Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2018 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

We’re a very serious team at PC Gamer. You should see how we make our back pages: a council of staff, management, and focus testers all sat around a table, wordlessly nodding as we analyze with scientific precision the amount of mirth a joke may produce. A serious team needs a serious game, hence this month’s cover game. Turn to page 44 to learn about the swarms of aliens and many badasses that make up Serious Sam 4. EDITOR phil.savage@futurenet.com PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Flying Twitter @Octaeder This month Skipped out on deadline to enjoy the sights and smells of E3. Seriously?! TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Email us at letters@pcgamer.com…

CHOOSE WHETHER TO PICK A HEAD-ON MILITARY STRATEGY OR A MORE CAREFUL ONE PLAYED IT I just killed a bear on a beach. It took me a few attempts—mostly because I find dodging animals attacks fraught in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, much like I did in Origins—but I finally shot the thing with enough fire arrows that it went down. While I normally wouldn’t expect a game to justify the logic of a boss battle with a bear, an investigation of a nearby shipwreck, strewn with bodies, reveals the reason it’s there. The bear was being transported by shady smugglers, until the boat crashed. The character who sent me to kill the bear was a smuggler, too—something she didn’t tell me at the start of the quest. Confronting her, I choose…

NEW FOR BATTLEFIELD V IS THE ABILITY TO HITCH A MOUNTED WEAPON TO YOUR VEHICLE PLAYED IT Set during World War II, Battlefield V is a successor of sorts to Battlefield 1942, the first game in DICE’s long-running multiplayer FPS series. “We’re going back to our roots,” says series producer Andreas Morrell. “It’s so special for everyone at DICE to be able to return to where everything started.” This revisit highlights just how much things have changed in the 16 years since Battlefield 1942’s release. For better or worse, Battlefield is now far bigger and brasher. While the core remains intact—two teams fighting on large maps over land, air, and sea—the difference in tech fidelity and polish is substantial. It’s also worth remembering that the time period DICE is so…

ENVIRONMENTS, WHILE STILL LINEAR, CAN FEEL LARGE AND OPEN PLAYED IT Between GTA V, Vermintide II, Destiny 2, and the upcoming Monster Hunter: World, I’m already well served for endless co-op games. Can Anthem muscle its way into the rotation? Having played a section of one mission, the answer is a definitive: Yeah, maybe. BioWare’s multiplayer action RPG makes a good impression as I jump off a cliff and, bam, with a press of the left stick (I’m using an Xbox controller for this demo), my jetpack activates and I’m flying around a forest. It’s neat, and it’s obvious how it benefits the design. Environments, while still linear, can feel large and open. Routes can be more interesting. And, when surrounded by a horde of insectoid jerks, escapes can be…

In this narrative game you play Lina Romero, a driver-for-hire operating in the neon-drenched cyberpunk city of Los Ojos. Developer Chance Agency describes it as a game about “gig labor and tech disruption” which lets you experience life as a driver for an Uber-alike taxi company in the future. The game is promising an “overarching noir mystery” to solve, but there will also be dialogue-driven encounters with random passengers along the way. I love the sound of the “persistent nuanced emotion system”, whatever that is, which will apparently shape the overall story. After experiencing life as a future-bartender in The Red Strings Club, I’m all for another game that takes a look at a small part of a cyberpunk setting. NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2019 DEVELOPER Chance Agency PUBLISHER In-house…

A distinctive visual style reminiscent of French comic book artist Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud is just one of the exciting things about Sable. Another is that the game is being penned by Meg Jayanth, the lead writer on peerless interactive fiction game 80 Days. It’s an exciting combo, and I love the idea of an exploration-focused game set in a mystery-filled alien desert. Developer Shedworks describes it as a coming-of-age tale in which titular protagonist Sable rides around on a hoverbike uncovering the people, culture, and history of this otherworldly setting. Enigmatic, ruined monuments litter the desert, and one of your goals is revealing their purpose with help from nomadic tribes which have lived there for centuries. NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2019 DEVELOPER Shedworks PUBLISHER Raw Fury…

