Innholdsfortegnelse for August 1, 2016 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Summer DEVELOPER Boss Key Productions PUBLISHER Nexon LINK www.lawbreakers.com Cliff Bleszinski keeps calling LawBreakers “mature.” His characters aren’t League of Legends’ fantasy pals—who he laughs about—or Overwatch’s likeable cast of Pixar fighters. This is Cliff Bleszinski, the Unreal Tournament and Gears of War guy. His characters are mad and violent and one of them has electricity coming out of his face. They say swears. Truly, LawBreakers is as whimsical as any other shooter coming out right now, it just isn’t as colorful or smiley. It’s videogamegritty, exaggerated and splattered with blood. It’s a silly but sensible direction: cartoon colors are in right now, so Bleszinski wonders if the green-andbrown era of Gears of War isn’t due for a comeback. Maybe, but what’s more important is that…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE October DEVELOPER DICE PUBLISHER EA LINK www.battlefield.com Three years after Battlefield 4 showcased its dazzling water effects and dauntingly large-scale ‘levolution’, the sequel is here. Battlefield 1 is DICE’s ambitious and exciting take on World War I, told using the familiar Battlefield formula. FIRST LOOK Battlefield 1 promises the grittiest, most brutal and immersive experience we’ve ever seen from a multiplayer shooter. It’s DICE’s biggest gamble by far, but if the game works it’ll re-affirm Battlefield as CoD’s main competitor in the massive first-person multiplayer race. Let’s be clear though, WWI is merely a vehicle. Battlefield 1 isn’t a realistic and authentic point of historical reference, and if it was it would neither be Battlefield, nor fun to play. Other than a smooth launch, for me…

The immersive sim is one of the most exclusive of PC gaming genres, and perhaps the most illustrious. Only around two dozen such games have been developed in the entire history of PC gaming, but at least a quarter of these would be considered among the best games ever made. This is not surprising. Immersive sims are complex and ambitious creations by their very nature. These games combine elements of FPS, RPG, platforming and stealth into one seamless whole. Each game varies the emphasis of these components, but there are some clearly identifiable qualities that mark them out. They are always first-person, prioritize compelling environment design, and encourage emergent play, providing the player with an array of tools to pursue open-ended goals. This month, I’ve traced the history of this…

TONY ELLIS THIS MONTH Suffered a minor existential crisis in an outbuilding. ALSO PLAYED Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain I ’m standing in someone’s greenhouse, for pity’s sake. I’m looking, of my own free will, at stacked garden chairs, tubs of paint and orderly rows of silicone-based bathroom sealant. There is nothing for me here. Nothing to interact with, nothing to advance the plot. But I had to look anyway, just in case there was. I had to let myself into this person’s back garden, hobble across their lawn at Rapture’s excruciating walking speed, and look in their greenhouse. Now I’ve got to hobble away again. It’s my third greenhouse today. A while ago I was peering into someone’s garden shed. Before that I was standing in someone’s…

I still have moments when I’m wearing the Oculus Rift headset when I forget myself. In a moment of frustration, I take my hand from the controller and reach for something that isn’t really there. But I can see it. It feels real. Maybe, just maybe, some part of me thinks, if I reach for it, I can touch it. I can grab it. I can’t, of course. The Rift is a portal to another world for the eyes and ears, and for the mind, but not for the body. Not yet anyway. But it’s come so far, so fast, from the prototype on Kickstarter a few short years ago. And now it’s a new platform for playing games that I slip on every day—partially for fun, and partially to…

YOUR REVIEWS Portal Stories: Mel. Never expected a free fan-made expansion to be basically as good and lengthy as Portal 2. Michael Cohen Plus there’s no Wheatley, either a blessing or curse depending on your tolerance for mild-mannered British voice acting. Doom has a solid campaign, and I’m having a ton of fun. I kinda felt like a kid again, which might be weird when talking about Doom. Riad You played Doom as a kid? We’ll be informing your parents immediately. I have been playing Heroes of the Storm and I think is a good MOBA. Full of strategy, teamwork and different maps. Raf But is it the best MOBA? Years of argument have yet to produce an answer. I’ve been playing a lot of Assetto Corsa lately. Combined with…

