Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2021 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

HIGHS Moneycraft Minecraft modders have earned over $350M since Microsoft bought Mojang’s block-builder. Arena Legends Apex Legends’ new 3v3 Arena mode is already a fan favorite here. Long war After six years, massive Doom mod Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony is finally available as a standalone game. LOWS Crypto woes HDDs and SSDs may become as hard to buy as GPUs if a new ‘proof-of-space’ cryptocurrency takes off. Out of Steam This year’s GDC survey found only 6% of developers feel Steam’s 30% revenue cut is well-earned. Nuclear winter Call of Duty: Warzone’s nuke event was a huge letdown, because we’ve seen it do better.…

If you’re still seething over Driver’s infamous car park level, you might well blame series creator Martin Edmondson. But the real culprit is the film that planted the idea in his head some two decades earlier. The Driver (1978) was a crime chase thriller in which a wheelman proved himself by flinging an orange Mercedes between the pillars of an underground garage. It’s all there: The handbrake turns, the speed test, the reverse 180—even the slalom that would-be drivers found so tricky to master. “It was actually the first film I ever went to the cinema to see,” Edmondson explains. “My dad had to go first just to check it wasn’t too violent.” The level’s difficulty, however, is all thanks to Edmondson. “I could do that garage in just under…

While Diablo II: Resurrected overhauls Diablo II’s graphics, underneath the new 3D models, dynamic lighting, and shiny puddles it’s the same action RPG I was click-click-clicking through 21 years ago. It feels a bit simplistic today (the skill tree is tiny!), but that only makes me like it more. Diablo II still rules. There are little tells that Diablo II: Resurrected is just a costume—the way the character model gently snaps to the eight directions the original sprite can face, for example—but I might not have believed that it’s truly just a high-res version of Diablo II if it weren’t possible to unmask. Press G, and the 4K world dissolves into the original low-res renders. It’s extremely cool. Aside from the redone graphics, not much has changed. There are quality…

Back in 2018, Owlcat Games released Pathfinder: Kingmaker, a CRPG based on the popular tabletop game. It had some neat ideas, like building and managing your own kingdom, but paled in comparison to the likes of Divinity and Pillars of Eternity. Fast forward to today and the developer is hoping to make up for the first game’s shortcomings—and has managed to raise over $2 million through crowdfunding to help them do it. Wrath of the Righteous expands on Kingmaker in every way, including the addition of Mythic Paths. These let you become, among other fantastic creatures, a Lich, Angel, Gold Dragon, or Demon, which will dramatically affect your character, how the story plays out, and how the world reacts to them. But that all comes much later. First, you have…

So Kynseed is an RPG about growing up, getting old, and dying, which is quite ironic since it feels like the game has been on Steam in various builds since forever. It actually first appeared on the platform back in 2018, when GreenLight was still a thing, and it’s now finally out. Well, in Early Access at least. Although the game’s development timeline is somewhat lengthy, it’s understandable looking at the scope of the game. After jumping in and starting a save in the most recent build, the Apothecary update, it’s almost overwhelming how much there is to do. It’s a life sim RPG like Stardew Valley but with less emphasis on farming. You have a farm as your main source of income—you can plant, nurture, harvest, and sell crops—but…

he world is dying. Tendrils of darkness crawl across the land, swallowing up everything but the battered road ahead and your flickering torch, the world’s last hope for salvation. The apocalypse has arrived—but if that sounds bleak, you’ve probably never played Darkest Dungeon. “The first Darkest Dungeon, the further you go down, the worse and worse and worse it gets,” says Red Hook co-founder and creative director Chris Bourassa. Chris is about to convince me that this game about the end of the world, full of lost souls and horrifying monsters, is actually about hope. Darkest Dungeon II is a road trip, a roguelike mash-up of Darkest Dungeon and The Oregon Trail about clawing your way out of the darkness, rather than descending ever deeper into it. LAST WAGON OUT…

I’m strapped into the passenger seat of a car somewhere in the American midwest. I don’t know how I got here, just like I don’t know how I’ll end up alongside the next four drivers I hitch a ride with in Hitchhiker. In an even vaguely real-world context, this scenario could be a little alarming, given how vulnerable I am as an amnesiac hitchhiker with no sense of direction. But as soon my driver, a raisin farmer called Vern, starts musing about everything from relationships to philosophical raisin-based analogies, a wave of comfort washes over me, and I’m all aboard for the ride—wherever it may take me. Why our protagonist is hitchhiking across America will eventually become clear (sort of). But while I’m riding shotgun with this procession of philosopher-drivers…

