Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2023 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

Dragonbaby is a localization company based in Osaka, Japan, which was co-founded by Jeremy Blaustein and Sam Burton. If you recognize Blaustein’s name, it may be from his freelance work on games including Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill. Burton has been translating for all his working life. “I’m probably more of an exception than the rule,” Burton says, explaining that he’s been in localization since graduating from the University of Manchester in 2015. This was because his first role, with a large localization company in London, was “very low paid, very long commute. But they accepted people with no experience”. Today, he’s head of localization. “I also think that I’m an exception,” says Blaustein, “but then again, I come from two generations earlier than Sam. I studied Japanese and…

The first time I got really far in Mortal Sin and unlocked its third area, I thought I was overpowered. My character was basically Guts from the manga Berserk. On muddling through that third area and reaching Mortal Sin’s Early Access endgame though, I realized my error: you have to be overpowered to survive these final levels. Mortal Sin is a first-person melee combat-focused roguelike from solo developer Nikola Todorovic. And, in a really rather weird turn of events, we actually published a review of Mortal Sin last March (it’s still on the website) after an early version of the game was mistakenly labeled as a finished build by a third party representing Todorovic. Despite that mix-up, PC Gamer contributor Tom Sykes loved that early version of the game and…

Diablo IV has a Dsurplus of corpses. For every gangly demon, there are piles of bones just waiting to pop out. They bulge out of their stomachs like a rodent in a snake. One slice and they come tumbling out. It’s a bloody mess, but to my Necromancer, it’s an opportunity. To her, there’s value in what a body leaves behind. After all, bodies are a pain. They fight us at every turn and exist to get worse. Corpses, however, are a canvas. They birth friendly skeletons and deadly explosions. Those explosions lead to more corpses, and soon, my Necromancer is a spark in a world of gasoline. Don’t let the screenshots fool you: Diablo IV is an absurd game. It may be darker and more serious than Diablo III, but…

Dredge isn’t shy about the horrors that lie mere feet under my fisherman’s dinky boat. Sure, my bright day hours are filled with peaceful fishing to gentle piano tracks, in a quaint loop of sailing around for catches and then selling them for money towards upgrades and tools. Then dusk sets, my paranoia kicks in and Dredge bears its monstrous, mutated teeth. Life in Dredge is Lovecraftian as hell, wonderfully ominous and effortlessly moreish all at once. Things start off simple enough: my poor fisherman has wrecked his vessel near the small island town of Greater Marrow. After being offered a replacement and a small debt for the pleasure, I’m on my way to start fishing. Getting a target to align with green zones dotted along various shapes reels fish…

After a year of power creep letting us chew through enemies, Lightfall is here to bring some challenge back to Destiny 2. Abilities take longer to recharge, enemies hit harder and tank more damage, and it’s no longer possible to outlevel certain activities. We’ve spent a year gorging on ice cream, and now Destiny 2’s newest expansion wants to remind us that, no, we also have to eat our broccoli. In this analogy, the broccoli is machine guns. This was always going to be a hard sell. Destiny 2 feels different now – less approachable and quicker to punish a mistake. While many of its changes were necessary, I’m not surprised that players aren’t as hyped about what Lightfall brings. It doesn’t help that there isn’t even a great campaign…

If you’ve ever attempted to dunk a basketball you’ll know the pleasure that comes from trying to achieve perfection through repetition. Freekick Underground captures that pleasure with remarkable accuracy. You, the free-kicker, are trying to reach a distant soccer goal, which you have presumably lugged to the sewer for your subterranean pastime. Each of the 15 levels is a challenge of environmental geometry, as you try to apply just enough height and pressure to punt the ball into the back of the net with a single kick. As you can’t move the little player—just decide the height and power of their kick—there are only two keyboard keys to worry about: Up and Right. Up moves the height meter, and Right increases the power gauge. Get either wrong and the ball…

