Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2019 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

HIGHS Minecraft Thanks to a huge content update, Minecraft now has villages, pandas, many new blocks, and more. Platinum Games Hinted at two new games, describing them as something that’s “never been designed before”. Ambitious! Microsoft Published charmingly old-fashioned examples of acceptable trash talk, including “get wrecked”. LOWS Randy Pitchford The Gearbox CEO is having a month on Twitter, first with a kerfuffle over microtransactions in Borderlands 3, followed by assault claims. Echo Fox Former NBA pro Rick Fox is leaving esports organization Echo Fox over an investor’s racial slur. The Sonic Movie Since Sonic looks about as bad as expected, he’s getting a redesign.…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE October 4 Developer Ubisoft Paris Publisher Ubisoft LINK www.ghostrecon.com YOU LIMP AWAY FROM THE FLAMING WRECKAGE AND FIND YOURSELF BEHIND ENEMY LINES This brand new Ghost Recon game begins with that old military videogame favorite—the helicopter crash. High above the jungles of the Aurora archipelago—a remote chain of islands in the Pacific—a swarm of… something attacks your chopper, and the fact it seems to be targeting you, suggests it might be something more sinister. The Aurora archipelago is home to Skell Technology, a massive corporation that makes everything from home computers to automated war machines. It’s the latter, a growing threat to the world, that brings the Ghosts here. Despite being a relatively small archipelago, Aurora contains several diverse biomes including forests, deserts, an active volcano,…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Spring 2020 DEVELOPER Jump Over the Age PUBLISHER Fellow Traveller LINK www.jumpovertheage.com “I’M TRYING TO BE ACCURATE TO BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE AND EVOLUTIONARY THEORY” In Other Waters shrinks the entirety of an alien ocean into one interface. You’re the AI that accompanies xenobiologist Ellery Vas on her dives into the oceans of Gliese 667Cc in search of life that may help sustain mankind, while trying to find out what happened to her partner, who disappeared during a prior mission. All you see of Ellery’s adventures is a map—Ellery herself is a little dot, as is everything she encounters. As you scan the environment for anything from environmental clues about the ecosystem to plants and creatures for Ellery to study, descriptive text from the interface itself as well…

I’m in LA, in a ‘secret location’—it’s a warehouse—to experience the grand unveiling of Borderlands 3. It’s early in the day, and I’m still slightly jetlagged. On stage, projected onto a giant screen, Claptrap is doing a dance. His shrieks echo throughout the building. Having established that the series’ mascot is back, and—depending on your perspective—as funny or as too-irritating-for-this-time-of-the-morning as usual, the demo continues. There’s banter, there’s wasteland combat, and there’s a miniboss. “Shiv,” introduces the title card. “Brought a knife to a gun fight.” Borderlands is back. I’m initially underwhelmed. The early demo introduces some new movement options—sliding and mantling—but nothing that feels like a bold new direction for the series. An iterative sequel is all fine and well, but I’ve been fighting through Borderlands’ wastelands for tens—maybe hundreds—of…

Drive north from Capcom’s headquarters in downtown Osaka, along the Tosabori River, and in about 20 minutes you’ll see a unique red-bricked building with a domed roof. This is the Osaka City Central Public Hall, one of the city’s most beloved buildings and part of the inspiration for the Raccoon City Police Department in Resident Evil 2. This iconic setting, which fans count among the series’ best, was confidently reimagined in the 2019 remake, and this is the story of how it was designed. “I WANTED TO MAKE CHANGES THAT WOULD MAKE THE GAMEPLAY MORE FUN” Enter the Central Public Hall, which was built in 1918, and is an important cultural center for the city, and you’ll find polished floors, towering pillars, ornate detailing, and a vast church-like ceiling—the same…

