Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2024 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

HIGHS Witcher’s Work CDPR’s devs are loving Elden Ring’s DLC. Creative Block A mad Minecraft scientist has voxelised Google Maps, effectively letting you export the whole world into the game. Bombshell News Fan-made Fallout 2 remake Project Arroyo now has over 100 devs working on it. LOWS Publisher interference The Internet Archive was forced to remove half a million books from its library after being sued by publishers. Too hard, really? Shadow of the Erdtree hit ‘mixed’ user reviews on Steam. Going Hollow Neither SGF nor the most recent Nintendo Direct had Hollow Knight: Silksong news, driving fans even further around the bend.…

Sometimes, there’s a moment you can look back on that you identify as a turning point in your life. For Vincent Abric, this was reading a technically detailed John Carmack interview on the subject of Quake III Arena. “That’s the moment I told myself, ‘I want to do this,’” he says. Convincing his father to buy him a book on C++, Abric taught himself programming before going on to learn computer science at university. Having successfully earned a master’s degree in computer graphics, he entered the game industry, eventually expanding his skillset to encompass not just graphics, but also physics, UI, gameplay programming and more. Procedural generation—in the context of Dead Cells and Windblown, at least—fundamentally means that “the assets are not placed by hand in the levels. Each time…

One of my oldest videogame wishes is about to be granted. Assassin’s Creed is finally bound for Japan, but I’ve resisted getting too excited until I see it in action. Ubi says Shadows will return to the series’ roots as a stealth game, similar to last year’s Mirage. Here are my thoughts after an hour-long hands-off demonstration. Shadows is still firmly in the territory of Valhalla combat—lock on, dodging, animation canceling—but I noticed some improvements. Enemies seemed less spongy, and in general both Yasuke and Naoe are more deliberate with their attacks. The pace of combat was a bit slower, and looked really cool. It’s also great to see enemies actually react to each of Yasuke’s strikes. Nothing pulls me out of an Assassin’s Creed fantasy faster than guards who…

Jumping off a chopper in the middle of a jungle and instantly being screamed at to get into cover as bullets rain down from the tree line has typically been reserved for action movies or more linear games, but in Gray Zone Warfare this happens naturally and is as intense as it sounds. Gray Zone Warfare straddles the line between hardcore military simulation and an extraction shooter. Once you are on the giant open-world map you can head out of your base on a chopper and back as much as you like, but you’ll likely want to do that fairly often to make sure you don’t lose the loot you have picked up or the items you need to complete your tasks. Or at least that’s the way I like…

Whenever the immersive sim genre is brought up as a topic of conversation, the usual suspects are always in attendance, and rightly so. From System Shock to Deus Ex, Bioshock to Prey, these games and series remain to this day huge pillars in the PC gaming landscape. However, for my money, while I feel these games and series deserve their legendary reputations, one series towers above them all within the immersive sim genre: Arkane Studio’s superlative Dishonored. Hitting store shelves back in 2012, the first-person immersive sim Dishonored placed you in the shoes of Corvo Attano, the Royal Protector to the realm’s Empress Jessamine Kaldwin. However, after being framed for her murder and, in true The Count of Monte Cristo style, wrongfully imprisoned, as the player you’re then given the job…

IMMERSIVE SIM MASTERCLASS NEATLY, BIG BAD DELILAH COPPERSPOON CALLS OUT TO YOU CREEPILY FROM ACROSS TIME 1 Manor approach A Crack in the Slab opens in the front courtyard of Aramis Stilton’s manor. The building is immediately imposing due to its sheer size and its state of advanced dilapidation, building tension straight away. 2 Wrack and ruin Entering the manor, the tension continues to build as you explore its ruinous lobby, stairwell, and nearby corridors. The building has been partially reclaimed by nature, while detritus is everywhere. 3 Discovering Aramis Eventually, you discover Aramis Stilton in the Music Room. He’s gone mad. At this point the mysterious Outsider appears and bestows upon you the Timepiece, which lets you travel between time periods. 4 Shifting sands Progression through the manor requires the player to use…