Let’s think of this in terms of karaoke. Nobody really enjoys it when someone’s actually good at it. What you want is a group of people who try very hard but consistently fail to hit the high notes and are endearingly rubbish. Dragon’s Dogma is the PC game equivalent of that. It dreams so big. It’s the person in the group who picks the Meat Loaf song, forgetting the required vocal range and three-minute instrumental bit. Dragon’s Dogma promises a dynamic open world and an epic story, with combat that feels eccentric and unusual. And, for the most part, it delivers. There’s something wonderfully adventurous about clambering up a cyclops and stabbing it in the eyeball, and the game’s systems are tactile enough that you genuinely feel like you’re interacting…

It’s 1999. A young PC enthusiast living in a quiet town is having his little idiot mind blown on a weekly basis now he’s the proud owner of a personal computer. It’s a kaleidoscope of formative experiences: Half-Life. Thief: The Dark Project. PC Gamer magazine and its many in-jokes (beards and tanks were especially in-vogue topics of tomfoolery for then editor Jim Flynn’s band of raconteurs). Doing his homework by pasting passages directly out of the Encarta CDs that came with the aforementioned PC. And then, one day during a math lesson, comes something entirely different. AT SURFACE LEVEL, BONZI BUDDY MADE GOOD ON HIS PROMISE “He does all sorts”, my friend Thomas Frame enthuses. “Tells jokes, sings songs. You can type stuff in and he says it. He’s got…

After weeks of teasing Valve has announced Counter-Strike 2, the newest iteration of what some consider the greatest and most popular competitive FPS in history. Yes, it’s technically not the second Counter-Strike game, but the number feels like a statement of intent: this is the foundation for the next decade of Counter-Strike players and the esports scene). And on first sight you may well wonder what the big deal is. Valve says, “Counter-Strike 2 is an overhaul to every system, every piece of content, and every part of the CS experience,” but it looks, and plays, an awful lot like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The big changes are technological, with the most eye-catching being the new smoke grenades: the billowing smoke they create now reacts to things like bullets and grenades.…

For nearly a decade, developer Airship Syndicate has felt like it’s building up to something. Formed out of the ashes of THQ and Vigil Games—the creators of the Darksiders series—it’s been quietly releasing very good games ever since, such as Darksiders Genesis and Ruined King. Its projects have been modest, but full of whip-smart RPG mechanics and progression systems, each feeling like a testing ground for bigger ideas. Wayfinder feels like the culmination of that work. The game is an MMO action-RPG—it’s published by Digital Extremes, and that’s appropriate, because really if you think of this as Warframe’s structure combined with the style and combat of Darksiders, you won’t be far off. Brought to life by Joe Madureira’s distinctive chunky, colorful art style, it’s an immediately pleasing fantasy world to…

Rats. They’re a staple of early RPG levels, and while some games have fun with them, like giving them psychic powers or hiding a single huge one under an inn, in Wartales they’re grotesque, their disgusting hole surrounded by the carcasses of their victims, the ground made sticky by blood. I hadn’t even picked up a quest, so I didn’t need to attack. I just saw rats and waded in with all the misplaced bravery of the level-two fighter. And frankly, I’ve had better mornings. This fight against rats hinges on killing the broodmother, a swollen monstrosity who summons more rats out of the ground every time she gets a turn. Wartales, from the French developer behind Dune: Spice Wars, has been in Early Access for a while now, and…

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is like the anti-God of War. It bears a family resemblance to Sony’s franchise revival, enough to invite comparison, but its design philosophy could hardly be more different. In particular, if you ever thought God of War would benefit from a more hands-off approach to nudging you through its adventures (“Shut up Atreus and let me figure it out for myself. God!”), then rest assured Clash: Artifacts of Chaos keeps its sweaty palms strictly to itself. If that sounds heavenly for those who prefer their games not to be littered with symbols and NPC chatter telling them where to go and how to get there, however, beware the old adage ‘be careful what you wish for, you might just get it’. Pushing through Clash’s lush world…