Launching a ship is difficult. It imposes stresses on the vessel not experienced during standard operation. It presents a significant, often dangerous engineering challenge. In 1860, after eight years of planning, two people died launching Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s SS Great Eastern. It’s so difficult, in fact, that sailors do anything they can to bless the maiden voyage, which is why we smash bottles of champagne on the hulls of new ships. Despite this, I’d still rather launch a 32,000 ton steam ship with salad tongs and half a can of WD40 than try to fire up Sea of Thieves on the Microsoft Store again. It simply won’t load. I reinstall, switch drives, and even consider breaking a bottle of champagne against my PC. In the end, I move the whole…

Swimming in games is always bad. So why do I quite like Song of the Deep, a game that’s just one great big underwater level? It’s partly to do with presentation. The missing-dad storyline and Irish narration make it feel I’ve stumbled across a sad Scandinavian animation on Netflix. I respect protagonist Merryn’s engineering skill: If I built a homemade submarine in a day it would essentially be a submersible tomb. And while it’s not especially challenging, it’s a pleasant experience nonetheless: Like going to see the expensive aquariums at the back of the pet shop and accidentally discovering your missing father floating next to the algae scrubbers. 68…

Want a gaming monitor? Get one with a high refresh rate. Everything else is pretty much up for grabs, and are there plenty of features to ponder. Deciding between an IPS or VA panel is already a conundrum. And what about panel, size, shape, and resolution? Is the 16:9 aspect ratio still the most versatile, or is ultrawide? The best high refresh rate monitors ain’t cheap, unfortunately. But nor are they megabucks. If you feel you can’t answer any of these questions then don’t fret, we’re here to help. For we’ve done the testing, played the games, and made our conclusions in the hope of offering you a firm answer on which high refresh rate monitor is worth your money. 1 MPG ARTYMIS 343CQR MSI $899 Way ahead of the…

Mythic Quest is a workplace sitcom about the dev team behind the most popular (fictional) MMORPG in the world. We talked to some of the actors and creators behind the show (which is co-produced by Ubisoft Film & Television) about the serious game industry issues it tackles with humor, how gamers and developers have responded to the show, and if there are any similarities between making a game and making a show about a game. In Mythic Quest’s pilot episode, the team was scrambling to complete its first expansion, called Raven’s Banquet, and season two similarly begins with the gang hard at work on the next expansion: Titan’s Rift. And in some ways, it sounds like making the second season of a television show might not be all that different from releasing…

Anyone who’s read Rivers of London will feel right at home with the intro to Last Stop. Having hilariously stolen a policeman’s helmet, two teens from 1982 try to escape into the London Underground, pursued by cops, where they find a mysterious green-glowing door and an even more mysterious stranger. One steps through, the other holds back. An adventure from the creators of 2016’s Virginia, Last Stop makes use of a similar flat-shaded Unity-powered aesthetic. While major characters are detailed, background figures have a distressing lack of facial features. Player characters stand stiffly when not controlled, and bump into things a lot when they are. Two characters wear the same shoes, but don’t seem to notice. It’s not all bad though. Last Stop is split into three narratives, selected by…

There is no fall damage in Sky Beneath, which turns out to be a lucky thing. Arcing over so my feet point perpendicularly to where they used to be, I drop to the wall of a lift shaft and then, with another 90-degree flip, drop all the way down it as far as I can go. The demo I run through gives a half-hour slice of the beginning of the game, in which our hero breaks into a run-down science facility while chatting with an off-screen ally, and attempts to get her ‘gravity suit’ powered up. Once this is achieved, she makes her way to the lift shaft in an attempt to access the R&D division, locked beyond a large door. The key to opening the door, it disappointingly turns…

Of all the tiles in Dorfromantik—tiles that snap together in magical ways—edge pieces are the cruellest. There’s a finality at odds with the endless nature of this procedural jigsaw, whose forests, towns, rivers, and railways want to expand in every direction—not be curtailed by the results of a lucky dip. Dorfromantik is a puzzle game, but also a city builder, and sort of a board game. You spend your time constructing settlements, and all the necessary stuff around them: Forests, train tracks, rivers, and patchwork fields, by placing hexagonal tiles that are randomly drawn, one at a time from a pile on the screen. You don’t get to choose between tiles, or remove ones that have been set already, although you are allowed a glimpse of upcoming tiles, to better…

