Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2015 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

2014 was the strongest year in recent memory for RPGs, and that’s even with key titles like The Witcher 3 and Pillars of Eternity being pushed back to next year. The games spanned a thematic gamut, but many of them were reboots of beloved series or returns to the genre by respected storytellers. We had a massive, old-school RPG with some modern tweaks in Divinity, a Viking epic in The Banner Saga, and the return of another classic series in Wasteland 2. Obsidian chipped in the wonderful South Park and let’s not forget Shadowrun Returns, Warlords of Draenor, and Legend of Grimrock II. Dragon Age: Inquisition is certainly the year’s biggest-budget RPG, but other than BioWare’s epic, this list of independent efforts conveys how costeffective it’s become to make games…

CLICK pcgamer.com LIKE facebook.com /pcgamermagazine SHOOT steamcommunity.com /groups/pcgamer WATCH youtube.com/pcgamer FOLLOW twitter@pcgamer SEND letters@pcgamer.com PC Gamer FutureUS 4000 Shoreline Ct. Suite 400 South San Francisco, CA 94080 It’s NOTHING like TF2. It feels more like a twitchstyle shooter, with unique classes. Jacob Zacharia Pretty stoked about this. Brian Lee It’s a great game and plays fairly well. It does need some adjustments, though. The game feels horribly slow in play compared to the videos, where it felt like it had a higher pace. If they boosted movement speed by, like, 50 percent, it would be more comfortable to play. Anthony Sammartino I hope the game is just as good as they made it look like in the trailer (I’m not talking about graphics here). They did the same with Diablo…

ANDY: Finally, someone made an Alien game based on the right film. The Creative Assembly obsessively broke Ridley Scott’s 1979 original down and used its component parts—one terrifying creature, a struggle for survival, a dark, claustrophobic setting—to make the best Alien game ever, and one of the best horror games ever. It’s probably the bravest, most subversive ‘AAA’ game of the year. When I first heard about Isolation, I wondered if they’d be able to rest an entire game on that premise of a single alien stalker. But thanks to careful, considered pacing, and mixing up Amanda’s circumstances, it never got stale, even after 25 hours. In one section the motion tracker is useless, in another you’re free to fire your weapons without alerting the beast. Little changes like this…

Need to know What is it? A first- and third-person modern agriculture sim. Influenced by SimFarm Reviewed on Windows 7, Intel Core 2 Quad 9450, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 570 Alternatively Euro Truck Simulator 2, 85% Copy protection Steam It wasn’t long before my eyes started to glaze over. Not because of the subject matter— which at its best I found oddly relaxing as I cultivated, sowed, and harvested, up one row and down the other, with nothing but my thoughts and the diesel roar of my Deutz-Fahr to keep me company. The trouble is that underneath, it’s not much of a simulation. It’s just tractor porn. The tractors and attachments look fantastic, with switches, knobs, flashing lights and even caked-on dirt. Trouble is, that superficiality goes all the way…

Need to know What is it? War with less hoo-rah and more clicking. Influenced by 1939-1945 Reviewed on Core i7 2.2GHz, 24GB RAM, GeForce GT 750M Alternatively Supreme Commander 2, 87% Copy protection Steam This is Relic’s second standalone expansion for Company of Heroes 2. Where The Western Front Armies was multiplayer-focused, Ardennes Assault is very much a singleplayer campaign—but it has learned a lot of lessons from the online world. Your companies accrue veterancy and, equally, casualties. As you make your way around the meta-map of Belgian conflict zones, you soon realize this is as much a part of the game as the more traditional ‘click on the baddies to make them die’ bit. As you navigate your companies to the next of the 18 missions, you’re free to…

ANDY KELLY This month Spent more time taking pretty pictures of orcs than stabbing them in the head. Also Played Elite, ACIV: Black Flag Why doesn’t every game have a photo mode? I’ve played Shadow of Mordor for ten hours so far, and at least three were spent in its amazingly powerful screenshot tool. At any time you can click the left stick and freeze time. Then you can spin the camera around, zoom in and out, change the field of view, and add effects. Whenever I behead an uruk or stumble across a beautiful sunset, I can’t help myself. I have to take a screenshot. It’s made me appreciate just how much detail is in the visuals, from the orcs’ facial expressions (whether they’re growling in anger or cowering in…

It’s a retelling of The Tortoise and the Hare, only the tortoise is a heavy-set Russian with a minigun, and the hare an unbelievable jerk. Imagine a TF2 version of Wacky Races and you wouldn’t be far off. It deservedly won the Saxxy 2014 award for Best Action. www.bit.ly/RivalryRush 1 The plan The Scout spots a poster for a Mann-Co running contest—complete with amazing prizes for the winner. Despite being the fastest on the team, he decides he needs some extra help and enlists the Engineer. 2 Testing Cue a montage of prototype footwear going horribly wrong. There’s plenty of slapstick failure as the two conspirators slowly refine their design. They find success, but not before being seen by the BLU Scout. 3 Soldiering on As the race begins, the…

