Innholdsfortegnelse for Christmas 2016 i PC Gamer

HE’S TREATED BY MANY AS AN ORACLE. HERE’S THE THING: ORACLES DON’T WEAR TIES The Spy laments the lack of a nemesis. No, that’s not quite right. The Spy laments the lack of the idea of a nemesis. They sound fun. It would be exciting to have a Moriarty to your Sherlock, a Newman to your Seinfeld, an Aliens: Colonial Marines to your Alien: Isolation. The Spy would slip, ferret-like, through the vents of a high-tech corporate bunker, carrying an arm amputated from the treasurer of a shady cabal. Dropping elegantly into the soft embrace of a laundry room basket, The Spy would emerge to the sight of The Nemesis, perched louchely on a mid-rinse Hotpoint Aqualtis. The Nemesis would nod curtly at The Spy’s briefcase – still handcuffed to…

“THERE’S LITTLE IN THE WAY OF DIRECT EXPOSITION. WE WANT YOU TO FIGURE IT OUT” NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Early 2017 DEVELOPER Big Robot PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.thesignalfrom.com A mysterious signal is coming from the planet Tölva, and your mission is to find out what it is. That, according to Big Robot, is the heart of the game. But you don’t explore the surface yourself: you hijack a surveyor robot and do it remotely. And if you die at the metal hands of an enemy faction also hunting for the signal, you can just hijack a new one. Similarly to Sir, You Are Being Hunted, the studio’s previous game, it takes place in a large open world and has a freeform structure. There are missions, but no critical path in…

WOLVERINE The UNSC’s anti-air unit is fierce, and sometimes your only option for preventing an onslaught of banshees from nuking your troops. SCORPION Halo’s basic tank. Parking one of these on two of my capture points was a smart way of keeping the Banished’s weedier infantry at bay. BLISTERBACK A deadly combined air/ ground unit – one of the best of the Banished’s standard units. This is where the wolverine comes in handy. BANSHEE The Banished’s standard aircraft model. Remember the moment you steal one in the first Halo? They look and sound the same.…

I thoroughly enjoyed this year’s Top 100. Looking through it, I noticed you have Troika’s Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines at number 65. It’s an epic game, but I’d like to ask when Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura will get its time in the Top 100 – or at least a shout-out in the magazine? It was Troika’s first game, and my favourite. The Steampunk/fantasy setting was exhilarating. Travelling through Arcanum, and visiting towns and cities like Shrouded Hills, Tarant and Caladon was simply amazing. I’ve attached a photo of my beloved Arcanum collection [above]. Khorium Top 100 picks only require one passionate advocate, so it’s always possible it’ll find a place in future lists. And, who knows, maybe we’ll do a Reinstall in the future. Enjoy your copy…

PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Shooters, war Currently playing Battlefield 1 This month Survived a gas attack when... no, actually, I’m not going to do a fart joke here. JAMES DAVENPORT Specialist in Shooters, dongs Currently playing Shadow Warrior 2 This month Became well versed in the many words that also mean penis. WES FENLON Specialist in Shooters, muscles Currently playing Gears of War 4 This month Was subjected to the manly ways of Marcus Fenix. Has been bench pressing ever since. TJ HAFER Specialist in Strategy, hexes Currently playing Civilization VI This month Became incredibly jealous of Peter the Great’s magnificent moustache. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Shooters, crime Currently playing Mafia III This month Discovered that running a ’60s crime family can actually be really tedious. KEZA MACDONALD Specialist in…

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” TRANSLATION: I am running, bayonet out, at my foe. Should I survive, I will write poetry about this day. “YEEEEEEEEEEEEEAH!” TRANSLATION: We have secured the enemy sector, and lived to tell the tale. So many did not. We shall honour their memory. “You got a plan, Sergeant?” TRANSLATION: The military is not a democratic institution, and I accept I will not always agree with my commanders. That said, can I at least have a bloody order? “We have lost the pigeon” TRANSLATION: Man’s thirst for warfare corrupts all. Even the birds are tools for our killing. I am become death, the destroyer of pigeons.…

