Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2024 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

HIGHS Endless Sky No Man’s Sky update adds stuff fans had “almost given up hope on”. Videogames? Big deal The voice of Igon, Elden Ring’s angriest NPC, had no idea gaming was huge before he got the job. Cyrodiil in Russian? More than ten years after its creation, massive Russian Oblivion mod Citadel of Madness has been translated into English. LOWS What a heist Rockstar finally let you claim earnings via your phone in GTA Online. Then it paywalled the feature. You shall not Pass Microsoft suddenly jacked up prices on Game Pass. Solo Mode Obsidian says it thought about BGIII-style multiplayer for Avowed, but it didn’t have experience like Larian’s to pull it off.…

Although he began by teaching himself programming with books from the library that were “even at the time hilariously out of date”, Andrew Shouldice spent years learning before he was ready for a solo project, and to leave the game jams, and even the developer he’d eventually joined, behind. He reached the point where he decided, “I can do not all the things, but many of the things; enough to make a complete game. I will need help with audio and music, and maybe some business help, but I could do it.” That game was Tunic—though, when he first started work on it in 2015, it was initially called Secret Legend. The idea of a unique language was integral to development. “I’ve looked through old notes,” explains Shouldice, “and a…

RELEASE September 2024 DEVELOPER BitCake Studio PUBLISHER Mad Mushroom LINK s.team/a/1903560 ATOMIC PICNIC Sandwiches and sausage rolls give way to bullets A co-op roguelike bullet-hell-inspired third-person shooter is a lot of description for a game to carry, but Atomic Picnic shoulders the burden gleefully. An arena shooter that can be played solo or with up to three friends, this is a fast-moving game with hints of Borderlands and Fortnite about it in the way numbers pop off your cel-shaded enemies as you do them damage. In motion, it’s a colorful blaster with environments that are filled with ledges to jump on and cover to get behind, while killing monsters gets you crystals that can activate power-ups. The idea is that, following a calamity that has left the planet filled with…

A flintlock is a firearm from ye olden days which uses flint-striking ignition to fire. It’s fallen out of fashion lately, mainly because it takes about 400 years to reload. The idea of trying to use one to kill several gods is pretty daunting. But I’d certainly rather take on that challenge than the far more terrifying one of being a Soulslike releasing less than a month after Shadow of the Erdtree. Maybe this game deserves a 90 just for bravery? You play as Nor, an ax-wielding warrior trapped in a seemingly endless war with the living dead, because someone’s unfortunately left the door to the afterlife open. After one of those classic attempts at fixing everything that actually makes it all much worse, Nor gets a nice big pile…

If Dredge has left you terrified of the ocean, get your sea legs wet again with Mourning Tide, which offers a lovely bit of fishing, no monsters allowed. Hmm, that’s a funny way of spelling ‘morning’. And that’s an alarming-looking fish. Oh no. Lovecraft has got his tentacles in this one too. To be fair: no actual tentacles. Just several increasingly unsettling fish. But despite the descent into horror, the fishing in Mourning Tide remains a delight. Unusually, it doesn’t follow the usual mechanics in fishing games, which have you hammering a button and pulling back an analog stick to simulate the rod. Instead, after throwing the line into the ocean, you just have to move the mouse to keep it within a plain black circle. Keep the struggling fishing…

I love the idea that in the future, aliens will analyse toilet graffiti to glean information about the human race. Cue a team of celestial beings, stroking their stardust beards as they unpick masterpieces such as “The naked man fears no pickpocket” and “Yer ma likes scotch eggs and she’s vegan”. Heaven’s Vault is predicated on a similar, if not identical premise. But instead of scrying filthy limericks on cubicle walls, archaeologist Aliya Elasra travels between planets, accompanied by her unsettling ghost-robot, Six, uncovering ancient script and piecing together fragments of lost civilizations. It’s a legitimately challenging, unusually satisfying puzzle that will please anyone with an interest in language or analytical thinking, but it’s an acquired taste. The pace is sedate to the point that it sometimes feels like it’s…

