Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i PC Gamer

HIGHS Stardew Valley Our ‘Spirit of the PC 2016’ winner has now made an estimated $24 million. Less valuable, but still cool. Enderal The massive Skyrim mod is getting its own expansion, adding 10-20 hours of new quests. Frog Fractions 2 The Kickstarter-funded experimental comedy game is found hiding inside Glittermitten Grove. AGDQ Speedrunning event raises $2.2 million for charity. Check out the excellent Hitman: Blood Money run. Just Cause 3 The multiplayer mod is out now, and promises cooperative carnage. LOWS Hitman Only achieved Bronze tier in Steam’s Top 100 top sellers of 2016. Agent 47 deserves better. Dirt 3 Codemasters’ rally racer disappears from digital stores, likely due to an expired licensing deal. Landmark Daybreak is to close the sandbox build-’em-up next month. It was once such a…

1 THE ISSUE  The relatively low-resolution art style of adventure games tends to evoke comparisons with their predecessors from the ’80s and ’90s. 2 SAME BUT DIFFERENT  This is a pet peeve for Wadjet Eye’s Dave Gilbert, who doesn’t see his games as old-school or conventional beyond the pixel art itself. 3 IN GOOD COMPANY  Owl Cave Games’ Olivia White, on the other hand, is comfortable with the label. They’re classic adventure games mechanically, she says. 4 WHAT THE CUSTOMER WANTS  SkyGoblin’s Theodor Waern likes the label, too. It’s an unspoken agreement with the players to stick to a specific set of adventure game tropes.…

Dragon Age: Inquisition’s opening environment was notoriously dull – too many filler sidequests, and it was a bit unclear when you were allowed to go somewhere else. When Mass Effect Andromeda comes out, put its planets and their associated sidequests to this test. Anything more than a one out of five means that you’re in the Hinterlands – in space. You’ve been in the same environment for over four hours without seeing any new cutscenes. You’re hunting some kind of creature or gathering some kind of mineral to make a thing, but you’re not sure why. You’ve forgotten why you came here and you’re not exactly sure when you’re allowed to leave. There are so many icons on the map that you’re genuinely stressed about where to go next. Ultimately…

1 ALD’RUHN The manor district of Under-Skar returns, and it’s much more ominous that I remember. 700 years were apparently not kind to its huge mudcrab cadaver, as here he’s much more recognisable than the indistinct murky dome of 2002’s TESIII take. 2 VIVEC CITY Not nearly as annoying to navigate as it was back in the day, due to being much smaller. The main campaign (which should weigh in at 30-40 hours) centres on curing the mortal god Vivec, who holds a floating rock ominously over his namesake city. 3 SADRITH MORA The wizard equivalent of willy waving, the towers of Sadrith Mora’s mushroom growths indicate the relative power of the magus who resides within. It’s more ominous than a simple signpost, though really I’m more interested in who’s…

ANDY KELLY Specialist in Survival, horror Currently playing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard This month Entered a house full of creeps. The punchline writes itself. PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Racing, topography Currently playing Forza Horizon 3: Blizzard Mountain This month Did sick drifts like a rad racer who doesn’t play Forza in his pants. KATE GRAY Specialist in Visual novels, euphemism Currently playing Ladykiller in a Bind This month Tested the limits of NSFW by playing Ladykiller for work. FRASER BROWN Specialist in Strategy, tanuki Currently playing Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun This month Discovered the stealth potential of small, chubby canids. CHRIS SCHILLING Specialist in Adventure, pathos Currently playing The Walking Dead This month Embarked on an adventure more deadly than 2016. TOM SENIOR Specialist in Strategy, masochism Currently…

THE NERD Angry, a little boring, mostly serves as a barrier for you when you’re trying to sleep with pretty much anyone. THE ATHLETE Seems to be your cousin, so I guess you probably can’t screw him. He also can’t win you votes, so you may not talk to him much. THE PHOTOGRAPHER Manipulative, untrustworthy, kinda cute. Spoilers: you can get to a sort-of sex scene with her, but it’s a bit of a dead end. THE MAID The only WoC in the game. She’s cute, and makes a Final Fantasy reference at one point. NICE.…

