spells and he levels up, making all his mechs stronger. TRYNDAMERE Kill this champion, and he comes back angier. His newly beefed up stats and abilities allow you to rush down your opponent’s Nexus. YASUO Damages any enemy you stun. Do it enough and he levels up, attacking all stunned enemies with his Quick Attack before they can retaliate.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020HYBRID HEAVENGenuinely funny games are a rarity. So without overlooking the ingenuity of a game that fuses point-and-click adventures with platform-puzzlers, the highest praise I can give Lair of the Clockwork God is that it made me laugh from start to finish. Its central pair – alter-egos of creator Dan Marshall and co-writer Ben Ward – would hate the phrase ‘interactive comedy’, so I’ll simply say that this is a gag delivery device with an outstanding hit rate. Its sense of humour might occasionally be too caustic for some It opens in a Peruvian jungle, immediately establishing its central hook. While Ben is dedicated to point-and-click conventions, Dan has reinvented himself as an indie platformer hero on an emotional quest. If you haven’t played the earlier Ben and Dan games, you…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020RE-BOREDThis reborn RTS spins a yarn about a host of factions fighting over the course of several campaigns, and then again in multiplayer battles and skirmishes. But there’s also another conflict: the one between 2002 and 2020. There’s the classic original game with its elaborate faction design and clever RPG flourishes, and then there’s the ‘Reforged’ part. It’s an attempt to bring the game into the modern age, but one that feels half-hearted. This is not the remaster that Warcraft III deserves. It’s still the Warcraft III you remember, but it looks a bit nicer Blizzard hasn’t done a great job of communicating what Warcraft III: Reforged actually is. Initially, it sat somewhere between remaster and full-on remake. Not only was Blizzard going to add heaps of new art and…7 min
PC Gamer|April 2020SHOT IN THE DARKNo matter how intelligent or empathetic you are, it’s incredibly difficult – arguably impossible – to truly comprehend the enormity of the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Videogames usually seek to loosen your grip on the concept further, by saying little more than “go shoot every Nazi soldier you find in the face”. But this pigeonhole-defying game, while still fully failing to communicate the scale of events, opens your eyes somewhat wider in a very impressive way. The result is an incredibly affecting emotional journey through history. You and your small band of resistance members are German citizens; names, attributes and appearances randomly generated. The story begins with Hindenburg appointing Hitler chancellor in 1933, and runs right through until the aftermath of the war in 1946. Each turn represents a week…4 min
PC Gamer|April 2020HONEY TRAPIf you’ve ever made small talk with a bee, you’ll know that they take their work awful seriously. Inquire about their leader, Jerry Seinfeld, or try to convert them to salted caramel, and they’ll just sit there, sticking their beaks in your flower bed. Well, if the bees get wind of Hive Time, I’m not sure how they’ll react. It’s a moderately involved simulation game that puts you in charge of a friendly bee hive. But it’s very tongue-in-cheek, and probably not entirely accurate to the hive experience. The early game is painfully slow, but the later game is a stress-fest You’re in control of a small hive that’s only just about ticking over. There are few workers buzzing about in search of nectar, while the queen sits on her…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020RAGNAROK GODDESSMuch like how you can tell a lot about a person from their shoes, it’s possible to glean information from the way a game handles its ladders. Stay with me. A game that lets you recklessly slide down suggests an underlying sense of mischievous fun. Conversely, if it could, I get the sense Hellbladewould explain to me in great detail how each rung of every ladder reminds Senua of some half-repressed trauma. It’s the action-adventure equivalent of being left with a religious aunt That’s an empty way of saying Hellblade, understandably, takes itself very seriously. It demands I listen when it talks. In some ways it’s the action-adventure equivalent of being left with a deeply religious aunt, albeit a rather exciting one daubed in woad. The opening does a thoughtful…2 min
PC Gamer|April 2020THE DARKSIDE DETECTIVEThis “micro-adventure game” presents you with six bite-sized bits of paranormal investigation, each lasting around 40 minutes. That sounds short, but that’s the point – I love being able to dip in, complete a case, then come back another day. It’s a simple, dialogue-led adventure: the characters don’t even move, but I’m too busy enjoying the buffoonery of Officer Dooley to notice. And it’s a game that nods to so many other mediums that it looks like it has a nervous twitch. Thanks to its humour and episodic presentation, it’s like the video game adaptation of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace we never knew we needed. 78…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020JARGON BUSTERActuationPoint The depth to which a key needs to be pressed before it registers as a press. Clicky A switch that delivers an audible click every time it’s pressed. Linear A switch that moves directly up and down, delivering smooth keystrokes without noise or tactile feedback. Mechanicalkeyboard A keyboard built around individual switches for each key, rather than a membrane sheath mounted on a PCB. Switch The physical component of a mechanical keyboard beneath the keycaps on a mechanical keyboard. The switch determines how a key is actuated, whether or not it provides audible or tactile feedback with each press, and more. Tactile A switch that provides a ‘bump’ of feedback every time it’s pushed. Tenkeyless A keyboard that lacks the right hand number pad.