Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2015 i PC Gamer

SMITE Smite Pro League Fall Split August 7 – October 25 The world’s best Smite teams compete over two months to determine who progresses to the regionals and ultimately the world championship. This is the place to start if you want to get into professional Smite. STARCRAFT II MSI Masters Gaming Arena 2015 August 28 – 31 After a run of international qualifiers, MSI’s latest StarCraft tournament ends at PAX Prime in Seattle. LEAGUE OF LEGENDS 2015 EU Regional Qualifiers August 29 – 31 A fierce playoff to determine the third team to represent the EU region in the upcoming League of Legends World Championship, played over three days. HEROES OF THE STORM 2015 HWC Europe Championship October 3 -4 Eight of the best European Heroes of the Storm teams…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Winter DEVELOPER Frontier Developments PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.elitedangerous.com Later this year, landing on planets will finally be possible in Elite: Dangerous . It will extend the game’s three principles of trading, combat and exploration to the surfaces of procedurally generated alien worlds. I talked to director David Braben about what Frontier has in store for Horizons , a paid-for premium update to Frontier’s space sandbox. “We’re starting with airless planets and moons to begin with,” says Braben, “but Earth-like planets will happen in the future.” Like the galaxy itself, the surfaces of these planets will be created using procedural generation. But that doesn’t mean they’ll be random scatterings of rocks and ice – Frontier’s algorithm uses real science to generate…

Brad Bramlett, id’s multiplayer producer, describes it as “movement as defence.” Art director Hugo Martin says he wants players to feel like “Bruce Lee with a shotgun on a skateboard.” Marty Stratton, Doom’s executive producer, puts it more bluntly. “Stopping is death,” he told a crowd at 2015’s QuakeCon in Dallas, Texas. To encourage players to stay in motion, Doom has no regenerative health, no stealth system, and multiplayer matches that are all about capturing the devastating power-ups that are scattered throughout the arena. Doom is all about moving, and never standing still. Says Stratton: “it ties into every decision we make.” THE DEVIL YOU KNOW How do you reboot a seminal PC classic like Doom, a game whose DNA is present…

November 1999 GameMaker 1.0 released, introduces GML scripting language. September 2000 GM 2.0 allows DirectX use for sound. March 2001 Introduces saving and loading. GML becomes colour-coded. July 2001 v4 sees GameMaker completely rewritten and its interface changed. December 2001 Adds multiplayer support. April 2003 v5 released. Overhauls interface again, adds timelines. September 2003 Adds particle system. October 2004 v6 rewrites engine in Direct3D, makes 3D games possible. February 2007 First version released through YoYoGames, allows manual extensions. December 2009: v8 comes with in-built tutorials. May 2012 GameMaker: Studio 1.0 released, adds in-built Box 2D physics. November 2014 GameMaker Marketplace added, LiquidFun Particle Physics introduced.…

Lower in Russia As for combating game piracy, Ubisoft’s DRM hasn’t stopped, or even delayed in any form any pirate getting their hands on their games. Steam aren’t that bad, and prices being lower in Russia to compensate for their piracy rates probably helps out in some cases, though despite all this I believe more can be done. Sam Ensuring that your games are reasonably priced and readily available is a publisher’s best counter to piracy. Unless you’re talking about the other kind of piracy, of course, in which case the best counter is cannons. PCG The concept of reboots Last month my email discussing reboots of series that don’t really need them was featured the magazine, which I was very grateful for. However, after seeing your response, I decided…

