Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2016 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

The exciting, fast-paced QuakeCon reveal of Quake Champions and my recent Doom playthrough have both taught me something: I am prepared to do the ’90s again. This month’s cover feature dives into the challenges of bringing Quake back in a changed FPS landscape. There’s plenty more, too: Prey is a sci-fi game from the creators of Dishonored, and we’ve got a review of the new Deus Ex. Enjoy. EDITOR samuel.roberts@futurenet.com @SamuelWRoberts TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Tweet us @PCGamer Our team of writers TONY ELLIS Specialist in wearing, restarting This month Took a break from shrugging at indie games in Now Playing to share his slog to get Pillars of Eternity finished after a bloody year of trying. Andy Kelly Specialist in Cyberpunk, 0451 Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month…

HIGHS Prey Nothing to do with the original, but a very cool-looking sci-fi immersive sim. Lucioball in Overwatch Free, fun modes to match the season are most welcome in Blizzard’s gigantic FPS. GTA Online The ever growing online platform gets a track editor for its absurd racing mode. System Shock Remastered The remake of the cult classic PC title beat its Kickstarter goal by miles, plus the demo is good. Evolve Stage 2 and new events give Turtle Rock’s 4v1 monster shooter a boost. LOWS We Happy Few As refined as its striking E3 trailer was, We Happy Few is many country miles away from being finished. No Man’s Sky hype Boy, this got out of control, which will happen when people spend almost three years waiting for a game…

RELEASE 2017 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER Big Robot LINK www.big-robot.com.com One of the more intriguing indie announcements of late came in the form of this free-roaming science fiction game from the creators of Sir, You Are Being Hunted. The visual style of The Signal from Tölva is the work of the brilliant Ian McQue, formerly of Rockstar Games, who regularly shares his gorgeous and evocative sci-fi art on social media. Here Ian is helping to create a world that deliberately evokes old sci-fi paperbacks and prog rock album covers. The game is about uncovering the truth behind a signal coming from the planet Tölva, while also blasting robots and exploring a mysterious world. You control disposable robots on the surface of this planet, looking for scrap and investigating signals in different…

i’ve played, and reviewed, a lot of first-person shooters. So when id Software announced SnapMap—an accessible map editor bundled with their superb Doom reboot—I decided to try to apply that experience to creating my own level. Without having to worry about coding and all the other stuff actual game developers have to deal with, I’ll be free to focus purely on the design. And when it’s finished I’ll get some of the team who worked on the game, and on SnapMap itself, to give it an honest review. Because it’s about time we critics faced some criticism ourselves. People have created some wild stuff with SnapMap, including music sequencers, endless runners, and rudimentary RPGs, but I’m going to keep it simple. I want to make a fun, well-paced singleplayer level…

Despite scoring highly, Mankind Divided can’t quite match Human Revolution’s 94% score. What does that mean? That the immersive sim genre is more competitive today than it has been in decades? That, despite creating an excellent set of systems, Eidos Montreal doesn’t quite stick the (Icarus) landing? In fact, it’s a little of both. At least it’s no Invisible War. Elsewhere, the 80s just keep coming. Quadrilateral Cowboy is a brilliantly inventive mix of heists and hacking, Lovely Planet Arcade promises hours of entertainment for FPS perfectionists, and Earth Defense Force 4.1—guaranteed to be one of the dumbest games you’ll play this year—is a ridiculous amount of fun. DEPUTY EDITOR phil.savage@futurenet.com This month’s augmented critics… ANDY KELLY Specialist in RPGs, brooding Currently playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided This month Reviewed…

There’s fish burning in a fryer and I’m too busy washing plates to stop it. Meanwhile, nobody is cutting potatoes and the paraplegic raccoon in a wheelchair just slipped and fell into an icy river while holding a full plate of french fries ready to serve. The fryer goes up in flames and the tabby cat rushes for the fire extinguisher. We still need to cut potatoes. All in all, this is merely an average level of catastrophe in Overcooked. This is a wonderfully chaotic local co-op game that gives real power to the words “too many cooks spoil the broth.” At its best, a team of four players look like a beautiful mix of ballet and an assembly line, chopping ingredients, shuttling them to cookers, and then serving the…

THIS MONTH Regained 15GB of overdue disk space. ALSO PLAYED The Witcher 3 I ’ve been here so many times before. It’s the final showdown with archvillain Thaos, in the hall of Sun in Shadow, and I know exactly what’s coming next. I just can’t do anything about it. Sure enough, Thaos casts the spell that smashes my whole party flat. Then he brings two colossal statues to life. All three start laying into us. Resignedly, I set my party fighting back. But if I bring Thaos’s hitpoints low enough, his body will simply become invulnerable and his soul will jump into one of the statues, both of which will continue to pound us. Even if by some miracle I’m able to destroy both statues, it will only be after…