Going into Still Wakes the Deep, I was confident in my ability to withstand the horror clichés that I knew were about to come my way. But, instead of just dealing with your typical chase scenes and jumpscares, The Chinese Room decided to pull something out of its sleeve that I hadn’t experienced before—the most traumatic dialog and voice acting I’ve ever heard in a horror game. You play as Caz McLeary, an electrical engineer on the Beira D oil rig who’s running from the law and some stupid decisions. Caz has been on the rig for a while, so you don’t have to worry about getting to know your co-workers—meaningful relationships have already been established. Still Wakes the Deep skips the usual slog of tutorial-like character introductions and just…

The Flash games I remember most fondly are the games like Mateusz Skutnik’s Daymare Cat, which mixed beautifully hand-drawn artwork with simple puzzles and small-scale exploration. There was a minimalism to these Flash-based puzzlers that you don’t see much anymore. Playing this remaster is like being transported back to 2013. I’m being very specific about the year because that’s when Daymare Cat was originally released. Well, it’s just been remastered, and I’m pleased to report that it’s just as lovely as the game I sort of remember. There’s an atmosphere to Mateusz Skutnik’s games: a stillness tinged with mild unease, as you flit from one beautifully sketched fantasy scene to another. But it’s a fantasy world minus the reams of description, with little color and environments that sputter at the…

Every gaming showcase needs a Knights & Bikes. The running order usually is as follows: large-scale FPS sequel; graphically striking first-party title that’s actually shit; inscrutable Japanese action RPG that three people on Twitter are delighted about; beautiful 2D adventure with wistful hand-drawn graphics. The latter demonstrates that, despite being a bone-crushing revenue machine, you also have heart. There are a few ways this can go. First is a chipper, detached cartoon adventure, in the same mold as Tearaway or LittleBigPlanet. Then there are games like Unravel, that look delightful but hide a slightly dark heart. Knights & Bikes is mostly on the cute side, but there are moments where the luster fades and it focuses on more challenging subjects. It’s best when the girls’ imaginations superimpose fantasy elements over…

1 STRIKE THE LEGS The key to defeating most Furnace Golems is focusing on one of their legs. Keep smacking to stagger them three times so they fall over. 2 GET AIRBORNE To damage invulnerable golems, you’ll need to use a Spiritspring to get above them, then toss Hefty Fire Pots into the brazier on their head. 3 RIDE TO VICTORY Never fight a Furnace Golem on foot. Instead, bring Torrent and use him to jump over the fiery shockwaves the golem creates when it stomps.…

It’s well-documented by now—the skills you develop in sim racing really do translate to the track. Last year’s Gran Turismo movie charted Jann Mardenborough’s journey from hotlapping in the eponymous Sony racer to competing in Super Formula and the World Endurance Championship, but he’s just one of many who have successfully made the jump. 2019 World’s Fastest Gamer winner James Baldwin has gone on to compete in British GT, winning several races. Numerous F1 drivers have now been schooled by sim racers—Enzo Bonito scaled Lucas di Grassi at the Race of Champions 2019, Valterri Bottas suffered the same fate at the hands of F1 esports champion Lucas Blakely, and in 2022 Blakely did it again against some guy called Sebastian Vettel. It’s settled, then: sim racers are fast. But in…

If you ever crack open the SteamDB charts and leaf through the platform’s illustrious history, you might find that in May of this year, a game called Banana reached the middle of the pack on Steam’s top 100. When I sat down to look into this, it was at number 47—just four ranks shy of Cyberpunk 2077, and ranking above actual videogames such as Fallout 76, Diablo IV and Slay the Spire. You might also wonder why this happened, since Banana is a game where you click on a picture of the curved yellow fruit and do nothing else. I wanted to know why, too. So did everyone on the UK side of PC Gamer, actually, as we sat in a morning call on a Wednesday (which I maintain is…