Orcs Must Die! Unchained is dead. On April 8, Robot Entertainment shut down the servers it once hoped could be home to millions. This had been the studio’s intended opus, the action tower defense hit reimagined as a free-to-play hobby game. It had the backing of Chinese internet giants Tencent, just like League of Legends and Fortnite. But in the end, it didn’t have enough players to cover its server fees. It’s a genuine tragedy, a cautionary tale about what happens when live games don’t get the air they need, but it’s not the one I’m telling today. Instead, this is the story of Orcs Must Die! Unchained’s last weekend, and a doomed mission to play the whole thing. As we begin, it’s Saturday afternoon. The lights won’t go out…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Infinity War with cyber ninjas and deadly hats EXPECT TO PAY $60 DEVELOPER NetherRealm PUBLISHER Warner Bros REVIEWED ON Intel Core i7-7700 CUP @ 3.60GHz, 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER1-2 LINK bit.ly/2BX2BFe It might seem like lunacy to begin a Mortal Kombat review by praising the game’s subtlety. You’ve watched videos of eyes being plopped out and spines being crushed. But there’s a moment, early in the game’s story mode, which encapsulates how the series has evolved. Reunited, Kitana and Liu Kang share a hug. Liu goes to embrace her—but he can’t. He’s too awkward, she’s too important. It tells you everything about their relationship without a word being spoken. It’s an absolute thrill for anyone who’s followed the…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Minimalist factory builder EXPECT TO PAY $30 DEVELOPER Dapper Penguin PUBLISHER Kasedo Games REVIEWED ON Intel i5, 16gb RAM, Nvidia GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER No LINK www.riseofindustry.com The first thing you’ll notice upon playing Rise of Industry is that it’s absolutely gorgeous. The boxy shapes and flat colors of the low-poly style are a perfect fit for the city/factory builder genre. This, combined with bright colors and sticker-like icons, makes the game looks less like a real city and more like a child’s play set. Unfortunately that’s also how the game plays, like a toy. Something that’s fun to play with, but lacks direction. Rise of Industry is fundamentally about supply and demand. There are a handful of towns of various sizes spread across the…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A fantasy RPG with survival elements EXPECT TO PAY $40 DEVELOPER Nine Dots Studio PUBLISHER Deep Silver REVIEWED ON GTX 980, Intel i5-6600K, 8 GB RAM MULTIPLAYER Online and local co-op LINK www.ninedotsstudio.com A game where you can never die sounds like it’d make you fearless. Why worry about failure when you simply fall unconscious and wake up somewhere else? It turns out the opposite is true here. Failure costs something more precious than a videogame life—it costs time. Time to heal, to rest, to repair gear, to travel all the way back to the site of your defeat to try, and possibly to fail, again. Immortality is more terrifying than death. You can’t just reload your last save when you lose a fight,…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY £11 DEVELOPER Wadjet Eye Games PUBLISHER In-house You know what it’s like when you go into your favorite bar, everyone cheers, and the bartender has poured your usual tipple by the time you’ve reached your stool? Me neither. But I imagine it’s a lot like going back to Unavowed. There’s something about the pacing of Dave Gilbert’s supernatural mystery that’s deeply comforting. I can meander through a case in a single evening, meet some new people, and spend time with characters who feel like they existed before I started playing. Compared to the noise and bluster of other games, Unavowed feels dark, real, and oddly relaxing. That doesn’t mean it’s nice. Each story feels like a cautionary fairytale. I solve a case that begins…

It should be enough to tell you that Cave Story is about an amnesiac boy rescuing rabbit people from an evil doctor. But if you need more reasons to play it, know that it’s one of the best indie platformers ever made, especially if you love Metroidvanias. It’s a huge, weird, engaging game—one moment I’m fighting a giant bar of soap, the next, a rabid, mutated version of the very bunnies I’m apparently here to save. This version gives an extra level of sheen and a remastered soundtrack.…

ANDY KELLY THIS MONTH Saved a few dozen refugees from a stricken space station. ALSO PLAYED Heaven’s Vault It’s been a while since I last played Elite Dangerous, which makes the moment when I jump into a random system and find a burning starport pretty shocking. As I approach, the flight controller warns me that the station is in danger. The advertizing billboards that normally guide pilots through the ‘mail slot’ as they dock have been replaced with flashing red signs saying “EVACUATE”. And I notice strange green splodges on the exterior walls, suggesting that the Thargoids—mysterious aliens slowly making their presence felt in Elite’s galaxy—are responsible. Curiously, I still have the option to dock. The flight controller cautions me about high temperatures inside the station as I fly closer…

Yes, this is the Mod Spotlight section of the magazine, but calling Total Chaos a mod is doing it a disservice. This remarkable thing, created by Wadaholic, transforms Doom 2 into a survival horror. But if you’re expecting old Doom assets flipped into some kind of clunky horror game that sounds cool on paper, but doesn’t quite work, well… just look at the screenshots. This is such a departure from the game it’s based on that I’d believe you if you told me it was a standalone project built from the ground up. I should clarify, however, Total Chaos runs on GZDoom, a 3D-accelerated Doom port that adds support for dynamic lighting, sloped floors, Quake 2-style skyboxes, and other stuff the vanilla game could only dream of rendering. Even so,…

