Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2018 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Jokes, delegation Twitter @Octaeder This month Still hasn’t found a freelancer to write his bio jokes for him. Management sims are going through something of a Renaissance, it seems. For starters, there’s our cover game. Jurassic World Evolution is set to take all of Frontier’s experience making Planet Coaster, and enhance it with the addition of dinosaurs and danger (from dinosaurs). Also this issue, we look at Sega’s attempt to resurrect Theme Hospital-style medical management, and review a game about building cities on Mars—with all the potential disaster that suggests. EDITOR phil.savage@futurenet.com TALK TO PCGAMER Have your say! Email us at letters@pcgamer.com…

Valve has joined forces with Magic: The Gathering’s legendary creator, Richard Garfield, to create a trading card game set in the Dota 2 universe. For a general sense of what Artifact is like: If conventional card games are like chess (which I know they aren’t), then Artifact is the 3D version which Spock plays on the Enterprise. Each match plays out across three boards, representing the lanes from the Dota 2 map. You deploy cards in these lanes to help you destroy enemy buildings and protect your own. The base game has 280-plus cards and 44 heroes. A deck comprises 40 cards minimum (including 5 heroes). Swapping and selling on the Steam Market will let you grow your collection without relying on pack RNG. Depending on the color combinations your…

PLAYED IT It’s a suicide mission, but not in the way I was hoping. I’m in control of four New Jericho soldiers who have been infected with an alien virus. They’re heading into battle one last time, on a mission to dispatch the mutants now occupying a New Jericho base. Our job is to secure the location and rescue any survivors. It’s not going well. Phoenix Point is the next game from X-COM: UFO Defense creator Julian Gollop. It’s a return to X-COM’s brand of turn-based tactics and high-level strategy. But this is an evolution of the genre, incorporating elements introduced by Firaxis’s recent XCOM series (the one without the hyphen). It’s a merging of ideas both old and new, to create something distinct, with its own quirks and complexities.…

There are over 30 flyable ships in Elite, and every one has its own distinct personality. These craft are the real stars of the game, and the thing every commander aspires to own—whether they’re an explorer, trader, bounty hunter, or pirate. But how are they built? It’s something that has always intrigued me, how an idea makes it from someone’s mind to a spaceship that can be flown in-game. So I asked how Frontier does it, focusing on the latest ship to be added to its growing space garage: The mighty Chieftain. “The Thargoids have returned,” says Sandro Sammarco, lead designer of Elite Dangerous, referring to the mysterious aliens that have been tormenting pilots across the galaxy. “And their arrival has inspired the Alliance to build a war fleet, including…

CRY OF FEAR A Half-Life total conversion from 2012, Cry of Fear is impressive for the sheer number of things it tries to do with the aging GoldSrc engine. It doesn’t take place in a series of grey, blocky corridors, for one thing (rather, a grey, blocky city), and it even boasts a basic inventory system. It’s a game about running from spasmodically jerking not-humans as you explore and solve puzzles and generally feel bad about your situation. It’s scary, primarily due to jump scares, but also because of its relentless tension. Despite some rough edges, this is an ambitious eight or so hours of quality horror. PS www.bit.ly/cryfear SLENDER: THE EIGHT PAGES Based on the internet legend of the Slender Man, this horror was catapulted to notoriety by shrieking…

ZINETH It’s worth digging through the entire Arcane Kids catalogue. Its manifesto—“Make the games you wish to see on the Dreamcast”—informs its anarchic output, and has resulted in such oddities as Bubsy 3D and the unsettling Sonic Dreams Collection. But my favorite remains student project Zineth—a skate-’em-up that pays homage to Jet Set Radio. Traversal feels great, as you jump, grind and wall-run your way to uncontrollable speeds, rewinding time whenever you make a mistake. The memorable soundtrack and abrasive, cel-shaded aesthetic serve to enhance Zineth’s unique sense of style. PS www.zinethgame.tumblr.com LOST CONSTELLATION Tangentially related to Night in the Woods, Lost Constellation is an adventure about an astronomer who journeys through a forest to see ghost of her dead lover. The tone will be familiar to fans of Night…