The worst thing about Fallout: Resurrection using the old amnesia plot is that the main character never has to explain why, on the run from mysterious ghouls, he/she opted to seek solace in a cave so infested with mutant critters that even the people in the nearby town apologize for it. But that’s OK. Punching and stabbing a few rats and mole rats and scorpions is a fine reminder that this isn’t your modern, fancy, VATS-enabled Fallout 3 or 4, but the far more brutal original. Resurrection is a Czech-made mod, ten years in the making and two and a half years in the translating. It’s a Fallout 2 mod—easily installed over the top of any copy, from GOG to Steam to the original—set between the first two games, and…

CHRIST HURSTEN On starless nights when the air is still, I sometimes play something that isn’t online and competitive. DOTA 2 www.dota2.com Dota 2 requires an extraordinary time commitment and sometimes (often) involves strangers shouting at you, but there’s no better competitive game for my money. Deeply rewarding five-on-five wizard war with a vast array of heroes, skills and items. Best enjoyed with others, particularly when you’re starting out. DOOM www.doom.com This revival of the legendary FPS is one of the year’s surprise hits. A slick new approach to arena shooter combat does away with endless backtracking and encourages you to dive into the horde shotgun-first, and you’re rewarded for your valor with phenomenally satisfying sound and visual effects. DARK SOULS III www.darksouls3.com It’s another Dark Souls game. But here’s…

PC GEEK Ouch, those fonts. Also, what does “Special Double Gold Issue” mean? That isn’t a thing. COVER LINES The vital top half of the cover is empty! ‘Master your arm chisels’ can go top right. CHAIR ? Say what? PC Geek readers won’t buy this with a chair on the front. Try a Total War instead. 35 TIPS Hey, that’s a lot of tips! But it’s hidden. Pop that in the top left area, known as the ‘hot zone’. NEXT MONTH DAWN OF WAR III Learn more about Relic’s RTS. BIOSHOCK How Fort Frolic was made. NO MAN’S SKY Andy flies to all the planets. ON SALE OCTOBER 11…

The Spy has been called many things since the end of the Cold War: espion, shpion, katáskopos and Jiàndié. Coincidentally, these all mean ‘spy’ in a number of different languages. The countries in question are the last known destinations of a shaggy-haired informant named Gerald Preston, creator of the military’s first weaponized tractor (The Spy needs him, and more importantly his blueprints, intact), and also where The Spy goes whenever there’s a wodge of annual leave to use up before the end of the financial year. The Spy has an eye on the enemies of the free world even while downing the seventh mojito of the morning. Vanquishing the world’s enemies by any means necessary is a task that can’t be delayed by a holiday, even if The Spy would…

I’m at QuakeCon, surrounded by id Software’s most dedicated fans, watching the first footage of the studio’s next game. A cheer goes up from the crowd. I imagine it’s a relief for id. If Quake Champions doesn’t get a pop from a QuakeCon crowd, something’s badly wrong. It wasn’t a sure bet, because this isn’t a typical arena shooter. Like Overwatch and Team Fortress 2, Quake Champions is a multiplayer FPS with characters, each with a unique ability. And yet, as the QuakeCon footage reveals, Quake Champions still looks, feels and, as far as I can tell, plays like Quake. “Seriously?!” exclaims Tim Willits, id’s creative director, when I ask him why now is a good time for Quake’s return. His expression suggests I’ve just asked why now might be…

“AUGMENTED PEOPLE ARE NOW SECOND-CLASS CITIZENS” While moody protagonist Adam Jensen is fitted with military-grade mechanical implants that let him turn invisible, punch through walls, and hack computers, most of his peers in this high-tech future just have advanced prosthetics. Cybernetic replacements for a missing limb or eye. But the ordinary citizens don’t see the distinction. To them, every augmented person is equally dangerous. It’s a paranoia born of the so-called Aug Event, in which augmented people around the world were driven violently insane, killing millions. The truth behind this disaster is revealed in the previous game, Human Revolution, which an optional 12-minute recap video recounts in convoluted detail. Set just two years later, Mankind Divided is a direct continuation of this story. Augmented people are now second-class citizens, harassed…

I have never been so angry at a pile of shapes. The greenman is two spheres on top of one another wearing a red triangle hat. He fires a red sphere my way. I waddle-juke left. He fires another. Waddlejuke right. Red blobs block my way, so I reach terminal waddle and heave myself over them with the grace of a kicked pig. I feel like I should be out of breath, but with an exasperated cough from my shotgun, I send him on his way. That was my 15th attempt, because before I could get to this particular greenman, I had to collect some coins, shoot bombs out of the air, and jump-shoot over the shields of a few greenies. One bad swing of my mouse, one poorly timed…

“There is no such thing as a quick game” Paving over the entirety of the New World may not be an easy task but, with a few hundred years and a copious coin purse, it is possible to become more of a threat to the environment than Jeremy Clarkson. Sid Meier’s Colonization may not now be the most grand looking game but, back in the day, Civilization’s little brother was something of a treat. Released in 1994 by MicroProse, the now oft-overlooked strategy management game pulled in positive coverage on the Amiga, despite lingering in the shadow of the wider-known Civilization series. Colonization is one of those games that lures you in with the promise of a sedate strategy experience as you begin to colonize the New World— either the…