00%-10% A game of absolutely no value. Are you playing one of these games? Take 3d6 emotional damage. Examples Big Brother 11%-39% Yikes. Technically broken, or so fundamentally flawed that it’s ultimately not worth any time or money. Bad. Examples The War Z 40%-49% This game is functional, but majorly flawed and disappointing. Examples Firefall, Star Trek 50%-59% Mediocre. If it has any interesting ideas, they don’t work well. Might suffer from bugs or technical issues. Examples Primordia, Painkiller: Hell & Damnation 60%-69% An interesting idea poorly expressed, or a derivative idea executed averagely. Comes with caveats. Examples SimCity, Mortal Kombat X 70%-79% Good, but not a classic. This score is a recommendation, just not a glowing one. Examples Broken Age, Shadowrun Returns 80%-89% A great game with exceptional moments…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A dungeon builder and crawler all in one digital card game. EXPECT TO PAY £11 DEVELOPER Gambrinous PUBLISHER Versus Evil REVIEWED ON i7 960 @ 3.61GHz, 6GB RAM, HD 4870 X2 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.guildofdungeoneering.com Guild of Dungeoneering is a simplification of the dungeon crawler both mechanically and aesthetically. It’s a digital card game that looks as though it was sketched on graph paper by a child who got bored in class. Every step of the game’s simple formula is represented by pencil-drawn cards, from the battles to Dungeoneering’s most distinguishing feature: that you build the dungeons yourself. Quests begin with some rooms, enemies, and maybe some loot chests already laid out. Each turn you get a new…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Wandering samurai adventure set in feudal Japan. EXPECT TO PAY £20 DEVELOPER Acquire PUBLISHER Ghostlight REVIEWED ON GeForce GTX 970, Intel i5-3570K @ 3.4GHz, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.wayofthesamurai4.com After 200 years of isolation from the rest of the world, Japan has opened its borders up to foreigners. The ruling shogunate and the British are working together to take financial advantage of this new policy, while isolationist rebels fight to keep the country closed off. It’s an interesting setting, based on real history, but used in a very silly game that’s about as historically accurate as Blackadder. A wandering samurai, you arrive in the fictional port of Amihama just as violence erupts between the three groups. This is your first taste of Way…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A steampunk heist/ hacking sim/platformer with procedurally generated maps. EXPECT TO PAY £12 DEVELOPER Size Five PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON I7 960 @ 3.61GHz, 6GB RAM, HD 4870 X2 MULTIPLAYER None LINK sizefivegames.com/games/theswindle You have 100 days to steal enough money to then steal a device called the Basilisk, which threatens to make thievery an unviable career. On each of those days you must attempt to rob a procedurally generated building. You can move, jump, hit things with a stick, and also ‘interact’ with them – at first just to open doors but later to do things such as hack computers for more money. My first thief died by falling too far. Through the sacrifice of several of his colleagues, I learned that mines…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? An expansion for last year’s brilliant philosophical puzzler. EXPECT TO PAY £11 DEVELOPER CroTeam PUBLISHER Devolver Digital REVIEWED ON Intel i5-2500K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.croteam.com/talosprinciple Every puzzle in The Talos Principle is a code waiting to be broken, a cipher rendered as a chamber full of colour-coded lasers, turrets, jammers, mines, fans, pressure plates and energy barriers. Arriving at a solution means discovering the correct arrangement of all these elements – all of them matter, and somehow, despite the relatively small number of components, each chamber feels substantially different. Entering a new chamber, you’re asked to pull together everything you know about the pieces placed before you – the way two lasers counter one another,…

This was one of the earliest games to inspire terror. Procedurally generated tiled maps, in 1986 no less, unmoored the game from finity. Your only enemy: an emotionless rotating statue squatting atop the highest point. He’s looking for anomalies to smooth out. As a gathering of energy, you are an anomaly, and getting smoothed out is fatal. So you absorb trees, place boulders, and drop a synthoid on top that you can jump into. Get higher than the Sentinel, and he’s yours for the absorbing. But if he catches sight of you, it’s a matter of pure panic-escape as he drains you to nothing. The Sentinel is not available to buy, but you can play it free in your browser at abandonware sites.…