You spend the most time with the least interesting guns NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A third-person shooter with meaty guns and meaty characters. EXPECT TO PAY £35 DEVELOPER The Coalition PUBLISHER Microsoft REVIEWED ON GeForce GTX 980, Intel i7-6700K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER 4-player co-op, 10-player versus LINK www.gearsofwar.com Around the time new hero JD Fenix rode along the spokes of a ferris-wheel sized gear, I began to suspect that Gears of War 4 might not be a subtle game. Maybe the real giveaway was when I shot down a giant airplane while riding a motorcycle in the inevitable on-rails take-a-break-from-yourregularly-scheduled-carnage interlude. Although now I think about it, that chainsaw gun might have been the first tip-off. This is Gears almost exactly as we remember…

TETSUGURO KUSABI A chain-smoking, foul mouthed veteran cop, Kusabi is more than a little rough around the edges and gives everyone a hard time. SUMIO KODAI The youngest member of the HCD, and Kusabi’s partner, Sumio is the “good cop” to his buddy’s “bad cop”. Alas, he makes poor life choices. KIYOSHI MORIKAWA The lone wolf of the department. He’s also got a bit of a crush on Hachisuka, and transforms into a creep around her. CHIZURU HACHISUKA Treats crime-solving as pure science, making her lots of friends and ensuring she gets invited to all the parties.…

It feels more like a survival-horror game when you’re playing it NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A brutal, challenging, visually arresting rhythm game. EXPECT TO PAY £16 DEVELOPER Drool PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON GeForce GTX 780 Ti, 16GB RAM, Intel 4770K MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.thumper.com You are a chrome beetle, hurtling unstoppably into a void, zooming through hellscapes on rails at grimace-inducing speed. A screaming, flaming skull hovers in the middle distance, sending debris down the track to end you. If that description reads like a nightmare, know that Thumper looks and sounds like one, too. Most games have you fighting your way out of danger, but this one fires you headlong into the abyss. This is a rhythm game with deceptively simple one-button controls,…

GSP 300 HEADSET Sennheiser£90 Good audio is hard to find at lower prices, in fact it’s usually something reserved to HyperX and their Cloud IIs. However, the GSP 300 really impressed me, offering a fantastic frequency response, minimal distortion and a comfortable fit. This is one of the cheapest best-sounding headsets I’ve had the pleasure of wearing. www.sennheiser.com ML120 PRO 120MM FAN Corsair £20 Corsair’s latest cooling technology uses magnetic levitation to suspend the fan entirely off of its mounting, reducing motor noise to an absolute minimum. What this means is an operating frequency of 400-2200rpm, enabling whisper-silent operation with some fantastic static pressure and airflow figures too. www.corsair.com C922 PRO STREAM WEBCAM Logitech£85 Fancy some streaming? Or just upgrading your old webcam? Logitech’s latest Pro Stream Webcam can record…

1 PARADOX A space sim from a top-down perspective, with a lovely CRT filter effect. Take on jobs, shoot pirates, and die a lot in a game that realises the brutal indifference of space. www.bit.ly/FermiJam1 2 MARLOWE’S PATH You basically play a computer terminal in this atmospheric, lo-fi charmer. Pick destinations for a blocky space vessel while its two pilots chatter and bicker. www.bit.ly/FermiJam2 3 NO STARS, ONLY CONSTELLATIONS Robert Yang’s games tend to be fairly penis heavy. There are penises here, but it’s mainly a game about staring at the stars. www.bit.ly/FermiJam3…

“Captain Titus is a man too big for the game he’s in” NEED TO KNOW RELEASED September 2011 PUBLISHER Sega (formerly THQ) DEVELOPER Relic LINK www.spacemarine.com Captain Titus stands seven feet tall, clad in his holy armour. He has a pistol the size of most shotguns and a chainsaw for a sword. He has a rectangular head, the voice of Mark Strong and the chiselled chin of an Olympian, and he lives to kill Orks in their thousands. Captain Titus is a man too big for the game he’s in. His blue and gold armour is designed to stand out among hordes of enemies on huge battlefields. He is genetically tailored for the front line of a huge war. He should be clearing out entire enemy mobs in the shadow…