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020BUDGET BUILDTOTAL £1,072 MOTHERBOARD B360M-HDV ASRock £63 ASRock’s B360M board definitely qualifies as ‘no frills’, but it’ll still get the juice out of your CPU without bottlenecks. PROCESSOR Core i3-9100f Intel £70 An incredibly nippy quad-core CPU for the price, Intel’s 9th gen budget chip skips integrated graphics for affordability. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2060 GAMING EVGA £320 Compact, great value, and part of NVIDIA’s latest GPU generation, this EVGA model is the budget gamer’s best friend. COOLER Hyper 212 Evo CoolerMaster £25 Even a budget build can benefit from a good CPU cooler, letting you enjoy a quieter, cooler system. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 16GB Corsair £57 16GB of RAM gives you plenty of breathing room when running multiple programs, and Corsair’s selling this kit cheap. POWER SUPPLY CX-M Series CX550M…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020“Your flashlight is your most trusted resource for popping giant eyeballs”If you’ve ever had a nightmare about your hometown turning into something macabre and barely recognisable, that’s Gylt. The town is devoid of life. Abandoned cars litter the cracked and crumbling streets. Humanoid monsters with boils on their black skin wait for you around every corner. And you play as a little girl named Sally in this Stranger Things-esque world trying to save your cousin, Emily, from the creatures hell-bent on destroying her and you. Gyltis a Google Stadia exclusive that I’ve been chipping away at ever since I completed my review for the platform back in November. Google hasn’t said when it will offer free subscriptions to its service, so if you want to play it, you’ll have to pay the Stadia Pro monthly subscription fee plus the cost…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020“I feel like a Jedi – albeit a bit more like the work experience Padawan”Liking Star Wars is like being the coveted child in a custody battle. My Last Jedi dad insists the things I love are bad for me and has replaced my co*ke with kombucha. My Rise of Skywalker mum is responding by feeding me energy drinks until I resemble a taurinefattened mallard. I loathe them both. Can Fallen Order fix me? Not initially. It won’t launch on Steam, so I have to download it twice and try again with Origin open – the sort of frustrating false start that feels like trying to tear a new sheet on cheap toilet roll. It works eventually – I have no idea how – and Fallen Orderfinally gets off to the start I longed for. Stirring music, twisted metal structures, and soaring flybys all…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020STARDEW VALLEY EXPANDEDWhen I installed the Stardew Valley Expanded mod, I hadn’t played Stardew in several months. I’d yet to try the enormous ‘everything’ update that added a plethora of new items, crops, clothes and bug fixes. If I were to succinctly explain SVE’s level of quality: I didn’t know the difference between what had been added in the official update, and what was part of the mod. Stardew Valley Expanded, true to its name, does what a proper expansion can for any other game. It adds new characters, new locations, events, and feels like it could have been a part of Stardew Valley from the start. I start a new farm and, having apparently evaporated every ounce of creativity in my body, name it the Expanded farm. I’ll remember which is…7 min
PC Gamer|April 2020MANA-A-MANAFOCAL POINT Each player has a maximum of 20 health points. Your Nexus is blue, your opponent’s is red. If either one depletes to zero – yeah, you guessed it – that competitor loses. ATTACKS VS DEFENCE During each round, one player attacks and the other defends, but both have the opportunity to play cards. The orange sword indicates the attacking phase. MANA TIME This number in blue shows your mana. A unit’s mana cost is indicated at the top-left, and any mana unspent can be saved and put towards spells.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020CLIMBING THE LEADERBOARDS IN HITMAN 2When PC Gamer’s former editor-in-chief Samuel Roberts tweeted that he’d claimed the top spot on the leaderboards for the Hawke’s Bay level of Hitman 2, I felt like I had something to prove. I’d reviewed Hitman 2. I’d reviewed every episode of 2016’s Hitman. While I’m open to the possibility that other people are better at the series than me, I wasn’t about to let someone who worked for the same magazine hold the top spot. I returned to the New Zealand beach house and started optimising. Maybe if I hid over here? Perhaps if I tossed a coin over there? An hour of experimentation later, and I’d beaten Samuel’s score. I’d also realised there much more I could do. My current time was fine, but I was pretty sure…4 min
PC Gamer|April 2020The PC Gamer teamFRASER BROWN Specialist in Living one turn at a time Twitter @FraserIBrown This month Wrote not one but two massive features. We had to cast Cure Light Burnout on him. WES FENLON Specialist in Bomb defusing Twitter @wesleyfenlon This month Checked out an old shooter made new, and a new shooter that feels suspiciously old… TYLER WILDE Specialist in Bigger boats Twitter @tyler_wilde This month Massacred medieval knights, sinister undead, and tourists just trying to enjoy the beach. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Evading the persistent undead Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Discovered an even worse person to have a drink with than Mr X.