Vermintide II’s ‘AI director’ is sadistic. With a lumbering Chaos Warrior already attacking us, the AI summons an armored Stormvermin ambush from behind. They quickly knock out Bardin the dwarf, Kruber the mercenary and Sienna the fire mage, leaving only me, the nimble elf Kerillian, to save us. If I can just get to one of them, I can revive them and turn the tide back in our favour. Then, out of nowhere, the AI summons a Chaos Sorcerer. Usually these special enemies like to hang out at a distance and summon tornados that scatter us to the wind—an attack I can easily dodge—but this Chaos Sorcerer wants to make it personal. He teleports to me and begins sucking the soul out of my body, rendering me completely helpless. A…

Narrative games are often in danger of being hard-to-read novels, books that one ‘plays’ the reading of to the detriment of both the actual reading and the book. Where the Water Tastes Like Wine is a prime example of that particular danger. There’s truth and beauty to find within its choppy transcontinental trek, but only at the expense of a pair of sore eyes. The 19th and 20th century microstories that make up the bulk of WTWTLW (there are over 200 of them) are encountered by plodding across a garish map of the entire United States by foot, and sometimes by train or car, and activating ugly little icons. There’s light personal upkeep to be done, managing rest, money, and health, but dying just resets you somewhere in America. The stories are…

I enjoy a verbose adventure game as much as the next person, but there’s something to be said for games that drop you into a world, without a lengthy cutscene justifying your presence. The World Begins With You opens in such a manner, with your character waking up in an old prison cell in an empty building. With its enigmatic protagonist, its crumbing ancient ruins and its exquisite presentation, this is a game obviously inspired by the likes of Journey and ICO. TWBWY’s main strength is clearly its beautiful setting, which consists of monolithic structures and angular boulders jutting out of a series of softly lit ruins. The 3D models, the cinematic camera and, above all, the lighting effects are some of the most impressive I’ve seen in a jam…

THIS MONTH Willingly endured the boredom of British railways ALSO PLAYED Into the Breach I’ve taken the train from Bath to London hundreds of times in my life, usually to visit game developers in the capital. And while I enjoy that part of the job, the journey itself is a dispiriting chore. Rail travel in the United Kingdom is a chaos of delays, overcrowding and overpriced sandwiches. Yet when I saw Great Western Express on Steam—an expansion for Train Sim World that recreates part of that route—I felt compelled to play it. Videogames are a powerful form of escapism for me, but what if I played one to achieve the complete opposite of that? Train Sim World is primarily a game about driving trains, but it’s unique in that it…

The quality of Amadeus, an Amnesia mod by Swedish creator Reminiscity, becomes clear when I step into the main hall of the old house where the story takes place. It’s a beautiful, grand room, with cold moonlight pouring through stained-glass windows, glass domes in the ceiling, a velvet-carpeted stairway, and eerie oil paintings hanging on the walls. It’s probably prettier than the main game’s Brennenburg Castle, which is quite an achievement for a free mod. Inspired by Christopher Nolan’s wonderful The Prestige and, curiously, the work of TV mind-wizard Derren Brown, Amadeus tells the story of Cornelius Campbell, a magician trading under the name The Amazing Alduin. Cornelius’ career has come grinding to an undignified halt, and where once he was able to fill the biggest theaters, he now struggles…

PCG INVESTIGATES There is one fantastic story about a botanist called [John James]—the self-described ‘Frankenstein of flowers’,” says Seed’s lead designer, Olie Kay. “He scraped the radium paint from watch dials and used this on his budding roses—don’t try this at home! He said that the best way to dispose of the radioactive material was to simply bury it in the farthest corner of the garden!” Stories like that completely captured the imagination of Kay and the rest of All Seeing Eye. The small studio’s game, Seed, is a virtual reality project where you can breed and grow procedural plant life, either to complete missions or to enjoy a playful sandbox. As well as appealing to fans of pottering about in sheds, Seed scooped top honors (and $150,000) in a competition…

FIRST LOOK The vibrant box art for the Games Workshop tabletop game, Necromunda, will always stay with me; a lump-muscled punk screaming and unloading his boltgun blindly into the air, the sheer metal pillars of the Underhive filling the background. It perfectly captures the Necromunda spirit in all its rustiness and verticality. Rogue Factor’s turn-based shooter is hoping to capture that spirit. It’s a simple enough premise: On a toxic planet ruined by human avarice, vast towers called Hives house massive populations. The elite reside at the top, and the lower you go, the more depraved things get until you reach the Underhive, where gangs of punks, ex-soldier types, and creepy pale men battle it out for decaying generator rooms and derelict factories. Underhive Wars takes place in one such…