USER REVIEWS • TIE Fighter. Nostalgic space romp where you play as an Imperial badass, courtesy of www.gog.com. They just don’t make games like this any more. @DickHoltz True, that. Fingers crossed that X-Wing Alliance eventually makes the leap, too. • We’re playing Warcraft because it lets us hang out with our high-school buddies who have moved away from home, and game at the same time. @krchalfantll Daww, that’s sweet. We play MMOs with our enemies, mostly, just to remind them that we’re still out there. • Hearthstone and Beyond Earth. I’m a boring person but these games are pretty damn good! @thedaviddawson Those aren’t boring games, though. Is the ‘boring person’ thing related to something else? Maybe stamp collecting? • Dead Space 3. It’s a pretty shocking take on…

After years in development hell and a change of director, the Warcraft movie finally made a prominent appearance at Blizzcon 2014. It’s due in March 2016, and Duncan Jones, of Moon and Source Code fame, will direct. The full cast was confirmed alongside new footage, and Jones and actor/mega fan Rob Kazinsky, AKA Orgrim Doomhammer, were there to reassure us that the film was in the right hands. Jones made the bold statement of calling it “Avatar and Lord of the Rings at the same time...” The cast however are mostly midlevel stars, Dominic Cooper (King Llane) and Ben Foster (Medivh) taking on Alliance characters, and Clancy Brown, Daniel Wu and Kazinsky embodying the Horde. Paula Patton (of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol) will play Garona. On stage, Kavinsky demonstrated his…

Four years ago, a group of hardcore Alien fans—who also happened to be game developers—were given the opportunity of a lifetime: to make a game set in that film’s distinctive sci-fi universe, with the full blessing of franchise owners 20th Century Fox. The result is Alien: Isolation, a brilliantly tense and atmospheric horror game, and the first spin-off that’s ever done HR Giger’s creature justice. While most Alien games look to James Cameron’s actionpacked sequel for inspiration, The Creative Assembly used Ridley Scott’s original slow-burning 1979 horror classic as its template. “Alien is unmistakably Fox’s property, but from the moment we pitched the original concept to them, they’ve been completely behind us,” says Alistair Hope, creative lead. “I think because we were trying to stay true in spirit to the…

Need to know What is it? A JRPG strategy game set in an alternate reality World War II. Influenced by World War II, JRPGs Reviewed on Windows 7, Intel i7 4960X, 32GB RAM, Nvidia GTX Titan Alternatively XCOM: Enemy Unknown, 87% Copy protection Steam I hadn’t heard Valkyria Chronicles’ familiar violin melody since it was first released for PS3 in 2008, but six years later, those strings whisked me back to Gallia and the familiar faces of Squad 7 with an instant hit of nostalgia. I’m happy to report that my delight with the PC version didn’t stop at the violins. Chronicles is a turn-based strategy, third-person real-time shooter, alternate-reality World War II JRPG, and miraculously that all comes together beautifully. You command a series of turn-based battles from the…

Need to know What is it An action-packed military shooter set in the near future. Influenced by The last seven Call of Dutys Reviewed on Windows 8, Core i7-4770K, 16GB RAM, GTX Titan Black Alternatively Counter-Strike: GO, 84% Copy protection Steam The campaign is a firstperson shooting gallery smattered with nearlyon-rails vehicle segments, quicktime events, and slightly interactive storytelling. So, it’s a lot like the last seven Call of Duty games. It sure is a lot better than Ghosts, though, and it introduces some neat near-future gadgets. The most interesting of which are the Exo suits, which imbue their wearers with double-jumps, strafe dashes, and other special abilities. Guns are everywhere and fun: big, powerful, varied, some punching single shots through armor, others spraying corridors with death. The ballistics aren’t…

Charlemagne is like a featurelength prequel to the main game. It’s a more focused tale about the creation of the Holy Roman Empire—the powerful state that drives so much of the drama. At its heart is the conflict between two characters: Charlemagne, aka King Karl, and his brother Karloman. The year is 769 AD. Karl is the ruler of West Francia; Karloman of Middle Francia. The two are bitter rivals, and both scheme to unite Francia under their own rule. It’s a historical 2Fort, with just as much possibility for violence. As always, you can play as any noble from any nation on the map’s three continents. Don’t care about the unification of Western Europe? Decide how the Byzantine Empire fares instead. Or use the DLC’s new custom empires to…

SAM ROBERTS This month Called a classic sci-fi beast a ‘dickhead’ then reset the save point 20 times. Also Played Resident Evil 4, X-Wing I’m worse than the alien. That’s what I’ve learned about myself in Alien: Isolation. I’m halfway through the story, returning through the very first environment where I met the alien near the start, at the Lorenz Sys/tech lobby, a reception area with a raised walkway around the perimeter. The alien is pursuing me and the humans here are armed and ready to kill strangers. After a few failed attempts, I throw a noisemaker to summon the alien to take them all out. “Shit!” yells Ripley, as the carnage begins. I make a beeline for a hiding spot. As the bloodshed continues, I sneak around the walkway to…

