Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2022 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

ROBIN VALENTINE Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Zipped himself up in a sleeping bag and declared himself God Emperor. There are some fictional locations that are just endlessly evocative. The shadowy streets of Gotham City, the rolling hills of the Shire… and, of course, the shifting sands of Arrakis, setting of Dune. Its fierce space politics, giant worms, and psychic drugs make it one of the most memorable places in all of sci-fi—and, incidentally, the perfect battleground for a strategy videogame. We first found that out 30 years ago with Dune II, and now Dune: Spice Wars is here to prove it once again. TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Email us atg 53:160 letters@pcgamer.com…

Chuhai Labs co-founder Giles Goddard thinks minimum settings are going out of fashion. A veteran of Nintendo in Japan who has worked on everything from Amiga and N64 to Wii and Oculus Quest, he’s noticed a change over the years with regard to developing for different PC specifications. “It used to be that the developers would aim for the lowest spec, and they’d make it look great on that, regardless of anything,” he says. “And then, if you had a faster PC or graphics board, you could put more bells and whistles on top for post-processing effects or whatever, but only to make what was already there nicer-looking. “I think nowadays, because everybody’s got a [powerful computer] the bar is so high that all the AAA makers are basically just…

It would be so, so easy to write off Teardown as just a tech demo. A simple framework of maps, tools, and missions built to show off developer Dennis Gustaffson’s incredible voxel destruction technology. But over its 18-month stretch in Early Access, Teardown has proven itself not only a stunning display of technical prowess, but also a bloody good little heist-’em-up, and the most creative sandbox platform since Garry’s Mod. Teardown is, first and foremost, all about that destruction. It’s a game of wooden shacks, concrete walls, metal catwalks, and plaster corridors—all of which respond appropriately to being wailed on with a sledgehammer. Despite its blocky appearance, Teardown’s worlds break in wonderfully convincing ways. Metal pipes bend when supports are removed, while plaster walls chip away to expose sturdier brickwork,…

1 GRINDER This ominous contraption gobbles up bodies and spits out mince. Hildred keeps mentioning how little she actually cleans it, which is surely going to impact her establishment’s hygiene rating. 2 OVEN Where meat and flour are transformed into the best pies (that are made from humans) you can buy. While that kitchen might look unwelcoming, what with all the viscera, at least the ovens work well. 3 BODIES Surely every London kitchen has a hole for where the bodies can pile high? While it might not look like the most sanitary option, rest assured that with business booming, they don’t stay there for too long.…

It’s such a great pitch, isn’t it? Braces! Aliens! Smoking! All the threat and precision of XCOM, but with the immediacy of a third-person shooter. You can tell from the construction of this intro that it doesn’t deliver. The Bureau is a deeply strange game: a cut-and-shut of different ideas that never really coheres. It’s a cover shooter with some inconsequential conversational elements; like someone made a Mass Effect game after hearing it described by six different stupid aliens. The result is akin to wearing a fedora in 2022: It feels like a great, stylish choice people will admire. But, actually, you look like a right twat. 61…

Guilds in MMOs are a wonderful thing. They bring players together under a common cause to tackle deadly dungeons, navigate new challenges, and build friendships. But like all online communities, they don’t always last. When a game has been out for over a decade, it’s natural that some people will move on to other games or get too busy with life, leaving formerly tight-knit groups to fizzle out. It’s no one’s fault—that’s just how it goes. It’s also why I decided to risk all of my in-game wealth in one huge server move gamble. The latest patch for FFXIV (6.1) saw the opening of a new housing area, and with it hundreds of new plots for home enthusiasts to scramble after. It also introduced a new lottery system to give…

As a recovering completionist, any open-world game I try in 2022 poses an inherent dilemma: How much of this world do I experience? Historically I’ve given into the guilty pleasures of Ubisoft-style games, merrily chasing question mark-laden maps and filling progress bars to 100%. Recently, I’m taking a more direct approach. Rather than attempting everything, I’m being more selective. With Dying Light 2 and Horizon Forbidden West out this year, too, there’s only so much time. Elden Ring presents challenges to both halves of my virtual tourist, it turns out. As you’d expect from a FromSoftware open-world game, trite modern conventions like question marks are absent. You do have a mount and fast-travel points to help you get around the Lands Between, but with the fact that hidden map fragments…