1 COOL RUNNINGS Even when overclocked the 5775C runs at just 60ºC, which is impressive enough. At stock speeds it runs at a peak of just 54ºC. For a small machine that’s great work. 2 GRAPHICS GUMPTION It’s the first time we’ve seen Iris Pro on a socketed CPU, but given the cost the Core i5-5675C is probably a better bet for a well-priced chip with CPU graphics power. 3 POWER SIPPING Broadwell’s mobile heritage is most obvious in its power use. At peak levels the platform power is only just over 100W at stock speeds. 4 GAME-AVERSE With its low clockspeed and relative lack of overclocking potential, the Core i7-5775C is definitely not a worthwhile gaming upgrade from even a Devil’s Canyon i5 CPU. INTEL CORE I7-5775C ark.intel.com £294 C…

MOTHERBOARD Z170 Pro Gaming Asus £120 The latest revision of our favourite gaming motherboard, with an M.2 PCIe x4 slot, Intel network port, USB 3.1 and SLI support. PROCESSOR i5-6600K Intel £156 Intel’s new Skylake processor is nearly as fast as an i7 for gaming. Comes with some important memory/storage speed boosts. GRAPHICS CARD GTX 970 4G MSI £270 Offers the best price/performance ratio right now, and MSI’s model is cheap and overclockable, with a quiet cooler. COOLER Hyper 212 EVO Cooler Master £25 If it ain’t broke... the Hyper 212 EVO is a great cooler for the price. Save a bit of money in your mid-range build. MEMORY Ballistix Sport(8GB) Crucial £90 8GB of reasonably fast DDR4, and one of the cheapest deals you’ll find. Corsair is reliable, and…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASED 2003 PUBLISHER Ubisoft DEVELOPER Ubisoft Montpellier LINK www.bit.ly/1HqquMY Sight is a recurring mechanism in Ubisoft’s open worlds. Assassin’s Creed has its synchronisation towers, from which you gaze out to unlock more of the map. Far Cry has its magic tactical binoculars. And cult favourite Beyond Good & Evil has its reporter’s camera, a chunky old Kodak-style affair. It may seem a minor part of the whole, compared to hover racing or thwacking aliens with a jo-staff – but it’s both a key plot element and emblematic of how Ubi’s open-world games have gone on to sacrifice sympathy for scope and density. As philanthropist turned resistance fighter Jade, you use the camera mostly to snap…

The Spy knows what it means to lose millions – usually other people’s millions. The Spy has gambled government money on everything from high-stakes poker matches to high-stakes dog races to high-stakes rock-paper-scissors contests. How else are you expected to secure sensitive nuclear codes? ‘Diplomacy or actual espionage’, pshh. Blizzard’s lost a few millions recently, too, but it turns out the publisher can take the hit. Activision-Blizzard’s latest round of financial results (thrilling, as you know) reveal that World of Warcraft has shed 1.5 million subscribers since May, bringing the total down to 5.6 million – a long way from the 10 million they boasted around the launch of the last expansion. For any other game, a dip of almost 50% would be a big, big deal. But this is…

1 PUTT-PUTT The series for the youngest players, ages 3-5. Bright colours, energetic animations and simple plots made it unintimidating and easy to understand. 2 FREDDI FISH For players 4-6 years old. Each game featured a mystery that encouraged reading and critical thinking in order to crack the cases. 3 PAJAMA SAM For 5-7-year-old players. The entries tackled common childhood issues, such as fearing the dark and eating properly, wrapped up with increasingly complex challenges and blue-footed pyjamas. 4 SPY FOX A take on James Bond, the series was designed for ages 6-8. Witty dialogue matched with multi-step puzzles to challenge older kids.…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE October 13 DEVELOPER Ubisoft Montreal PUBLISHER Ubisoft LINK rainbow6.ubi.com/siege/en-gb Tom is nailing the doors shut, and armouring the key entrances. Cooper is helping barricade the windows, and making ready to track the bads with a heartbeat monitor. Stefan, having scattered his razor wire inside the nailed-shut doors, is roaming the corridors of the derelict building alone, despite our shouts to regroup. (He dies alone.) I’ve planted an armoured emplacement in one corner of the room and now I’m crouching behind it with my tactical shield up. We’re ready. At which point something can-shaped rolls under the nailed-shut doorway, buzzing gently. Later I will wonder why we left gaps at the bottom of every door, but my initial reaction is GRENADE ARGH, so I dive behind the…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2015 PUBLISHER Ubisoft DEVELOPER Ubisoft Montreal LINK assassinscreed.ubi.com Idon’t feel a lot for Assassin’s Creed these days, partly because there are far too many of them – three in the past year, between Unity , Rogue and Chronicles – and also because Ubisoft’s track record with PC ports is spotty at best. I’ve taken to skipping multiple years of Assassin’s Creed . I played Black Flag but avoided Unity . I’m slightly more interested in Syndicate . During a brief hands-on, I got to try out the biggest change to the series so far – the grappling hook…