1 LEARN SOME TERMS Not every visual novel is Japanese, but many use genre terms to describe their content. Being able to tell “nakige” from “otome” may help save time on the hunt for your next game. 2 EMBRACE ALL THE EMOTIONS What often makes visual novels so appealing are the unforeseeable turns their plots can take. Their habit to go for maximum drama or romance can either be just what you need or severely exhaust you. 3 GET USED TO WAITING Once thoroughly enamored, you may get to the point where you actively dive into the world of fan translations, or simply wait a long time to ever see a western release of that interesting visual novel.…

You wouldn’t expect a niche hunting game to feature some of the most realistic natural environments on PC. The Hunter: Call of the Wild, developed by Avalanche, features a series of massive, gorgeous hunting reserves—from the grassy plains of Africa and the lush forests of Germany, to the frozen wilds of Siberia—and they’re all stunningly beautiful to look at. The game is developed by a small team, yet despite having a fraction of the budget of something like, say, Far Cry, its landscapes are above and beyond anything I’ve seen in any other game. And as I wandered the autumnal forests of Hirschfelden, I wondered: How did they do it? “A lot of trying and failing,” says Peppe Pihl, world designer. “Research and more research. Blood, sweat, and tears. I…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE TBA DEVELOPER Pixpil PUBLISHER Chucklefish LINK www.eastwardgame.com JOHN WIELDS A SHOTGUN AND IS ALSO VERY HANDY WITH A FRYING PAN One look at Eastward, and you can immediately tell what made the pixel art aficionados at Chucklefish fall in love with it. From colorful environments filled with detail to the unique characters softly bouncing with each breath, Eastward feels alive, even though it’s set in a world that’s anything but. With Eastward, developer Pixpil has decided to go all out—the first project for the Shanghai-based team is looking to Japanese RPGs from the late ’80s and early ’90s for inspiration, a genre that originated enduring videogame characters and approaches to adventure gameplay. You take control of John and Sam, a taciturn miner and a small girl…

RACCOON CITY The success of the Resi 2 remake means a new version of the third game could be in the works. I hope so, because I’d love to see more of the zombie-infested Raccoon City in three dimensions. ROCKFORT ISLAND I’ve always loved the setting of Code Veronica: a remote prison island flooded with zombies. You’re landlocked in most Resi games, but the island setting here adds to the claustrophobia. SPENCER MANSION Yes, Capcom’s remake of the original Resident Evil is fantastic—but it still uses 2D pre-rendered backgrounds. I’d love to explore the creepy mansion from the first game in full 3D, powered by the RE Engine.…

1 SLEEP LIKE A KING Buy a tent so you’ll sleep like a king even on the ground. 2 BUY WISELY Tents provide different bonuses. Fur tents keep you warm, mage tents boost your mana. 3 FIND A SAFE SPOT If you pitch your tent near butterflies, it’s an ambush-free zone. 4 CHOW DOWN Camping is a great time to cook any raw meat or plants you’ve collected. 5 TAKE TIME TO FIX YOUR GEAR Allocate a few hours of rest for repairing weapons and armor. 6 PLANT YOURSELF The plant tent is a big seed that instantly grows into a single-use tent. 7 DISASSEMBLE Don’t forget to roll up your tent and take it with you in the morning!…

With a new Respawn game on the horizon, now feels like a fine time to revisit not only one of the best Star Wars games, but also the best game about forgetting you’re actually evil. I last played KOTOR after watching the first Force Awakens trailer, so my hero looks slightly like John Boyega, and I feel like an idiot for ignoring that Rey was obviously the Jedi. It’s a faff to make KOTOR run properly on a modern PC, but it’s worth it. It still has some of Bioware’s best characterization, an incredible, moving score, and one of the best twists in all of gaming. Which I’ve slightly ruined in the intro. Soz. 88…

Destiny 2’s PvP is a bit of a mess—neglected, unbalanced, and with a bizarre idea of what constitutes good matchmaking. That’s particularly true of competitive mode, which foregoes standard practices like placement matches or leagues in favor of resetting everyone each season and making all players, whatever their skill, scramble from the bottom afresh. At the same time, some of Destiny 2’s best guns require players to reach Fabled—the midpoint on the competitive ranking system. I have never done this, because, despite having played a lot of Destiny 2, I’ve barely touched competitive at all. PHILS AVAGE THIS MONTH Engaged in electroshock therapy ALSO PLAYED Sea of Thieves This season, though, Bungie has doubled the number of rank points you gain (or lose) from wins or losses. Theoretically, it should…