PHIL SAVAGE Are games art? Probably. Are games science? Kind of. Are games cooking? No. Are games crochet? I don’t know what that is. FAR CRY PRIMAL www.bit.ly/PrimalPC I get why people were cool on this latest Far Cry – it’s very similar to the last few games in the series – but it still works for me. The pre-civilisation setting puts a greater emphasis on Far Cry’s excellent stealth systems, and I’m a fan of the ridiculous ways it repackages Far Cry’s tools for the stone age. It looks gorgeous, too. BOTANICULA www.botanicula.net A daft point-and-click adventure that favours mellifluent, joyful interaction over convoluted and frustrating puzzles. In one section, you pull a dangling creature’s tongue to shift the pitch of his “aah” noises. This causes a giant tortoise…

THERE’S A LOT MORE GOING ON THAN THOSE PRETTY CGI FACES SUGGEST NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Summer 2017 DEVELOPER Square Enix PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.finalfantasyxiv.com Impressive scenery, epic music, and handsome people punching each other atop a giant statue – the teaser for Stormblood , the next expansion for Final Fantasy XIV , certainly has all the hallmarks of another epic Final Fantasy adventure. However, there’s a lot more going on than those pretty CGI faces suggest. As has been hinted for almost two years in-game, Stormblood will be heading to Ala Mhigo – a city that has been held by the Garlemad empire for 20 years. You’re part of the resistance movement trying to take it back and reclaim…

REPLICATOR This is what you’ll need to build every other bit of Tek tech. Don’t lose it. TELEPORTER Exactly what it sounds like, the teleporter lets you teleport between stations with your inventory, character, and dinosaurs intact. SHIELD GENERATOR Generates a bubble shield that blocks projectiles and allows free passage for allies. Consumes Element based on the diameter. CLONE CHAMBER Used to make a replica dinosaur at a high Element cost. Roll the dice for a chance at improved stats, but your dino may not survive. DOOR It’s a door! An automatic door that opens based on proximity and rank. Finally, you can make a room impenetrable to little brothers. HYPER CHAMBER As the ultimate bed, it recharges all your stats while you’re sleeping and gives a minor XP boost…

Seriously telling I just got my copy of PC Gamer in the mail, and I have almost lost all hope in the magazine that I love. Are you seriously telling us that Gwent is the best game this month for a cover? Or did you just want to have Geralt of Rivia on the cover to sell more copies? If a card game is the best thing about PC gaming this month, then I don’t even feel like reading this issue. But of course I will because I’m sure there are plenty of other games, real games, like Mafia 3 and BioShock that I can read about. SadGamer411 You’re talking about the same Gwent that’s a new game from a beloved studio, and a spin-off from our #1 pick in…

This month’s free gift comes courtesy of Sega to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the excellent Company of Heroes RTS series from Relic. It’s a key granting you access to one of CoH 2’s armies, the Oberkommando West, for online play in all of the game’s multiplayer maps, even if you don’t own the main game. You can also play against the AI in Skirmish mode – so there’s something for every strategy fan. This normally retails on Steam for £9.99. Here, it’s free with your magazine, and we hope you enjoy it. HOW DO I REDEEM MY CODE? This is a Steam key. Download the Steam client from www.steampowered.com if you haven’t already, click on the Games tab, then redeem product and enter the code. It will appear in…

“THIS IS NO SIMPLE REHASH AND REPLACEMENT” Buildings are levelled beyond anything I’d experienced in Battlefield 4 NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A team-based WWI multiplayer shooter with pigeons. EXPECT TO PAY £50 DEVELOPER DICE PUBLISHER EA REVIEWED ON Windows 10, 16GB RAM, i5-6600K, GeForce GTX 1070 MULTIPLAYER Up to 64 LINK www.battlefield.com I’m chasing a man carrying a pigeon. He dives into a building – a mistake, because I’m using an assault class loadout specced for short range combat. I follow and get the drop on him. A couple of blasts from my Trench Shotgun take him down. He drops the pigeon. I pick it up, and start scribbling a note. The note – that is, the timer that dictates how long until the note…