FIRST LOOK RELEASE September DEVELOPER Daedalic Entertainment PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.tljhgame.com his is a space exploration RPG inspired by such games as Starflight and Star Control, but with the replayability of a roguelike. It’s set “in a procedurally generated, endlessly surprising living universe inspired by modern science fiction shows like Farscape and Firefly” according to Daedalic, and is quite a shift from the developer’s usual point-and-click fare. The setup is reminiscent of Star Trek Voyager, with a jump drive malfunction catapulting you, your crew, and your ship to the other side of the galaxy. Now it’s down to you to find your way home, and your journey should be an interesting one. The developer is promising “complex quests and moral dilemmas”, secrets buried on ancient worlds, and also danger. Lots…

PROFILES NIKLAS FEGRAEUS Design director DENNIS BRÄNVALL Lead designer I’m glad you guys have introduced offline play to Star Wars Battlefront. What was the thinking behind introducing this mode? Niklas: It’s something the fans have been talking about for a very long time. It’s been on the forums, it’s one of the most requested things, to play offline in our big modes. And that’s what Skirmish is about. We’ve been working on it for quite some time—it’s not an easy thing. It’s one of those things we know fans really wanted, so we’ve been listening. Everyone knows you have a second Battlefront game on the way—was this a goodwill gesture? Niklas: That’s one way of putting it, absolutely. It’s us having a conversation with the fans, listening to what they…

This is a game about heists. You scan documents from offices in lockdown, steal safes from banks, download the brains of coma patients in hospitals floating in space. You achieve this with the help of a hacking deck, some springboards, a tiny dog-like robot that can go places you can’t, and a gun turret in a suitcase. Except that, technically speaking, you never actually execute these heists at all. The plucky Impala team like to beat a virtual build of each job before risking their real-life necks. This affords you a lot of luxuries puzzle games rarely allow, such as the ability to no-clip through walls to look at the level from any angle. Instant restarts, tutorial messages and the abstract nature of many of the levels are thus accounted…

Furi’s combat is shallow, and I mean that as a compliment. You observe, react, and punish. It’s advanced Bop-It, advanced rock-paper-scissors, the Grand Finals in fly-swatting. Furi exercises the hell out of a very small set of abilities until they feel innate. You’re the Stranger, a sci-fi samurai busting out of celestial prison with an angry man dressed as a purple rabbit, fighting a series of top-down bullet hell, hack-and-slash bossfights. These aren’t infinite anime escalations of power, but challenging one-on-one encounters. You’re as capable at the beginning as you are in the end—it’s only your skill that changes, although getting good can be a test of patience. You can slash, parry, shoot, and dash from the first minute. Holding each action’s button charges that move, making them more powerful…

I’m crossing the galaxy in a spaceship with a pig, a couple of aliens, and two heavily armed mercenary penguins. I myself am a robot— named Robot Baratheon—and I’m playing Für Elise on an electric guitar I stole from a massive library I found at the bottom of an ocean as we travel to a forest planet to find cotton so I can craft a teddy bear to give to an actual bear. None of this is particularly unusual in Starbound, the side-scrolling exploration and crafting game. What begins as a quest to save the universe from a newly awakened ancient evil (is there another kind?) quickly devolves into a fun and charming rabbit hole of tasks and to-do lists, some official but many more personal. Yes, you need to…

Evolve is back, free, and easier to get into than ever. There are a ton of changes in Evolve: Stage 2’s free-to-play beta, and many of them encourage faster, more aggressive matches thanks to more powerful monsters and helpful new abilities for the hunters. Match times have also dropped from 20 minutes to 12 and the available maps have been redesigned to accommodate Evolve’s new priorities. The changes are big, but not necessarily permanent or complete— Turtle Rock Studios is reworking Evolve from the ground up. But one change is more transformative than the others: the Orbital Arena, essentially the mousetrap in Evolve’s game of cats-and-giant-mouse, is no longer the sole responsibility of the Trapper class. Now the dome is a shared ability: anyone on the team can deploy it…

When James Sunderland arrives in Silent Hill, he finds strange creatures roaming the empty, fogbound streets. On the surface they’re simply enemies waiting to be shot or bludgeoned to death. But nothing in Team Silent’s horror masterpiece is that simple. As you journey through the town and learn more about Sunderland, you begin to realize that there’s more to these monsters as well. They’re so unusual. None of art director Masahiro Ito’s designs can be traced to creatures from other horror fiction. “I wanted to give them a human aspect,” Ito said in a 2001 making-of documentary. “When you first see one as a silhouette in the distance, obscured by fog, you think it’s a person. But then I undermine this human aspect by giving them strange movements and using…