In the fiction of this new Mortal Kombat movie, I like to imagine there’s a whole crew of workers hired by thunder god Raiden to set up the lighting for the tournament arena. Floodlights with colored gel filters to set the mood. Torches for ambiance. Maybe a few spotlights to make sure everyone knows it’s fight night. It must’ve been as disappointing for them as it was for me when the fighters decided not to bother waiting for an arena, and just started killing each other in whatever dark alley, dark temple, or dark house they happened to be in at the time. The lighting union will not forget this betrayal! Whether to help hide its CG effects or to set a dark and serious tone, the new Mortal Kombat seems…

BIRD AND BEAST PILAF Meat and poultry cooked with rice and stock. Eat this dish and the damage you take while guarding enemy attacks is reduced. TOCHITURA DE PUI A savory stew made from the meat of a rare bird, which lives somewhere in the village. Gives you a large permanent HP increase. SARMALE DE PESTE Cabbage roll stuffed with fish. The Duke says they’re “so light you’ll feel weightless”, which gives you a permanent movement speed boost.…

Although Blade Runner has inspired three trillion and six movies, games, books, comics, albums, and cereals, only a tiny percentage of these have understood (or even tried to understand) the movie. Throwing neon signs and Japanese words around your environment like a baby gleefully hurling porridge across the kitchen has nothing to do with cyberpunk. Here, however, we have a game that not only understands Blade Runner, but thoroughly deserves to be mentioned alongside it. Y’know, like I just did. Your character is an android created with the sole purpose of running what is for legal reasons absolutely not a Voight-Kampff machine. The game (mostly) consists of a half dozen or so interrogations conducted with this machine. Usually you’ll be speaking with androids, but occasionally with a human. You see,…

Having spent several days agonizing over how best to explain the complex premise of Quantum League, I’ve decided that the best course of action is to (partly) lie. So, I’m going to tell you that this is a competitive 1v1 or 2v2 FPS consisting of three-round matches. At the end of the first round, you travel back in time to fight alongside yourself for the second round; then time rewinds once more, so that you’re fighting alongside two previous versions of yourself. Let me give you an example. I’m playing a 1v1 point-capture match. In the last seconds, my opponent and I are both on the point, but they kill me just as time runs out. Time rewinds, the second round begins, and I run ahead of the previous version…

If there’s one thing games have taught me, it’s never to trust anyone in a lab coat who tells you they’re not a doctor. Even, and perhaps especially, if they work on the Clinique counter in Boots. This is how SOMA begins, and the sense of all-pervading wrongness spirals from there. I feel sad going into it with some prior knowledge, because it must have been amazing to experience the first WTF moment cold, trying to piece together what’s going on from snippets of garbled information and environmental hints. The world is properly brilliant: The feral child of Rapture and the Sevastopol, literally dripping in horror, framed by menacing shadows. It looks fab, even now, like a real, intimidating place despite the speculative fiction trappings. The feeling of being in…

After being endlessly hassled by monster fish in Song of the Deep, this feels like revenge. Megaquarium is Prison Architect for aquatic life. Or at least that’s how I’m playing it. I don’t care if you don’t want to be bullied by the bigger fish, King Demoiselle; you made the mistake of looking like an enemy from my last review. That thought aside, Megaquarium is just lovely: a gentle management sim that drip feeds you new options for progression and provides just the right level of complexity. 80…

Switzerland’s rolling hills and snowy peaks seem like the ideal destination for a bit of peace and quiet. But in the horror game Mundaun, instead of being charmed by Swiss countryside, my first day in the snowy Alps ended with me scrambling around in the dark fending off monstrous wicker men with a broken pitchfork. My first day in town has been, in a word, surreal. The game’s heavy charcoal hand-drawn visuals really should have been my first clue that this was not going to be the getaway I had envisioned. A little bit of context: You play as a young man named Curdin, who has returned to the secluded rural village of Mundaun after receiving a troubling letter. The local priest has written that Curdin’s grandfather has tragically died…