IN ONE SCENE, JESSE PERFORMS A RITUAL THAT SHIFTS THE HOUSE FIRST LOOK Remedy’s seventh game is the surrealist third-person shooter Control. You play as Jesse Faden, who stumbles into a strange building called The Oldest House. This labyrinthine space is the HQ of the Federal Bureau of Control, and you’ll explore its many mysteries. Far from a pleasant office visit, Jesse must battle a strange force called the Hiss, which has corrupted many of the Bureau’s employees. In fact, saving the Bureau is now her job: After acquiring an ‘object of power’—a transforming gun—Jesse is named the new director of the FBC. Jesse has abilities she can acquire by completing quests and finding objects of power. In a hands-off demo, we see Jesse levitate rubble to form a shield,…

1 ORIGINAL SOURCE Croteam explained that CEO, Roman Ribari´c, “came up with a design of a headless guy running straight at you carrying two bombs that looks straight out of on old Peter Sellers comedy”, adding, “He usually just handles documents and contracts. Go figure!” 2 DRAWN FROM LIFE In Sam lore these enemies are reanimated Sirians—they look similar to humans so Croteam can look to real life for references. Some elements are modelled by hand, like the gloves. Others, like the shoes, are scanned using photogrammetry techniques before passing through the rest of the art pipeline. 3 SAY AAAAAAAAAAAAA! The original scream was recorded by CEO, Roman Ribari´c. The headless bombers lack mouths, due to the aforementioned headlessness, so the screams actually emanate from a Life Control Unit (LCU)…

Early in Pillars of Eternity II, the Watcher has the first of many pirate encounters in the Deadfire Archipelago. A swine called Benweth orders his crew to kill you and take your ship. But before they get the chance, a cyclone blows in and saves you. It takes a while to repair your storm-battered sloop and get back on the high seas, but when you do you can exact revenge on the bilge-sucking cur by sailing to his hideout, Fort Deadlight. The design of Fort Deadlight and the quest that takes place there, Blow the Man Down, was led by Jorge Salgado, a senior designer at Obsidian Entertainment who has previously worked on Fallout: New Vegas, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and the original Pillars of Eternity. “I designed…

Levels have been built to accommodate a range of playstyles If only all stretch goals were as good as this. Conceived as a bonus for those who backed Koji ‘Iga’ Igarashi’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Kickstarter, Curse of the Moon looks and plays like a classic 8-bit game. While it appears Iga only had a supervisory role, Curse of the Moon offers more than a passing wink to the series with which he made his name. If someone told you this was a great lost NES Castlevania game, you’d have a hard time proving otherwise. In fact, it bears more than a few similarities to one particular Castlevania game. As in Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, your protagonist, Zangetsu, is a fairly standard warrior archetype joined by three other…

The trick to being good at Slipstream is mastering the drift It’s a shame that you can’t buy OutRun on Steam, GOG, or any of the digital distribution services—not since the disappearance of OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast. OutRun is such a pure, uncomplicated masterpiece, letting you experience the joy of skidding past traffic as you race along winding roads, blasting out the absurdly (and thus perfectly) named Magical Sound Shower. But while we’re severely lacking in OutRun, we do now have Slipstream, and it’s almost as good. You drive as fast as you can across roads, racing towards a checkpoint before your timer runs out. Hit one and your time is extended, and you choose whether to go left or right to a new area. And then you do…

Villagers frequently got stuck in their arm-waving animation I’ve been yelling at people to copy the Company of Heroes approach to real-time strategy since 2006. The combination of a low number of units, heavy combat micromanagement, and territory-based resources resulted in my favorite RTS of all time. What I never imagined was that someone would apply the formula to a historical Middle Ages setting. So does the transition from guns to axes work? Unfortunately not very well. It’s the abilities, you see, they’re just not very interesting. A key part of the Relic-style-RTS is that each unit has a bunch of powerful abilities. The iconic moment of Company of Heroes is when you realize that the humble rifleman, if equipped with a grenade and well micromanaged, can defeat a machine…