HORSEPLAY 1 The Lands Between is filled with horse-riding foes, but did you know you can parry them off their mounts for a ground stab? You can even do this to the Night’s Cavalry bosses, though they will try to re-summon their spectral steeds if you don’t keep them occupied. MARGIT GUD 2 Looking to make Margit a little easier? Visit the annoying Patches in Murkwater Cave and purchase his shackle. This item lets you restrain Margit multiple times throughout the fight, and you can even use it on Morgott later. Two for one can’t hurt. POISON OVERLOAD 3 You’ve most likely encountered Land Squirts in Elden Ring’s watery areas, bloated sacs that spew poison into the air. It may seem counter-intuitive, but if you poison them in return, they’ll…

WIDOWMAKER Overwatch’s femme fatale is a French ballerina with a sad history. After being kidnapped by the evil Talon and brainwashed, she murdered her own husband before returning to Talon. CHAMBER Valorant’s sniping specialist is also French. There must be something in the wine. His ultimate ability Tour De Force gives him a very expensive, high powered sniper rifle. Ooh la la. KARL FAIRBURNE Karl Fairburne is an American sniper in the Sniper Elite series. If you’ve ever wondered what James Bond might be like as a Yank, he’s your guy. He uses his rifle to foil the plans of evil Nazis.…

WES FENLON Twitter @wesleyfenlon This month Took Dune fandom to the next level by snorting cinnamon up his nose until he saw visions. MORGAN PARK Twitter @MorganRPark This month Investigated the difference between 6v6 and 5v5. Bless him, he struggles with numbers. IMOGEN MELLOR Twitter @ImoMellor This month Discovered that even time travellers have to deal with rich people messing everything up. CHRIS LIVINGSTON Twitter @screencuisine This month Ran errands for a bunch of frogs. And yet he “doesn’t have time” to wash up his used mugs?!…

“THE WAY HE PRESENTED IT TO ME WAS THAT HE WAS PUTTING TOGETHER THE 1927 YANKEES” Must have been born under a lucky star, this one,” mutters the gnome pushing the cart that carries your dead body. His voice is leaden with irony. Your luck extends only to the fact that your corpse is in one piece. A fat lot of good that’ll do you on your way to the incinerator. It’s an opening most reminiscent of Planescape: Torment, the classic RPG that begins in similarly macabre circumstances. But it also evokes The Elder Scrolls—namely the census taker who processes your entry to Morrowind, and mentions that you were born under a certain constellation. In that game, it’s a detail that contributes to a sense that you’re favored by the…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2022 DEVELOPER Half Past Yellow PUBLISHER Merge Games LINK mergegames.com Time on Frog Island was originally called Trading Time, and I can see why. I’m shipwrecked on an island, and the only way to fix my boat is to help out some giant frogs. Give a frog something it wants, it’ll give me something back. It’s all about trading up. What those frogs want, and what they’ll give me for it, is often a puzzle. No one speaks in words on Frog Island, only in pictures. The pictures can be simple, an identifiable object shown in a word bubble. Or it can be a little trickier. A frog asking for a sunflower is easy to understand but another shows me a picture of a mug, then…

When Frank Herbert began to pen the first Dune novel, video games were in an entirely nascent form. In 1965, when his iconic sci-fi work was published, a mere handful of games had been created, often for looming mainframe computers as research projects. However, in starting to build out his world of interstellar feudal conflict, political drama, and the desperate mining of a powerful drug called ‘melange’ or ‘spice’, Herbert set in motion a series of events that would have a profound influence over the real-time strategy genre, and even the wider gaming landscape. Herbert’s tale initially appeared as a run of serialised pieces in Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine. Soon after, Dune was released as a novel, which would in turn inspire numerous sequels written by Herbert and…

“Respawn had done such a fantastic job giving players an immersive experience by playing a wide range of audio tracks simultaneously. To get the performance level we wanted while staying within budget, we removed some subtler tracks after optimizing the sound.” “Framerate is king in VR, so that took priority with graphics resolution close behind. We also added some features, such as the ability to toggle the multisampling anti-aliasing level. Since this is a VR project, we had to set up an entirely new build and testing pipeline.” “There is a misconception that [porting] is ‘easy’ since you have the base game to work from. In reality, optimization is a difficult challenge that requires a robust set of tools, strict technical guidelines and talented artists who know how to make…

