Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2017 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

NUMBERS GAME A data analysis boom in the world of soccer has seen clubs develop a voracious appetite for information that can help them evaluate the condition of their players, identify weaknesses in opponents, and find the right signings to push their team to the next level. Football Manager’s database is now helping to provide the data clubs are looking for, which means the management simulation is starting to have a very real impact on the beautiful game. The touchline pretenders among us aren’t the only ones scouring Football Manager 2017’s database for the perfect signing. From the big dogs in the Champions League, to the relative pups of the USA’s Major League Soccer, soccer clubs across the planet tap into the same database to help them make crucial decisions about…

PLAYED IT Since its announcement, Vampyr has been fluttering in the periphery of our collective vision like a bat at night. We know it’s an action RPG set in London during the Spanish flu epidemic, and that it’s as dark, wet, and miserable as any pre-’60s depiction of the city, but not much more. I caught up with Dontnod narrative director, Stéphane Beauverger, to shine a paraffin fuelled light on the game. You are John E Reid, a doctor trying to figure out how he became a vampire while working with Spanish flu victims. In contrast to the busy streets we’ve come to expect from semi-open games, there are only about 60 citizens on the streets of Vampyr’s London. “It’s London during a deadly epidemic, so not many people are out at…

THE RULES Race three laps, avoiding obstacles, mortar strikes, and other dangers. The challenger in first place, or the last man standing, wins. Andy: I don’t know why Arma 3 has go-kart DLC. There’s something absurd about a soldier skidding around in a tiny car. Which was the inspiration for my first event, Death Karts. The guys have to make three laps of the runway, which I’ve littered with wrecked vehicles and sheep. I’ll also be flinging lightning bolts and the occasional mortar strike to spice things up. Phil: We set off. I dodge tanks, rusted boats and other detritus (is that a sheep?), and, as I approach the halfway point of the first lap, I’m in the lead. The shouting from nearby desks suggests that I might be the…

THE RULES Zeus runs between shipping containers. Challengers have to kill him as quickly as possible from a sniping spot. Shortest time wins. Andy: And now for a test of marksmanship. I ask the guys to climb to the top of an enormous cargo crane at the Blue Pearl docks. It looks out over a long row of shipping containers, which I’ll be zigzagging through. Each challenger will take it in turns to kill me. I was originally going to have them all firing simultaneously, but it was too difficult to determine who killed me. So this way works a lot better. Tom: I’m up first. I make sure I’m crouched, because that improves the stability of your aim in Arma. Then I make sure I’m shuffled up close enough…

1. SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY Faculty Has Studio Experience: 93% All-Time Grads: 669 2016 Grads Shipped Game: 100% 2016 Grads Hired: 87% 2016 Grads Salary: $65K Fun Fact: SMU has gone all-in on VR! Their new 2,000+ square foot lab lets students experiment and play with every single type of VR hardware, from Oculus Rift to Microsoft Hololens to cutting-edge eye-tracking devices 2. UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA Faculty Has Studio Experience: 100% All-Time Grads: 537 2016 Grads Shipped Game: 98% 2016 Grads Hired: 95% 2016 Grads Salary: $64K Fun Fact: An epic studio houses many different stages that are also used for movies and commercials, which offer students paid internships. 3. UNIVERSITY OF UTAH Faculty Has Studio Experience: 89% All-Time Grads: 214 2016 Grads Shipped Game: 100% 2016 Grads Hired: 95%…

It’s day one of Scout’s journey up the river with her dog, Aesop, and she’s just been mauled to death by wolves in a forest after her raft got battered by rocks. I’m starting again. While the colourful presentation of The Flame in the Flood and the presence of a dog suggest a warm journey across a flooded United States, it’s actually one of the cruelest survival games I’ve played. There is a campaign mode with a presumably happy ending at the other end of the river, but reaching it requires hours of horrible deaths. Scout can die of starvation, thirst, cold, drowning, excessive bleeding, or being mauled by animals. And these are just the ones I know about. It’s as if The Road had loads of alternate endings, including…

Z270 MOTHERBOARDS Lay the foundation of your next gaming PC with one of the latest Z270 motherboards Q&A How much should I spend? If you’re not fussed about overclocking don’t spend much more than $250. Already have a great soundcard and lots of USB hubs? Drop that to under $220. Don’t care about looks? Head below $200. Is onboard audio worth it? The pricier options are better, but if you’re really concerned about audio quality you should get a separate soundcard. What about overclocking? All these motherboards support overclocking of your processor and memory. The flagship Intel Core i7-7700K processor I’ve tested them with is relatively easy to overclock from 4.5GHz to 5GHz, resulting in close to a 10% performance boost for around a 20% increase in power consumption. Dictionary…

Valve doesn’t need to make any more games. Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and Steam are enough to keep the company afloat. But for those of us who miss the days when it made other games, there may be some good news. When asked in a recent roundtable interview at its Bellevue office, attended by PC Gamer, Gabe Newell revealed that the company is working on three full VR games, clarifying that they’re not just experiments. Newell compared its work on VR across hardware and software simultaneously to that of Nintendo, which has always created its own games specifically to get the most out of its hardware. It’s not exactly Half-Life 3, then, but it does mean there will be a point where you can play new Valve games, providing you’re willing to…