We’re hardly short of first-person horror games, but here’s a spook-’em-up that’s a little more interesting than most. Trapped inside your flat, you have to collect a list of items in order to perform some sort of science experiment, using a device that seems to meddle with the laws of reality. The upshot of all your meddling is the eventual arrival of, yes, a ghost, a figure who taunts you with ethereal sights and sounds. You’ll know the sort of thing if you’ve ever seen a horror film: Sinister laughter chuckling in your ear, weird little bugs crawling from the bathroom fixtures, and furniture shuffling around of its own accord. Umfend is a well-paced, atmospheric horror that feels a little like PT (if PT was made for the PlayStation in…

I’m not very good at Slay the Spire, and it’s been quite a while since I last took a run up its steeple, which is still in Early Access. But the promise of getting to try its third character, The Defect, is enough to draw me back into the intense push and pull of its card-slinging strategy. This is the kind of game where a three-act drama can play out in just one hand, as joy turns to despair and back again. Or, for me, despair, ill-founded joy and then back to despair. And I love it. The Defect is unlocked by completing a game as The Silent, during which my dim memory of a favorite strategy of spreading poison and then playing a card that deals extra damage to…

We’re a very serious team at PC Gamer. You should see how we make our back pages: a council of staff, management, and focus testers all sat around a table, wordlessly nodding as we analyze with scientific precision the amount of mirth a joke may produce. A serious team needs a serious game, hence this month’s cover game. Turn to page 44 to learn about the swarms of aliens and many badasses that make up Serious Sam 4. EDITOR phil.savage@futurenet.com PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Flying Twitter @Octaeder This month Skipped out on deadline to enjoy the sights and smells of E3. Seriously?! The PC Gamer team PHILIPPA WARR Specialist in Strafing This month Was embroiled in the madcap japes of Serious Sam 4 developer Croteam. RICK LANE Specialist in Crouching…

PLAYED IT You wake on a roof, restrained by an unnaturally strong woman while a man shouts questions at you. The pair are members of the Unavowed—an organization dedicated to protecting the mortal world from the supernatural. They explain that you were possessed by a demon, that you’re wanted by the police for multiple homicides, and that, given your old life is over, you should probably join them. You do, kicking off another adventure that—much like Wadjet Eye’s excellent Blackwell series before it—is set in a version of New York filled with mystical thingummies. Relocating to the Unavowed’s HQ, you and your new pals set out on a series of missions to discover what your demonic passenger was doing. NEED TO KNOW RELEASE TBA DEVELOPER Wadjet Eye Games PUBLISHER In-house…

This was a long time coming: EA’s other major sports series—the one that doesn’t have the perfectly spherical balls—is returning to PC. If you’re a fan of football, that’s good news. If you’re not, Madden is an accomplished strategy game, with deep tactics, endless stats, and ruthless opposition. Sure, there’s less evisceration than your average strategy game, but that’s the price you pay for realism. I’m impressed by the effort EA has put into this PC version. Yes, you can use a control pad. But also there’s new mouse and keyboard support, letting you control players with the mouse using a thumbstick overlay. It sounds terrible, but I found it pretty natural to use. NEED TO KNOW RELEASE August 10 2018 DEVELOPER EA Sports PUBLISHER EA…

The next game in Playground’s superb open-world racing series is set in the United Kingdom, which is an inspired choice. The game will take you through England, Scotland, and Wales, each of which offers a variety of driving terrain. And a new changing seasons system will alter how each stretch of land looks and feels. The drivatar system returns, with ‘ghosts’ of other players populating the roads, but you can also connect to the internet and have real players alongside you. Each server can support 72 players, so you’ll never be short of folk to race with. You can even play against your Xbox-owning pals via cross-play. With over 450 cars to choose from, there’ll be plenty of ways to tear up the roads. NEED TO KNOW RELEASE October 2…