STAGE 0 An entirely unmutated cultist of Nurgle, rather wishing he didn’t have to fight Grey Knights. STAGE 1 This Plague Marine has grown a big horn. May not seem like much, but it’s the first step on the path to greatness. STAGE 2 A betentacled hand and a tumor-ridden foot—what greater blessing could a cultist ask for from the Lord of Disease? STAGE 3 Horns and a mouth in his gut helps this Plaguebearer stand out from the crowd—and eat two lunches at once. STAGE 4 With a grimacing face on his shoulder and an even bigger stomach-maw, this guy’s got a lot of mouths to feed.…

SLEDGE HAMMER No ammo. No fuss. Just a slab of rock on the end of a stick. If you need something smashed, this’ll smash it no problem (as long as it’s not brick or concrete). SHOTGUN Think of it as a sledgehammer, but with range. Not the most precise tool, but if you need to smash a window in a hurry there’s no better one. ROCKET LAUNCHER The rocket launcher is for those special occasions where you need to blow something up from half a mile away. Kaboom! BXH - X42 Fine, this one’s a mod. But sometimes you just truly need something erased from existence—and this handy, portable black hole launcher will do exactly that.…

Modern MotoGP is in a golden era. 2021 saw eight different winners across 18 races, and so far this season we’ve had three different riders on the top step in four races, including two taking their maiden victories. It’s unpredictable, packed with talent and spectacle, and guaranteed entertainment every race. Naturally, then, the focus of Milestone’s licensed bike sim MotoGP 22 is the 2009 season. An all-new mode, titled Nine: Season 2009, takes you back to a bygone era when Rossi, Lorenzo, Stoner, and Pedrosa jostled their 1,000cc machines around each other for the wins, by way of a documentary-style video series directed and narrated by filmmaker Mark Neale, and a series of challenges intertwined between them. The challenges are straightforward, the objectives always focusing on either overtaking or gapping…

YOR SINGULARITY An entirely synthetic race that doesn’t eat food and doesn’t care about approval. Ideal for new players. NAVIGATORS Navigators excel at science and exploration, but are less good when it comes to fighting and diplomacy. DRATH Tough looking dragon-people. The more money they have, the happier their citizens are. Sounds about right. XELOXI The Xeloxi Civilization is comprised entirely of criminals, which seems a bit prejudiced, really.…

Forget the lost, heretical technology of the past. There is one source of guidance now. One truth. And to live outside that truth is to risk ruin, ridicule and destruction. I am, of course, talking about trying to play Dawn of War with the original disks rather than just buying it again on Steam, complete with all 76 expansion packs that have been released since. It’s the smart choice, partly because the box copy is probably lost in my parents’ loft, and partly because I’m not certain my PC even has a disk drive. The Dark Age of Physical Media may have passed, but Dawn of War still bangs. No mercy for those snivelling xenos. 00…

At the end of 2020, 343 Industries completed its long journey to bring every mainline Halo game (except 5) to PC. It was a tremendous feat, but not the end of The Master Chief Collection’s journey by far, with season after season of thematic updates bringing new cosmetics, modes, and entire new maps to shooters that hadn’t otherwise seen updates in over a decade. Halo Infinite’s release may have called time on these massive seasonal drops. But as the latest update proves, 343 is far from done tinkering with the venerable FPS collection. The Master Chief Collection’s April update is headlined by an unseasonably spooky rework of Firefight, Halo’s PVE horde mode. Flood Firefight lets the green mist descend over New Mombasa’s streets as the Flood hordes invade Halo 3:…

This is a debrief report from Flaming Buffalo (I arrived late to codename assignment), from reconnaissance in the Soviet Army controlled region of Afghanistan. I was given two weeks to navigate and gather as much intel as possible on the USSR presence ahead of Big Boss’ arrival. He’s a busy guy, you know—it’s not like he can be in two places at once. after all. I was inserted by helicopter at 1800 hours near Spugmay Keep at the region’s southernmost point, with the intent of navigating the entire outer edge. On foot I made my way to the nearest small guard post, where I planted myself up on a ridge with a view from above. I spent a whole day watching this meagre camp to glean what I could about…

There is no high quite like the emasculated agony of graphics envy. It was 2007, I was 16 years old, and still fully bound to the limitations of the Xbox 360 and PS3 in the bedroom. The hand-me-down laptop whirring on the desk could barely handle Battlefield 1942, much less the relentless tempo of speedy processors dutifully obsoleting the seventh generation of home consoles. Still, I voraciously tore through the games press, reading up on the mouthwatering vistas that were enthusiastically unavailable on a Dualshock, essentially as a way to torture myself. The primary object of my obsession? Supreme Commander. Gas Powered Games’ watershed RTS arrived with exactly one selling point; this thing was a beast, and you should be jealous if you couldn’t run it. And so, I binged…