I’ve been away from the MMOs of my past – taking a bit of a rest from sinking thousands of hours into Guild Wars 2 or The Elder Scrolls online—and to fill their place I’ve been playing, well, another MMO. But a cosy one. Sky: Children of the Light is a beautiful and casual MMO from the developer of Journey, which somehow managed to take the same flying and sand surfing that made their two-hour PlayStation game a hit and turn it into a multiplatform live service phenomenon. I turned to Sky occasionally on my Nintendo Switch for a few years but after it finally launched on PC this spring I’ve been back into it pretty aggressively. Sky’s primary activities are exploration and platforming challenges, collecting currency (candles) out in…

Summer is nearly over and that means it’s time to think about how to keep your PC cool. You thought I was going to talk about going to the beach? Get a grip, you’re reading PC Gamer. I’m on the lookout for the most efficient case fans able to offer the best performance and least noise. Most PC fans may look alike but it only takes a small, seemingly inconsequential change for a night and day variation in performance. The gap between the fan blade and the frame, for example, seems like a tiny detail but this often separates the very best PC fans from the very worst. There are also differences imperceptible from the exterior. The choice of bearing will decide the performance, noise and lifetime of any fan,…

Unlike Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo is still holding out from porting its dragon’s hoard of exclusives to PC. And yet the PC still manages to be the best place to play Nintendo’s back catalog. Case in point: an unofficial PC port of sci-fi espionage shooter Perfect Dark, available to anyone able to (legally, of course) source an N64 ROM file for the game. Of all consoles past, the N64 holds the dubious honour of being the one with the most overly ambitious games for its hardware. Even Nintendo’s own in-house productions struggled to hit their 20-30 frame per second targets, a problem that only grew over time. While there’s still debate as to whether Perfect Dark dethroned GoldenEye (it did), Rare’s ambitious spy-fi FPS was unquestionably one of the most…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE TBC DEVELOPER 1047 Games PUBLISHER 1047 Games LINK splitgate.com In a time when new multiplayer shooters regularly try and fail to escape the shadows of Call of Duty, Fortnite and Apex Legends, the story of Splitgate and its creators at 1047 Games defies all logic. There were several moments when the ‘Halo with portals’ arena shooter almost sank after failing to find a steady audience after its Steam launch in 2019. It was a minor miracle when Splitgate reemerged with console ports in 2021 and became the hottest free-to-play game of that summer, exploding to a peak of 200,000 concurrent players and briefly making a traditional arena shooter one of the most-played games in the world. But what’s most surprising to me is what happened after…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE August 23, 2024 DEVELOPER Firewalk Studios PUBLISHER Sony Interactive Entertainment LINK playstation.com Concord’s reveal trailer was met with some boos from the balcony: great, another Overwatch. It is a sci-fi PvP hero shooter, but after playing it, I can confirm that Concord isn’t Sony’s Overwatch. And it’s fun. We may not be looking at a Helldivers 2-level phenomenon, but Concord could be the multiplayer hit of the summer. There are obvious similarities between Concord and Overwatch—both feature a bunch of characters with unique guns—but it’s also obvious that a bunch of ex-Bungie devs work at developer Firewalk Studios. Most characters have double jumps, one I played had a triple jump, and another could temporarily hover. They can also dodge, which briefly pulls the camera into third-person…

Endwalker was the conclusion of ten years’ worth of world-building and story that culminated in a universe-ending threat. It was a moment for the MMO ages that saw the Warrior of Light pushed to their limits and brought a close to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga. Now the next expansion for Final Fantasy XIV is here. Can it live up to fans’ expectations? No. No it can’t. But frankly, what could have? There’s no following up saving the world and fighting the physical embodiment of universal despair. Instead, Dawntrail bravely walks its own path of fresh beginnings and new adventures. There’s the occasional stumble along the way through the new continents of Tural, but it (mostly) sticks the landing. The first thing you’ll notice in Dawntrail, before you’ve even made…