READ ME FIRST REVIEWED June 2014, 86% DEVELOPER Respawn Entertainment PUBLISHER EA REQUIRES Dual Core CPU, 512MB GPU, 4GB RAM LINK www.titanfall.com COMMUNITY www.respawn.com/forum It’s not fair to say that nobody is playing Titanfall’s new maps. Today, one person was in the matchmaking queue for Expedition, the game’s first map pack. None were attempting to play the other two, Frontier’s Edge and IMC Rising. The game fared a little better elsewhere: a population for the original game modes in double or triple figures, with Attrition peaking at around 700 people. Later in the day things improved, and it’s normally possible to find a game for the campaign and a handful of other modes: but unless you like a lot of two-on-two capture-theflag, the passage of time and a declining population…

The release of Nvidia’s new, powerful, mobile Maxwell graphics architecture reflects how the line between desktop and mobile gaming is increasingly blurring. But there’s always the question of price. The PC Gamer Rig, the finest gaming machine you can build for a sensible price, will still significantly outperform any equivalently-priced laptop you care to compare it with. The best value, and most versatile, way of PC gaming is still the desktop machine. WHAT’S IN THE BOX The components that make up the PCG Rig POSSIBLE UPGRADES Asus RoG Swift PG278Q > Currently the finest high-performance gaming screen around. The 21:9 U3477Pqu has a finer panel, but lacks the G-sync/144Hz advantages. Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming > A great value, super-fast overclocked version of Nvidia’s finest card. The cooling is silent…

The Spy understands the true meaning of ‘exclusive’. Luxury retreats in the Swiss alps, private islands in the pacific, even the underground volcano fortresses beloved of his foes: these are nothing next to the cold unflappable certainty of a console-only release. There is no club more exclusive than a Sony boardroom, no promise more stone-certain than the vow of a Microsoft executive when they say that these are the games you can only play on Xbox. Except that isn’t true at all, really, is it? As GTA V progresses PC-wards, the notion of console exclusivity is revealed to be a rule defined by its many, many exceptions. They’re all PCs at the end of the day, and The Spy has seen games flock back to the land of their birth…

Skyforge is a science fantasy MMO produced by Allods Team, the people who, as you might expect, made Russian free-to-play MMO Allods. Derivative of World of Warcraft in many ways, it had a few high concept ideas that made it worthy of more attention than it perhaps received. It enjoyed most of its popularity in Russia, and thus both the game and its developers evaded audiences in the west, a problem compounded by a free-to-play model that has always been less popular in this part of the world. Skyforge is a multi-pronged attempt to fix that. For one, Allods Team has enlisted the help of a small team at Obsidian whose role is to consult on game design and develop new content. “They helped us create a proper story,” says…

This has arguably been one of the best years for the PC in recent memory, despite— perhaps because of—a relatively quiet schedule of big-budget releases. We’ve seen the classic RPG return to the platform in half a dozen forms, the 4X strategy game find fresh new expression, and simulationdriven survival horror take center stage. It’s been an involved process to distill the year down to the seven awards you’ll find over the next few pages, but we think we’ve arrived at a selection of games that we consider well worthy of their accolades. Each of our judges nominated five of this year’s games that meant something to them: by pooling our selections, we revealed which games cropped up over and over again as the year’s best. In each case we’ve…

Need to know What is it? An open world third-person action adventure set during the French revolution. Influenced by Assassin’s Creed, Hitman: Blood Money Reviewed on Intel i5 3.4GHZ CPU, GTX970, 8GB RAM, 41GB HDD Alternatively Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, 86% Copy protection Uplay Paris in 1798, what a time to be alive. The streets are filthy with mud, blood and gunpowder smoke. Starving citizens bully perceived enemies of the state to hungry guillotines. Guards clash violently with roaming anarchists. Above, you see burning effigies and spiked heads. Below, French tricolor flags stamped into the dirt. Assassin’s Creed Unity recreates all this with astonishing clarity and sets it in the most detailed city I’ve ever seen in a game. If Unity was a game about absorbing the ambience of a remarkable…

HOW WE TESTED Subjective testing > There are few magic numbers here. Using a monitor is the best way to test how good it is . To impress us a monitor has to deliver clear text and strong graphics for both games and the boring practical stuff, as you’ll be using it for both. Build quality > Having your monitor wobble every time you put a mug of coffee down on your desk is not an ideal situation. Neither is a stand that you can’t adjust to your preferred height. Image quality > The image tests at www.lagom. nl/lcd-test were used to identify the differences between similar panels. Each monitor was run through all the relevant tests to get a clear idea of comparable image quality and performance. RoG Swift…