PETER THE GREAT WESTERNISER Gains bonus culture and science from trade routes with civs ahead of him in civics and tech. Thus, he likes civs that stay ahead of him in these categories. HOJO TOKIMUNE BUSHIDO Wants to be bros with those who have a strong military, but also strong faith and culture output. He turns up his nose if you don’t have all three. VICTORIA SUN NEVER SETS Gets along great with other civs who start on her continent, dislikes civs from continents where England does not yet have a city. QIN SHI HUANG WALL OF 10,000 LI Wants his civ to be the most wonderful in the world. Dislikes anyone building the same wonder as him, especially if you beat him.…

The city is a straight-faced homage to New Orleans, not a GTA parody NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? An open-world crime story set in 1960s Louisiana. EXPECT TO PAY £35 DEVELOPER Hangar 13 PUBLISHER 2K Games REVIEWED ON GeForce GTX 970, Intel i5-6600K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.mafiagame.com Lincoln Clay returns from Vietnam in 1968, only to find himself fighting another war on the streets of New Bordeaux, Louisiana. A feud between his adopted family – who are members of the black mob – and a Haitian crime syndicate turns bloody, and suddenly his plans to leave his hometown behind for a job in California are put on indefinite hold. He’s been pulled into a brutal world of revenge and repercussions. Clay’s violent homecoming…

I can’t believe they didn’t let me into the Pretty Girl Poker School. But back to games – remember Hogs of War? The Rik Mayall-voiced 3D game inspired by Worms that cast pigs as racial stereotypes in the World War? I played it to death on PS1, but that old ’90s software didn’t run very well on a modern PC. Well, Ultimate Mayhem is like giving Hogs the technical upgrade I wanted, with the unwanted side-effect of removing Rik Mayall. I mean, that’s not Team 17’s fault. They can’t be expected to deal with my unfair Rik Mayall expectations. No one can. This is good 3D Worms. But if you’re a purist...…

HIGHS Battlefield 1 DICE’s FPS rules again with the best entry in the series since Bad Company 2. Even Andy likes it. Halo Wars 2 A convincing stab at bringing a familiar kind of RTS game back to life. Also, some form of Halo is on PC again. Westworld and Black Mirror It’s pretty cool when TV’s most talked about shows are both so strongly influenced by games. Hitman Now we’re at the end of season one, it’s fair to say IO’s experiment with Agent 47 worked out pretty well in the end. Final Fantasy XIV MMOs following the traditional model are rare now, but FFXIV hasa loyal audience, and a second expansion on the way. LOWS United Front Games The maker of Sleeping Dogs reportedly shut down recently. Tough…

1 16 WAYS TO KILL A VAMPIRE AT MCDONALDS is like Buffy, if Buffy were pissed off and really really wanted a Big Mac, a large fries and a day off. 2 500 APOCALPYSES feels vast and organised, like a real museum, but not all of its entries are interesting – though there sure were some surprisingly sexy ones. 3 HOW TO WIN AT ROCK PAPER SCISSORS is a game that’s secretly about making people disappear to another dimension, which is quite clever, if very weird. 4 SCREW YOU, BEAR DAD is smart, silly and meta, which are all things that make a great interactive fiction game, as it happens. Also, it has bears. And attack helicopters.…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE February 2017 PUBLISHER Ubisoft DEVELOPER Ubisoft Montreal LINK forhonor.ubisoft.com Against the backdrop of a siege, burly men and women – vikings, knights and samurai – hack each other to pieces with two-handed weapons. AI footsoldiers engage in unending conflict on the front line, but the real fight is between two small teams of players controlling For Honor’s powerful champions. The temptation to rush in swinging is high. It took me a good few hours with the alpha to see the error in this approach – to the extent that you can see anything when you are being repeatedly decapitated by an internet stranger. Despite the chunky physicality, this third-person melee game is not a brawler: you can hammer the light and strong…