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020The SpyThe Spy slips out of a dark alley and onto the high street, makeshift bandages and a bloodstained shirt hidden underneath a thick coat regretfully stolen from a market stall. The Spy scans the crowded thoroughfare, looking for… something. A trace of recognition; of surprise; of cold, predatory triumph. Reader, the job went bad. Suddenly, something unexpected happens. A man, lost in thought, walks headfirst into a lamp-post. What thoughts so fully consumed this man’s attention as to cause his face and head to collide with a much sturdier object? Perhaps the better question is what didn’t? There’s just so much… please now picture The Spy gesticulating widely in an attempt to convey the breadth and depth of how much there is. A NEW ASSASSIN’S CREED – WHICH IS LONG-RUMOURED…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020COMMUNITY MAGICEVE ONLINE The players who form the Council of Stellar Management assist and advise CCP on the game’s development. DOTA 2 Icefrog, the lead developer of Dota 2, is believed to contact pro players to get their opinions on game balance. NIER: AUTOMATA Players can also take development into their own hands – here a fan-made patch fixed issues with the PC port. SUBNAUTICA Unknown Worlds’ Early Access success involved player access to the developer task board and more.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020MANEATERIf it were easy to make games about being a shark, I’d be able to name more than just Jaws Unleashed – a 2006 game Tripwire played as it figured out how to build its shark-based RPG. With the caveat that there isn’t much competition, Maneater may be the best shark action yet. Fish don’t talk, which makes storytelling difficult. To solve that, Maneateris framed as a reality show akin to Deadliest Catch, with actor Chris Parnell narrating your movements in the water, explaining your shark nature as you swim around devouring hapless beach-goers. You have a human nemesis, a shark hunter who’s the star of this reality show, as well as underwater enemies, apex predators who’ve muscled into your gulf territory. It’s time to restore some natural balance. Gobbling…2 min
PC Gamer|April 2020DESPERADOS 3At times these days it seems like every weird niche PC game I loved as a child now has a modern remake or beloved spiritual successor. But even so, I must admit I never expected Desperados, the real-time tactics cowboy game, to make a comeback nearly two decades after the original release. In fairness, I was warned. Back in 2017 Mimimi games resurrected real-time tactics with Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. Now they’re back with a sequel to one of the two games that created the genre in the first place. (The other being Pyro Studios’ Commandos games). I’ll forgive you for having no idea what real-time tactics is, given how small the genre is; think of it as a real-time Invisible Inc. Despite the western setting, the emphasis…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020STARSTRUCKANYONE BUT DRIZZT I like Drizzt. Everyone likes Drizzt. He’s the best. That’s a problem for all the adventurers who aren’t legendary drow heroes. I don’t want a much more impressive hero showing me up in front of my mates. ELMINSTER You can’t have Volo and not include his best frenemy. Elminster is the archetypical wise wizard and would know a thing or two about mind flayers. VOLO The scholar will be making lots of appearances. He’s an inquisitive bloke with a fantasist streak that inspires him to take a few liberties with the truth. BOO (AND MINSC) Nothing gives a boost like a miniature giant space hamster. Boo and Minsc are Baldur’s Gate staples, so their absence would be greatly missed.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020REMASTER CHIEF“OUR PILLAR HERE IS TO ALIGN TO THE LEGACY GAMES AS BEST WE CAN” Slayer!” Is there a voice clip I’ve heard more in my life than Halo’s gravelly announcer preparing me for combat? Maybe one of his other callouts: “Double kill.” “Triple kill.” “Overkill!” (OK, now I’m just bragging). If there’s anything truly and utterly timeless about Halo, it’s that voice playing over the warm blue sky and dusty fields of Blood Gulch. Halo: Combat Evolved, now released for TheMaster Chief Collection on PC, looks today exactly as it always has in my mind’s eye: the same as it was on chunky CRT TVs at splitscreen LAN parties, the same as it was on the PCs in my high school 3D modelling class. My memory, of course, is wrong.…11 min
PC Gamer|April 2020INFINITE GAME JAMEvery fortnight, a visit to Sokpop’s Itch page – and, more recently, its Steam page – guarantees a new treat. Maybe you’ll drive through the rain to hunt down bounties in Blue Drifter, explore a pink sky castle in Labyrinth or spend an hour solving puzzles on Pear Quest’s little island. In two years, Sokpop has released more than 50 games, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Aran Koning, Ruben Naus, Tom van den Boogaart and Tijmen Tio met around five years ago when they started doing game jams together, including the popular Ludum Dare. When there wasn’t a formal one to go to, they’d just jam at home. Those events always came to an abrupt end, but they wanted to keep it going. The collective grew from…10 min
PC Gamer|April 2020ROAD TRIPPIN’It’s taken seven years for developer Cardboard Computer to release all five episodes of its otherworldly adventure. It was first Kickstarted in 2011. Where games like The Walking Dead or Life is Strange will drop episodes at most months apart, Kentucky Route Zero irregularly wandered into our lives with two hours of surreal, evocative story before disappearing once again – slinking back into the aether until it was time for the next episode. It’s strange having to review a game that I’ve been playing for over seven years. In some ways it’s a weirdly nostalgic experience, a reminder that I’m a completely different person from when I started playing back in 2013. While I think many will have the same realisation, Kentucky Route Zero’s message about the struggles of rural…4 min