If there’s one thing Ubisoft loves, it’s a multi-functional animal. As I’m shown new footage of Star Wars Outlaws in action, it’s clear that hero Kay Vess’ furry little axolotl-like friend Nix is another of their signature living Swiss army knives. In other words, a successor to Assassin’s Creed Origins’ Senu the Eagle, Immortals Fenyx Rising’s Phosphor the phoenix, and Far Cry’s entire menagerie of useful pals. So, yes, that means Nix can send out a pulse that highlights foes and interactables, do a distracting little dance to attract attention, and stun people by leaping at their faces. I even see him setting up traps, rigging up barrels to explode in a burst of choking smoke the next time a guard patrols past them. It’s only at that moment that…

Pax Dei is an exciting prospect. A ‘social sandbox’ MMO from Mainframe Industries, a developer that includes many EVE Online alumni, it eschews concepts like levels, classes and heroic journeys, instead promising players a medieval life. You can become a tailor, an architect, or a knight serving in a barony, upholding its laws. “The idea is that we’ll have emergent trades, and then we’ll have artisan guilds, and people will come together and they will form big towns,” says game director Reynir Hardarson. “And over time you’ll have the formation of actual civilizations. But currently, the game is a little bit more like a survival game, because it’s missing a lot of pillars.” All the trappings of the survival genre are here: you must scour the world for resources, construct…

ANDUIN WILL START TO HEAL FROM THE TRAUMATIC EVENTS OF THE LAST EXPANSION You wouldn’t know it from the outside of Blizzard’s gated headquarters in Irvine, California, but inside its tinted glass doors the future is being written. This year, WoW turns 20, and World of Warcraft’s tenth expansion, The War Within, will honor that history as it takes a titanic step forward into a new era. Just as I remember pulling the glossy WoW box off a Fry’s Electronics shelf in 2005 and compelling my mother to buy it for me, the Blizzard developers responsible for making the MMO today remember their first experiences with it too. Almost every developer I speak to at Blizzard is transported out of the otherwise empty conference room as they recall their earliest…

1 BACK COURTYARD 2 BASEMENT 3 BUTTERFLY ROOM 4 DINING ROOM 5 GREAT HALL 6 POOL 7 THE STUDY Submerged Area There are submerged secrets to be found down here via clever use of the timepiece. Boiler Room Manipulating time here allows you to grab some goodies, and change the present. Basement One of the manor’s least visited rooms. Watch out for the barrels of fine wine. Work Room A largely inconsequential room, but one that is detailed and nicely appointed. Lower Study The location of the dark seance that drives Stilton mad. Where Delilah returns. Dining Hall There are time puzzles a plenty here, as well as plenty of guards while in the past. Central Hall This large hall is stuffed with guards, as well as the main stairs…

All the best superhero teams have one thing in common: everyone has their role. While Wolverine’s charging in, claws flashing, Cyclops is up on a ridge shooting down lasers, and Colossus is body-blocking energy blasts. That’s what your squad of superheroes feels like in Capes as you’re directing them in turn-based battles. From teleporter Rebound to psychic Mindfire to speedster Mercurial, each character is wonderfully distinct, and securing victory means combining their unique powers to enhance their strengths and cover their weaknesses. The Capes are not quite your typical superheroes, however. They’re based in King City, a dystopian near-future metropolis that’s been ruled by a team of supervillains for decades. Your crew is less like a classic crime-fighting team, and more like a cell of young supers fighting back against…

1 CYSTS A special activity themed around a specific challenge, like not getting blown up by exploding moths. 2 DUAL DESTINY A two-person exotic mission that feels like a mini-dungeon. Complete it to unlock an exotic class item. 3 PATHFINDER Instead of bounties, you now have Pathfinder objectives. Complete these for XP and loot. 4 OVERTHROW The Pale Heart’s signature activity. Run around the map completing events and opening chests. 5 SEARCH ZONE There’s something in here. It could be a Ghost, or a puzzle or maybe a new unlock for your Prismatic subclass.…