The idea of giving Bloodborne its own karting spin-off is so ridiculous that, of course, it had to happen. But all the joke needed was a couple of mocked-up screenshots before we could all sit back and watch the social media engagement roll in. No one would devote any serious time to making Bloodborne Kart an actual thing, right? Er, yes—and who better to undertake it than the developer of Bloodborne’s PS1 demake. Like Bloodborne PSX, Nightmare Kart is kind of a joke game. But what an exquisite and painstakingly delivered gag. The name may have clued you in that The Lawyers have pecked off the Bloodborne affiliation, but even with the serial numbers removed it’s still clearly devoted to From Software’s classic. There’s a hunt on in the gothic…

At the risk of sounding like I have terrible hand hygiene, I’m writing this with Citadel Trollslayer Orange on my thumbnail. This is relevant because I was highlighting Cthonian Beserks from Warhammer 40,000, which are as close as you can get to the dwarven heroes of Deep Rock Galactic. Every element of my life, apparently, needs to feature diminutive intergalactic miners. Space dwarves are difficult to get right, which is partly why an entire range of Citadel miniatures, the Squats, were retconned and eventually replaced by the sleeker, more imaginative Leagues of Votann. With this thought in mind, I approach Deep Rock Galactic with some trepidation. But any anxiety is jettisoned when I accidentally press the taunt button in the first five seconds of the tutorial, and my dwarf holds…

I was reminded of Crystal Caves this month when looking Iat old PC Format magazine cover discs, because a man’s got to have a hobby, and noticed that a demo of it was given away with the first issue I remember buying. PC Format is long gone, of course, and sadly missed, but Crystal Caves endures—it’s on Steam and GOG in remastered form. This is an Apogee game, the company founded in 1987 that changed to 3D Realms, made Duke Nukem 3D, and got into a complicated licensing arrangement with another company called Apogee. But this is the Apogee that published Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D, and Crystal Caves was released under the shareware model, where a demo was freely distributed, and you paid for the rest of the game…

Four hundred s a large number in almost any context: 400 shiny American dollars, though, seems a smaller number. Particularly when you consider that it’s become the de-facto price point for modern consoles. Then you browse PC component retailers wondering if you could build a PC for the same money, rubbing your eyes theatrically at the number of extra digits that appear to have been mistakenly added to the price of—well, everything. In these uncertain financial times, an experiment is in order. Is it possible to build a gaming PC for $400 or less, during an era when the latest Nvidia GPUs cost seven Bitcoins each? In this accursed age it seems basically impossible to pop to the shop for a pack of noodles and some Kleenex without walking out…

Ever wonder how many people it takes to make Steam? Barely any, it turns out. Documents from an antitrust suit against Valve show that the company consisted of 336 employees in 2021. That’s a fraction of the size of most big game publishers, even as Steam continues to shape PC gaming as a whole. The documents originate from Wolfire Games’ 2021 lawsuit arguing that Steam constitutes an unfair monopoly on PC digital distribution. The documents remain partially redacted, and were likely meant to have all the juicy details fully blacked out—a surprisingly common error in the US legal system that leads to sensitive data being made public. The Verge has a full chart of the year-by year number of employees and departmental payroll changes at Valve. The chart confirms prior…

SUPER MARIO 64 The most full-featured decomp-port to date. More responsive controls and with a bevy of new features and mod support. ZELDA: OCARINA OF TIME A recent debut thanks to the Ship Of Harkinian project. Looks and feels great, and even has a built-in randomizer mode. MARIO KART 64 Not playable yet, but making great progress. The decompilation is almost done, opening the door for a PC port. DUKE NUKEM: ZERO HOUR A good console spinoff, if you can get past the N64 jank. The near-complete decompilation aims to fix that.…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Q3 2024 DEVELOPER Proxy Studios PUBLISHER Proxy Studios LINK s.team/a/1481170 Proxy Studios made Warhammner 40,000: Gladius, a well-regarded and luxuriously expanded 4X with the heavy focus on combat you’d expect from the grim darkness of the far future. I mention this only because Zephon is a 4X, is also set in a futuristic dark grimness, and has a familiar combat system. Rather than the galaxy-spanning civilizations of 40K, brought together on the planet Gladius for a big fight, Zephon is more Earth-based and tells the story of the end of the planet’s civilization, and what comes after. A piece of artwork visible in the introduction shows apparently human figures in front of a tentacled beast, which is always a nice thing to see. Later, we’re told…