Broken Sword, like most games by Revolution Software, uses an in-house engine called Virtual Theatre. The studio was formed in 1990 by Charles Cecil, Tony Warriner, David Sykes, and Noirin Carmody, and its first project was Lure of the Temptress. This fantasy adventure game (which is now free on GOG) was the debut of the Virtual Theatre system, which would see characters moving around the world, traveling between locations, and following simple routines—around which many of the puzzles were designed. Broken Sword, however, doesn’t actually utilize Virtual Theatre to the same degree, but an iteration of the engine has been in almost every Revolution game to date, including its latest, Beyond a Steel Sky.…

Anyone who is not heartily sick of the words ‘blockchain’, ‘crypto’, and ‘NFT’ (and, indeed, mentions of quantum computing in these pages) may be interested to hear that, in a few years’ time, the whole thing might go away. It’ll probably be replaced by something worse, of course, but the argument over the subject is interesting. Could a sufficiently powerful quantum computer, one that’s not been invented as yet, bring the whole blockchain network down around our ankles? It’s easy, and often fun, to attribute remarkable powers to inventions of the future. Imagining VR that links itself directly to your visual cortex does not make it a reality, but quantum computers exist in the same way VR helmets do: The ones we know about are very early models that could…

If I asked you which game developer you’d consider Oscar-worthy, how would you respond? Maybe one of Sony’s ‘prestige’ first-party studios? Perhaps a narrative-heavy developer like Telltale or Dontnod, or a triple-A powerhouse like EA or Ubisoft? Instead, the academy has chosen to award Respawn Entertainment with the prestigious award—and it wasn’t even for the wall-running FPS series it’s known for. Colette, a short documentary following a 90-year-old French Resistance fighter as she visits the German concentration camp where her brother was killed, won the Oscar for Best Documentary (Short Subject) at this year’s Academy Awards. It’s a fantastic short, exploring pained family dynamics, resistance, and the brutality of Nazi rule in a tight 20 minutes. But it’s also an unlockable videogame extra, originally released as one of many supplementary…

DANNY PUDI (BRAD) BREATH OF THE WILD “My son is making fun of me at this point. You still haven’t finished this game?” CHARLOTTE NICDAO (POPPY) ANIMAL CROSSING “It was actually one of the ways that I would hang out with my mom, who was back in Australia.” JESSIE ENNIS (JO) TETRIS, TWO DOTS “I recently was caught by my screentime app, and found out how many hours I spend playing.” DAVID HORNSBY (DAVID) FIFA “I’ve gotten into FIFA 21. I’m playing weekend league now. I’ve got a club team with some high school friends.”…

The Expeditions series has invaded Mesoamerica with the Conquistadors and raided England with the Vikings, taking the idea of a historical RPG from a niche concept to a fan favorite. Now, Expeditions is going to ancient Rome, and it’s asking players to become one of the greatest conquerors of the age. Expeditions: Rome is the latest in the series, coming this year. It’s a sprawling work of historical fiction set in a world where the player’s custom character walks in the footsteps of Julius Caesar. Like previous games in the series, Rome won’t focus on a precise retelling of the history, but rather use history as a jumping-off point. It’s also going to take advantage of the new setting to shake up the underlying RPG mechanics, making the tactical battles more exciting…

Willem Dafoe’s face as the Green Goblin in Spider-Man still haunts me. I’ve been scared of Defoe for going on 20 years, and Twelve Minutes is proof that that fear remains strong even when I can’t see his ghoulish grin. Here at least I have good reason: He only went and choked me to death. That was the first time the aggressive cop, voiced by Dafoe, broke into my apartment, and accused my wife of being a killer. It wouldn’t be the last. Twelve Minutes is a time loop game, a miniature Groundhog Day mystery that hinges on this break-in and the buried story behind it. Before I played Twelve Minutes, I didn’t expect my character to be aware of the time loop—I assumed this was a small game about…

Typical, isn’t it? You wait ages for a grizzled World War II real-time tactics game set on the eastern front, then two come along at once. Last year’s Partisans: 1941 was an excellent take on the Commandos formula, and now War Mongrels seeks to do the same from a different perspective, with missions so challenging they will make you cry blood. Taking place in 1944, War Mongrels sees you assume control of a Dirty-Dozen-style group of saboteurs who attempt to undermine the Nazi war machine as it slowly retreats from Soviet advance. Interestingly, your first two characters are themselves former Wehrmacht soldiers. Evald is a reluctant Silisean draftee, while Manfred is a former hero of the Nazis imprisoned for refusing to fire on a group of unarmed civilians. DOGGED DETERMINATION…

