Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2017 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

Reading the word ‘Skinks’ in this month’s Total War: Warhammer II cover feature took me back to a time when I (badly) painted miniatures in my friend’s back garden. Creative Assembly continues to bring its grand vision of Games Workshop’s fantasy universe to life – check out Chris’s feature on p32. This ended up being the biggest reviews month of 2017 so far. Dawn of War III and Prey lead the pack, but the surprise winner ends up being What Remains of Edith Finch. Enjoy the issue. EDITOR samuel.roberts@futurenet.com SamuelWRoberts TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Tweet us @PCGamer…

Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite NEED TO KNOW G iven the growth of Marvel into a colossus, it’s surprising to see a new MvC game. You can only imagine how much more complicated it is to secure the rights to this scrap for the ages, but here we are. This time it’s been reworked into a two-on-two format, as opposed to three-on-three battles. In doing so, there’s been some interesting changes. The game now uses a four-button layout for strikes—light and heavy punches and kicks—plus a button to use an Infinity Stone and one to tag in your partner. Accessibility is one of the game’s main design pillars. Executive producer Peter ‘ComboFiend’ Rosas stated that the team “expects a lot of new players to show up, so however long they have they’ll…

Divinity: Original Sin II NEED TO KNOW D uring the Kickstarter for Divinity: Original Sin II, Larian Studios added a stretch goal for a Game Master mode, a platform for creating online tabletop adventures. It’s been over a year since that goal was hit, and Swen Vincke, Larian’s founder, asks me to roll a d20 to see if I can steal memories from a corpse by eating it. I roll a 16 and enjoy a snack. We’re meant to be playing the beginning of Ultima VII: Serpent Isle, one of Vincke’s favourites, but with the engine of Original Sin II and the ‘anything goes’ philosophy of tabletop role-playing. Using a walkthrough to refresh his memory, he crafts the campaign in less than 30 minutes, but it keeps us playing for hours.…

Dawn of War III “I ADMIRE DAWN OF WAR III FOR TRYING TO REINVENT ITS FORMULA” NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? The 40K RTS returns with a MOBA-influenced multiplayer mode. EXPECT TO PAY $60 DEVELOPER Relic Entertainment PUBLISHER Sega REVIEWED ON Windows 10, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 MULTIP LAYER Yes, with up to six players LINK www.dawnofwar.com O utlandish swagger seeps through every pixel of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III, and I can’t help but sit back and admire it for what it is. Here, we find ourselves in a futuristic world so advanced that people flit about in spacecraft as easily as we take the bus, and yet despite all of the cybernetics and high-tech weaponry, one of its greatest heroes is a guy wielding a…

Strafe NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A roguelike FPS with one life, three starter weapons and a framed picture of John Stamos. EXPECT TO PAY $20 DEVELOPER Pixel Titans PUBLISHER Devolver Digital REVIEWED ON Windows 10, Core i7, 8GB RAM, GeForce GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.strafe1996.com Strafe proudly wears its influence on its sleeve… and its other sleeve, and its legs, and both jacket pockets. As a shooter, it’s the personified desire to convince mum to buy a Voodoo2 card. As a roguelike, it’s that one arcade cabinet shoved shrine-like into the arcade’s darkest corner and reverently avoided for its money-eating reputation. As both, it hooked me into sinking over ten hours into it, but as we parted ways I felt I’d retread too-familiar ground. Strafe nails the…

Syberia 3 NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? The third instalment of a cult classic adventure series. EXPECT TO PAY $40 DEVELOPER Microids PUBLISHER PQube REVIEWED ON Intel i5-3570K @3.40 GHz, 8 GB of RAM, GeForce GTX 970, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.syberia. microids.com T he original launch of Syberia 3 was planned by French developer Microids for June 2010, a whopping seven years ago. It was a different, sparser time for adventure games. In that desperate age, when there was a dearth of fantastical romps full of puzzles, Syberia 3 could have potentially gotten by on novelty alone. Seven years later, however, it simply feels creaky, dated and surprisingly rushed. How do you reintroduce players to a series 13 years after the last game? Typically, the answer is…