PC Gamer|April 2020THE STORY SO THRAI love strategy games. I love The Dark Crystal. But heading into this adaptation of the Netflix TV series, I was pretty sceptical of the idea of squishing the two together. It’s a pleasure to report that while Age of Resistance: Tactics never fully justifies the combo, it’s a far richer and more substantial game than you might expect. For those unfamiliar, the show (itself spun out from a 1982 cult movie) takes place in a strange fantasy world, represented primarily through puppetry and animatronics, where the peaceful Gelflings are oppressed by the parasitic Skeksis. The game loosely retells this story, with a few new diversions, though in a way jumbled and fleeting enough that anyone who hasn’t watched the series will be utterly lost. A JRPG-esque ‘jobs’ system allows…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020HISTORY LESSONFIRST WAR The orcs arrive in Azeroth and promptly start killing humans. They win. SECOND WAR The humans form an alliance of other races to avenge the destruction of their homeland. INVASION OF DRAENOR The Alliance enters the Dark Portal and invades the orc homeworld of Draenor. LICH KING MK1 Naughty orc Ner’zhul is transformed into the first Lich King by the Burning Legion. This is bad news. HORDE ON HOLIDAY Thrall gathers the remaining orcs on Azeroth and moves them from Lordaeron to Kalimdor. THE SCOURGE ARRIVES The Burning Legion creates a plague of undeath. Prince Arthas tries to stop them. EDGELORD ARTHAS He fails, instead becoming a bit of an arsehole and picking up a cursed sword. Arthas then joins the Scourge. KICKING OFF ON KALIMDOR The Horde…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020BATTLES ROYALEWATCH_DOGS ROYALE Set it in London, and it’s just another piece of commentary on post-Brexit Britain. ASSASSIN’S CREED: SURVIVE With freerunning and grappling, Ubi could have the next Apex Legends. FAR CRY: BATTLEGROUNDS Actually, I’m not sure that this isn’t already a side-mode in one of the billion games in this series. TOM CLANCY’S BATTLE ROYALE Who needs a clever name when you can just put a famous author in front of the title? RABBIDS ROYALE Kid-friendly, but with the kind of chaotic energy Fortnite could never hope to harness.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020WAY OF THE DRAGONWhen the Dragon Ball Z anime aired, the first arc lasted 39 episodes. Assuming every episode is around 22 minutes, that’s about 14 and a half hours until Vegeta is defeated. Dragon Ball Z: Kai cuts this down to 26 episodes, totalling nine and a half hours’ viewing time. In Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, you’re able to get through this first arc, including all the sub-stories, in about six hours. As a game, it understands what you’re here for – larger than life, planet-destroying battles – and doles them out in spades, with added RPG-style mechanics for a sense of growth and progress. Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot covers the four main arcs of the story The game’s story covers the four main arcs of the show – Saiyan, Frieza, Cell,…4 min
PC Gamer|April 2020HYPER-AWAREBefore the Web, there was Hypercard, a system for the Mac that used innovative hyperlinks to shunt users between content cards. These cards could have contained facts, contact details, or monochrome pictures – or they might have comprised a point and click adventure game. Without Hypercard there would be no Myst, and, probably, no Madness of the Coastal Structure, the latest from acclaimed interactive fiction author Porpentine. Built using the Hypercard Framework, Madnessis a text adventure that feels extremely early ’90s. It isn’t just the Hypercard stylings – which are crammed with beautiful pixel iconography – but also the setting, which brings to mind the classic Infocom adventures. The realm of Madnessisn’t a cohesive one. Centaurs rub shoulders with enchanted pop bands, strange machines and other oddities. It’s a game…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020GOZER FUND MEI feel like Ghostbusters: The Video Game is what seven-year-old me would have asked for from the Make A Wish foundation. The attention to detail is almost overwhelming. Proton packs jangle as you run. PKE meters bloop in exactly the right way. And somehow, a soundtrack from a 35-year-old movie is expertly retrofitted to a modern(ish) action game. I get misty eyed just hearing the menu music. But the most striking thing is still the characters. Murray oozes back into Venkman’s sleazy charm. Ray is relentlessly chipper. And Winston is inexplicably missing from the first hour, just as he was in the movie. It’s amusing, well written, and implemented in a way that rarely feels forced, although the new recruit could hardly be more generic if a team of CIA…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020GHOST MASTERIn The Sims, it’s usually an accident when your inhabitants end up being terrorised by a vengeful spirit. (That, or you’ve entombed the deceased’s ashes in a secret compartment so they can never find peace.) But in 2003’s Ghost Master, it’s precisely the point. It’s essentially a haunted puzzle game in which you have to scare people by tethering ghosts and ghouls to specific items or areas. The result feels like if James Wan produced a movie about the disappearance of Mortimer Goth. 70…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020TO THE EXTREME!For many decades now we’ve been melting sand and making it think. The current photolithography process for making microchips, such as the CPU and GPU inside your PC, dates back to around 1977, and involves painting light-sensitive chemicals onto a wafer of silicon, then shining UV lasers through a mask so that they mark the chip’s pathways into the chemical, then a bath in something nasty that dissolves the top layer of silicon not protected by photoresist. The process has been evolving, but now it’s starting to reach the end of its useful life. Why? Because chip pathways are, if you believe the PR exhalations of chip manufacturers, now as small as 7nm across. They’re not, of course, as the nanometre measurements are more like marketing terms these days and…5 min