The first Halo Wars never came to PC – and I’m not sure if we really missed out. That 2009 RTS was tailor-made for the Xbox 360, and it showed. Everything we would ordinarily recognise as real-time strategy was condensed to enable a greater emphasis on combat. Even the unit cap felt stingy – a reflection, perhaps, of the limitations of the hardware. On the platform that created the genre, an RTS made for consoles would never have been a great fit. Eight years later, however, we’re not exactly as rich with RTS games as we were in the ’90s and noughties. Ensemble, the studio that made the first Halo Wars, no longer exists. Outside of Relic’s reliable output and the omnipotent StarCraft II, you’ve got…

I’m playing Dragon Age Inquisition on the recommendation of a mate, and have to say it’s amazing! Take that dragons! Jack Taylor Never mind the dragons, it’s the bears that’ll get you. Playing Disney Infinity on Steam so I can unlock the lightsaber so my four-year-old can be Jedi Queen Elsa. Dustin Faber This is father of the year material. Battlefield 1! I’m loving it! The maps are great, and the destruction is the best in the series! The Red Dead Potato It’s not often you see that many exclamation marks associated with World War I. Kentucky Route Zero – Act 4. This is how it would look if David Lynch made a game. Katphood Let’s hope the upcoming series of Twin Peaks is as good. Hitman. Lots of fun…

You know it’s nearly Christmas when publishers start releasing their biggest games of the year. (Also because calendars straight up tell you how long it is until Christmas.) For EA, that means Battlefield 1. DICE’s multiplayer shooter – actually the 15th Battlefield game – doesn’t venture too far from its predecessors. It’s still a big, chaotic game about big, chaotic wars. The difference this time is that the war in question is World War I. It’s a setting that works surprisingly well, forming the basis of the most unusual and refreshing Battlefield in years, and my favourite since the excellent Bad Company 2. Also this month, the first new Civilization since the disappointing Beyond Earth. Based on TJ’s review, Civ VI is now the best in the series. Update your…

K BULLET Armour piercing bullet that does insignificant damage to tanks. TROLL RATING SHIELD A big sheet of metal that protects against countersniping. TROLL RATING PERISCOPE Safely peek over a ledge, marking enemies for your team. TROLL RATING FLARE GUN Shoot this to blind nearby enemies with its glaring light. TROLL RATING TRIPWIRE MINE Place near the door or stairs of your sniper nest. TROLL RATING DECOY A fake sniper head that reveals enemies who shoot at it. TROLL RATING…

No two cities you build will ever look or feel the same NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Turn-based strategy spanning all of human history. EXPECT TO PAY £40 DEVELOPER Firaxis PUBLISHER 2K REVIEWED ON Windows 10 64-bit, Core i7-4770K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 770 MULTIPLAYER Up to 12 online, local network, and hot seat LINK www.civilization.com Civilization VI is the ultimate digital board game. More than ever in the series, the map is the soul of every opportunity and challenge. I’m playing for, with, and against the board. Forests and deserts and resource-rich tundra influence the growth of my civilisation, granting it boons and burdening it with lasting weaknesses. The glorious, challenging dynamics that emerge leave me in no doubt that the series has crowned a new…

FRENCH WARD A historical district based on New Orleans’ French Quarter. Lively and colourful, it echoes with the sound of jazz music. RIVER ROW A dockside district run by Vito Scaletta, protagonist of Mafia II. He uses it to run smuggling rackets and extort unions. DOWNTOWN The most built-up area of New Bordeaux. The Marcano crime family runs construction and bribery rackets here. DELRAY HOLLOW The residential district where Clay grew up. Once run by the black mob, but now used by the Dixie Mafia to push heroin. BAYOU FANTOM Located on the outskirts, this area of marshlands is used by the Marcanos for gun running and moonshine production.…