FIRST LOOK If you ever snuck into the woods as a child, hoping to find mythical creatures, or searched valiantly for a portal into another world, The Wild at Heart feels like it’s being made just for you. Currently in development at indie studio SleepNinja Games, it tells the story of two young friends who uncover a land of magic and monsters on the borders of their sleepy hometown. It takes place in a small coastal town called Willowvale, which sits alongside a deep, sprawling forest. While exploring the woods one day, the game’s protagonists Wake and Kirby discover that there are friendly spirits living among the trees, and they’re being protected by an order called the Greenshields. Justin Baldwin, creative director at SleepNinja Games, talks about these characters with…

1 BLOCKOUT This is the first stage. The artists will draw rough sketches called ‘blockouts’ in 3D software, which help establish the basic shape of the craft being designed. “The nice thing about working in 3D is that we can check the design out from every angle,” says Chris Gregory, art director. “But we don’t texture them, because that can be a little misleading. You can be seduced by the fact that it’s shiny. You need to get the basics right before the details.” 2 IDEATION Once the shape has been settled on, the artists then focus on the details, such as how the landing gear will function and where the engines are placed. A ship can go through dozens of iterations at this phase until it clicks. “We also…

A RAVEN MONOLOGUE It’ll take you less time to play this textless tale than it will take for me to write here why you should. It’s a tiny storybook about a raven interacting with villagers while a bittersweet song loops. It’s easiest to think of A Raven Monologue as a short, sharp burst of emotion, not a million miles away from one of those pre-movie Pixar shorts in terms of its impact. Mechanically speaking, your only interaction is moving back and forth between the wonderfully illustrated panels, but there’s an ambiguity to the tale which means that puzzling out your own interpretation of events is a significant part of the action. PW www.bit.ly/monologuepc BUTTERFLY SOUP I’m only partway through Butterfly Soup myself, but it’s here because of the heartfelt nature…

No matter what you’re doing in Minit, no matter where you are, you will drop dead every 60 seconds. Life in this Legend of Zelda-inspired adventure is fleeting, and you only have a minute at a time to solve its puzzles, talk to its characters and complete its quests. A timer at the top of the screen ticks those 60 seconds down relentlessly, and throughout your time with Minit, you are at its mercy. That all sounds very dramatic, but Minit isn’t completely sadistic. Some of the items you find, such as a sword washed up on a beach, will carry over to your next life, opening up more areas to explore. And as you traverse the world you’ll find houses that will act as respawn points. So with every life you’ll make…

The wait for Final Fantasy XV on PC has been long, following lots of talk from Square Enix about optimization, mod support, and nicer-looking hair. If you’ve waited 15 months—on top of the almost decade-long wait after the original Versus XIII announcement—to play this road trip-themed action RPG, though, it looks fantastic, and arrives in a more complete form than it did on consoles. While previous entries are better-known for turn-based combat, or real-time with a complex strategic layer in the case of FFXII, this is a pure action RPG—and a pretty simple one at that. Your character, Noctis, rides around in a car with his three friends for most of the game. You can take on sidequests, hunt for specific creatures, and tackle dungeons that unlock new weapons. The…

Our memories often bear little resemblance to the cold hard facts of the events in question. We overdramatize, we paint ourselves in a harsher light, while many of the finer details and much of the context slips away. You could imagine memories as small islands punctuating an endless, forgetful fog, and it’s those islands—those memory worlds—that you’re tasked with exploring in Sean Han Tani’s dreamlike, introspective game All Our Asias. Set in the near future, at a time when machines allow people to enter one another’s minds, AOA’s premise might immediately remind you of To the Moon. Like that adventure game, you’re venturing into the mind of a dying patient, in this case your absentee father, who protagonist Yuito has complex feelings for. However, rather than attempting to fulfil his dying…

THIS MONTH Fought (and lost) a battle with Windows 10 updates. ALSO PLAYED Cypher, all the free games CONTINUED ADVENTURES IN GAMING Something that I did not expect to have a strong opinion about in Assassin’s Creed Origins’ Discovery Tour mode was the representation of mosquitos. Mosquitos are complicated lifeforms to find interesting because they are so closely related to the transmission of disease, including malaria, yellow fever, Zika, and West Nile virus. Although they can be biologically curious, they’re not (as far as I have found) in any way lovable, and they are also an active threat to so many people around the world. Mosquitos came up because, when I loaded in to Assassin’s Creed Origins to poke around in the edutainment Discovery Tour mode, I found myself near water.…