PC Gamer|April 2020MID-RANGE BUILDTOTAL £1,631 MOTHERBOARD X470 PRIME X470-PRO Asus £132 Tasteful RGB (if that’s your thing) and substantial heatsinks make this a fine base for any AMD build. PROCESSOR Ryzen 7 3800X AMD £289 Once our top-end pick, AMD’s Ryzen 7 is still as formidable but now realistic for mid-range builds, too. What a time to be alive. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2060 Twin Fan Zotac £320 Serious power from the ‘just about affordable’ end of Nvidia’s new GPU fleet, and it’s ray tracing-ready too. COOLER Hydro Series H55 Quiet Edition Corsair £55 Tidy and quiet, the H55 will unlock our CPU’s overclocking potential and look good through your case window while it does so. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) @2666 Corsair £67 16GB is the minimum amount of RAM we’d recommend…2 min
PC Gamer|April 2020“Games are in need of more strangeness”From the very first moments, this largely text-based game puts me on the back foot. Superficially, it’s a game about managing a settlement in a fantasy land, making sure all of your citizens are safe, warm and well-fed. But almost immediately, it reveals itself to be much stranger than that implies. Before you even begin, you have to choose an origin story for your clan, picking from multiple options at different points in their history. These choices are largely baffling, steeped heavily in the game’s unique setting. I scrape together crumbs of lore as I go – gods are very real, their power can be invoked by physically reenacting old myths, but most of them are asleep I think? And my clan’s patron deity is the god of a specific…2 min
PC Gamer|April 2020QUAKE II RTXIf you’ve been itching to replay Quake II, this RTX edition of the game – a project by NVIDIA-owned LightSpeed Studios – is the perfect excuse. It’s the same game you love, but with added real-time reflections, volumetric lighting, global illumination, and other visual upgrades designed to show off NVIDIA’s RTX series of GPUs. It makes heavy use of real-time ray tracing, a rendering technique that can produce incredibly realistic lighting effects. Basically, an algorithm traces the path of a light source, then simulates the way that light interacts with virtual objects – whether it’s a glass window or a pool of water. And the results can be amazingly photorealistic. Only a few games have support for ray tracing at the moment, but NVIDIA has already made it a flagship…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020QUALITY PEARSSEASONAL VILLAGER OUTFITS For a bit of flavour, this mod changes every NPC’s outfit for each season. No more cold shoulders in winter! DYNAMIC NIGHT TIME This mod gives a more varied light cycle to Stardew with dawn and dusk lighting at their appropriate times. CLIMATES OF FERNGILL The climates mod adds new weather patterns and types, including blizzards and something called ‘thundersnow’. NPC MAP LOCATIONS You’ll never lose track of a character you need to talk to with their face on your map showing where to find them.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020TOTAL PEACE PART II’ve recently written two diary series for PC Gamer, and they both involved an enormous amount of killing. Well, I’ve had enough. No more swords. No more guns. No more leaking bags of skin at my virtual feet. From here on out, I’ll only be offering my enemies cake and presents. I’m going pacifist, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. To demonstrate my commitment to the non-violent path, I’m going to peacefully play what is by sheer weight of numbers the most violent series ever made, Total War. Specifically, I’m playing Total War: Three Kingdoms, for which Creative Assembly revamped many of the game’s secondary systems, lending elements like diplomacy, economy management, espionage, and character relationships far greater depth and nuance. My plan is to use these…9 min
PC Gamer|April 2020PHOENIX WRIGHT: ACE ATTORNEY TRILOGYThis collected trilogy has had quite the journey to PC. The three included games were originally released in 2001, 2002 and 2004 as Japan-exclusive GBA titles. After success over there, they made their English debut in North America and Europe, launching on the Nintendo DS. From there the trilogy was once again ported to the Nintendo Wii and iOS in 2013 and then again onto the 3DS in 2014. The three games finally made their debut onto PC last year, bundled as the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy. The PC port lets new players experience the visual novel series for the first time, and allows fans to revisit the thrills of being back in the courtroom. Bouncing from console to console, you would think the trilogy would have been through…8 min
PC Gamer|April 2020MUST PLAYSLAY THE SPIRE megacrit.com A deck-building roguelike that starts tricky and somehow gets much harder. A single decision can unravel a run quickly, yet here I am steaming into my fifth attempt this session in hopes of ascending once more. Its four classes each feel unique, and I’ve experienced waves of favouritism with each. SPELUNKY spelunkyworld.com This roguelike platformer is adorable yet deceptively difficult. Every run is different, and you can even go to Hell. The pug is easily the GOAT videogame dog depiction and that isn’t up for discussion! There are plenty of tricks to master: try looting the shop without using bombs or ropes. It’s… pretty hard. THE SIMS 4 ea.com/the-sims-4 Every play session of The Sims 4 ends with, “It can’t be that time already!”. This game…2 min