Man o’ War: Corsair NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Naval action in the Warhammer Fantasy open world. EXPECT TO PAY $30 DEVELOPER Evil Twin Artworks PUBLISHER n-house REVIEWED ON Windows 10, 16GB RAM, Intel Core i7-7700, NVidia GeForce GTX 1070 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.manowar corsair.com There’s something Orkish about Man o’ War: Corsair. Despite gimcrack construction, it holds together through force of will, delivering flashes of brilliance bolstered by a boisterous score and vivid setting. But they’re counterbalanced by moments of failure, where the game feels unfinished. Even then, as you stare at the floating fragments of vessel this could’ve been, it’s an oddly endearing wreck. Gork (or maybe Mork) would be proud. At times the game is shaky to the point of collapse If you’ve lost track of…

N OW P L A Y I N G I D O W N L O A D S I B E G I N N E R ’ S GUI D e I U P D A T E I R E I N S T A L L I W H Y I L O V E I M U S T P L A Y I f the Warriors of Chaos are the biggest bullies in the Warhammer playground, Beastmen are like the smaller, nastier kid who wipes boogers on your bag and sniggers when you get shoved in the urinals. That’s how I play them in Total War: Warhammer, anyway. The only problem with this is that they start on the opposite side of the map to…

WHAT’S NEW IN THE BIGGEST GAMES N O W P LA Y I N G I D O W N L O A D S I B E G I N N ER ’ S G U I D e I U P D A T E I RE I N STALL I W H Y I L O V E I M UST P LA Y B etween the fantastic exploration of the early game and the good-when-it-worked galactic crisis of the endgame, Stellaris tended to lose its momentum. Players would hit a point where, once they’d carved out a decent sized empire, they’d sit and wait, unsure whether to try to make peace or war. Whichever they chose, it was on their terms. Rare was the time when you…

SAMUEL ROBERTS As the world ends outside my door, I merely shrug and summon another orbital laser to eradicate tiny men. STORIES UNTOLD www.storiesuntoldgame.com A horror-themed anthology that’s clearly inspired by ‘80s movies and TV shows, this is one of my favorites from this year. At under a tenner for four very different episodes that slowly construct a larger arc, it’s great value. Stories Untold partly comes from Jon McKellan, who created Alien: Isolation’s UI. DAWN OF WAR III www.dawnofwar.com It’s been a while since I got deep into a real-time strategy game, but the mix of colossal scale and more specific hero control in Dawn of War III appeals to me a lot, providing I’m not playing against anyone who’s especially good at the game. Looks like it’ll just…

JOHN STRIKE Specialist in Battlefield, canines This month ook some time out of designing to write about the Swedish Battlefield player who sorted his weak loadout for him. See page 86. PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Mugs, recycling Twitter @Octaeder This month Revisited Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The mouths are not as good as you remember. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Space, adventure games Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Went to EVE Fanfest and almost had to fly home after someone coined the term ‘vsports’.…

Call of Duty: WWII NEED TO KNOW Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before. Soldiers huddle together inside a Higgins boat. They’re part of the Allied invading forces barrelling towards Omaha Beach. An endless wave of bullets attempts to repel them as they try to disembark, with bodies littering the shore. Yeah, it’s an FPS set in WWII, with shades of Saving Private Ryan. Not that recalling this cinematic imagery is a bad thing. I’m taking in this section of the opening mission at a press reveal event and, even in a room crowded with other people, this version of the battle on D-Day is unsettling. Disorientating explosions and gunfire never let up as lead character Roland ‘Red’ Daniels sprints to a Czech hedgehog for cover. I…

Kenshi NEED TO KNOW N obody cares about you. You aren’t special. You don’t matter. You are not the center of the universe. I’m not used to games telling me this, but this is Kenshi’s whole thing. It’s an RPG set in a brutal world that doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die, and there’s something strangely compelling about that concept. “You are not great and powerful”, says developer Lo-Fi Games. “You don’t have more ‘hit points’ than everyone else.” A bold stance for a genre where you’re often cast as an all-powerful hero. But it’s also an exciting one, because RPGs are some of the tropiest games around. Kenshi has been in development for almost a decade. The first video of the game in action was posted…

T he typically epic main quests of Western RPGs represent only a small portion of an adventure that might last for over 100 hours. In between these gargantuan set pieces are countless sidequests, asides, and ancillary diversions with the power to flesh out characters and worlds, guiding us down the paths less well trodden. Sidequests help define their respective RPGs, reinforcing their themes and letting us dig even deeper into these elaborate fictional universes when the critical path is ignored and deviated from. “From a design standpoint, the most important thing for a sidequest is that it needs to bring some added value,” explains CD Projekt Red quest designer, Patrick Mills. “Usually, this means exploring a topic, situation, or theme that’s implicit in the main story, but not foregrounded. From…