You want to buy a game or PC at a better price, but you want to avoid trawling through page-after-page of search options in pursuit of that reduced rate. It makes perfect sense – sometimes you pay what you think is a great price for a boxed PC game, less than you’d find it on Steam, only to find it for less elsewhere later on. As a consumer, what’s ideal is having a better price found for you with as little fuss as possible. Even better would be to just drop the thing you want into a box and have the internet magically summon a more competitive price for you. Beat My Price, an innovative new service from bespoke offers, does all the hard work of comparing the price of…

RELEASE November 10 Combat Judging from the QuakeCon demo, stealth works similarly to the way it does in Fallout 3, with the same [HIDDEN] bar as before. The VATS targetting system returns to provide some sense of more traditional, turn-based combat with the precision that offers, but the shooting itself is being designed to compete with the best modern FPS games. That’s a significant step up from Fallout 3’s slightly janky shooting, which was burdened by unseen dice rolls. VATS no longer stops time, either, just slowing it down, and the accuracy percentages on the HUD change in real time. Good aiming can make up for lower shooting stats, but digital dice rolls still play an important part in determining whether a shot lands. This is an RPG, after all.…

The Talos Principle’s first expansion, Road To Gehenna, was a pleasant surprise this month: an island of intellectually-ambitious spatial puzzling in a sea of Dota, Dota, and more Dota. It’s squarely aimed at people who’ve already enjoyed and finished the original game, but give it a look: nobody expected the team behind Serious Sam to turn out the smartest game in ages, but they did. Elsewhere, Andy goes digging for gold in the utterly strange open-world RPG Way of the Samurai 4. This is a game that is partly about British colonialism and its impact on feudal Japan and partly about someone’s bizarre decision to call a female character ‘Melinda Megamelons’. That both of these things can exist in the same game is a testament to how deeply and enduringly…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A high-speed F1 racer with the emphasis on realism. EXPECT TO PAY £40 DEVELOPER Codemasters PUBLISHER Namco Bandai REVIEWED ON GTX 970, Intel i5 4670K, 8GB RAM MULTIPLAYER Up to 12 LINK www.formula1-game.com This year, Codemasters has seemingly given up trying to pack new features into its racing sim for us to play around with. Instead, the studio has removed almost everything other than the bare bones of a career mode and some online multiplayer options. Surprisingly enough, F1 2015 also represents the purest and most thrillingly breakneck representation of F1 yet. There’s no longer the option to create your own personal racer and take him from Zero to Hero. Instead it’s just one season playing as an already-famous F1…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A puzzle-platformer where you control multiple characters. EXPECT TO PAY £7 DEVELOPER Neko Entertainment PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Intel i7 x980 3.33 GHz, 9 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 MULTIPLAYER None LINK replay.e-neko.com Oh, you moron! Get out of my way!” I scream with red-faced fury at my co-op teammate. After a long run through a complicated level where absolutely everything worked perfectly, I’ve just tried to jump over the guy but the idiot’s chosen that exact moment to jump over me, which means we collide face-first in midair just inches from the exit. No one goes anywhere, and we have to replay the level again. What’s important to understand is that this is a singleplayer game and my co-op teammate is actually…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? The abyss. EXPECT TO PAY Free to play DEVELOPER Playsaurus PUBLISHER In-house MULTIPLAYER None FIRST REVIEWED N/A LINK www.clicker heroes.com Cow Clicker. A game in which you clicked a cow. A game that openly deconstructed casual gaming, and deftly insulted the virtue of curiosity with more savage subtlety than Peter Molyneux. Then, Cookie Clicker , which added a sham of exponential progress, and a Granny side-plot that convinced several of my dearest friends that it was good. It was not. They are stupid and I despise them. I played Cookie Clicker for days. Now, Clicker Heroes. Its infinite trick is ‘ascension’. When you ascend, your progress is distilled into Hero Souls. These increase your damage…