For as long as there have been written stories, people have been trying to theorize what makes them tick. Some interpret stories as a series of acts, for example, while others view them as different varieties of a hero’s journey, or riffs on seven basic plots. Storyteller, meanwhile, posits that it’s fun to muck about with time-honored structures and tropes, and see what sticks. And frankly, it’s hard to disagree. In Storyteller’s comic-strip world, any tale can be told in three to six panels, and it’s your job to figure out how. Each canvas of panels is a puzzle, which you solve by placing scenes and characters to create an outcome that matches the story’s title. Perhaps the title is ‘Eve dies heartbroken’, for example, and you’re handed two scene…

You play as a hospital janitor in this turn-based RPG, which combines a Silent Hill-like setting with vivid characters and enemies reminiscent of Persona. It begins with the solitary Vasilis (that’s you) cleaning up spills around the hospital as usual, before a blackout turns your familiar world on its head. Most of the staff and patients disappear, although there are now monstrous creatures and ghosts roaming round the halls. Initiate a fight—most won’t attack first—and you’re in familiar 16-bit RPG territory, especially when you’ve picked up a few party members. There isn’t a lot to chew on when it comes to combat, with only a few abilities per character, meaning you’ll use the same tactics again and again. However, battles are a surprisingly small part of the game, and you’ll…

Rounding up the vague, mythical creature theme is Hades, a game that gets ten extra points because Cerberus is a big red dog you can pet, rather than a group of cash-stacked probably-racists. It’s also the best game you’ll ever play that lets you chat with sexy gods every time you die. And die you will. Over and over and over again. But Hades is constructed in such a way that death rarely feels punitive. Supergiant excels at the story-driven stuff, and the additional narrative treasures you unlock at the start of each new run often outweigh any frustration. Hades is a flex; a powerlifter doing gymnastics, just to demonstrate that they can. Those narrative threads are expertly woven into the weapons and upgrades, too. Some of these feel deliberately…

There are days when I want to throw my gaming headset off my head. Not out of rage. No, I suffer from something called uncomfortable ear lobes from wearing those damned things all day. It’s in these tough times that I look to my pair of trusty PC speakers to deliver bass-thumping audio instead. For many years PC speakers have been ruled by nondescript towers that left a lot to be desired in terms of audio quality and oomph. Thankfully, PC gaming’s obsession with overkill has led manufacturers to craft some truly extraordinary speakers to set down on your desk. Even going as far as a soundbar with a head-tracking, beam-forming AI built-in. Neat. There really are many options to choose from nowadays. Thankfully that’s why our team exists. We’ve…

KEY Budget build PC gaming is for everyone. Pick the parts you want to build a new, well-rounded PC for a good price. Mid-range build You want to run every new game at 1080p 60fps. This recommended build will see you through. Advanced build You’re looking for the best PC on the market and superior components. But you still want to spend smart. BUDGET BUILD Enjoy 1080p gaming without breaking the bank 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 13400F Intel $196 Intel’s added four more cores to its entry-level Core i5 and it’s become even more fantastic value. GRAPHICS CARD Radeon RX 6600 AMD $220 AMD’s RX…

No longer must those of us who love FromSoftware’s build-your-own-mecha series languish in purgatory, stuck playing the last Armored Core’s merely OK (and now decade-old) multiplayer on modded PlayStation 3s. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is blazing its way onto PC. If you’ve been a dedicated PC player for your whole life and the whole ‘mecha anime’ thing passed you by in the ’90s and ’00s, the hype from fans of FromSoftware probably seems odd. What you need to understand is that there are other games with mechs, but they are not Armored Core. In the same way that Elden Ring is an all-encompassing experience, Armored Core has long striven for that same ideal with giant robots. This sequel is a promise to fans that’s been decades in the…