Schrodinger is a sassy cartoon cat, to whom death is merely one of two coexistent facets of a superstate, collapsed only upon observation. Yes, we’re observing him constantly, but that’s only a problem if you’re going to be a dick about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. This lovely not-really-educational idea sadly sounds better than it is. The main problem is remembering which of the more obscure three-quark powers might be useful at a given time. The thought required to work out the button combo kinda wrecks the tempo.…

1 1080 KILLER? Dual RX 480s don’t quite beat Nvidia’s top-end GPU. But for games that support CrossFire, it’s seriously close, and for £100-200 less, well worth it. 2 BEAUTIFULLY CRAFTED For many, an aesthetic system is all but an afterthought. With the Corsair Crystal 460X, OCUK has built a tidy, sleek rig worthy of displaying on any desk. 3 KABY OVERCLOCK Kaby Lake may not have wowed us with its incrementally small improvement, but overclocking is a different story. OCUK has managed to push the Core i5-7600K up to 4.9GHz without affecting stability. 4 NETFLIX 4K One of the neatest features included with Kaby Lake is its ability to allow streaming services to output at 4K, making it a media-friendly futureproofed system. PC TOWER TITAN OSPREY PRO GAMING PC…

MOTHERBOARD H270M Bazooka MSI £90 Kaby Lake has landed and the 270 series chipsets with it. MSI’s Bazooka H270M is a perfect fit for our new Core i3-7100 CPU. PROCESSOR Core i3-7100 Intel £116 Kaby is a minor advance on Skylake, but for a new PC, there’s no better choice. Two cores, four threads, and a 3.9GHz clock. GRAPHICS CARD RX 480 G1 Gaming 4GB Gigabyte £191 The RX 480 is still our budget GPU of choice, making quick work of the vast majority of games at 1080p. MEMORY Fury Black 8GB @2400 HyperX £60 DDR4 packs higher speeds, better energy efficiency, and larger capacities. 8GB is still perfect for most games, too. POWER SUPPLY EVGA 500W 80PLUS Certified ATX12V/EPS12V EVGA £52 A reliable PSU with enough juice to run…

ANDY KELLY THIS MONTH Returned to Azeroth and reunited with an old friend. ALSO PLAYED Astroneer, Total War: Warhammer AS MUCH AS I’M ENJOYING IT, IT’S NOT REALLY THE GAME I REMEMBER. IT’S TOO EXCITING It’s the winter of 2010 and World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm expansion has just been released. After years of resisting I finally decide to try Blizzard’s MMO, and like many before me I fall hopelessly under its spell. I play it every evening for hours, amazed by the scale, hooked on the grind. Then I just stop. Perhaps another game came along or I just got bored, but the obsession mysteriously fades away, my subscription expires, and I leave Azeroth behind. Over the years I’m occasionally overcome with a powerful desire to return. I reminisce about…

KATHARINE BYRNE THIS MONTH Swapped keyboard for pen and paper. ALSO PLAYED Dead Space ADMITTEDLY, IT WAS IMMENSELY SATISFYING SOLVING JINDOSH’S LAST REMAINING MASTERWORK My playthrough of the first game was more disaster than Dishonored. At the time, I didn’t quite grasp that slitting every throat I met in those early Dunwall levels would send me spiralling toward the dreaded High Chaos ending never to return. As the hours rolled on and the increasing swell of rats began to gnaw on Corvo’s bootstraps, I thought that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to redress the balance by going full stealth, stifling the screams of my foes without shuffling them off their mortal coil. Alas, Arkane’s Chaos system was more severe than I’d anticipated. The rats continued to scoff their…

SAMUEL ROBERTS Buys games on a whim then makes his team do features on them. PHIL SAVAGE Veteran of Kerbal Space Program, so knows about pretend space. In a Steam sale long ago, on a whim, Samuel picked up the sandbox and construction game Space Engineers. For this feature, he and Phil teamed up to build a spaceship in it, to leave Earth in that spaceship and to fly it to the Moon – all without knowing how the game actually worked, or paying any attention to its tutorials. FINDING EACH OTHER Phil: I launch a creative mode server, spawning in a base on Earth. Samuel joins, and... Sam, where are you? Samuel: I’m 66km away, Phil, having spawned in the Earth’s atmosphere, and I’m in a landing craft which…