The term dungeon crawler summons images of descending into a labyrinthine dungeon, but for 99% of the time you’re really just traveling sideways. If only you could cut through all the floors filled with monsters and traps and simply dig a big hole to the heart of the dungeon. Oh, hello, Agujero. Agujero is just that: a game about falling down a giant hole, and by that I mean shuffling, as you slowly squeeze through one section at a time by repeatedly tapping the down arrow. It’s a hole filled with creatures, who will emerge from under you at regular junctures to ask a question or demand something of you, and how you respond will determine if you make it to the bottom. These encounter choices roughly coincide with your…

Rounding up this month’s Batman-adjacent collection is a game with an abundance of both capes and crusaders, although few characters here have the moral fortitude of Bruce Wayne. Instead, this is a game about preserving power, and dungeoning anyone who holds their head higher than yours. Crusader Kings II is a hilariously intimidating game. At times, playing it feels like learning to code, but backwards. You start with a desired outcome—war with France, probably—then research every single convoluted step it will take you to get there. Even something simple, such as ensuring your idiot offspring takes the throne when you inevitably die of dysentery aged 36, requires plotting, support, and the ruthless application of power. This level of complexity is approached in other strategy titles, such as in the overhauled…

Computex 2024 came and went. We saw the industry continue to shift its focus towards AI. We saw dissent in the ranks about the precise number of threads per core that should be considered optimum. We saw our own eyes glaze over whenever somebody mentioned VR. But what we didn’t see enough were the tech demos that put all that abstract language and numerical claims into action. How much more compelling would Dr Lisa Su’s AMD keynote about AI have been if, instead of telling us how it could be used to get visuals onscreen without rendering them, she’d shown us? That’s what you do when you announce a game after all, with the honorable exception of The Elder Scrolls VI. There’s an easy answer why Computex wasn’t bustling with…

It’s been a rough couple of years for the game industry—and even laying it out like that feels like an understatement. Back in February, the number of layoffs and studio closures had already hit over 16,000 people, and the number of employees losing their jobs hasn’t exactly slowed down since. A high-profile recent shock came from Microsoft, which shut down Dishonored maker Arkane Austin as well as Tango Gameworks, the studio behind surprise hit Hi-Fi Rush. It was an especially messed-up situation because, as plenty of developers noted in the aftermath: a studio probably shouldn’t sink after a single flop like Redfall, but even if they do make an excellent game, that still won’t save them from the margin-fuelled maneuvers of executives who can’t seem to put a straight answer…

CHERRYNANA BY HYPERLODIUM This is a cherry. It’s close to a banana, but not quite! Keep going, Hyperlodium, I’m sure you’ll get there eventually. KOALA BANANA BY BUGACHI You might notice that this is a koala, and not a banana. It’s not even a fruit. I’m really teetering on the edge here. SINKHOLE BANANA BY RICKYBOBBY_ I give up. Nothing’s real anymore. I’m throwing myself into the bananabyss. SKULLNANA BY MKD One day, your flesh, too, will be banana. Until then, have this horrifying work of art and keep waiting.…

Here, let me relieve you. After spending about an hour watching some very tired BioWare developers navigate the opening of the next Dragon Age, I can assure you that the weird, hero-shooter tone of that companion reveal trailer doesn’t carry into the game itself. No sir, Dragon Age: The Veilguard (née Dreadwolf) doesn’t have much time for japes at all. Things are grim. Dark. Fraught, even. A sinister hard-boiled egg named Solas is trying to dissolve the protective Veil between the physical and magical worlds, flooding the Tevinter Imperium capital of Minrathous with demons. The main character, Rook, is rather against that sort of thing. So are their demo companions: magical detective Neve, scout Harding (from Inquisition) and Varric (basically the series protagonist at this point). Off you go on…

Spare a thought for all the mid-budget RPGs set to release in the next few months. Launching a game in a genre as storied as this is hard at the best of times. Adding to it less than 12 months after it was shocked into the limelight by a universally beloved phenomenon feels faintly masochistic. Though if Baldur’s Gate III will inevitably stand as the yardstick to which all CRPGs are—fairly or unfairly—compared over the next several years, at least GreedFall 2: The Dying World seems to have inadvertently repositioned itself to court those fans wanting more of its party-based combat. This half-prequel, half-sequel to developer Spiders’ 2019 gunpowder fantasy ditches its predecessor’s middling action-RPG fights to raise the camera to a semi-bird’s eye view for simultaneous turn-based brawls. It’s…