MAMBA TOURNAMENT EDITION Razer £80 It had to happen eventually. Having spent years mostly unimpressed by Razer’s mouse offerings I’ve found one I really, really like. The Mamba Tournament Edition is simple, stylish, comfortable and devastatingly accurate. I love the lightweight nature of the device (something I never expected to say) and it feels great in the hand. www.razerzone.com K10 i-rocks £20 I love mechanical switch keyboards, but they are expensive compared to what else is out there. This solid membrane switch board from i-rocks isn’t going to win any Red Dot style awards, but it is cheap, simple, functional, and also reassuringly solid. It won’t last as long as a Corsair K70, but it’s a great budget offering. www.i-rocks.com 850 PRO 2TB Samsung £720 Those are both big numbers:…

MOTHERBOARD ROG Maximus VIII Hero Asus £172 Fantastic overclocking and stability, with a great UEFI BIOS from Asus. M.2, USB 3.1 and on-board power, reset, CMOS, etc, buttons. PROCESSOR Core i7-6700K Intel £263 Intel’s new top-of-the-line Skylake processor. Its new chipset includes important memory/ storage speed boosts. GRAPHICS CARD GTX 980 Gaming 4G MSI £415 Right now the GTX 980 is the best value single-GPU card for ultra 1080p and 1440p gaming, bar none. COOLER H90 Corsair £75 Quiet even under heavy load, the H90 gets the cooling job done with a single 140mm radiator, easily fitting a variety of cases. MEMORY Ripjaws V Series DDR4 2666 16GB G.SKILL £116 16GB of fast DDR4. RAM speeds make only a small difference, but the 2666 starting speed is stable and widely…

1 BURGHAUSEN A medieval control point map, which means no guns. Despite the chaotic nature of the mode, Burghausen offers a scenic German town to enjoy as you attack and defend. www.bit.ly/TeamWorkshop1 2 GLASSWORKS A 5CP map, locking both teams in a tug-of-war over its five control points. It’s designed for competitive Highlander, but works just as well with 24 players. www.bit.ly/TeamWorkshop2 3 OCCULT Team Fortress meets Indiana Jones in a King of the Hill map set in a mine shaft that leads to an old, forgotten temple. Its control point rests on a giant lump of gold. www.bit.ly/TeamWorkshop3…

May 2008 A leaked CGI trailer shows Jade running through a city, chased by police and jumping on helicopters. June 2010 Michel Ancel reveals that the sequel is being created by a small team to minimise commercial pressures. June 2011 Ancel announces that Ubisoft Montpellier will develop Beyond Good & Evil 2 for the next generation of consoles. June 2015 Ubisoft confirms that Ancel is still making games for its Montpellier studio, but avoids mention of BG&E2.…

HIGHS Mafia III A black protagonist and a 1960s setting that tackles racial issues? We didn’t expect that, 2K. Well played. Star Wars Battlefront Yes, we’re excited about flying the Millennium Falcon. We’re so predictable. The International 5 DDoS attacks couldn’t spoil the greatest spectacle in PC gaming. Congratulations to winners Evil Geniuses. Windows 10 Hey, turns out Microsoft still knows how to make a decent OS. But we still don’t trust creepy AI assistant Cortana. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Now being released alongside the console versions on September 1. LOWS Doping The Electronic Sports League will now be testing esports competitors for performance enhancing drugs. The Sims 4 Responsible for the most embarrassing moment at this year’s Gamescom. Google it. Homefront: The Revolution This post-apocalyptic FPS…

