Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2023 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

HIGHS Most impressive Nightdive is remaking 1995’s Star Wars: Dark Forces. Re-Deck Valve has once again done a Valve, and you can buy a refurbished Steam Deck. Black Isle’s 25th Obsidian has been celebrating 25 years of its predecessor Black Isle, one of the greatest RPG studios. Salut, you beautiful bastards. R2 Much A streamer spent so many hours grinding for every skill point in Jedi Survivor’s opening level that they just gave up. Red Dead Take-Two has re-released RDR1 on consoles without any enhancements for $50, but no PC release. Don’t tempt me reader Post Malone bought the Ring of Sauron Magic: The Gathering card valued at $2million. LOWS…

James McGregor got his start in video editing when, as a member of Rooster Teeth’s Achievement Hunter community, he became a part-time contractor managing and moderating their community video submissions. This helped him develop his editing style which, in turn, led to a professional job within the game industry itself. Eventually, a job opening for junior video editor at Team 17 caught his eye. “I was looking for something more permanent rather than pipeline contract work.” he explains, “so I thought, I don’t have any real past experience, but I’ll apply.” One fake trailer for a nonexistent Overcooked DLC and two interviews later, McGregor had landed the job. This involved tasks such as B-roll generation, screenshot capture… and trailer creation and editing. Today he’s freelance, helping a variety of developers…

A lot of studios have tried to jury-rig their own-brand Dark Souls. I’m happy to Areport that, after four hours with Lords of the Fallen’s 2023 reboot, Hexworks’ new take doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, its devs are building a custom ride using a tried-and-true frame, with a big hunk of weird Umbral nitrous strapped to its engine. Lords of the Fallen has a troubled past. Its namesake, a 2014 attempt at the Souls-like genre, was viewed by some gamers to be a hollow imitation of the real thing—the first outsider to take a stab at cashing in on the surprise successes of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. The ghosts of double-A jank and accusations of being a rip-off have loomed over its release, and I imagine my…

Whether you like hardcore simulation and strategy or the explosive thrill of mecha anime, games about big stompy robots have always had a home on PC. With the upcoming Armored Core 6 and MechWarrior 5: Clans on the horizon, it’s definitely a good time to be a fan of games about 100-ton death machines. While mech games span genres, they are bound together by the simple truth that piloting suits of mechanized armor into combat is a fantasy that never gets old. It’s an aesthetic that dates back decades to the very first MechWarrior in 1989 and now lives on in newer games like Titanfall 2 and Brigador. That’s why we’ve rounded up a diverse selection of our favorite mech games spanning multiple genres—from the traditional sim to button-mashing character…

After FromSoftware’s incredible run from Souls to Sekiro to Elden Ring, Armored Core VI is a near-radical departure: short, relentlessly paced missions, forgiving retries, and an empowering arsenal that makes it clear you are a one mech army instead of some nasty little guy. Its lean approach holds it back in a few minor ways, but a big budget game this dead set on what it is and what it is not is a precious thing in 2023. It may have taken FromSoftware a decade to return to its love of mechs, but it was worth the wait: Armored Core VI is a ‘we’re back on our bullshit’ slam dunk. This would be a great action game in any year, but I’m particularly smitten with Armored Core at this moment…

Gord opens with a disclaimer that it “explores mature scenarios and themes”, including among its list of triggering material “sacrifice” and “child sacrifice”. What it means by this is it lets you witness Mortal Kombat fatalities being performed on children. When I first brought a shuddering waif to kneel before one of the various “horrors” that rule Gord’s forests, I expected some artful cutaway when came to the big moment. Nope! Instead, Barney the dinosaur’s evil cousin wrapped its tentacles around the screaming urchin, raised them into the air, and crunched them down like a bony strawberry. I’m not one to moralize on what imagery games should and should not depict. But if you want me to take your gritty tale of survival in the wilderness seriously, then I question…

Dune is an obvious influence on striking sci-fi adventure Shards of God, with you playing as a space nun in a medieval-flavored setting. Along with your mother superior, you’ve suddenly been summoned to the god-emperor’s temple, but when your spaceship touches down there’s a revelation. God is dead. Yes, we’re in murder mystery territory, more specifically in a locked room scenario—or I should say locked coffin, as that’s where you find him. No one on the planet had the means to unlock it, and ‘God’ wasn’t killed before he went inside, so you have to work out the how as well as the who. I’m a big fan of locked room mysteries, and this is a clever and fairly clued one with a novel concept, thanks to its fantastic setting.…