DIVYA MOONEY Profession: Famous Explorer Trait: Secretive. Being scanned will reduce satisfaction. Wants to collect data from a system 12,000 light years away. Better stock up on Pot Noodles. JAYLINN HARRISON Profession: CEO Trait: Time sensitive. Delays will reduce passenger satisfaction. Wants transport. Clearly her company isn’t doing great if she can’t afford a space limo. ELDON DELEON Profession: Rich Tourist Trait: Demanding. Likely to make requests while onboard. Wants to see visitor beacons throughout the galaxy. Not actual landmarks. Just beacons. RUDOLPH CANTUHARTMAN Profession: Criminal Mastermind Trait: Criminal. If scanned by authorities, you’ll be attacked. Wants transport. Wrote ‘criminal mastermind’ on the manifest.…

PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Space stuff, Forza Twitter @Octaeder This month Joined Sam in building the worst spaceship in the galaxy. Go to p114 to see how they got on. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Haunted houses, Venice Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Rattled through the mansion of Resi 7, and only had to swap his trousers two times. STEVEN MESSNER Specialist in Space journalism, MMOs Twitter @stevenmessner This month Interrupted his birthday celebrations to write about Pillars II for us. Good work, Steven.…

IF ONLY THE SPY HAD THE PATRONAGE OF A RICH BENEFACTOR – PERHAPS VALVE A weak pound is bad for business – especially if your business involves international travel, the purchase of highly specialised equipment, and the use of coins to distract guards from their rigid patrol routes. The Spy likes to throw stout, hefty coins, imbued with the transient confidence of a proud banker wiping off gravy stains with a £50 note in his right hand, while embezzling millions from an orphanage for sick Victorian chimney sweeps with the left. Alas, the current state of the economy means weak, anaemic coins, which in turn means The Spy has been forced to sublet. Having a tenant hasn’t been great for The Spy’s work. Flatmates, it seems, have a poor grasp…

THE DISCUSSION IS OVER, BUT DOES IT DESERVE A 94% SCORE? LET US KNOW @PCGAMER Samuel: Things we know about BioWare: Mass Effect is out in March, they’ve been working on a new series in some capacity since Mass Effect 3 came out, and the last, successful Dragon Age was released three years ago this year. The Old Republic trundles along, too. What would you like to see from BioWare, Phil? Phil: If they had any sense, it would finally be time for a Dragon Age visual novel in which you play some young, lithe Inquisition initiate trying to score a date with Cullen. You know, the thing Tumblr has been crying out for. Personally, though, I’m excited by the idea of something new. I’d be interested to see how…

DESPITE THE GHOSTS’ REPUTATION, THEY’LL NEED HELP FROM LOCAL REBELS NEED TO KNOW RELEASE March DEVELOPER Ubisoft PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.bit.ly/grwildlands The Santa Blanca drug cartel is rapidly expanding its territory in Bolivia, and the collapsing government is turning a blind eye. As long as there’s no violence, they’re free to manufacture huge quantities of cocaine and ship it around the world. Led by the cold, ruthless El Sueño, the cartel has turned Bolivia into the nexus of the South American drug trade. But where there’s drug money there is, inevitably, violence, and the region is destabilising. The government’s soft touch has given the cartel space to grow to the size of an army, and it has no way of taking the country back. In the midst of all this,…

Tickets are available now for our second annual PC Gamer Weekender, hosted at the Olympia in London. This year, we’ve got an amazing mix of games you can go hands-on with, presentations by the biggest developers in PC gaming, hardware workshops, retailers, and so much more. We’ve set out to create the PC gaming show that we would love to see, and that we think you’d enjoy too. Headlining games include Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III, Halo Wars 2, Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, Tekken 7, Killing Floor: Incursion, Little Nightmares and tons more. The Sega Zone returns so that players can go hands-on with the publisher’s best games, past and present. Alongside this, we have tournaments running all weekend, PC hardware workshops, a fireside bar where you can relax…