ME, MYSELF & I “Will I bring on other staff in the future? When it comes to creating the actual art and music and coming up with ideas for characters and gameplay, I think I’ll do all of that myself. In terms of the really technical stuff—things like adding multiplayer, or porting to different platforms—I’d be fine with getting help with all that, simply because I want to spend my time actually creating a game and doing the things I like.” Eric Barone You know,” Eric Barone says, “as a kid I never really thought about how games were made. They were just these things that existed, almost like magic.” He first turned his hand to programming four years ago, as a way of improving his CV. Juggling game design,…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Summer DEVELOPER The Game Bakers PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.thegamebakers.com/games PLAY EDIT Furi is a boss-rush game that mixes hack-and-slash combat with arcade shooting. Without any standard levels, the combat is limited to just one-on-one arena fights, the idea being that each boss is distinctive enough that they feel like events in and of themselves. This is risky—most bosses in other games are bullet sponges and a bit rubbish, and a lot of games don’t even bother with them anymore. But since Furi draws so heavily from the Devil May Cry sub-genre of action game, great boss design must come with the territory. Furi is similar to Hyper Light Drifter in its weighting of combat and shooting. You have a fundamentally simple slash attack and 360-degree shoot…

This year, Instead of our usual afterparty at PAX East, we joined forces with Acer and Intel and brought you the ultimate PC gaming hangout at the Predator Gaming Lounge. The event was hosted at the ICA in Boston. Attendees were able to experience an enlightened state of gaming with uniquely powerful technology on Acer’s new Predator gaming notebooks, desktops, and monitors. Acer showcased the latest Predator line of notebooks, desktops, and monitors with popular PC games and debuted their latest: Predator 17 X. Gamers had a chance to play in a 1v2 CS:GO competition against Acer’s Pro gamer, Tweeday, for special Predator prizes and the ultimate CS:GO bragging rights. The night finished off with a cosplay contest hosted by Monika Lee and Danielle Beaulieu, including a grand prize for…

After the overwhelming responses at PAX South, AMD and PC Gamer, once again bring their dynamic collaboration to PAX East in Boston. BCEC transformed into a gaming wonderland featuring hands-on experiences with new games, hardware, and lots of free swag. We were ecstatic to continue our partnership with AMD. AMD showcased high-power systems from its top partners, to feature the power of its FX series processors and Radeon graphics cards. Attendees lined-up for an average wait time of one to one and a half hours to experience AMD's LiquidVR technology with the new Oculus Rift consumer VR headsets. Gamers competed against Team AMD in League of Legends and C&GO tournaments throughout the day for bragging rights. Lastly, gamers got a sneak peak at highly anticipated new games like Total War:…

Mastering the Dark Souls series requires certain traits. Patience, perseverance, skill, dedication. Traits I do not possess. I tried to play the first two games, and after a few hours hit a brick wall. But I found the dark fantasy setting and world design so intriguing that I just had to venture into the murky depths of Dark Souls III. And I was surprised to discover that, with a little help, it wasn’t as hopeless a crusade as I expected. The early stages are like walking through a dark room. You’re feeling around, bumping into things, stubbing your toe on furniture. But then you find the light switch. You learn each enemy’s attack pattern. You remember where ambushes and deadly traps are hiding. The area that seemed so dangerous and…

Every time I slip on the HTC Vive I think about Tom Berenger in Platoon drawling “You smoke this shit so’s to escape reality? I am reality.” The first thing I see, in SteamVR’s virtual nowhere, are the words “THIS IS REAL” in the distance. As I play games, I pick up telltale signs that the worlds inside the Vive are not real. The pixels bringing those worlds to life, the heavy plastic mounted to my head. The controllers in my hands. The occasional glitch. Even beyond that literal bit of text, though, the Vive boldly projects confidence that this is what VR should be. NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY $800 GRAPHICS CARD GTX 970 CPU Intel i5-6400/i5-4590 equivalent or greater MEMORY 8GB+ RAM VIDEO OUTPUT Free HDMI 1.3…