Full Throttle Remastered NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A remaster of the classic LucasArts adventure. EXPECT TO PAY $15 DEVELOPER Double Fine PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Radeon RX 480, Intel i7-5820K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.fullthrottle. doublefine.com M ore than one puzzle in Full Throttle is solved by kicking something, which neatly illustrates what makes it different from most point-and-click adventures. Protagonist Ben is a tough, gruff biker. A burly slab of meat stuffed into a leather jacket with a chin you could polish stone on, this plays into every aspect of the game, from the puzzles and storyline, to the hard rock soundtrack. But the key to the game is that while Ben is indeed a hard-ass who can handle himself in a fight, he also has…

Prey NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A first-person shooter with a variety of play styles and some annoying jump scares. EXPECT TO PAY $60 DEVELOPER Arkane Studios PUBLISHER Bethesda Softworks REVIEWED ON R9 Fury X, i5-3570K CPU, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.prey.bethesda.net I want to get into this locked office, and Prey has taught me that where there’s a will, there’s a way. The door is unhackable, and its keycard could be anywhere. It’s time to get creative. Its windows are breakable, but the gap is too small to squeeze through. Also, the trick of using the Mimic power to turn into a smaller object won’t work. There’s no ledge to perch on, and mugs can’t jump high. There is, however, a terminal in view of the window.…

What Remains of Edith Finch NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A first-person exploration of a very strange family home. EXPECT TO PAY $20 DEVELOPER Giant Sparrow PUBLISHER Annapurna Interactive REVIEWED ON Core i5-6600K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX-980 Ti, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER None Lin www.edithfinch.com My name is Edith Finch, and I’m a 17-year-old girl with a problem: My family has a habit of dying young. Only Edie, my great-grandmother, bucked the trend. She was also the chronicler of the family history, whose strange stories are tied with the estate that housed the clan for decades. And now, at the beginning of What Remains of Edith Finch, I’m the last one left—and I’ve come to learn the truth about the family curse. It begins as a Gone Home-like exploration into…

“Allied Assault feels old fashioned, and not because it’s 15 years old” J une 6, 1944. Omaha. You’re in a landing craft, waiting. Behind you, a crude representation of a face somehow manages to convey terror. A mortar explodes, hitting the adjacent craft and sending its occupants into the sea. You reach the land. The craft stops and, for a moment, everything is peaceful. Then the whistle blows and the guns start to fire. You run, die and reload, over and over again. Medal of Honor: Allied Assault is one of the highest-scoring FPSes of PC Gamer’s history. Our reviewer, Steve Brown, praised its confident plot and outstanding level design, calling it “the best FPS we’ve seen since Half-Life”. I, too, have fond memories of the best entry in EA’s Medal…

Quake Champions NEED TO KNOW W hat do you want from a new Quake game? Originally, I thought that my answer was an old-school arena shooter with twitch combat, breakneck traversal, intricate map design, satisfying gun feel and big, chunky gibs flying all over the place. And the good news is that Quake Champions is all of that. It feels like Quake. Having played for some time during the beta, I’m not sure that’s all I want from a new Quake. Despite everything it does to recapture that late-’90s feel, Quake Champions is a modern multiplayer FPS, and it comes loaded with everything that has come to mean. Instead of a server browser, for instance, you enter a matchmaking queue that tries to place you with similarlyexperienced players. This is fine.…

Sparc NEED TO KNOW C CP Games is best known for making EVE Online, the infamous space MMO that generates incredible stories of piracy, espionage, and backstabbing. So it might seem strange that it’s turning its attention to a fun, accessible VR sports game. But it isn’t really, because CCP is one of the most dedicated virtual reality developers in the business. Its enthusiasm for the medium has never faltered, and Valkyrie and Gunjack—both set in the EVE universe—are some of the bestselling VR games released so far. And they are pretty good too, because the company has poured a good amount of time and money into figuring out this new technology. Last year at Fanfest, CCP’s yearly celebration of all things EVE in its hometown of Reykjavik, Iceland, I played…