PC Gamer|April 2020FROSTY RECEPTIONThe launch of Warcraft III: Reforged seemed like it was going to be an easy win for Blizzard – it had already remastered one beloved RTS, and people were ravenous for another strategy game set in Azeroth. Instead, it’s been hammered by negative user reviews and Blizzard is now offering no-questions-asked refunds. Poor communication, delayed and missing features, and changes to the end-user licence agreement (EULA) have overshadowed the launch – and that was pretty shaky in its own right too. THE ACTUAL CHANGES ENDED UP BEING QUITE A BIT MORE CONSERVATIVE Back in 2018, Warcraft III: Reforged was pitched as something between a remaster and remake, with new art, graphics, cutscenes, UI and even changes to the campaign. Blizzard showed off one of the new cutscenes at the time,…2 min
PC Gamer|April 2020This month in… 20101 2010 was an exciting time for MMOs. The cynical World of Warraft cash-ins were (mostly) dead, and a new wave of projects promised to evolve and improve the genre. And sure, looking back, many fell short of that aim – yes, we’re looking at you, APB – but we also got plenty of genuinely great online games, including this month’s cover feature star, Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. 2 Rich McCormick marks his debut issue by gaming on a laptop for a week. Luckily the laptop could handle Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, so he was fine. 3 Not everything was rosy in the land of PC gaming. Previews for this issue detail Crysis 2 andSplinterCellConviction – both shallower, more consolised versions of once classic, complex PC…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020WORLD OF WARCRAFT: SHADOWLANDSFew places in Azeroth aren’t covered in the boot prints of World of Warcraft players. We’ve been to every major continent, alternate magical dimensions and through dark portals to sundered worlds. Hell, we’ve even been to space. But this summer, Blizzard is taking us to a realm no living soul has been before: the afterlife. Called the Shadowlands, these kingdoms of death are a typically well-oiled machine where dead souls are sorted and sent to different realms based upon their deeds in life – or it would be if some nefarious villain hadn’t broken the cycle, forcing every new soul to be dumped straight into a hellish abyss. “The Shadowlands pose a threat to our existence, to life, and what life means,” game director Ion Hazzikostas tells me. “That will…7 min
PC Gamer|April 2020NEW WORLDEarlier versions of Amazon’s MMO nagged players with thirst and hunger, but now a sip of water just replenishes a little health. Not much is precious to this team: if it isn’t working it gets cut, or revised. The survival systems didn’t make it, but you can still camp and cook up buffs. New World’s action combat system is one of the few exceptions. Amazon is committed to making you physically connect swords and arrows with your targets – no clicking once and watching ‘X hits Y’ scroll by in the chat window. It’s impressive that hit-detection works as well as it seems to in 100-player battles. A few times an arrow or bullet whizzed by me because the shot threaded a gap in whatever animation I was in the…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020COOK SERVE DELICIOUS 3In games, I’ve fought wars, escaped certain death and saved universes – but I don’t think I’ve ever been as stressed out as I am assembling a burger in Cook Serve Delicious 3. This cooking sim sequel puts the focus squarely on high-speed food preparation under pressure. A lot of pressure. In a near-future America torn apart by war, your goal is to… run a successful food truck. As you travel across the country, you have to set your menu and then (rapidly) get everything ready for your customers, tapping letters on your keyboard to correctly cook each dish. Different levels have different restrictions, forcing you to change up your offering by only allowing certain types of food, or requiring a minimum number of points (each dish being scored according…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020COUNTER-STRUCKHuddled alone in a corner near bomb site A, I knew I didn’t have a chance of sneaking in and planting the package strapped to my back. The defence had just wiped out the other four members of my team, and they knew the bomb was close. They’d be waiting to dome me as soon as I stepped around a corner. So instead I activated my ult, an ability I’d been charging up for half a dozen rounds. After a tense, vulnerable few seconds, I teleported clear across the map to bomb site B and armed the bomb, adrenaline pumping at the thought of pulling off a 1v4 upset. “Unloseable!” says League of Legends shoutcaster David ‘Phreak’ Turley, who was helping my team of journalists learn the basics of Valorant,…11 min
PC Gamer|April 2020MAPS OF MY YOUTHWARTORN COVE Two valleys open out into a cove where a tank sits, waiting to dominate the map. CTF matches were full of heroic and foolish warthog runs, trickery with the teleporters, and hopeless assaults on that tank. NEW MOMBASA CLASSIC An at-the-time awe-inspiring recreation of Bungie’s 2003 E3 demo for Halo 2, turned into a multiplayer map. Vehicles could dominate the wide city streets, but the sewers made sneak attacks a thrill.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020MAKE CHANGE1 Sokpop’s games are often wholesome, whimsical romps bursting with colour. They’re fun experiments with an equally playful style. 2 On the other side of the spectrum are the moody experiments – a strange alien city, a lonely night time drive, an evening in the North Sea. 3 While art often plays a central role in Sokpop games, it can also be understated and minimalist, creating more space for the mechanics. 