Computers and RPGs have always gone hand-in-hand. Even when the best adventurers could hope for visually was a few letters and numbers on a screen, what better way could there be to handle stats, die-rolls and complex calculations? Soon enough, though, computer RPGs were capable of doing much more. The original PC RPGs – such as MUDs, or multi-user dungeons – appeared in the mid-’70s. These weren’t for home computers, but mainframes, typically found in universities. They tended to be based on either Dungeons & Dragons, which itself launched in 1974, or be variously disguised takes on Tolkien. These included Dungeon, DND, Orthanc and Oubliette. A few, such as Oubliette, had simple graphics, though most started out as just text or used ASCII’s standard set of text-mode graphics. Despite the…

WASTELAND 2 One of the first big Kickstarter successes, Brian Fargo’s InXile brought back the almost 30-year-old series in pleasingly old-school form. DIVINITY: ORIGINAL SIN We praised Larian’s 2014 RPG for its freedom, simulation, depth and respect for player choice. The sequel’s made a fine first impression. PILLARS OF ETERNITY Scoring 92%, this successor to the Infinity Engine RPGs has a compelling set of oddball chums, intricate combat and a detailed world. TYRANNY Despite a well-developed fictional backdrop and an interesting angle where you play the villain, Obsidian’s other RPG is no Pillars of Eternity. TORMENT: TIDES OF NUMENERA See how this stylish spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment is shaping up in our review next issue.…

HOW WE REVIEW 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…

One of its greatest strengths is keeping you on your toes NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? First-person survival horror that returns to the series’ roots. EXPECT TO PAY £40 DEVELOPER Capcom PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Radeon RX 480, Intel i7-5820K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.residentevil7.com Ethan Winters drives deep into the Louisiana bayou to find his missing wife. We follow his car from above, a tiny speck against a vast expanse of remote, isolated swampland. The setting sun casts a gloomy orange glow over the landscape, giving you a sense of foreboding. If you get lost or go missing – or worse – out here, who would ever know? It’s a beautiful, evocative shot, and almost certainly an homage to the Torrance family’s yellow car snaking through the…

JAVIER A likeable, decisive lead with rugged, easygoing charm. Survival odds: 7/4 Season Three’s hero should be safe – but then Telltale did kill off Lee. CLEMENTINE Tough, resourceful, no-nonsense teen, has Seen Some Shit. Survival odds: 9/2 Second billing may suggest a shock, but surely Clem’s too beloved to die? TRIPP Gruff mechanic with a heart of gold – a real gentle giant. Survival odds: 20-1 Muscular and powerful, but has “heroic sacrifice” written all over him. ELEANOR Kindly doctor with strong bedside manner; potential love interest. Survival odds: 100-1 Far too nice to live; will prompt an angry revenge subplot. AVA A wild card: rough- edged, enigmatic, hard to pin down. Survival odds: 12-1 A redemptive death seems likely, but Ava could yet live to see Episode 5’s…

DEATHADDER ELITE Razer £70 Razer’s prestigious DeathAdder returns in this late-2016 revamp. Featuring an improved 16,000 DPI optical sensor, the now common-place RGB lighting, and the masterful ergonomic grip, it’s hard to find fault with this snake-inspired, high- performance peripheral. www.razer.com HD120 RGB LED FAN Corsair £60 (three-pack with controller) Corsair’s gone mad with this latest reimagining of its 120mm fans. The HD series features one of the most advanced RGB lighting systems out there, controlled exclusively by a fan hub and an onboard remote. It’s also quiet and provides a decent amount of airflow. However, it’s still not as good as Corsair’s Magnetic Levitation fans. www.corsair.com RIVAL 500 SteelSeries £70 A top-end gaming mouse, the Rival 500 is perfect for those itching to bind macros and abilities to their…