The Making of Full Throttle I n 1995 LucasArts released Full Throttle, a point-and-click adventure with a difference. You weren’t playing as a lovable goofball like Bernard Bernoulli from Day of the Tentacle or Monkey Island’s Guybrush Threepwood, you were a tough, gruff biker called Ben who used his fists and feet as much as his brain. At the time a LucasArts adventure was expected to sell around 100,000 copies, but Full Throttle sold over a million. And now, 22 years later, the game has been re-released with remastered graphics and audio. I ask the game’s writer/director Tim Schafer what it’s like going back to something he made when he was in his early 20s. “It’s been interesting looking at how I wrote dialogue back then based on my life…

Rime NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Slow-paced puzzle platformer set on a mysterious island. EXPECT TO PAY $27 DEVELOPER Tequilaworks PUBLISHER Grey Box REVIEWED ON Intel I5 4460@3.20GHz, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.tequila works.com/en/projects/rime In Rime, a boy washes up on a remote island and walks about. You’re guided through this new land by a fox—think a dog, but less good—who yaps while signposting where to go next. You climb things, push things around, line up shapes, and even control light to activate switches that open the way. It’s rather Indie Game: The Game from there: Twee imagery, gentle exploration, nice music, until some more thematically interesting stuff emerges later in the story. Rime took me about eight hours to finish, and it’s oddly…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A game that’s impossible to sum up in a sentence. EXPECT TO PAY $15 DEVELOPER David OReilly PUBLISHER Double Fine Presents REVIEWED ON GTX 970, Intel i7-5820K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.everythinggame.comwww.everythinggame.com A swarm of beetles dance together in swirling concentric circles. A blade of grass gets existential. A birthday cake regrets not getting to know its father more before he died. A trumpet flies through a surreal void playing a distorted tune for an audience of floating eyeballs. These are just a few of the things I witnessed in Everything, a game that takes you on a surreal, dreamlike voyage from the microscopic to the macroscopic. I start things off as a snow leopard roaming across a peaceful snowfield littered with trees,…

Scanner Sombre NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A first-person spelunker where you paint invisible walls with dots of light. EXPECT TO PAY $12 DEVELOPER Introversion Software PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Windows 10, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 Ti MULTIPLAYER None LINK bit.ly/scansombre This is the unexpected, and rather sudden, next game from Prison Architect developer Introversion Software. It’s a short, but sweet, exploration game in which you make your way from deep within a pitch black cave all the way up towards the surface. The environment is entirely invisible, and the only way to find your way around is by shooting out specks of light onto the walls with a LIDAR scanner. There’s no limit to using the scanner, and you can place an infinite number of LIDAR dots…

Beat Cop NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Sidescrolling adventure starring an NYPD neighborhood cop. EXPECT TO PAY $15 DEVELOPER Pixel Crow PUBLISHER 11 bit studios REVIEWED ON Windows 10, i5 4690k, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.beatcop game.com I have written 15 parking tickets—and if I want a bonus, I’ll write a few more. I’ve helped the owner of a sex toy store get rid of a body. The Italian crime family wants me to make some evidence disappear, and the local gang is furious because I arrested two of their drug dealers. I haven’t even had time to grab a donut. When a car theft call comes over the radio at the other end of the block, I’m so exhausted and hungry that I just…

learn to love a new genre N O W P L A Y I N G I D O W N L O A D S I B E G I N N E R ’ S G U I D e I U P D A T E I R E I N S T A L L I W H Y I L O V E I M U S T P L A Y S ome of the most beloved and fondly remembered games on PC are graphic adventures. They come in many forms, and vary wildly in quality, but storytelling, puzzle-solving, and a sense of humor are almost always at the forefront. The following games are great examples of all three, whether you’re solving a sinister occult murder…

N ine years. That’s how long I’ve been running around cp_badlands, and it’s never once felt stale. Added to Team Fortress 2 in 2008, it quickly became a staple of the Control Point mode, where teams are tasked with sequentially capturing five areas of the map and pushing the enemy team back towards their own spawn building. It’s a remake of a Capture The Flag map from Team Fortress Classic, and it shows, retaining two large bases at either end. Between them lies everything you could ever want as a TF2 player: Long sight lines for the Sniper, vantage points for the rocket-jumping Soldier, and hidey-holes where a Spy can lurk in wait of a wandering opponent’s back. That’s standard for official maps, which are fairly well designed, but there…