Space tyrants always seem like they’re having fun, just going around shooting lasers at planets they don’t like. But it’s all a facade. I’ve been trying to conquer the galaxy in Star Dynasties, but I’ve been too busy dealing with scandals and feeling sorry for myself. Things aren’t going well for Duke Fraser. My mum, who was also my best general, just died. I had to exile my brother after he had an affair with my wife. I’m having an affair of my own, and it might be a little bit responsible for a civil war. And you know what? I don’t think we even know how to make lasers. I’m pretty sure I can salvage this disaster, however, because I’ve played quite a bit of Crusader Kings. Star Dynasties…

DARKEST DUNGEON II DARKEST DUNGEON…

If you didn’t know that Nier was the final game from studio Cavia Games, you might be able to tell from playing it. The action RPG feels like a final act: a swing for the fences characterized by anger, tragedy, and a desperate sense of sincerity. And like most desperate swings, it failed at the time: Sales were poor, Cavia Games was absorbed into its parent company, and Nier’s creative director, Yoko Taro, moved on to ply his craft elsewhere. If Nier was characterized by desperation, Nier Replicant (technically named Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… but that’s just silly) is an act of love. Created by developer Toylogic and publisher Square Enix with the direct involvement of Taro and his regular band of collaborators, this remaster feels like an attempt to make…

Are you new to motorcycle racing games? Well, let me tell you this: MotoGP 21 is going to be really difficult. But what am I saying—perhaps you’re a perennial hundred-hour player in Milestone’s long-running bike sim, with every braking zone from Losail turn 1 to Valencia’s Adrian Campos corner memorized. Guess what: MotoGP 2 is still going to be really difficult. This series has taken a turn simwards since its move to UnrealEngine in 2018, but this year’s release represents the most noticeable shift in difficulty and realism in years. In particular, changes to suspension and braking make themselves felt in every corner entry and apex, demanding a different approach than last year’s game asked of you. And if you didn’t play any of last year’s game: Oh boy… But…

The story of Smelter begins with Adam and Eve and the downfall of Eden, and ends with freeing an empress from a crystal prison and racing to stop a megalomaniac demon from taking over what I presume is a section of Hell. It’s a side-scrolling action-platformer with a real-time strategy overland map, a tower-defense strategy game, and a top-down shoot-’em-up, interweaving multiple indie-friendly genres—and not for its benefit. The awkward blending of genes is just as weird as the story, which transports Adam and Eve’s fall from Paradise into a world of mailbox-shaped monsters, hidden labs, and a flying mask named Smelter. Eve wants to find Adam, while Smelter wants to restore his lost empire of Zirms, who resemble dark elves. He offers to merge with Eve, Venom-style. The result…

I haven’t looked, but I expect there are thousands of ASMR videos about Abzu. Calm voices narrating as you paddle past swaying kelp and shoals of brightly-colored fish. I’m comatose just thinking about it. It’s a testament to Abzu’s chill that you can even feel relaxed while riding a shark. The most stirring moments come from the sense of freedom, both in terms of where you go and the lack of a time limit. I also don’t mind the story, even if the inevitable ecological message feels like the bit at the end of the nature documentary where Sir David Attenborough makes us feel bad about how we’re ruining the ocean, and all crabs now live in discarded yoghurt pots. 82…

Playing Elite: Dangerous is like parenting—you are continually overestimating and underestimating the abilities of both your ship and child. You think your Vulture could just take on that wing of Deadly-ranked Eagles after an hour of swatting away sad little gangsters, then find yourself floating home. Similarly, my five-year-old son’s suggestion that he play that game where you “become like a police officer, but not, and shoot space pirates” should have given me pause. However, after a lockdown grinding the Lego Star Wars games past the point where anything has maintained its lustre, I thought this was a good idea. Elite has been woven into my being for 37 years. Could I hand down my love of the big black? Besides, while bounty hunters are pretty much the bad guys…

1 EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS Beeple’s collage, based on his popular Instagram, sold for $69.3 million. 2 THE PIXEL Digital artist Pak sold The Pixel, which is literally a grey square, for $1.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction. 3 JACK DORSEY’ FIRST TWEET A piece of internet history? Perhaps, but is it worth $2.9 million? 4 CRYPTOKITTIES DRAGON Got 600 Etherium ($1.45m) burning a hole in your hardware wallet? Why not buy a virtual pet?…