MOTHERBOARD B660M Mortar WiFi MSI $190 This MSI board delivers everything we need in a compact package and allows us to use much cheaper DDR4 memory. PROCESSOR Core i5 12400 Intel $192 Intel’s 11th Gen was at its best on a budget, and that’s why this six-core/12-thread processor is a great fit for this build. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Ed. Nvidia $399 The RTX 3060 Ti is a little overkill, but we’re willing to make sacrifices elsewhere to make it work. COOLER Laminar RM1 Intel Free with CPU Intel bundles a redesigned CPU cooler with some 12th Gen processors. This little chip chiller will serve us well for a while MEMORY Ballistix 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB) Crucial $80 With plenty of capacity at 16GB, this unembellished memory has…

MOTHERBOARD MPG Z690 Carbon WiFi MSI $400 This MSI motherboard offers a mix of high-end features, plentiful ports, and DDR5 support, without an extreme price tag. PROCESSOR Core i9 12900K Intel $620 Intel’s Core i9 12900K represents Alder Lake’s finest chip, and it’s one hell of a processor for whatever you might throw at it. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Ed Nvidia $1,199 The RTX 3080 Ti is the latest flagship graphics card from Nvidia, but savvy builders may prefer the RTX 3080. COOLER Kraken X63 NZXT $150 One of the most stunning AIO coolers rebuilt with an updated pump and, of course, RGB lighting for more pizzazz. MEMORY Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB Corsair $340 A new memory standard for a new era of memory speed. The Dominator…

ATREIDES Leader: Duke Leto Atreides Key strengths/weaknesses: Can peacefully annex territories, but cannot pillage neutral villages. If you want to prioritize politics over warfare, Atreides is the faction to play as. HARKONNEN Leader: Baron Vladimir Harkonnen Key strengths/weaknesses: Can use Oppression ability on villages, but loses resource production without active militia. Nobody likes you, but oppressing villages gets results, strengthening your army, and bolstering your stable of spies. THE FREMEN Leader: Liet Kynes Key strengths/weaknesses: Slower military supply drain, but limited access to political Landsraad. Expert desert warriors, the Fremen are largely excluded from politics but can ally with independent sects around the map to gain authority. THE SMUGGLERS Leader: Esmar Tuek Key strengths/weaknesses: Can place underworld headquarters in enemy villages, but limited access to political Landsraad. Money rules everything,…

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GILES GODDARD, CO - FOUNDER, CHUHAI LABS “It’s interesting to see what will happen with 8k and ray-traced graphics, because I think we’ve hit the limit for resolution with 8k. [With real-time ray tracing] it’s going to be less about turning settings off and on [because] it renders the world as in real life. It’s very hard to turn things on and off with ray tracing.” TERRY GOODWIN, TECHNICAL DIRECTOR, LAB 42 GAMES “People are always saying, how can they possibly get better than this? I think there will always be new ways of representing some facet of reality that you didn’t realize was missing until it’s put in a game. And everything looked really great before then, you just didn’t really notice.” ALEXANDER MURPHY, PRODUCER, VIRTUOS PARIS “I think…

STIR UP GOSSIP Chatting to your crew is a great way to learn about the lore—and they also love bitching about each other. TUNE UPS Repair your damaged ship to make it faster, deadlier, and home to even more Grey Knights. HIT THE BOOKS Use Seeds gained in battle to fund your research, gaining Strategems, Prognositicars, and other 40K words. CARTOGRAPHY Use the map to track the Bloom’s spread across the system, and spread your psychic network to more planets. MAKE OVERS Give your soldiers some individuality by customizing their appearances. You can’t go wrong with another bionic eye. GET TOLD OFF You may be the Commander, but you answer to Vardan Kai, who likes to call up and give you a bollocking.…

VALENTINO ROSS At the time an eight-time champ who’d just returned to winning ways after Hayden and Stoner won in ’06 and ’07. JORGE LORENZO So good in his debut Yamaha season that Rossi had a wall built between them in the pits. 2009 was war between the teammates. CASEY STONER The Ducati rider won the championship in 2007, then Rossi found a way to beat him to the ’08 title. It was everything to play for in 2009. DANI PEDROSA The Spaniard dominated 125s and 250s, but battled injuries throughout his MotoGP time, and was looking to step up in ’09.…