Yes WHILE THE LINE-UP IS EXCITING, ORIGINAL GAMES ARE NONEXISTENT. No SUCCESSIVE GAMES IN A SERIES CAN ITERATE AND IMPROVE UPON THE LAST ONE. THE DEBATE IS OVER, BUT WHICH ARGUMENT DESERVES A SEQUEL? LET US KNOW @PCGAMER. Ben: I live my life by two philosophies, Sam. One: big numbers are better than small numbers. Two: everything in the past is worse than everything today. That’s why black and white movies objectively suck, old people are better than babies, and videogames need more sequels. They’re a chance for developers to fix what needs fixing, add elements they couldn’t have added before, and essentially have another shot at doing things better, like in It’s a Wonderful Life, which sucks by the way. Sam, can you tell me a single videogame sequel…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Autumn DEVELOPER Jay Tholen, A Jolly Corpse PUBLISHER Devolver Digital LINK www.dropsytheclown.com The key to Dropsy is the hug system. Anyone you see – and some inanimate objects – can be hugged. Dropsy may look like the stuff of nightmares, but he has a heart of gold. Not everyone will want to hug him at first, though. First you have to make them like you by completing sidequests. For every successful hug, Dropsy pins a picture of the hugee to the wall above his bed. He’s a serial hugger, whose hunger for hugs cannot be sated, and the most unlikely videogame hero of the year. Dropsy is also an adventure game, in the classic LucasArts mould. The stylish art is reminiscent of…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 DEVELOPER Hangar 13 PUBLISHER 2K Games LINK www.mafiagame.com The life of the Italian mafioso has been well documented and there’s a well-worn template for the rags-to-riches story of a young hopeful struggling with the internal wranglings of organised crime. Mafia III is different. It’s set in a reimagined version of New Orleans in the late ’60s and casts the Italian mafia as the primary antagonists. You play Lincoln Clay, a black Vietnam veteran who, on returning to the US, finds work with the black mob. It’s here that Clay – an orphan – finds the family he’s been searching for. But his sense of belonging is cut short when his adoptive family are betrayed by the mafia. Now he’s building his…

When Geralt of Rivia arrives in Velen, searching for his adopted daughter Ciri, he finds a war-ravaged no man’s land. Dead soldiers litter the fields – the aftermath of a bloody war between Temeria and the invading Nilfgaardians – and deserters hang from trees, bags over their heads, swaying gently in the breeze. Yet despite this horror and devastation, Velen is also a place of startling natural beauty, of lush forests and rolling hills. This contrast is mirrored in The Witcher 3’s most emotional and disturbing quest, Family Matters, and in the complex, conflicted character at the centre of it: the Bloody Baron. “We needed a character that personified Velen, with all of its beauty and troubles,” Pawel Sasko, designer of the quest, tells me. “The Baron is a soldier,…

Many tools have been released over the years that claimed to make game development accessible to all. Software like Klik ‘n’ Play and DarkBASIC promised an easy route into game design, either through simplified programming languages or avoiding coding altogether. But there’s a difference between making game design accessible, and making professional game design accessible. That’s where the other apps fell short, and where GameMaker: Studio is different. “I think that when we released Studio, the product changed and the user-base changed,” says Stuart Poole, head of production at YoYoGames, the makers of GameMaker: Studio. “People are now using this as a tool to make a living.” Once a hobbyist development tool, lately GameMaker has formed the basis of several massively successful games, including Hotline Miami, Nuclear Throne, and the…