Nvidia has revealed two powerful new graphics cards to replace its 900 series, the GTX 1070 and the GTX 1080. Co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang says they’ve been in development for two years and are the product of over a billion dollars’ worth of research investment. Nvidia says the GTX 1080 is faster than a pair of GTX 980s in SLI and even faster than a single Titan X. In fact, the 1080 promises twice the performance and three times the efficiency of the Titan thanks to the nine teraflops of performance in its 2560 CUDA cores. Yet, it still only needs 209 megavolts of electricity to run. The GTX 1080 will retail at $599, but the cheaper GTX 1070, costing $379, will be available as well—and even that model is faster…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 7 October DEVELOPER Hangar 13 PUBLISHER 2K Games LINK www.mafiagame.com I ’m sitting down at a table with the three lieutenants helping me maintain my growing hold on New Bordeaux, Mafia III’s marvellous recreation of 1968 New Orleans. I’ve just finished the climactic mission in my bid to take down an Italian-run construction fraud racket. It was, all things considered, a delightful spree of organized carnage. PLAY EDIT It started with a slow, quiet infiltration by way of a stolen mob vehicle, before rapidly escalating to a hotel penthouse containing seemingly half the local mob. And a showdown with their rocket-launchertoting ringleader. And then I took his rocket launcher and fought my way out through the front lobby. It was hectic, is what I’m saying. But…

EVE Online, the infamous space MMO, has been CCP’s bread and butter for years. But the company is trying to branch out, among other things by becoming a leader in virtual reality game development. As well as EVE: Valkyrie, its Oculus Rift launch title, the Icelandic company has been working on a number of experiments, one of which it’s calling Project Arena. PLAY EDIT I’m standing in a corridor that looks like something out of Tron. In one hand I have a gauntlet, in the other I have a light-shield. At the opposite end of the hall is my opponent, who pulls his arm back and tosses a glowing disc at me from his gauntlet. Without thinking I bat it back at him with my shield, but I hit it…

The great old houses of the stealth genre are enjoying a long Indian summer. Deus Ex has held on to its core values even as it adapts to the mainstream, and the latest Hitman episodes have absolved the series of, well, Absolution. Thief has struggled—after such a long absence, 2014’s patchy reboot was a let-down—but we haven’t needed Thief, really, since 2012. Dishonored’s claim to that particular throne was strong from the outset. Soulful, clever and violent, Arkane’s new immersive sim revived the fantasy of the agent in the shadows. Yet Dishonored wasn’t special just because it resurrected an old legacy—it was special because it challenged it. Stealth games are always in some way about the fragility of power: in the dark you might as well be god, but exposed…

We call them first-person shooters, but “first-person follower” would be just as apt. If there’s one thing every Call of Duty campaign has in common, it’s an AI personality who escorts you through the level, booting down doors and wrestling guards to the floor. These characters can be more annoyance than accomplice, especially when they oblige you to digest some plot development before you can move on. At worst, they feel like personifications of Call of Duty’s legendary unwillingness to cede real agency to the player. Is there a place alongside more obviously choice-driven, open-ended games such as Metal Gear Solid V for campaign design that merely asks you to keep up? Do we have anything left to learn from Soap MacTavish? As regards the work of Mohammad Alavi, at…

SAMUEL ROBERTS THIS MONTH Almost wrote about pretend ice cream in a magazine. ALSO PLAYED Hitman, Ashes of the Singularity T his month I spent weeks looking out of my window, feeling Don Draperesque existential angst, wondering what videogame adventure to write about in this slot. I got 200 words into a thing about how the ice cream shop in Hitman’s Sapienza locale has individual flavors behind the glass—an artist was paid money to make mint chocolate chip ice cream! Can you believe that? Anyway, it wasn’t very good. So I went to my go-to game, GTA V, for when I need to escape into a sunny climate and/or watch the world burn. Franklin’s aunt mentions she’s having a guy round tonight, so I better not be in the house…

1 INFESTED FREEWARE Might need to ring Rentokil for this one If you’re old enough to remember the MacVenture series— and too poor to afford the hypnotism to forget it—you’ll notice a few hallmarks in the eerily accurate Infested, a similarly cruel adventure game that tries to murder you at (nearly) every turn. Specifically, it’s styled after the NES versions of Deja Vu, Uninvited and Shadowgate, but you’ll also recognize the interface and horrific zombie faces if you played those games on a Mac back in the day. Infested explores territory MacVenture never got around to: outer space. Emerging groggy and ill from a spaceship’s stasis pod, you quickly realize things have gone awry. The rest of the crew are missing, for a start, while the ones you do find…