Tripwire is collaborating with Killing Floor mod mastermind Alex Quick again, this time to publish his studio’s open world action-RPG where you play as a murderous shark. Judging by our interview with Quick, it’s essentially the tale of a young shark who wants to realize its dream of murdering humans and upgrading a shark version of a skill tree. “What does a shark skill tree entail?” you might ask. WELL. It entails earning upgrades called ‘evolutions’ by killing things. These upgrades offer abilities like tail whip attacks or the ability to inflict deep, bleeding wounds with your teeth. Assigning points to five different attributes will affect your upgrade slots and allow you to specialize your shark. NEED TO KNOW RELEASE TBA DEVELOPER Blindside Interactive PUBLISHER Tripwire Interactive…

All this exploration leads to satisfying melee combat My parents only let us watch old movies” says Ash, as we’re rummaging through an abandoned pharmacy, looking for medication. “I didn’t even realize they were old, I was so mad at them when I found out Judy Garland was already dead.” It’s a small character moment, nothing to write home about, apart from the fact that Ash is a randomly generated character. Just like everyone else in State of Decay 2. One of the things that makes State of Decay stand out is that you’re not playing as a person, but a community. You collect these survivors as you go along, with most of them squatting in your customizable safehouse. If the character you’re playing as gets tired or injured, you…

There are lines to elicit a chuckle even within the throwaways It’s hard not to love what makes point-and-click games the way they are: The tests of abstractly applied logic; the trial-and-error of adding paint cans to every item in your inventory because your character vaguely mentioned the word ‘color’; the absurd chains of item requirements you have to plod through to get someone to do a task for you. But how much of that is nostalgia blurring the lines of something that, in the harsh light of reality, feels too much like hard work? Unforeseen Incidents is a point-and-click game made much in the mould of its predecessors from LucasArts and Sierra On-Line—right down to the main character being a lovable idiot caught up in intrigue, accompanied by a…

It’s a simple, quiet game where you unravel a mystery You’ll be familiar with Octavi Navarro’s work if you’ve played Thimbleweed Park, and over the last year or so, the talented pixel artist has been releasing small adventure games of his own. We covered Midnight Scenes: The Highway a few months back—a short point-and-click that’s a little like an interactive Twilight Zone episode—and now Navarro has returned with an adventure that’s more ambitious in just about every way. The Librarian puts you in the shoes of a magical book shuffler in a lightly developed fantasy world, who has to venture out of her house and visit her workplace in the middle of the night. And not because of an overdue library book, or someone speaking loudly in the reference section:…

ANDY KELLY THIS MONTH Decided that Orisa is the best Overwatch hero. ALSO PLAYED Rocket League IT’S THE MOST FUN I’VE HAD WITH AN ONLINE SHOOTER IN YEARS I don’t play competitive online games. I find them too stressful. But there’s something about Overwatch that clicked with me. My biggest issue, however, was finding a hero I was halfway good at. Having a ‘main’ in a game like this, where balanced team composition is vital, probably isn’t the best idea, but I’ll never get good with anyone otherwise. So I spent an evening experimenting with different characters, settling on support-tank hybrid Orisa. Her primary weapon is a hefty cannon with a decent range called a Fusion Driver. You can do some solid damage with it, although firing it slows your…

According to Twitch, over 15 million users log on every day to watch live gaming, and each clocks up an average of 106 minutes viewing time. This vast audience has naturally turned the streaming platform into a honey pot for those with ambitions to make a living from playing games—but few have the right gear. To stretch for the celestial apex of streaming stardom, you must ensure every broadcast is good quality; that means a clear, high framerate with low lag. Online audiences demand footage of the latest games, so a streaming PC needs to cope with the rigors of simultaneously playing and broadcasting the industry’s most graphically demanding titles. The following setup will do just that, but if you haven’t got a spare kidney to flog on eBay, I’m…

WE’RE PROUD TO HAVE GIVEN PC THE SHOWCASE IT DESERVES AT E3 The fourth annual PC Gaming Show, held in the gorgeous Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, was positively heaving with first looks, announcements, and world exclusives. The show was hosted once again by the wonderful Sean ‘Day9’ Plott, and we’re proud to have given PC gaming the showcase it deserves at E3. One of the biggest cheers was for Sega, which revealed that Yakuza is finally coming to PC. Yakuza 0 and Kiwami are canonically the first two games in the series, making them the perfect starting point for PC gamers unfamiliar with it. Yakuza is famous for its brutal combat, wild humor, stirring melodrama, and karaoke sections, and we can’t wait to play it. We saw Sable, a…