KEY Budget build PC gaming is for everyone. Pick the parts you want to build a new, well-rounded PC for a good price. Mid-range build You want to run every new game at 1080p 60fps. This recommended build will see you through. Advanced build You’re looking for the best PC on the market and superior components. But you still want to spend smart. BUDGET BUILD Enjoy 1080p gaming without breaking the bank TOTAL $1,120 MID-RANGE BUILD Our recommended build for playing the latest games TOTAL $1,393 ADVANCED BUILD Go above and beyond with a PC powerful enough to end worlds TOTAL $4,026…

NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT THE FIRST CHANCE TO EXPLORE THE SUMMERSET ISLES SINCE 1994 The Elder Scrolls Online’s first expansion sent players to Morrowind—giving us a chance to revisit the location of one of Bethesda’s most beloved RPGs, albeit set many hundreds of years before its events took place. For the next expansion, we’re heading to the Summerset Isles, home of the high elves. This will be Elder Scrolls fans’ first chance to explore the Summerset Isles since 1994’s The Elder Scrolls: Arena, which contained the entirety of Tamriel thanks to its procedurally generated overworld. Naturally, that rendition looked, well, like it was made 24 years ago. Zenimax Online Studios claims this updated rendition will offer a detailed landscape featuring tropical lagoons, colorful forests, cliffside vistas, and the “gorgeous…

FIRST LOOK Immediately after finishing the Two Point Hospital developer interview transcription I… well, I should have started writing this preview, but what I actually ended up doing was booting up Theme Hospital and curing a swarm of patients with comically swollen heads against a soundtrack of jaunty music and bathroom noises. Two Point Hospital is both a standalone game in a new, broader setting and, inescapably, a spiritual successor to Bullfrog’s 1998 hospital management simulation. Partly that’s because of the structure and tone of the game—comedy and medically-themed design—and partly it’s because the studio is being led by Theme Hospital’s lead developer, Mark Webley, and lead artist, Gary Carr. In this interview they’re joined by Ben Huskins—a long-term colleague of the pair and the lead designer on Two Point Hospital. He explains what…

FIRST LOOK In The Blackout Club, teenagers have been waking up in different parts of their hometown covered in dirt, or with blood under their fingernails and no memory whatsoever of what led them there. Something nasty lurks beneath the surface of this place, and the adults don’t want to know, so it’s up to the teens to get to the bottom of it. They’ll band together and uncover a vast network of tunnels under their town, and a sinister conspiracy involving the adults they interact with every day—but they don’t even know they’re a part of it. In this co-op horror game for up to four players, you’ve got to document what’s going on in this suburban town, but objectives are procedurally generated, thrusting your characters into new and…

As you play Jurassic World Evolution, Dr Ian Malcolm (played, of course, by Jeff Goldblum) will occasionally chip in to remind you that what you’re doing—creating thinking, feeling creatures in a laboratory to, essentially, sell theme park tickets to tourists—might not be totally cool. He’s your conscience, and a neat way for the game to acknowledge the dubious morality of what you’re doing, which the films have made a point of addressing. So while building your own Jurassic World facility is exciting, and a dream come true for many fans of the series, developer Frontier still wants you to think about the important philosophical questions it raises. “Getting to write new dialogue for Dr Ian Malcolm is just the best,” says lead writer John Zuur Platten. “And getting to hear…

STARCRAFT Two decades after it was first released, Blizzard now offers its strategy space opera free of charge. The bundle also brings you the Brood War expansion’s fresh crop of campaigns, tilesets, units, and upgrade advancement. One of the longest-serving games on the esports circuit, the pro scene is largely over for StarCraft, but the top players can still make a few bob in the tournaments that remain. That means in addition to being a free game, you could pump up your actions-per-minute and earn an infinite return on your zero investment. PC Gamer: Offering sound careers advice since 1993. PW www.bit.ly/starcraft-free THE ELDER SCROLLS II: DAGGERFALL Boasting a 63,000 square mile map, Daggerfall is an enormous RPG set in the Breton homeland of High Rock. It features many elements…

DOG OF DRACULA 2 Set after the condiment prohibition of a now-overthrown tyrant, and with the world now largely jacked into the cyberbahn, Dog of Dracula 2 takes you into the seamy, neon world of Nuevo Tokyo. Follow the tale of a friendship gone awry—of your link to a little pup in a Dracula cape who’s sporting a green mohican and a range of cyber implants. The text spits out lines like, “The neon glow of her e-cig illuminates her rain-stained onesie,” and your orange-suited avatar can peer at USB ramen before entering a dive bar containing pastries of easy virtue. Dog of Dracula 2 dives headfirst into ’90s pop culture references and fantastically daft cyberpunk tropes with nothing less than total commitment. PW www.bit.ly/draculapc MURDER DOG IV: TRIAL OF…