4 And sometimes it gets weird, with potato men playing a game of dodgeball; or jumping inside some fruit to catch grinning worms.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020REVIEWHOW WE REVIEW We review each game on its own merits, and try to match it to a reviewer who’s a passionate expert in the field. The main aim of reviews is to help you make buying decisions. To this end, we’re selective about what we review, and try to focus on the notable, interesting, exciting or surprising. DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT DLC might be new missions for a game, or it might be a single new item. If we think you want to know about it, we’ll review it. EARLY ACCESS Any released alpha, beta, or otherwise unfinished game that you can currently pay for. For these games, we won’t assign a score, but we will tell you whether they’re worth your time. THEY’RE BACK Whenever there’s a bargain or re-release…2 min
PC Gamer|April 2020A DIFFERENT LEAGUEIdon’t think I can stomach buying another booster pack after playing Legends of Runeterra. It’s a necessary part of physical card games where cards often have real-world value, but their prevalence in digital card games is just an excuse to sell the worst kind of lootboxes. It’s enough to make anyone cynical. But thanks to a generous reward system that avoids booster packs altogether, Legends of Runeterra is one card game that’s easy to love. You’d be forgiven for rolling your eyes at the thought of a free-to-play card game based on League of Legends. The card genre is full of these spin-offs. But Riot Games’ take is full of clever innovations and tense duels dictated by your skill rather than how much you spend. It keeps Runeterra feeling unpredictable…8 min
PC Gamer|April 2020ZERO CLUE1 RETRACE YOUR STEPS The highways morph, so go back the way you came and you might find yourself somewhere else. 2 LISTEN TO RADIO STATIC If you listen closely, you’ll be able to hear a ghostly voice in the static with helpful directions. 3 FEEL WHERE YOU WANT TO GO If you put your complete trust into the road, the road will certainly reward your loyalty. 4 LOOK OUT FOR GIANT BIRDS They might not take you where you want to go but they will take you somewhere. That’s good!…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020REBEL ALLIANCERIAN Job: Paladin/Grave Dancer My mobile heavy hitter, able to leap to wherever he’s needed most. DEET Job: Bramble Sage/ Mender A magical powerhouse, chucking out heals and fireballs. NAIA Job: Stone Warden/ Soldier A reliable tank who hits hard and gets faster the more damage she takes. BREA Job: Song Teller/ Scout Dispenses buffs to her friends and stuns to her enemies. POMBO Job: Musician/ Potion Master Honestly, I just keep this guy around because his name makes me laugh.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020ROLL CALLALLIANCE Made up of humans, dwarves, and elves, the Alliance are the all-rounders with tech, magic, and knights. HORDE The orcs, trolls, and tauren faction is full of melee bruisers backed up by shamanistic magic powers. SCOURGE The undead Scourge is fuelled by necromantic magic and enjoys a bit of cannibalism now and again. NIGHT ELVES The Night Elves love shooting and magic. It’s a ranged faction but can also field huge giants as a tanky frontline.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020WRITE AND WRONGIf reading sounds like too much hard work to you, then a book that also has the cheek to ask you to expend valuable snack-fetching energy on rolling dice would be positively insulting. But fear not! This adaptation of one of the most successful Fighting Fantasy books, a series co-created by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, is perfect for the lazy. It does almost everything for you, including proving that books and games are most definitely not interchangeable. Every word is read to you by Marsan as he sits in a comfy-looking chair This is not, strictly speaking, a videogame adaptation of the book Deathtrap Dungeon. With a few tiny tweaks, it isthe book Deathtrap Dungeon, albeit a version that allows you to pretend that you’re friends with the actor…4 min
PC Gamer|April 2020WALK THIS WAYIn those moments when your mind drifts away from whatever mundane reality you’ve put in front of it, do you ever imagine the stickmen in road signs coming to life, and having adventures? No, me either. But it’s to everyone’s benefit that somebody at Skookum has, because it provides a fine foundation for the studio’s debut. It might just have easily been adapted into a Pixar short: given sentience and agency over the other objects within the signs it occupies, a stick person breaks free from the confines of their painted prison and hops from sign to sign, from subway to street, from mild peril to slightly more pressing peril. Skookum’s clever about this unique way of presenting its puzzles That might not sound a deep enough well of creativity…4 min
PC Gamer|April 2020GARAGE ROCKI’m sure every musician could do with an infinite practice room: a place to store, and of course play, every intriguing-looking instrument that comes along. Haunted Garage, as you’ve probably guessed, does just that, by giving you an endless white void in which you can stash a collection of fictional instruments. The absolute best part of this peculiar adventure game is playing with those devices, clicking on each to connect wires and flip switches and twist dials, to see what noises you can produce. They all play at the same tempo, and can be left alone once cajoled into life, creating an automated orchestra. You’re a scientist, a tinkerer. A kid in a toy shop, pushing all the buttons to see what happens. But that’s only half the story. Click…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020THE BLACKWELL LEGACYAnother ghostly title set in New York, The Blackwell Legacy was the second game from Unavowed’s Dave Gilbert, released back in 2006. Luckily, point-and-click games don’t age. The story holds up and most of the scenes have conflict and purpose. The stakes are clear for hero Rosa, who has to work with spectral guide Joey or risk being institutionalised. It’s a knowing adventure game: there’s even an animal puzzle that nods to Broken Sword’s wretched goat. Couple this with characters that feel relatable if not always likeable, and it’s a good alternative to the Ghostbusters approach to undead relations. 