MOTHERBOARD Z270-A Pro MSI £115 Despite the low price, the Z270-A Pro supports a single M.2 PCIe SSD, and memory with frequencies up to 3800 MT/s. PROCESSOR Core i5-7600K Intel £230 Only a five percent incremental increase in performance on Skylake, but if you haven’t upgraded in a while, now might be the time. GRAPHICS CARD GTX 1070 8GB Dual Asus £390 Exceedingly powerful, this 1440p gaming GPU will keep your framerates high in all the latest AAA titles. COOLER Kraken X31 NZXT £70 To get the most out of a good CPU you need a cooler to match. The Kraken X31 is powerful, quiet and great for overclocks. MEMORY Savage Black 16GB @2400 MHz CAS 12 HyperX £120 Thanks to insanely low timings, these two 8GB sticks of DDR4…

SAMUEL ROBERTS THIS MONTH Found robots too stressful, found farming too stressful. ALSO PLAYED Titanfall 2, Space Engineers I completed Titanfall 2 over the Christmas break, and I found it stressful. The demands of Respawn’s mech shooter – that you sit up for extended periods of time, and pay attention to what’s happening on screen – left me looking for lighter fare. Stardew Valley’s sense of routine and grindy harvesting of resources for cash is the opposite of the sort of game I’d normally play. You wake up every morning, check the TV for the weather forecast, and check the fortune teller to see if anything decent will happen to you. Then you go farm until you’re sleepy, and hope you find a geode – basically a treasure egg –…

1 CALL OF CHERNOBYL MOD The call of the irradiated wild The first version of this comprehensive Stalker: Call of Pripyat mod was released back in 2015, but it’s been expanded massively since, culminating in an update that ensured its place as Moddb’s 2016 Mod of the Year. Skyrim’s enormous total conversion mod Enderal placed at number two, which should give you some sense of Call’s ambition and scale. The first thing it does is take the discrete chunks of wilderness found in the three Stalker games andshove them together, giving you a complete version of its radioactive Zone to explore in search of freaky enemies and loot. That would be enough for some…

THE MOD FORCES YOU TO BREAK OUT OF YOUR HABITS AND RE-ENGAGE WITH THE GAME AGAIN The word ‘mod’ undersells Long War 2 . Mod implies an aesthetic tweak, a UI correction, a new weapon perhaps. In fact, this is XCOM 2 as developed in a parallel universe. Long War 2 does add lots of new weapons, classes and skills, but all these service a set of bespoke design aims that turn XCOM 2 from a survival strategy game into a gradually paced army and territory management sim with expanded combat encounters. For players who have mastered XCOM 2’s story and power arcs, or now find them predictable, Long War 2 is an essential…

“Ezio embarks on a quest for vengeance across Renaissance Italy” NEED TO KNOW RELEASED 2009 PUBLISHER Ubisoft DEVELOPER Ubisoft Montreal LINK www.assassinscreed.com We’re introduced to Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the historical protagonist of Assassin’s Creed II , the moment he’s born. He pops out of his screaming mother and, in a truly bizarre tutorial, the game urges you to wiggle his arms and legs. Then we skip forward in time to his unruly teenage years, brawling and shagging his way around Florence. This could have easily been an indulgent, ponderous way to begin the game, but it’s actually brilliant. Too many games hurry you into the action, but this one takes its time and lets you get to know its hero before tragedy inevitably strikes. Ezio’s…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASED March 20, 2006 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER Bethesda LINK elderscrolls.bethesda.net From dying moments of the main quest, the Imperial City dominates Oblivion , and it’s little wonder. This grand place can be seen for miles across the map. It’s the jewel of the empire. No matter where I wander, or in whose house I lurk, stuffing outsized magical weapons into jewellery boxes, I always make my way back there. It’s my safe haven. Constructed by the long-dead Ayleids, and boasting the characteristic white stone and smooth lines of their striking architecture, the city is a circular hub, split into concentric districts. Each of them oozes wealth, only the outlying waterfront area and occasional beggar’s bedroll lying forlornly in odd corners hints at the city’s…