GET INVOLVED To join our World of Warcraft guild, you’ve got a couple of options. You can visit the forum at www.pcgwow.enjin.com and introduce yourself there. Alternatively, create or transfer a character to our server (Moonglade/ Steamwheedle Cartel/The Sha’Tar EU) and use the in-game search tools to contact somebody from [PCG]. THE INDEX MINECRAFT Server 85.236.100. 145:26665 Link www.pcgukmc. enjin.com GUILD WARS 2 Server Desolation EU Link www.pcggw.com STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC Server The Red Eclipse Link www.pcg-mi. enjin.com PC Gamer has had a World of Warcraft guild since time immemorial – it’s one of our oldest community institutions, enduring through the ups and downs of the legendary MMO. I caught up with veteran guildie Jodders to learn how the old guard are doing, many months…

Wherever possible, we finish a game before finalising the review. We review each game on its own merits, and try to match it to a reviewer who’s a passionate expert in the field. The main aim of the reviews section is to help you make buying decisions. ALPHAS & BETAS This means we’ll review any released alpha, beta or otherwise unfinished game that you can currently buy. For these games, we won’t assign a score, but we will tell you whether they’re worth your time in their current state. DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT DLC might be hours-long new missions for a game, or it might be a single new item. Either way, if we think you want to know about it, we’ll review it. THEY’RE BACK Whenever there’s a bargain or re-release…

CHRIS THURSTEN Specialist in RPG, competitive Currently playing The Talos Principle This month Gave himself a stress headache trying to finish every puzzle in time for the review. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Action, RPG Currently playing Way of the Samurai 4 This month Threw up his hands and stopped looking for answers. There are no answers. JORDAN ERICA WEBBER Specialist in Puzzle, platformer Currently playing The Swindle This month Took to Victorian crime capers like a fish to, er, fish crime. SAM WHITE Specialist in Action, racing Currently playing F1 2015 This month Drove the little vroom-vroom cars very fast in circles, as millionaires do. CHRIS LIVINGSTON Specialist in RPG, adventure Currently playing Replay This month Enjoyed revisiting the world of platformers that make you swear. RICHARD COBBETT Specialist in…

Norse-themed RPG KYN fails to engage. The more I played, the less it reminded me of Pillars of Eternity NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A party-based action-RPG EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Tangrin Entertainment PUBLISHER Versus Evil REVIEWED ON Windows 8, Core i5, 8GB RAM, GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.kyngame.com Bram is my party’s tank. He is a Magni warrior, the saviour of our village, and a damage-absorbing badass. His reputation doesn’t last long. Upon returning from battle, he spins in a few circles, then crouches down. “Come here, Sheep,” he says to a chicken. This is pretty awkward for me and the village elders, but it’s most confusing for the chicken. Staying in his crouch, Bram begins to levitate sideways off-screen, shuddering down the hillside…

LEWIS HAMILTON This year’s dominant big-dog. Lewis is fast and merciless on the track, and getting past him won’t be an easy task. NICO ROSBERG Everyone’s favourite sulky German and most of the time a reluctant second to Hamilton, he’ll still be tough to pass in that Mercedes. SEBASTIAN VETTEL Vettel is running at a comfortable third, but the German is pushing hard to regain his championship victory streak of 2010 – 2013. KIMI RAIKONNEN/ WILLIAMS The battle for fourth, fifth and sixth is separated by only three points right now between Ferrari’s Iceman and Team Williams.…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A modern episodic reboot of the classic series. EXPECT TO PAY £7/£32 DEVELOPER The Odd Gentlemen PUBLISHER Sierra REVIEWED ON Core i7, 8GB RAM, GeForce GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER None LINK sierra.com/kingsquest Every hero has to start somewhere. Honestly though, I never thought King Graham of Daventry started out as Guybrush Threepwood – a gawkish young man desperate for respect and glory, fondly remembered by his older self in the form of stories told to granddaughter Gwendolyn. Young Graham is much like his game. Well meaning. Full of confidence. Just a bit too eager for his own good, leaping to the cool stuff before learning the basics. New episodic developers The Odd Gentlemen have borrowed much from Telltale’s book here, a little old-school wandering and…