TITUS RENDS THE TYRANID HIVE TYRANT IN TWO WITH HIS CHAINSWORD. THEN THE CARNIFEX ARRIVES On the far edges of my vision, on a distant horizon littered with bursts of flame, crumbling Imperial structures, and the remnants of heavily armored vehicles, I see the Tyranid horde approaching. A mass of writhing carapace plates, talons, tails, and bile, the horde swarms across the pock-marked battlefield as bunches of entrenched Imperial Guard begin frantically firing from dugouts to the left and right of me. But be under no illusion, these small squads of Astra Militarum are massively outnumbered. Just as I am, Demetrian Titus, formerly one of the Ultramarines’ greatest heroes, dispatched to Avarax to help hold back the tide. As the Xeno mass scurries to and up the derelict, fractured walls…

To get the inside scoop on how Saber Interactive has approached Tdeveloping Space Marine 2, we spoke to the game’s brand & creative manager, Yann François about Ultramarines, Tyranid hordes and a grimdark far future where there is only war. How did you approach building on the first Space Marine? Space Marine was a huge success in its time. So when Saber and Games Workshop met to decide what we can do right now together, the idea was to try to recreate the powerful fantasy behind Space Marine, which is the powerful fantasy of embodying a superhuman warrior fighting across the galaxy against all the horrors that are straight through the galaxy, and threatening mankind. The only thing that was missing [to do that], was the technology itself. That was…

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Lmuisa is a young lawyer from Vienna, and she’s burned out. Dungeons of Hinterberg leans into millennial malaise and twists it: she’s going to take a little break to find herself in a picturesque Austrian mountain town that’s recently been rocked by the arrival of magic. Instead of ski slopes, Hinterberg has dungeons. Surely slaying monsters will help Luisa solve the fear of being in your 20s and not knowing what to do with your life? The bulk of Luisa’s days are spent in dungeons in four different regions, each of which grants Luisa two different magic powers she can use in combat or to solve puzzles. Combat is simple, which works in its favor: there are enough mobs that they could have become aggravating if I were not confident…

The whole deckbuilding roguelike thing can be traced back to Dream Quest, and now it’s come full circle with the unrelated but similarly nap-tastic Pillow Fight, which plays out as you’re trying to get to sleep. Knowledge of the genre will not necessarily help you here, however, as Pillow Fight makes big changes to the formula that was set down in pencil with Dream Quest, and in stone with Slay the Spire. Rather than your hand being dealt randomly every turn, you get a persistent set of cards that have cooldowns before they can be used again. You’re mainly playing with a set of white and black sheep tokens, which will earn you—or your opponent—points as each turn comes to an end, when the remaining tokens are weighed on a…

It’s strange going into The Dig with zero knowledge of what it actually is. I assumed, for some reason, it would be a cheerful archaeology romp; Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis without the whips and hats. The actual game is far weirder. The point-and-click equivalent of that kombucha gif. The story centers around an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. A team of experts are sent into space to divert its course, leaving it in a stable orbit around the planet, essentially making a naff sequel to the moon. I had absolutely no idea about this, and I spend the first five minutes wondering why more people don’t berate Michael Bay’s gormless cosmic action film, Arnageddon, for nicking the idea. But instead of miners, the team sent…

Buying a graphics card feels increasingly like closing on a house or starting a small business. It was once as simple as saving up about 400 bucks, triple-checking which slots your mobo supported, and then buying the big box with the fanciest-looking fantasy character on it. The more fireballs and face paint, the better the graphics card within. However, crypto farmers, lockdowns and egregious manufacturer price-hiking have made that purchase considerably more complex in the last five years. At least, that’s the excuse I’m giving people if they ask why I’m still using an RTX 2080 Ti. Once Nvidia’s pride and joy, the card they’d use on comparison slides with massive green bar charts showing all the extra frames it could produce, it’s now chugging along a bit. It doesn’t…