Most rhythm-based action games don’t wholly work. There’s a danger of them being the worst of both worlds: out-of-time music accompanying stressful action. For every crisp Crypt of the Necrodancer, there are a dozen clones with the grace and finesse of an art teacher with labyrinthitis ruining a school disco. The answer to this problem, as is so often the case, is experimental jazz. Ape Out deftly sidesteps the need for action to land on the beat by offering a freeform cacophony of cymbal crashes, rimshots, and juddering fills. It’s like playing a drum kit as it falls down the stairs; a version of Whiplash where a 500-pound gorilla pulverises JK Simmons; the feverish night terror of a zookeeper with a paradiddle phobia. It’s a simple conceit made more satisfying…

While rumors do the rounds online of a new Jet Set Radio being in the works at Sega, August sees the release of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk by Dutch indie game studio Team Reptile. As a spiritual sequel to Jet Set Radio, this action-adventure platform game is described as “one second per second of advanced funkstyle”. The main premise sees players explore the five boroughs of New Amsterdam as they battle rival crews and avoid militarized police. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is now available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.…

We all love a plucky underdog story, and Intel’s entry to the discrete graphics card market felt like just that in 2022. Strange as it sound to describe a semiconductor behemoth with a $140bn market cap as the Mighty Ducks to Nvidia’s Hawks, it does make sense when you consider that Jensen Huang’s outfit has a $1.13 trillion market cap. Besides, the graphics war hadn’t been Intel’s fight until the release of the Arc A750 and A770 cards. Not really. Intel’s on-die graphics served a small proportion of the gaming community, but it was Nvidia and AMD who were really down in the trenches, exchanging salvos of benchmarks. It was a fight that had been waged for two decades, too. What chance did Intel have of catching up? And yet…

1 A STUFFY NOSE A sign of a dusty room where your PC isn’t getting adequate airflow and instead churning particles around for you to inhale. Bust out the compressed air. 2 FRAYED EDGES If the edges of your desk and mouse mat are starting to look like a dog’s been at them, it’s time. They’ve had a good run, now put them out to pasture. 3 ELECTRICAL TAPE In fact, any Rube Goldberg-style repair job. Yes, headsets are expensive and technically it still works, but that tape isn’t going to hold out forever. 4 FOOD DETRITUS We’ve all done it. Everyone’s on Discord already but you haven’t eaten yet, so it’s a keyboard pizza for dinner. But the time comes when you really must fight back.…

The name Wizardry still carries weight, which is probably why the recent announcement of Eternal Crypt: Wizardry BC—a blockchain-based clicker game and NFT platform—went down like a lead balloon. A sad sign of the times, perhaps, but a good excuse to talk with Robert and Norman Sirotek, the brothers behind Sir-Tech, publisher of the most influential RPGs of the 1980s. It’s hard to imagine a world without Wizardry. The first game, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, released in 1981 for the Apple II before being ported to almost every platform of its era, is one of the key foundational works of the medium. Even in its original form it’s intuitive, accessible and (to anyone who’s played a dungeon crawler) immediately familiar. Wizardry had players roll a party of six…

In Shyish, the Realm of Death, Nagash the Great Necromancer moulds the souls of the deceased into his personal army. Cursed with new forms that reflect their mortal sins, he creates endless hosts of wailing, suffering spirits known as the Nighthaunt. And then he sends them all to capture my bloody control points. When this real-time strategy game set in the mythic fantasy world of Warhammer Age of Sigmar was announced, only two of the game’s four factions were revealed: the shining warriors of the Stormcast Eternals, and the vicious, swamp-dwelling Orruk Kruleboyz. As I play through two of the game’s campaign missions, I get to meet a third—and it’s not a friendly introduction. As I attempt to hold three objectives—the bases of spectral chains I need to break to…