84…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020MECHANICAL KEYBOARDSTaking the plunge and investing in a mechanical keyboard can alter the whole feel of your PC. There’s nothing wrong with using a stock keyboard, but opting to upgrade one of the main ways you interact with your computer gives you a more personalised experience. Their signature feel is down to the mechanical switches, giving each one a little bit of tactile personality. There are some cool benefits to switching to mechanical too, even if you’re not primarily using your keyboard for gaming. First of all, they’re really strong on customisation, meaning you can choose the look and feel that suits your needs and works best for you. RBG lighting seems to be a given on PC hardware these days but there’s also the option to choose the type of…6 min
PC Gamer|April 2020TEENY TINY1 CARBON NANOTUBE A single-walled carbon nanotube measures just one nanometre across. They are ten times as strong as regular carbon and also have great tensile strengthand thermal conductivity. 2 DNA MOLECULE A molecule of DNA is 2.5 nanometres across and about 5 centimetres long. If harnessed for data storage, a single gram could hold 1 zettabyte (9.7 billion terabytes) of data. 3 CPU TRANSISTOR On Intel’s 14nm process, the gap between transistor fins, and therefore between gates, is around 70nm. These have been used in Apple’s MacBooks and MacBook Pros. 4 HUMAN HAIR Ranging from 50,000 to 100,000 nanometres across, the human hair has no computing or data storage capabilities we know of. If it did, barbers would be raking it in.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020ADVANCED BUILDMOTHERBOARD ROG Maximus XI Code Asus £350 Immense overclocking potential, and a look that’s barely even recognisable as a motherboard. Space-age PCB tech. PROCESSOR Core i9 9900K Intel £480 Intel’s new 5.0GHz, 8-core monster rules the roost in the CPU market. And it comes in a fancy nine-sided box too, so there’s that. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2080Ti Black Edition EVGA £1,049 EVGA’s custom design is considerably cheaper than Nvidia’s reference card, and with great cooling. COOLER Kraken X62 NZXT £126 The Kraken is the culmination of three of our favourite things: an infinity mirror, a 280mm radiator and slick braided cooling. MEMORY Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3200 Corsair £155 Faster than you could ever reasonably hope to make use of unless you plan to edit three 4K movies at once,…2 min
PC Gamer|April 2020“I am a rat, feasting on the remains left behind by more skilled players”I am not a brave man. Where Escape From Tarkov’s battle-hardened veterans will actively look for a fight, I flinch at even the most distant sounding gunshots, scurrying from bush to bush and outright avoiding the most well-trafficked areas unless I absolutely have no choice. In the grand food chain of Escape From Tarkov, a hardcore mil-sim survival shooter about looting gear in a post-apocalyptic Russian city, I am not a bear or a tiger. I am a rat, feasting on the remains left behind by more skilled players. And I kind of like it that way. Though Escape From Tarkov has much in common with both survival games like DayZ and battle royales such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, it manages to feel like some kind of mutant hybrid between the…3 min
PC Gamer|April 2020MIRROR IMAGEMETRO EXODUS This post-apocalyptic road trip was already beautiful to look at, but the addition of ray traced global illumination really elevates the visual fidelity of those bleak, radiated landscapes. CONTROL The shiny floors and eerie atmosphere of the Oldest House are the perfect showcase for ray tracing. Control’s use of the tech is seriously impressive, with some amazingly realistic reflections. SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER The use of ray tracing here is most prominent, appropriately, in its tombs, with light sources such as flickering braziers and candles casting realistic moving shadows. BATTLEFIELD V If you want to experience the next generation of puddles technology, just play Battlefield V with ray tracing on. The way the world is reflected in the water of a flooded trench is truly stunning.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020THE PLAYERSDONG ZHUO The tyrant who usurped the throne of the Han Empire. DONG MIN Zhuo’s somewhat unhinged adopted son. He’s the murderous sort. HAN EMPIRE Once the ruling faction of China, now the vassal of Dong Zhuo. CAO CAO China’s great general and strategist. Also a peaceful guy. LIU BEI China’sfriendly neighbourhood warlord. Trustworthy. TAO QIAN A well-respected warlord, and long-time ally of Cao Cao. YUAN SHAO Powerful northern warlord. A useful ally but arrogant. LIU YAO Small-time warlord to the south. Backstabber.…1 min
PC Gamer|April 2020QUEST ASSUREDLago IV Class:Warrior Who could tank better than a World of Tanks tank? Let’s see those idiot orcs get past that. Agent 47 Class: Rogue Turns out he disguised himself as a Mind Flayer and killed the boss monster three weeks ago. G-Man Class:Wizard We’re not 100 percent clear what his magical powers actually are, but he seems like he’d be useful. Doom Guy Class:Healer Listen, he may not be the conventional choice, but he always knows where the heath packs are. ...UNTIL APRIL 02…1 min