JEREMY PEEL THIS MONTH Believed a super-soldier could fly ALSO PLAYED JALOPY I DON’T NECESSARILY EVEN NEED TO KNOW WHERE I’M GOING BEFORE I LEAP The reveal trailer for Jedi: Fallen Order is full of minor feats of impossibility. The protagonist leaps great chasms, runs on vertical surfaces, and loosens the sturdy metal panels of a spaceship using only the spiritual spanner in his mind. I’ve played power fantasies like this before, and am bracing for it to feel more like Jedi: Fallen Over under my fumbling fingers. Or at least I was until I went back to Titanfall 2. Respawn’s only singleplayer campaign to date is the sensible place to look for pointers on how its Star Wars game might play, and it bodes well for Fallen Order’s acrobatics.…

NEED TO KNOW DIFFICULTY Easy TIME Less than an hour to get started VITAL LINKS www.rockstargames.com/V servers.fivem.net lossantoslife.com/rules 1 BUY GTA V FiveM is an up-to-64-person open source community modification for GTA V, that allows mods on the client side of operation. It works independently of GTA Online. Simply put, you must own GTA V in order to roleplay in GTA V. 2 GET A HEADSET There are a number of serious, text-based GTA V roleplay servers out there, but the best ones use voice chat. Newer versions of my favorite HyperX Cloud headset, pictured, retail for around $50. 3 INSTALL FIVEM Download the free FiveM client via its website. Again, it’s worth noting FiveM doesn’t modify your GTA V installation, which means you can switch between GTA Online and…

PC peripherals have become a hot market in the last decade or so, and nowhere is that more obvious that in the gaming sub-sector, which means anyone shopping for the best gaming keyboard in 2019 has a massive number of options at their fingertips. We’re seeing an incredible array of products across all sorts of switches and feature sets, from keyboards that act more like gamepads than traditional decks to boards that flash a Christmas in Rockefeller Plaza level of colored lighting spectacle.  While this means that there’s a range of choices at the both the top and bargain tier, it can also breed a level of marketplace confusion, so we’ve tested dozens of decks both new and old to help you The first step to finding the best gaming keyboard…

PLAINTIFFS ALLEGE THAT THE EVERYDAY ATMOSPHERE AT RIOT HASN’T IMPROVED Following a report by Kotaku on the endemic sexism at Riot Games last August, the company announced actions to improve its culture. Several months later, a number of Riot employees filed lawsuits against their employer for gender discrimination. Riot responded by pointing out its mandatory arbitration clause, effectively blocking court proceedings. Over 150 employees left their workplace both to protest forced arbitration, a practice in which a private arbitrator settles disputes instead of a court judge, and the ongoing problems at Riot. Arbitration differs from court procedures in that they’re confidential and parties choose arbitrators themselves, which means they’re not necessarily impartial. Most importantly, arbitration rulings aren’t legally binding. Since the original Kotaku report, Riot has taken measures to combat…

ALAN WAKE Set in the Pacific Northwest, this Twin Peaks-inspired horror game features some deep, spooky forests. KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE The kingdom of Bohemia’s forests are second only to The Hunter’s in terms of atmosphere and density. STAR WARS BATTLE FRONT Dice used a technique called photogrammetry to perfectly recreate the forest-covered moon of Endor. SKYRIM There are a lot of forests in Skyrim, but the autumnal trees and mountain flowers of the Rift are the highlight.…