FROSTCRAG SPIRE This Wizard’s Tower DLC was one of the tastiest additions to the game, offering stunning views and a wealth of vital features, from altars and a lab to teleportation portals. CHEYDINHAL Nestled beneath the mountains, close to the Morrowind border, this city is home to not only the Dark Brotherhood, but Oblivion’s infamous missing painter quest. SKINGRAD One of Cyrodiil’s most prosperous towns, and chock full of character, it has the best house available in the game – Rosethorn Hall – but it won’t come cheap.…

SAMUEL ROBERTS If I didn’t have videogames, all I’d have is my friends, family and cheeses. Which would essentially be an empty existence. 80 DAYS www.inklestudios.com/80days This densely packed, very loose adaptation of the Jules Verne book uses just a few words and pictures to bring steampunk versions of real-world cities to life in extraordinary fashion. You’ll feel like you’ve travelled the world and lived a life, and then you’ll go again to visit those places you missed. REIGNS www.reignsgame.com Govern a kingdom by selecting binary choices dealt by cards. Swipe left or right to balance the happiness of your people, military and church. When one of these eventually turns against you, start again as your successor and see how long you survive. My record is 50 years so far.…

1 Dragon Age: Origins is on the cover – but it was just Dragon Age then. Much is made of how the “post-Oblivion visuals” will enable BioWare to offer emotional character depth. “BioWare are back,” said Ross Atherton. He wasn’t wrong. 2 A showcase of PC gaming oddities includes porn parody Misty Mundae: Erotic Raider. 3 World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade scores a respectable 87%, but the real attraction is The Mark. “The Mark approaches dreadfulness like a collector cataloguing every scuttling horror in the digital world.”…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE March (version 1.0) DEVELOPER Abrakam PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.faeria.com In 2013, Abrakam put together a Kickstarter for its card-cum-tile strategy game Faeria . It was wildly successful – raising over $90,000 (over £75,000 in the Queen’s money). Now, that game is available on Steam Early Access as a free-to-play title for everyone to get in on. Faeria brings together aspects of Hearthstone, Magic: The Gathering, and Scrolls, and mashes them together. Players fight by summoning creatures and other units to a board of hexagonal tiles, and also summoning land. Summon red mountains, and you’ll be able to summon red creatures – which are combat oriented. There are four special types of land, plus plain prairies, each of which corresponds to a type of…

There’s a reason the ’90s are considered a golden age. Everything seemed possible. Every new game had the potential to be its own thing. Is Ultima Underworld , released in 1992, an evolution of dungeon crawlers like Dungeon Master ? Yes, but to call it so is to do it a huge disservice. Underworld wasn’t about fighting through a dungeon, but experiencing it. You play as Ultima’s Avatar, falsely accused of a crime and thrown into the Stygian Abyss with nothing but the clothes on your back. What you find is a living community with its own characters and histories. Learning to survive is learning to be part of it, trading for supplies and making allies. Creator Blue Sky Studios, later Looking Glass Systems,…

Despite what the first-person view suggests, Resident Evil 7 is a return to form. You’re back in a big house full of creepy horrors, conserving ammunition, managing inventory slots and snorting herbs. The series’ emphasis on action, spurred on by the acclaimed Resi 4, has been dialled back in favour of a more traditional, slowburn pace. It’s clearly worked its abominable charm on Andy, as you’ll see from his glowing review over the page. We, too, are looking to the past – albeit the more recent past of 2016. With the year off to a slow start in terms of new releases, we’ve gone back and reviewed some of the interesting gems we initially missed. Included in that crop is the excellent Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, which might…

PISTOL The first gun you find. Weak and slow, but you’ll rarely be short of bullets. MACHINE GUN As weak as the pistol, but the rapid fire makes up for it. Burns through ammo. SHOTGUN Has a wide spread, but will remove the head of most things at close range. GRENADE LAUNCHER Slow to reload and explosive rounds are rare, but it blows things up a treat. BOMB Plant it on the ground, wait for an enemy to walk over it, then enjoy the fireworks. MAGNUM You’ll need ten antique coins to unlock this. Powerful, but ammo is rare.…