In the year 2011, men were men and the terrible affliction of ‘Unreal Engine 3 Neck’ raged unabated. At this time of peak Xbox, we got the original Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, which paired the gothic grimdark far future of the Imperium of Man with Gears of War-style shooting, minus the knee-high cover everywhere. Twelve years on, not much has changed in Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, at least going by an hour-long demo level I had the chance to sample. I never get tired of seeing those big ol’ blue Ultramarine pauldrons, and we’re actually pretty starved for straight-up, linear, over-the-shoulder shooter campaigns like this, but unless the full game has some serious surprises in store, it doesn’t feel like Space Marine 2 will win the favor of 2023…

CONCEPT PHASE A new mech starts with a concept from artist Alex Iglesias, adapting one of the original tabletop designs into something that fits Piranha’s direction for the series. Time: 3-4 weeks SCULPTING Piranha’s 3D and texture artists then create the in-game asset, including cockpit, camo variations, and battle damage. Piranha will reuse animations from similarly-sized mechs when possible. Time: 11 weeks QUALITY ASSURANCE Next comes implementation in the game and various QA passes. The feel of a mech trumps everything, even the “realism” of this fictional world. Total Time: 3-4 months for one mech.…

Mimimi is a studio that understands its niche. Shadow Tactics, Desperados 3 and now Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew are fundamentally the same game; tactical squad stealth where players must quicksave and load until they can pull off a flawless heist. This time they’re celebrating the power to quicksave. Shadow Gambit makes it a magical plot MacGuffin and the power of the Red Marley, your sapient pirate galleon. For newcomers to the series and genre, Shadow Tactics, Desperados 3 and Shadow Gambit are what Mimimi defines as ‘stealth strategy’ games. Take your Metal Gear, Hitman or Splinter Cell and pull the camera up to an RTS perspective and give the player a small squad of sneaky sorts to complete their goals and get out intact. From this elevated perspective, players…

1 HANDS The pulse gun (AC’s right) and stun baton (left) are short-range, but ideal for punching through shields. 2 CORE The core effects generator efficiency and how quickly you can be staggered. 3 HEAD The head determines how quickly you recover from a staggered state. 4 ARMS Arms affect your weapon tracking and weapon weight limitations. 5 SHOULDERS The laser cannon (AC’s right) and missile launcher (left) offer long-range damage.…

Shroom and Gloom takes the deckbuilding roguelike and bungs in a big load of mushrooms. Your enemies are murderous fungus people, and most of the cards are mycology-themed. On top of that, it’s all exquisitely hand-drawn. You know the basics by now: every turn you expend energy to play cards that are randomly drawn from your deck, while out of battle you plow through a dungeon, gradually acquiring shiny new cards. The difference with Shroom and Gloom is that the dungeon is viewed from the first-person perspective, although admittedly you’re still walking in a very strict straight line, without the ability to sidestep or even go backwards. But exploration is neatly handled by the game’s second deck of cards, which come into play in the safe rooms located between each…

You want to know what true versatility looks like? Richard Ridings. He’s the voice actor who played the narrator from Dungeon Keeper, High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer from Total War: Warhammer and, of direct relevance, Pigsy from Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. He’s also the voice of the dad from Peppa Pig. And yes, I do know the last two characters are both pigs. Don’t cheapen this. Enslaved is one of those marvelous disasters we only see in game development. Too beautiful to live, too precious to be almost completely ignored by the paying public. But ignored it was. It was originally pitched as an animated movie by developers Ninja Theory, but, after a ripple of indifference from Hollywood, things changed. Andy Serkis got involved, and, six months later, Alex Garland…

MATT POSKITT THIS MONTH Tried to save the president’s daughter from a crazed cult. ALSO PLAYED Jet Set Radio, Marvel’s Midnight Suns Capcom has been knocking it out of the park in recent years. The Resident Evil series in particular has gone on from strength to strength, beginning its resurgence with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in 2017. The latest—the remake of Resident Evil 4—has been fuelling my evenings as well as making sure that the villager’s eerie chants torment my nights. Truth be told, I’ve been a bit stuck on what to play lately. The sun is shining. Lockdown is a thing of the past. It’s time to seize the day… I’m sorry, the president’s daughter has been kidnapped? Taken to a remote village in Spain? And I’m the only…

FIGHT STICK • Better accuracy and precision for pulling off those wild combos. • Tons of modification potential with different levers, buttons and art. • Pretty damn comfortable. • Makes you look a hell of a lot cooler. CONTROLLER • Small enough to slip inside any bag or your pocket. • Cheaper and more accessible. • Offers great movement precision with the D-pad. • Great starting point before transitioning to a Hitbox or fight stick.…