Last year’s F1 23 was great because it offered three compelling single-player pillars, including the lavishly produced, Drive To Survive-esque story mode. Take that away, in the now-predictable two-year cycle for such major features, and you’re left with something that really does invite the question of whether it could have just been DLC instead, despite a new emphasis on assuming the role of real drivers. Without the story mode, there’s a definite feeling of having done this before. Even the supposedly all-new career mode is predictable. Will we start the new weekend with a practice session in which we fulfill three R&D tasks? Yes, we will. What was once an innovative and enjoyable practice session which taught you the track and how to play the game is now some seven…

Solving a murder would be so much easier if you could just dial up the victim and chat with their ghost, wouldn’t it? Or that’s what movies and TV have led us to believe. What if the spirit can’t remember what happens, or they only have a few fragmentary pieces of information to share with you? Even when you’re interviewing the dead, there can still be plenty of detective That’s the setup for Seance, where you play as a medium tasked with investigating the murder of a woman named Tamsin, a case in which very little is known by the police. They’ve tried detecting the normal way, but now they need a psychic to bust out the ouija board and interview her ghost one L-E-T-T-E-R at a time. Thankfully, her…

The correct way to play Arkham Asylum, the secret best Batman game, is to think about the Dark Knight’s one rule with every single chokehold, suplex, and Kevlar-coated elbow to the kidneys. Perhaps nobody died, but most of the Joker’s goons will be crippled for life. Wayne Enterprises obviously has shares in Gotham City’s physiotherapy department. In some hands, Batman’s approach to jurisprudence might seem slapdash. But this is Batman’s secret superpower. He doesn’t make mistakes. His fists are attracted to malfeasance. And if he’s dropping you on your neck it’s because you absolutely deserve it. It removes any danger of illiberality, and it’s one reason of many it’s amazing to play as Batman, no matter how many knees he caps. Compared to the open-world monsters that followed, Asylum feels…

Blisters forming in place of other blisters, sweat streaming down your forehead and into your eyes, despairing at your water supply—even the most passionate fans of Campo Santo’s 2016 wilderness adventure Firewatch would agree that it doesn’t capture these realities of the outdoors. Firewatch invites us to play Henry, a man seeking refuge from his stormy personal life by accepting a contract as a fire lookout in America’s great outdoors. He takes this job with some embarrassment: for he has left his wife, who suffers early-onset dementia, to the care of nurses. While we hear Henry through Rich Sommer’s nuanced performance, we see him through his hiking boots as they turn the soil of wilderness trails, and his big hands as they clamber up rocks. Though Henry does these things,…

The gaming laptop market never stands still for a moment. So, how are you ever supposed to know what’s worth spending your money on? We’ve been prodding and poking heaps of the latest gaming laptops to find out. It’s worth saying that you’re much better off buying a current generation GPU, such as Nvidia’s RTX 40-series, rather than something older. The older generations aren’t worth the money any more. You might want to consider one of AMD’s Ryzen 8000/7000-series CPUs, as these come with a decent iGPU. Blade 14 RAZER $2,700 Performance leader 1 The Blade 14 is far from the slimmest 14-inch gaming laptop around. But it is the most impressive on performance. It may appear not dissimilar to the Zephyrus G14 in many regards—the two laptops we tested are…

1 ZOLTAR THE MAGNIFICENT The best way to sell Nvidia’s GeForce 3 GPUs in 2001? A scary genie with ominous backlighting. 2 ISLAND 1 You’re going to be gutted, James Cameron, because ATi’s 2001 Radeon 8500 demo is Avatar before Avatar. 3 THE SAMARITAN Unreal Engine 3 announced its spectacular ability to render people shooting each other in rainy alleyways in this 2011 gem. 4 3DMARK 05 How much traffic can deep space possibly teem with? Futuremark was only too happy to show us. And melt our GPUs.…