The Isle of Man TT is regarded as the greatest motorsport event on the planet, offering the ultimate prize in motorcycle racing. Fresh from the success of RiMS, does Ride on the Edge 3 developer RaceWard Studio have what it takes to grab the Tourist Trophy from previous custodian Kylotonn? The first thing to note about Isle of Man TT: Ride on the Edge 3 is that this isn’t simply a cynical re-skin of the previous games in the series. It’s all too common an occurrence these days that the old adage ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ takes root —certainly when it comes to popular gaming franchises—but Isle of Man TT: Ride on the Edge 3 is a great example of how to take an established series and…

I love Tchia. I completed the main story quest in 12 hours, but I’ve played for twice as long just to explore more, complete challenges, collect cosmetics, find secrets and take photos. At least four of those hours were spent just following a long series of treasure maps filled with hand-drawn landmarks and other clues, testing my detective skills and knowledge of the world to uncover them all. And I’m not done playing yet, not by a long shot. Tchia is a third-person open world adventure where you play as a little kid (named Tchia) living on an archipelago based on the real-world South Pacific island of New Caledonia. While beautiful and tropical, Tchia’s island is no paradise. An evil overlord named Meavora has filled the island with creepy, golem-like…

There hasn’t been this much horror in a TV screen since the terrifying film Ring. Thankfully, nothing crawls from the screen in Nightmare Zapper, but it does contain a whole network of channels that tell a connected horror story. You control it by clicking ‘Next’, as if browsing listlessly one night with the TV remote. While the majority of the numbers are tuned to static, you’ll stumble across lots of horrific little snippets. One channel tells the story of some kids playing football, as it starts to get dark outside. Spitefully, a kid kicks the ball out of sight—then has to live with the dreadful consequences. Like half of the vignettes in Nightmare Zapper, this story isn’t interactive, bar your ability to leave at any time by clicking the Next…

Playing Mass Effect 2 again is like waking up after a night out with the worst hangxiety of your life. Did I dance in the club? Punch that journalist? Accidentally join a human supremacist paramilitary organisation? You’re reminded of every bad decision you’ve ever made, and, best of all, you get to make them all over again because nobody ever changes. It’s practically impossible to behave differently in a game that requires so much emotional investment. Every time I promise myself that this time, I’ll play as a Renegade, but deep down I know I’m lying. I’m the person who never released Grunt from his tank on my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2, because the idea of unleashing a genetically engineered Krogan super soldier seemed too risky. (There’s a…

“The constant fear that I’m going to uppercut a lamp is a little distracting” One difficulty for the novice boxer is the way other boxers try to punch you in the face, and what to do about that. Beginners often turn away and hunch over, which communicates the thought “please stop punching me”, but does not stop the punching, and certainly does not project the kind of skill and decorum a judge is looking for. This may be a rare problem that videogames can help with. I got into amateur boxing a couple years ago, and I spar just about every week. I try to spend lots of time training at the gym between those sessions, but alas, I often have to be at home, since it’s where I live.…

Taxi work has arrived in GTA Online, and with it an invitation to cruise through a game world which has continued to evolve over the course of a decade. Where previous updates have brought new missions, business and automobiles, working for the Downtown Cab Co introduces simple, pacifist errands to the Los Santos of 2023, liberated from unskippable cutscenes and repetitive gunfights. Don’t get me wrong. It’s completely banal. Once you’ve either purchased a taxi or arrived at the Downtown Cab Company, you can start taxi work at the press of a key. A customer’s blip will appear on the radar. Once you’ve collected them you’ll receive destination coordinates, while a tip value appears on screen which reduces the longer you take. It’s precarious employment. Rolling your ride will knock…

Playing our PC games anywhere other than a dedicated room full of beige machinery was, not so long ago, a profound and supremely challenging undertaking. It meant carrying around not just the discs of the interactive wonders we hoped to sample in a train carriage or car backseat, but also a gaming laptop whose cooling fans could drown out a fire alarm. Portable gaming once referred to this very specific thing: a laptop with high specs which you could, in a pinch, use to play games on. Providing the sun wasn’t too bright or you wouldn’t be able to see the screen. And there was an available plug socket at all times. And you didn’t mind being responsible for the sound of a Boeing 747 jet engine idling while you…