PLANETFALL FOLLOWS THE SERIES’ BLUEPRINT OF GROWTH AND EXPANSION FIRST LOOK Think Fallout, but on a galactic level,” says Triumph Studios CEO Lennart Sas during my hands-off demo of Age of Wonders: Planetfall. That’s an ambitious way to begin a presentation, but I’d argue that ‘Age of Wonders in a sci-fi setting’ is already an appealing enough elevator pitch. Either way, Planetfall looks lovely. It’s a turn-based 4X strategy game that swaps the series’ familiar medieval trappings for futuristic fixtures—and is also Triumph’s first outing under Paradox’s umbrella. Sas stresses the importance of diplomacy this time round, while continually referencing “casus belli”—an act which justifies war, and a staple feature of Paradox’s grand strategy games. Whether you play as scavenging droids, bioengineering Amazons, or vanguard forces fresh from cryosleep—to describe…

PUTTING IN EXTRA EFFORT FOR A ‘CLEVER’ KILL NEVER PROVED NECESSARY PLAYED IT Using a physics engine to throw a box at a skeleton’s head isn’t a particularly exciting or new idea, but it’s being presented as an exemplary expression of player freedom in Underworld Ascendant. You can also put out torches with water arrows to better stay hidden, or build magic bridges out of the weird abundance of boxes lying around the Stygian Abyss. It’s the same assortment of simple chemistry and physics magic we’ve been performing in games since Half-Life 2 made boxes cool. But for all the talk OtherSide Entertainment’s marketing has generated about how Underworld Ascendant will move the immersive sim genre forward, I was surprised by how dated it feels in practice. Set in the…

In 2016, indie provocateur Devolver Digital sent a tweet. “Count us in to help Metal Wolf Chaos get out to more gamers if FromSoftware wants some help,” it wrote. “#FreeMetalWolf”. FromSoftware said yes, and two years later the Dark Souls developer’s batshit mech shooter is finally coming to the west. It’ll offer resolution settings and framerates unreachable by the original Xbox release, but otherwise this is a remaster, not a remake. All of the janky controls, shooting, and voice acting is intact—Devolver Digital sees that as part of its charm. This is a game about the President of the United States fending off a coup by the VP by donning a mech suit and shooting traitors on the lawn of the White House, after all. NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2018…

Nestled among the loud, shooty, expensive games of the Microsoft E3 conference was a lovely little game about a fox on an adventure. Drawing on Zelda, developer Andrew Shouldice promises a mechanical depth similar to Dark Souls. You can dodge roll, block, and counter, making this more than just a straight Zelda homage. Tunic’s isometric world, which marries simple polygons with realistic lighting, will also be loaded with secrets, and Shouldice wants you to feel lost and alone. Despite the Dark Souls influence, Tunic’s setting is designed to be sunny and welcoming, but also give the player a sense of mystery, of not knowing what lies around the next corner. I can’t wait to get my hands on this one. NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2019 DEVELOPER Andrew Shouldice PUBLISHER Finji…

Also on the list of “terrors from the deep which I am super into right now” is Sea of Solitude. The game has been attracting attention since at least 2015. Now, EA has picked up this gorgeous indie project for its EA Originals project. The idea is that if humans become too lonely they turn into monsters. You must find out what has happened to the main character, Kay, and to the monsters you encounter. The aesthetic reminds me a little of The Flame in the Flood and the creepy dark of Playdead’s Inside. Both of which are excellent references. Not much was revealed onstage at E3, but earlier interviews suggest that you can do things like alter the water level around you by changing the emotions of Kay or…