Along with a few people on the Steam forums, I couldn’t get the latest 2D Worms game, WMD, to work on my relatively new PC. Then I noticed all the “best Worms since Armageddon!” plaudits in so many of the user reviews. This piqued my interest, even if it did seem to be like confidently declaring that the Amsterdam branch of Madame Tussauds had the best Kylie Minogue waxwork. What is it, precisely, about this game that makes it better than the 19 other identical by design games that have been released since? Well I haven’t got enough space to find out now, so I’ll have to work it out next month. Sorry. Unprofessional. Bad job. Boo. Shut up. No you shut up.…

1 PRICE POINTS Prices can change on these systems while we’re going to press, but OCUK has assured me they’re doing all they can to keep this price fixed at £1,333. It’s a lot, but overall you save money and net some good customer service too. 2 PROCESSING POWER The Intel Core i5-6600K is today’s must-have gaming processor. When you’re packing four cores, and insane single core performance, you’re not going to be held back in any of the latest AAA titles. 3 CHASSIS CONUNDRUMS That’s Phantek’s Enthoo Pro M chassis again. It’s a sweet case, but not essential. It adds an extra £10, and since you’re not the one building in it, I’d suggest you opt for the cheaper and better looking Eclipse P400. 4 WINDOWS WOES You can…

1 CK2 HISTORY GENERATOR TOOL Reroll history with this Crusader Kings 2 mod History can be a useful asset when it comes to strategy games, providing centuries, no, millennia of conflict (and maybe a few minutes where we all got on) for developers to draw on for their assorted factions and systems. But it can also be something of a hindrance, bringing all the politics and prejudices of the real world into games where you sometimes just want a bit of escapism. Here’s a tool for Crusader Kings 2 that procedurally generates a fresh history for the world, replacing countries, religions, and all the horrible stuff that went on in humanity’s past with an entirely new world that carries none of that baggage. After generating a…

IT’S A SHAME A BIG CHUNK OF THE UPDATE FEELS HIDDEN BEHIND A WALL OF GRIEFERS NEED TO KNOW RELEASE April 2015 PUBLISHER Rockstar Games DEVELOPER Rockstar North LINK www.rockstargames.com I’ve played over 100 hours of GTA V , and I haven’t even tried the first singleplayer mission yet. I’ve spent that time working my way through the heists with a band of friends, or just relaxing, cruising around the city raising money with stolen cars and simple missions. This doesn’t seem to be Rockstar’s vision for the future, as such. No new heists have been added in the last 18 months, and the developers have implied we shouldn’t expect any more. Instead the focus has shifted from co-op experiences with friends to a more open-world approach,…

1 NO CONCEPT OF PERSONAL SAFETY Orks will do anything for a laugh, including strapping themselves to rockets to fight planes. 2 THE COLOUR RED Orks strongly believe that the colour red makes things go faster. 3 SCAVENGER BEHAVIOUR Orks kitbash all their gear and other races have no idea how they manage it. Their stuff frequently explodes. 4 ALWAYS BE SHOOTIN’ Machine gun noises, or “dakka dakka” as they call it, are deeply pleasing to Orks. They find loud noises hilarious.…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASED October 2014 PUBLISHER Sega DEVELOPER The Creative Assembly LINK www.alienisolation.com A lot of 1970s science fiction has aged badly, but Alien hasn’t. This is down to several factors, including director Ridley Scott’s insistence on realism over flashy effects, and the practical, industrial designs of concept artist Ron Cobb. In the Alien universe, space travel is not glamorous or exciting; it’s completely matter-of-fact. The crew of the Nostromo aren’t in awe of the fact that they’re travelling between the stars. They just want to get paid and get home. And this is reflected in the stark, functional design of the Nostromo, which is more like an oil rig or a submarine than the fantastical ships we’re used to seeing in sci-fi cinema. In Alien: Isolation, The Creative…

You occasionally see this image on screens around Sevastopol. If you recognise it, that’s because it’s in two of Ridley Scott’s most famous films. Its first appearance is in Alien, when Ripley is escaping in the shuttle. Its second is in Blade Runner, appearing on a screen in Gaff’s spinner. It’s almost certainly just a reused effect, but it’s a nice piece of connective tissue between Alien and the similarly retro-futuristic Blade Runner – and now Alien: Isolation.…