A MUSEUM OF DUBIOUS SPLENDORS A Museum of Dubious Splendors is both a storybook and exhibition space. It elevates objects by supersizing them, by connecting them to the game’s collection of tales, by putting them in a museum space, by making them beautiful and weird, dangling in space. It’s part of Studio Oleomingus’s bigger project; a narrative experiment called Somewhere. The drip-feed of its facets illuminates a search for the mythical city of Kayamgadh. Studio Oleomingus offers a vibrant world of uncertain fictions and exploration. It might be the most exciting studio in game development right now. PW www.bit.ly/oleomingus FROG FRACTIONS At first, Frog Fractions appears to be an insipid edutainment game about a frog that’s trying to teach you maths. But as you unlock new upgrades, things become surreal,…

On the edge of my base camp is a vast wall of poisonous dust. Stretching for miles into the sky, this gray, churning cloud will kill me if I set foot in it. But when I build an air tank, jury-rigged from a broken one carried by a less fortunate survivor, I’m finally able to venture inside. I could stay out here in the sunshine, but in there I’ll find rare materials and blueprints for better weapons and gadgets. It’s a risk worth taking. As I cross into the dust, the sun disappears and I’m surrounded on all sides by an oppressive grey fog. And through the gloom I can see the telltale red glow of wanderers—aggressive zombies with glowing crystals where their heads used to be. These are the…

A Case of Distrust is an adventure game about clues and interrogation. It looks gorgeous—each screen a block of color given life by silhouettes and the stylish transitions that link each scene. As P.I. Phyllis Malone, you gather evidence by clicking on the objects in each room, and take statements by questioning suspects. Present the right details to the right people and you’ll unlock new leads—a place, a witness, even a culprit. Characters are almost all archetypes—the aloof fixer, the surly kingpin, the easygoing bartender. The formula works, though. A Case of Distrust wields its setting and genre adeptly. My favorite conversations take place during taxi rides between locations. These chats cover everything from transportation and Egyptomania to the plight of immigrants, and are fascinating in how they convey the…

You play as a ghost in this cute sidescrolling adventure, meaning you can fly clear over those pesky gaps that plague the likes of Sonic and Mario. In place of platforming precision, you’ll face tricky block-based puzzles, along with simpler turn-based battles against a variety of bizarre foes. You’re Midy, a friendly spirit who wants to be a knight. Your quest to achieve this sees you tracking down four primal beasties, before eliminating them in one-on-one combat. Putting its own spin on the turn-based rumbles of your average JRPG, Dord’s streamlined battles have you flinging unconventional items, including peanut butter jars, at the enemy. If you hold the relevant key for long enough, you’ll increase your damage output, however if you keep it down for too long, damage will be halved. It’s a…

THIS MONTH Stayed until last orders at the bar. ALSO PLAYED Into The Breach The Red Moon Inn has been a welcome stop throughout my time playing Vermintide. A charming, rustic hangout situated in the shipping town Ubersreik, it maintains a welcoming atmosphere thanks to the friendly demeanour of innkeeper Franz Lohner. It’s also one of the few safe havens in a town under siege by hordes of Skaven—a literal tide of vermin, if you will. The inn is your hub between missions, giving you time to prepare; tinker with Vermintide’s awkward crafting system, or awkward upgrade system, or awkward bounty system. It’s a practice space, too. See those meats hanging from the bar? They’re physics objects, and, as elven archer Kerillian, I’d pierce every sausage and drumstick, watching them…

OLD GAMES, NEW PERSPECTIVES Theme Hospital has been through several stages of life. At launch in 1997 it was a big deal, the successor to Theme Park—the game that made Bullfrog’s fortune. Theme Park was an irreverent, colorful management simulator that turned the Guildford studio from a domestic player to an international contender. Theme Hospital adopted Theme Park’s tone—and great swathes of its code—and turned it to a different purpose: The running of a profit-driven British hospital where patients suffer from a variety of comedic, and fictitious, diseases. It was softly irreverent in a way that drew flack from government and the press at the time, but would entirely pass under the radar now. Then Theme Hospital found a second life as a bargain-bin perennial throughout the low years of…