The fact that Obsidian’s rare stab at an original intellectual property remains my go-to reference for decent, saucy Bond chat means it must have got something right. The shooting sections are good but not great, the stealth is closer to great, but the strongest parts of the game are the roleplaying conversations. The point being that you’re playing the role required of you – it’s not about being yourself, it’s about being the right person for the job. Which is fine here, as Alpha Protocol isn’t pretending to be a dating sim. It’s an archetypal seven out of ten, but Alpha Protocol deserves a spot in all of those ‘Seven Out Of Tens You Should Definitely Maybe Play’ listicles.…

MOTHERBOARD H81M-P33 MSI £34 A bargain-priced microATX board that pairs nicely with the Pentium G3258, letting you overclock into 4GHz+ territory. PROCESSOR Pentium Anniversary G3258 Intel £48 Ludicrously cheap and overclockable, the dual-core G3258 rivals far more expensive processors in gaming performance. GRAPHICS CARD AMD R9 380 2GB Sapphire £159 AMD’s R9 380 is a refreshed R9 285, but it still packs enough power to handle 1080p gaming at a decent price. COOLER Hyper 212 EVO Cooler Master £25 A legendary cooler, still the best for its very reasonable price. Overclock to your heart’s content with this. MEMORY Crucial Ballistix Sport 1600MHz (8GB) Crucial £40 Cheap, low-profile, and reliable. Does its job. The best 8GB you’ll find. POWER SUPPLY EVGA 500W 80PLUS Certified ATX12V/EPS12V EVGA £33 A reliable PSU with…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Out now PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER Blizzard Entertainment LINK eu.battle.net\wow We’re about nine months into World of Warcraft’s Warlords of Draenor expansion, and I can’t remember what any of my guildmates look like. It’s not like I don’t have contact with them – I log in about four times a week and we exchange jokes in little green letters in the lower left of the screen. But as for actually seeing them? Forget it. We’ve stopped raiding and we’re all too ‘busy’ when we’re online together. We’re picking herbs or mining ore. We’re preparing work orders. We’re finishing quests with NPC ‘bodyguards’ to get more oil to launch naval missions for gear. And the worst part? We’re all doing the same things on…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASED February 2012 OUR REVIEW 86% EXPECT TO PAY £20 LINK www.alanwake.com America’s Pacific Northwest is one of the most beautiful places on the planet, but there’s also something haunting and mysterious about those dark woods and forested valleys. This landscape inspired David Lynch when he created supernatural soap opera Twin Peaks, and ultimately Finnish horror game Alan Wake. Remedy’s love of Lynch has been apparent since the ‘Address Unknown’ theme park in Max Payne 2, but Wake is its most overt homage to his work. Like Twin Peaks, the game uses a place of stunning natural beauty to tell a grim, twisted horror story, and it’s this contrast that makes Bright Falls such an evocative setting. You arrive by ferry, in a disarmingly peaceful introduction to…

CHRIS THURSTEN I go in for elegant design and games that make you feel like you’ve learned something. Also, spaceships. CRAFT A MASTER PLAN INVISIBLE, INC. www.invisibleincgame.com Beautifully-crafted strategic stealth. You’ve got 72 hours to prepare your cyberpunk spy organisation for a last-ditch assault on the megacorps. This is an unparalleled generator of brilliant heist moments: last-ditch escapes, heroic sacrifices, precarious gambits. Fantastic art, too. SOLVE A PUZZLE INFINIFACTORY www.zachtronics.com/infinifactory Being abducted by aliens and forced to build factories isn’t such a terrible fate, it turns out. Infinifactory combines Minecraft-style creativity with the pleasure of logical puzzle-solving. The difficulty curve is perfectly pitched, testing your understanding of each factory element in dozens of different ways. GET LOST IN SPACE ELITE: DANGEROUS www.elitedangerous.com Whenever I’m feeling stressed, Elite’s massive simulation of…