1 Croteam built a bot to help it test The Talos Principle. The bot doesn’t solve the problems, instead it learns the key points of the solution from a human, and then plays them through, reporting any bugs or oddities. 2 The bots can be set to move at high speeds. A human might take ten or so hours to solve The Talos Principle without any help, but the bot can complete the same task in just one hour. 3 The reports are marked by putting pins in the level with text to explain the issue. Devs can then easily see when an object is falling through the floor, a door won’t open, or a tree is floating in midair. 4 The bot for testing Serious Sam works similarly, but…

It pays to get to know the person you’re about to murder Jonathan Reid is a doctor with an interest and expertize in blood, giving his transformation into a vampire a splatter of dark irony. The caring helper of the sick and protector of the weak is still in him, but so is a ravenous monster with a desire to drain the crimson life-giving nectar from his patients’ bulging, fleshy necks. It’s a deliciously evil and original premise for a vampire story, and frequently forces you to make some genuinely tough decisions. Do you kill an innocent for an XP boost and a helping of high-quality blood? Or do you stick to your morals and resist the urge, grabbing rats off the streets to briefly slake your thirst? It’s a…

It’s one of those releases which still feels like it’s in early access The cockroaches have been hoovered up, the bathroom is covered in hot pink paint and teal-colored tiles, and the brown-stained couch has been evicted in favor of a corner sofa. This House Flipper house is now perfect for resale. Well, I assume it is. My understanding of the property market is entirely based on old episodes of Changing Rooms and Location, Location, Location, and not, e.g. owning property. House Flipper tasks you with renovating houses. There’s contract work for other people—cleaning up after messy students or putting up a wall to convert a big bedroom into a small bedroom and a bathroom. But the game is named for the fact you can use the money you earn…

Shovel Knight meets The Deer Hunter in the tense Roulette Knight, which was conceived for this year’s Ludum Dare. The theme of that game jam was ‘combine two incompatible genres’, and here developer Four Quarters has mixed the RPG with a game of Russian roulette. Rather than taking on hordes of monsters, you’re battling yourself by loading a revolver with a bullet and aiming the weapon at your knightly head. Using a point-and-click interface, you’ll load the cylinder with some bullets, spin the chambers, and pull the trigger, while managing your equipment, abilities, and even visiting a handy shop. As in the real Russian roulette, you’ve no idea whether a bullet will fire. If it does, though, you’re not guaranteed a trip to the mortuary. Perhaps thanks to your metal…

CHRIS THURSTEN THIS MONTH Took a nice, gentle, deadly stroll through Miramar. ALSO PLAYED Dota 2, Baldur’s Gate I like to play ‘low-stakes’ PUBG, although really there’s no such thing. Here’s how it works: I load up Miramar in 1-Man Squad mode. Miramar because I like its desert expanses and urban environments; 1-Man Squad because it’s unlikely that I’ll win. It’s unlikely that I’ll win anyway, but this mode—where you’re sent in solo against teams of other players—is essentially hard mode. And in a very hard game, that takes the pressure off. I drop as early as possible, heading far north to the fence that runs along the edge of the map. The first cluster of buildings provides a good haul: a vest and helmet, backpack, two rifles, ammo, and…

I thought I knew the kinds of stories that would come out of Kerbal Space Program’s newest expansion, Making History. Now that KSP’s legendary modding community has access to all the scripting and planning tools it could ever need, I was sure we’d see recreations of the doomed Apollo 13 mission, recreations of Apollo 11’s historic moon landing, and probably even an interplanetary trading run inspired by the sci-fi TV show, The Expanse. It seems foolish that I never saw The Martian coming. Author Andy Weir’s story of a lone NASA astronaut stranded on Mars is a perfect fit for the focused, real-world-adjacent rocket physics of KSP. Using the new mission planner, KSP forum member Mikki recreated the drama of The Martian for brave Kerbals to suffer through. Behold: The…

PASSAGES These squares are passages, representing each section of your story. HOME MENU From here you can edit your story’s CSS, publish an HTML file to share online, view a proofing copy, and more. WORKSPACE You can move passages freely around this pasteboard and the lines will stay connected. Keep it organized. NEW PASSAGE There’s a reason this button is big. You’ll be pressing it a lot to create new passages to make your story bigger.…