1 COCKPIT Lined with posters of Gordon Freeman, water-cooled tower PCs, and PC Gamer magazine spreads to keep morale up. 2 GYROS AND ACTUATORS Created by none other than Gabe Newell himself in his Steam Workshop, these allow precise, rapid movement. 3 ARMOR PLATING When a big console gaming exclusive foe appears, these tough reinforced armor plates mitigate its attacks. 4 JUMP JETS PC gaming moves faster than console gaming, and these jump jets allow the PC Gamer BattleMech V30 to outmaneuver foes. 5 TARGET TRACKING SYSTEM Great for keeping track of incoming releases, as well as hardware orders from Newegg and Amazon. 6 BALLISTIC CANNONS If console gamers are foolish enough to try to break into PC Gamer Towers on foot, then these bad boys welcome them. 7 MISSILES…

Former Geralt Henry Cavill has made a point of saying he “pushed really, really hard” to stay true to the Witcher books, while also claiming that some of the writers on the show “actively disliked” them. Some aspects of Andrzej Sapkowski’s novels have been simplified for the TV show, and in an interview with Polish site Wyborcza, executive producer Tomek Baginski said: “[A] higher level of nuance and complexity will have a smaller range.” Baginski said he encountered a “perceptual block” with US audiences some years ago, when he was promoting an unfinished film project called Hardkor 44, a sci-fi retelling of the Warsaw Uprising. “For Americans, it was completely incomprehensible, too complicated, because they grew up in a different historical context, where everything was arranged: America is always good,…

POTATO FLOWERS IN FULL BLOOM Three-character parties, complex multi-elevation dungeons and surprisingly tactical combat. INFINITE ADVENTURES This one’s beefy: six-character parties, randomly generated maps and complex character progression. HEROES OF A BROKEN LAND 2 Still in Early Access. As well as Wiz-esque dungeoneering, there’s a strategic town-building world map layer to master. STARCRAWLERS Wizardry! In! Space! Four-character parties with much more intricate missions and combat.…

The demo starts, and my health is already draining. Welcome to STALKER 2, I guess. This Gamescom, for the first time, GSC Game World’s long awaited sequel is available to play—albeit just the smallest possible slice. But while the demo may be only 15 minutes long, it manages to pack in all the grim, dystopian misery a STALKER fan could want. Case in point, my health. I’m unconscious in an irradiated field full of anomalies. But that isn’t what’s killing me off. No, my character finally opens his eyes, and I discover the culprit: a mutant dog that’s been snacking on his leg. My character pulls out a gun. It jams. The dog lunges at his neck. My character struggles to hold it at bay, weakly kicking it away just…

With Homeworld 3, Relic’s classic space RTS looks set to join the pantheon of returning PC gaming gods. Blackbird Interactive (the new studio, helmed by many of the original Homeworld devs) invited me to test-drive War Games mode, one of its big new features: a roguelike-inspired PvE mode for strategists in a hurry. While no slouch as serious competitive games, the Homeworld series was always carried by its grandiose vibes, surprisingly powerful storytelling and spectacular, messy space battles. If that sounds even slightly intriguing, I recommend picking up the recent Remastered bundle of Homeworld 1 & 2, plus the GOG release of Homeworld: Emergence, the excellent but un-remastered middle game in the series. These are classic games, and a hard act to follow. And while I can’t speak to the…

2107 The newly created K-F Drive allows interstellar travel. 2439 The first battlemech, the Mackie, is tested on Earth. 2570 After an era of war, the Star League is founded, united disparate factions. 2767 The Amaris-Kerensky Civil War begins, threatening to tear apart the Star League. 2784 Aleksandr Kerensky takes six million volunteers and leaves known space, eventually forming the Clans. 2786 The Succession Wars begin as all factions try to claim dominion. 3015 Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries is set during this period of war. 3049 The Clan Invasion begins.…