Card games aren’t my thing. I don’t enjoy Hearthstone, and Magic: The Gathering makes me sleepy. Gwent is different—not in function, but in conception. It’s the Trojan Horse of collectible card games, having already infiltrated my consciousness through its presence in The Witcher 3. PLAYED IT Gwent is the perfect minigame for an open-world adventure—an entertaining pastime that encourages you to seek out fellow enthusiasts in order to expand your deck. I played it obsessively. This standalone incarnation is more complicated, but not overwhelmingly so. At its core it’s a best-of-three battle in which players take turns playing a single card. At the end of the round—either when both players pass, or when everyone has run out of cards—the player with the highest attack score wins. Unlike Hearthstone, with its mana pool, your only resource is…

Mount & Blade is an unlikely success story of the kind that only really happens on PC. Awkward, weird, and not particularly pretty, it’s nonetheless a triumph of sandbox design. It mixes tactical combat, RPG progression, and strategic simulation, all in a sandbox world full of possibilities. In Mount & Blade: Warband, 2010’s standalone expansion, and easily the best game in the series, players are free to explore a massive, politically intriguing medieval kingdom. Now, after years of waiting, a full sequel is on the way. TaleWorlds’ sizeable, dedicated fan base has been clamoring for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord ever since its announcement back in 2012. It’s one of my most anticipated games of the year, and I’m excited to find out how it has progressed since the footage shown at…

THE RULES A fight to the death on a small island. Challengers have a minute to select a starting point. The last man standing is the winner. Andy: And now for the grand finale. Ile Sainte-Marie is one of the smallest islands in Tanoa. The perfect arena for a fight to the death. There’s a large rocky outcrop in the middle surrounded by thick jungle, which should give the team plenty of hiding spots. I give them a minute before the round starts to choose a starting position, then the chaos begins. The last man standing wins, and there are no rules. I’ll also be randomly spawning civilians and animals, just so I have something to do. Tom: The island is heavily forested, and foliage has betrayed me once already…

Defender Quest's dev Lars Doucet recently published a breakdown of his theory on development bottlenecks. He discusses the different aspects, features, and technical choices that can potentially limit your game's audience and how you should prioritize them. EXAMPLE: Being locked at 800x600 resolution and overly simple cutscene art scared away a lot of potential fans from the first version of Defender's Quest. There was no value in improving other aspects until that big bottleneck was fixed. READING MATERIAL: bit.ly/DQBottlenecks — Lars' blog detailing the bottlenecks in Defender's Quest. HOMEWORK: Play through the campaign of Defender's Quest and identify what features or technical choices Lars could've made that would exclude you from the potential audience.…

Randomness has always been a core part of trading card games, from drawing cards to flipping coins to determine outcome of effects. But the developers at Hex are taking advantage of being a digital game to artificially manipulate the random outcomes to ensure only fun experiences are created. EXAMPLE: The devs modified the algorithm for drawing cards into your opening hand to remove the outlier "bad luck" scenarios where you start with too many/few of necessary resource cards. READING MATERIAL: bit.ly/HexRandom — Devs explaining the change to the opening hand card draws. HOMEWORK: Play through some of Hex's PVE campaign and note where randomness creates moments that are fun and exciting — and also when it creates moments of frustration or disappointment.…

Planescape: Torment occupies a special place in the history of PC roleplaying games. It sticks in the memory: Baldur’s Gate’s stranger, sexier, smarter sibling, interested in headier stuff than swords and sorcery. The original Torment was highly regarded, and its influence is felt throughout the RPG genre, from Pillars of Eternity’s soul-reading to the warped denizens of Fallen London. Yet it’s never, until now, had a proper follow-up. Torment: Tides of Numenera is that successor. Following in the footsteps of Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity as Planescape Torment once followed Baldur’s Gate—and based on the same engine—inXile has recaptured much of what made the original game special. This is a free-roaming, dialogue-heavy isometric RPG that places thought resolutely before action. Although combat features, the entire campaign can be played without participating in violence yourself. The Planescape setting…

If you showed a historian this game, in which samurai, Vikings, and knights fight each other, they’d spit out their tea and politely ask you to leave. It makes no sense for these people to be fighting for control of the same continent, but it doesn’t really matter. They’re fighting because it’s cool, and there’s something endearing about the way the game takes a gleaming broadsword to historical accuracy to make as enjoyable a celebration of medieval combat possible. There’s not a trace of cynicism in For Honor. You can tell the developers earnestly believe that burly warriors in ornate armor hammering each other with weapons is as good as it gets. There’s a lot more going on, from a confusing faction war metagame where players work together to conquer…

ANDY KELLY THIS MONTH Held his breath and wondered where everyone went. ALSO PLAYED Owlboy, Conan Exiles Aboy falls asleep in class, and wakes to find the class empty, and the school haunted by strange creatures. As far as hooks for a horror game go, that’s pretty good. Detention is a point-and-click adventure developed by a small team based in Taiwan. It’s set there in the 1960s, when the country was under martial law, an episode I don’t think a game has touched before. The localisation does a good job of explaining some of the more obscure references, but really this is just a good old-fashioned ghost story with a sinister, subdued atmosphere. You can’t fight the creatures. To get past them you have to hold your breath, but can…