WEST OF LOATHING The first town is a microcosm of the entire game, with choices and secrets packed into a tiny footprint set early enough that you can decide whether the character you created is right for you. THE EVIL WITH IN 2 The underrated survival horror game embeds optional tutorials. This boxcar encounter alone teaches about concepts like traps, upgrade materials, and escaping horrifying monstrosities. SPYRO: REIGNITED TRILOGY The hub locations of 3D platformers like the Spyro trilogy are beloved for a reason. They give players, especially younger ones, a safe place to practice platforming skills and new abilities. MAX PAYNE A snow-covered New York street is the perfect place to learn how Max Payne’s abrupt, balletic combat works. You spawn enemies from a button on a wall, and…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Expansive city-builder themed around the industrial revolution EXPECT TO PAY $60 DEVELOPER Blue Byte PUBLISHER Ubisoft REVIEWED ON Nvidia GTX Titan, Intel core i5-3570K 3.40 GHZ, 16 GB RAM MULTIPLAYER Yes LINK www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/game/anno-1800 Anno 1800 belongs to a select group of games that I like to refer to as “blink and it’s 2am” games. For example, you might sit down in an evening with the plan of setting up your first steel mill. Then you blink and it’s 2am and you’ve somehow founded a colony in the New World. Alternatively, perhaps you set the goal of reaching the next population milestone to unlock a new building. Then you do that, and the building you unlock is a zoo for which you can build individual…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? An open world post-apocalyptic shooter EXPECT TO PAY $60 DEVELOPER Avalanche, id Software PUBLISHER Bethesda REVIEWED ON GTX 1080, Intel i5-6600K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.rage2.com If a single weapon contains the essence of a first-person shooter, it’s undoubtedly the shotgun. Early in Rage 2, protagonist Walker—a wasteland ranger who can be either male or female, depending on your preference—finds a futuristic combat shotgun hidden away in an Ark, a kind of advanced fallout shelter designed to protect humanity and its precious technology from a cataclysmic asteroid impact. Rage 2 has a lot of problems, including a forgettable open world, but man, that shotgun. The instant you fire it, you know, everything else aside, it’s a quality FPS. This semi-automatic weapon of mass…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? The first three of four episodes of a futuristic point and click puzzler EXPECT TO PAY $17 DEVELOPER Palm Pioneer PUBLISHER Zodiac Interactive REVIEWED ON Core i5-8400, GTX 1060, 16 GB RAM MULTIPLAYER No LINK www.zodiacinteractive.com Point-and-click adventures have had a bit of a renaissance over the last few years. Increasingly the genre has cast aside its penchant for pun-filled mischief, and instead focused on being a great vehicle for investigative narratives. Tales of the Neon Sea borrows from well-known cyberpunk sources but, alongside its brighter aesthetic, it takes a deeper look at the technical aspects of cyberpunk, rather than the moral ones. The plot itself is conventional. One day the alcoholic augmented P.I. Mr Mist stumbles onto the corpse of his elderly neighbor,…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A Lovecraftian candle-lighting misery simulator EXPECT TO PAY $20 DEVELOPER Frictional Games PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Intel Core i7-7700 CUP @ 3.60GHz, 16 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070, Windows 10 MULTIPLAYER No LINK www.steampowered.com It gets worse as the game gets darker and my sanity suffers Let’s be picky. The central conceit of Amnesia: The Dark Descent is unrealistic. As anyone who’s taken a first date to see a Lars Von Trier movie can attest, it’s impossible to forget your worst mistakes. So the idea that someone could blithely erase out a past containing torture, kidnapping, and murder seems harder to swallow than than one of the game’s potions. The obvious caveat? It doesn’t matter. Amnesia remains a gruelling, unique experience. The sort…

Continuing with the amnesia theme (you spotted it, right?), we’ve got Alan Wake, a game about a man who forgets the book he wrote. I’ve tried to do that with reviews (60% for Spec Ops: The Line? Idiot) but never a whole novel. It plays like a ’90s TV show that was slightly too scary to watch, and I adore it. I love that the hero is called Alan, that his books are probably shit, and that he looks like a member of Semisonic who’s been kicked through FatFace. It’s exceedingly silly—axes and gunfights and shadow monsters in log cabins—but it’s made with palpable adoration for its influences, from King to Lynch to Hitchcock. Enjoyable enough Fortean nonsense. 76…

MALINDY HETFELD THIS MONTH Meandered through the American south at night ALSO PLAYED Anno 1800 I’ve never played Kentucky Route Zero before, out of fear of falling in love with a work in progress. Time passed, my mind changed, and the end of this strange painting of a game finally drew near. Many games take place at night, when monsters come out or criminals do their dirty work. But so many people work at night and see a completely different side of the world, where everything seems more subdued and people perhaps feel free to act a little differently as well. Add to that how Kentucky Route Zero takes place in those tiny communities and lonely houses away from the main roads—locations that have inspired games like Where the Water…

DO @ ME Life Invader, GTA V’s answer to social media, lets roleplayers converse without breaking RP protocol. Luckily, server mods don’t tolerate spam. REALITY CHECK Unlike the main game, death in GTA V RP is supposed to be rare. Don’t expect to respawn at the nearest infirmary. Do expect to wait for an EMS roleplayer’s help. PHONEIN Here, you’ll phone your employer, other RP services and, where required, the authorities. EMS roleplayers are busy, so don’t waste their time.…