THE DRIP With their big fancy hats and bejeweled tunics, bards are undeniably the slickest looking heroes in all of Faerûn. THE INSTRUMENTS Your instrument can be used to perform flashy bardic magic, but you can also put on musical performances, netting you gold. THE PATTER As a bard you get lots of unique dialog options that often veer into the cheeky, salacious and, quite often, hilarious. THE SKILLS Bards are masters of persuasion and deception, while their focus on charisma and dexterity makes them well-rounded adventurers.…

In En Garde! 17th century Spain is slathered with a sense of nostalgia. Not for the setting itself, of course—I’m not that old—although it is an enticing reimagining, with its piñata color palette and kitsch flamenco soundtrack. Rather, because it reminds me of Asterix books, of Dogtanian cartoons, and black and white episodes of Zorro on Sunday mornings. Of simpler times, in other words, and simpler forms of entertainment. Playing this swashbuckling adventure, meanwhile, tickles a different memory gland. En Garde! is like the remaster of an early 2000s console effort that never existed, from a time when developers were figuring out how the scrolling beat-’em-up might evolve into three dimensions. Superficially, it bears a family resemblance to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, but it’s narrower in scope,…

The tale of the wish-granting monkey’s paw is brought into the future in The Third Wish, a point-and-click made for the Adventure Game Jam. Despite being made in just two weeks, the game is fully voice-acted, which really helps to emphasize the obvious Twilight Zone influence. You play as Mr White, whose family runs a moisture farm on a desert planet, a place where shriveled monkey limbs are the furthest thing from his mind. A few traditional point-and-click puzzles later, an old trader friend appears and shares his story. He ends the night by discarding the monkey paw that has ruined his life—and telling you to destroy it. It would be a happier, shorter game if you obeyed him, but after some cajoling from your family, you do indeed make…

Swirling red sands batter a group of rebels, hunkered down against a building. One turns to another, eyes wide with fear. “We can’t win this fight! We need help. We need… a demolition specialist.” Cut to Alec Mason, polishing his sledgehammer as he lands on Mars… This image is more pleasing if you imagine a mechanic other than destruction underpinning Red Faction: Guerrilla. Shoveling. Riveting. Dry stone walling. But in truth, the gleeful annihilation of structural environments is a game in itself, and, thankfully, Volition is smart enough to know that we don’t need much incentive to hit things with a hammer. As Alec’s obviously-doomed brother explains, salvage on Mars is like gold, which is the reason you didn’t need to flatten every building you see. All the structures in…

ROBERT JONES THIS MONTH Got rejected by a tight-lipped corpse. ALSO PLAYED Diablo IV, Icewind Dale The drow raider lies mangled in a pool of his own blood, his limbs twisted and broken, the consequence of a bad end in a savage battle. Evidence as to why this drow, along with a pack of goblins, had attacked a coaching inn is sparse, and aside from the fact that a high-ranking official from the city of Baldur’s Gate has been abducted from the inn, nothing else is known. It’s a good job, then, that my party of adventurers in Baldur’s Gate III currently includes not just one but two clerics, masters of support magic, religious studies and, as this is the glorious world of DnD, rituals that allow them to commune…

Wireless technology has come a long way in a short period of time. Slipstream, HyperSpeed, Lightspeed, Stellar, Quantum—call it what you like, but you can pretty much consider a stable and robust connection as a given with any wireless gaming mouse from a renowned manufacturer. With that covered, you’re free to focus on finding a mouse that suits your needs elsewhere. Comfort is a key consideration. A top-quality mouse will contour to the hand and put every thumb switch within easy reach, even if there’s ten of them. Then there’s the sensor itself, the actual hardware translating your real-world movements to accurate actions in-game. If you’re particularly aggressive with your mouse movements, only some mice have the acceleration ratings to keep up. Burst Pro Air ROCCAT $45 Love it or…

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they look upon their gaming setup with fresh eyes. Usually that time comes when an outsider catches sight of your grinding dungeon. It’s a similar phenomenon to that of moving house, seeing intensely personal belongings being paraded around outside and saying to yourself, yep, definitely time for a new mattress. For me, it was having a mate round my house and seeing my gaming room through his eyes. And what I saw was hardly the stuff of an Architectural Digest tour. Dead and dying house plants arranged on a second-hand desk I’d bought on eBay during lockdown when new furniture took seven to eight years to turn up. Tea rings on my mouse mat. Dust. Cables dangling everywhere. And worst of all:…