1 MEGA CITY ONE MOD A new, alternate-universe Gordon adventure So Gordon Freeman has left early retirement, collected his gravity gun from the shed (it needed a going over with a wet wipe), and embarked on another adventure in Combine Country. Mega City One is a pretty sizeable mod based on an entry to the Source engine mapping tournament, The Hammer Cup. Its creator, Crowbar, has since revisited, expanded, and otherwise improved his work, integrating it into a singular story set in an alternate timeline. The difficulty has been rebalanced for Mega City One, and yep, ‘rebalanced’ is a euphemism here for ‘made much harder’. Half-Life 2’s hardier enemies have migrated to the early sections of this three-hour-long journey, while your rusty first-person platforming skills will be put to the test as…

I’m Morgan Yu. It’s my first day on the job with the TranStar research crew. Before work, I take a breezy helicopter ride over what appears to be a nearfuture San Francisco. A thumping synth track plays in the background. It’s pleasant, really. I’m meeting some people from Human Resources to run a few innocuous tests. Totally normal. PLAYED IT Within a few minutes, I’m in Talos 1, a space station (yes, in space) smashing sentient alien spiders made of black goo with a wrench. How you get there and why is a clever reveal that’s better experienced firsthand, but you can watch the first hour at www.youtube.com/pcgamer. You can’t really trust yourself. Shit gets weird. Try to stay cool. Smash aliens. In the most self-aware change for a BioShocky immersive sim,…

Set on the jungle islands of Tanoa, our first ever Arma 3 Sports Day will put the team through five brutal trials of skill and fortitude. These challenges, orchestrated by the almighty deity Zeus (well, Andy), will test essential skills such as marksmanship, driving, avoiding lightning bolts, and hiding from a helicopter in a bush. The challengers won’t know what each event involves until the chaos begins, and the mischievous Zeus will keep things interesting by throwing a few surprises into the mix, usually involving sheep. Who will be the champion? MEET THE TEAM 1 ANDY KELLY (ZEUS) I’ve played a lot of Arma 3, and am well-versed in Zeus mode, particularly spawning sheep. 2 SAMUEL ROBERTS I’ve only played Arma 3 once, for a feature, and had to be taught…

THE RULES Race from the tip of Nani to Muaceba on water scooters, avoiding Zeus’s lightning bolts. The first person to reach the shore wins. “TURNS OUT DEEP TROUBLE IS LIGHT ON ACTUAL TROUBLE, BUT IT IS DEEP” Andy: A simple race next. The guys have to drive ‘water scooters’ (basically non-copyright-infringing Jet Skis) from one landmass to another. I can’t place obstacles on water, so this’ll be less nerve-racking than Death Karts. Although I will be spicing things up with the occasional lightning bolt. I also set the weather to stormy so the seas will be rough. I don’t want to make it too easy. Phil: We point ourselves at the target, and go! And keep going. I don’t mean to criticize, but where exactly is the trouble in…

It's never been easier to make your own video game. Thanks to free development tools like Unity, Unreal, GameMaker, and HTML5, you can start making your dream game without paying a cent. But a brilliant idea can only get you so far — you're going to need some serious skills and solid experience to break through the challenges of indie game development and emerge with a working, finished product. And those aren't things you can self-teach yourself in any reasonable amount of time — you're going to need help. That's where the schools in this article come into play. The next few pages will show you who's best suited to teach you those skills. Schools all over the world are launching Game Design programs, and The Princeton Review has been…

Sorry, jerkwads, but I’m out. People just don’t want measured criticism, analytical features and interesting stories, all carefully written, delicately sub-edited, and bound together in a 116-page magazine. It’s all about YouTube these days, so I’m away to pursue a lucrative career pretending to be a Clarkson-esque blowhard, moaning about everything that’s wrong with the industry, while doing nothing to actually improve the situation. That’s the fantasy offered by Youtubers Life. It’s a light, quirky life sim, similar to Kairosoft’s Game Dev Story, but focused on people who make videos for the internet. You pick a subject—games, music, or cookery—and start recording. Your videos’ quality is based around your reactions, which are chosen by selecting one of a number of cards. You’re given the scenario, and must pick the response…

On the rare occasions I leave my ridiculous Paissa-shaped house I like to go all out. Frankly, doing fetch quests for Moogles or checking out yet another dungeon isn’t worth stepping out of the door for. Thankfully, after making friends with some sky pirates a few months back they’ve started inviting me to their raves... I mean raids. Their latest venue is this ancient city, Dun Scaith, which you can only reach by airship. Only the coolest adventurers can join the party and rub shoulders with the likes of Mrs Boombastic (yes, really). No matter how tight the guest list, there are always a few party crashers who just want to start trouble, but it’s not often you find an old demonic nemesis and Final Fantasy series celebrity as the…