Norco demanded to be played. A surreal, anti-capitalist point-and-click with striking, grungy art and writing that’s evocative, angry, and exhausted—how could I decline? I was confident it would be my jam, with comparisons to Disco Elysium and Kentucky Route Zero, as well as glowing reviews, sealing the deal. And it absolutely did prove to be my jam, at least initially. It’s bleak and beautiful, with a strangeness that gives it the air of another reality. But it’s grounded in the problems and frustrations of the real world, where corporations pillage and pollute as a matter of course, leaving behind a string of ruined towns and people. As a piece of fiction it’s great: Clever, pissed off, and deeply weird. But as an adventure game, or any game, it’s not quite…

It’s been a while since I’ve stuck my nose into anything related to Game of Thrones. I think I just lost interest, which is what happens when you spend years invested in a bunch of books and then more years invested in a TV show, and then you get an abrupt and disappointing end to it all. But just because something ends badly doesn’t mean you can’t—eventually, after a long enough grace period—dive back in and enjoy all the stuff you liked before it came grinding to an unsatisfying halt. And so when I saw a full conversion mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord called Realm of Thrones, which turns the world of Calradia into Westeros and Essos and populates it with characters and locations from Game of Thrones,…

Overwatch is a ‘dead game’ to many but I still play a lot. When I’m sitting with friends in Discord shooting the sh*t, I also like to shoot sh*t, and Overwatch is my preferred place to do that. I’ve played hundreds of hours of Blizzard’s shooter, and for the last three or four years my favorite hero to main has been Widowmaker. And it’s had a terrible knock-on effect in other games. Sniping as a sexy french lady is, to me, the pièce de résistance of gunplay. There is nothing that sets off a small explosion of serotonin in my brain like getting a clean headshot on someone. The elegance. The ease of it all. It’s the most competitive I get, to be honest, knowing that I killed someone even…

MORGAN PARK You know me for my multiplayer shooter takes, but there’s more to me than that. I’m a man of depth, and I like conquering walls and snow just as much as blasting online rubes. BRICK BREAKER TEARDOWN teardowngame.com One of the few indie games that I can’t stop coming back to. Now that its campaign is complete and its modding scene is thriving, it has become one of the most inventive and fun quasi-puzzle games around. You’ll be hooked the first time you sledgehammer a wall. SPIRIT BOMB MIDNIGHT GHOST HUNT midnightghosthunt.com This is what happens when the prop hunt genre reaches its natural conclusion: a 4v4 asymmetrical showdown between kitted-out ghostbusters and ghosts with a ton of tricks up their sleeves. Ghosts can also fight back with…

HTC VIVE PRO 2 £720 Massive FOV, massive resolution, 120Hz refresh rate. It runs a bit hot during longer sessions, though. HP REVERB G2 £550 The huge 4320x2160 resolution rivals the Vive, but HP’s offering doesn’t quite have the FOV. OCULUS QUEST2 £300 Popular on the grounds of its affordability and convenience, it’s also one of the quickest to set up. VALVE INDEX £920 The big boy. It’s the priciest, but it does feel the most premium of the lot of them to make up for it.…

MOTHERBOARD B660M Pro RS ASRock $120 This is as cheap as we want to go while still offering room for expansion and upgrades down the line. PROCESSOR Core i5 12400F Intel $180 There’s no iGPU on this chip, but it’s a little cheaper as a result, and will work great for this particular build. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 3050 Nvidia $249 This GPU will deliver 1080p performance easily, and with 8GB of memory, it’s built to last. COOLER Laminar RM1 (included with CPU) Intel Free with CPU There’s room for an upgrade here, but on a budget the included CPU will work just fine. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Corsair $49 You could bump this to 16GB, but to save as much as possible we’ll stick to 8GB.…

MAXIMUM → Detailed shadow effects obscuring every page → 120fps page flips give you ultra smooth transitions → Waft each page back and forth to see realistic paper physics MINIMUM → 60% less words per page. Don’t worry, you won’t miss’em → 375x240 images will still give you a rough idea what the games look like → Unnecessary sections cut for faster loading (Ed’s Intro, All Over, etc) … UNTIL JULY 12…