MUGEN The group’s leader and samurai, deadly with a katana and strong as an ox. Use him for taking out groups and carrying heavy objects. HAYATO A mercenary ninja, Hayato hangs out on rooftops and isn’t too shabby with a shuriken. Silent takedowns are his speciality. YUKI Despite being the kid of the group, Yuki’s a dangerous ninja-in- training. Use her bird call to lead enemies into ambushes or into her traps. AIKO A master of distraction, Aiko can blind foes with powder, and even walk among them unnoticed when in disguise. TAKUMA Takuma’s sniping skills are unmatched, and his explosives deadly. Stick him in a tower and watch him work his magic.…

When death comes as quickly as it does in this fat farmboy murder circus simulator, you want to be one furious button away from a whip-crack restart. Penarium delivers that rapid replay. It’s a simple, single screen survival platformer: you just have to collect barrels, while ever- changing but predictable traps bombard your body. The short breathing space that rewards you on every fifth barrel is both a relief and a fatal distraction. The best thing about Penarium, which suffers mainly from a short campaign? It feels like a game I could have made myself. And that’s the closest I’ll ever get to making a game, so I’ll take it as a compliment, even if no one actually intended one.…

OMEN X BY HP IS THE GATEWAY TO REACHING YOUR FULL GAMING POTENTIAL FIND OUT MORE ONLINE hp.com/go/omenbyhp TWITTER @OMENbyHP HASHTAG #DominateTheGame Enter a new legend, designed for gaming from the ground up. Omen X by HP is a revolutionary tower with no equal, home to insane power and cooling utilising (in some builds) liquid cooling and an innovative tri-chamber design; a machine that can easily take on the latest AAA games – even at ultra settings – and is fully VR-certified for the next generation of gaming experiences. Add to this the fact that the Omen X by HP is easily upgradeable thanks to its custom case – more on that shortly – this is a PC that can evolve to satisfy gamers not just now, but for any…

MOTHERBOARD Z270 Gaming M5 MSI £186 Both the M5 and M7 in MSI’s latest gaming series look stunning and offer an expansive feature set. A solid purchase either way. PROCESSOR Core i7-7700K Intel £339 Four cores, eight threads and the ability to turbo up to 4.5GHz make this CPU more than capable of gaming at the top of the range. GRAPHICS CARD GTX 1080 FTW Gaming ACX 3.0 EVGA £633 Slightly overclocked out of the box, cool and quiet – features that make this the perfect high-end 1440p and 4K killer. COOLER Kraken X62 NZXT £138 The Kraken is the culmination of three of our favourite things: an infinity mirror, a 280mm radiator and slick braided cooling. MEMORY Savage Black (4x8GB) 32GB @2400 HyperX £183 Take advantage of that CPU…

MIODRAG KOVACHEVIC THIS MONTH Smuggled wine to buy a new roof for my car. ALSO PLAYED The Elder Scrolls Online, Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator AS I DRIVE ON, MY ENGINE STILL LETS OUT PUFFS OF SMOKE. I TURN UP THE RADIO AND IGNORE THEM I grew up in ’90s Yugoslavia, an Eastern European country that no longer exists. The year I was born, my family bought a Yugo – a metal box with wheels that was the embodiment of cheap communist cars. Against all odds, it managed to survive for 27 years. Its tenacity and stubbornness is a testament to the sort of absurdity that Jalopy, a lo-fi Eastern Bloc road-trip sim, attempts to recapture. In the game, I’m introduced to my new car, the Laika 601 Deluxe. I have…

1 IL FILO CONDUTTORE A tactile game where you control a bouncy ball on a bit of string. The story advances as you play with the toy – a story that feels like an interactive Pixar short. www.bit.ly/TriennaleGames 2 A GLASS ROOM Grasp at fleeting, fractured memories with this virtual divination tool, by tuning it into psychic radio frequencies. Enigmatic images and sounds suggest a story. www.bit.ly/TriennaleGames 3 THE WORM ROOM An endless series of glass greenhouses, randomly generated as you move from one to another. Each room is different, and they never repeat. www.bit.ly/TriennaleGames…

MOST SPACE STATIONS NOW HAVE A PASSENGER LOUNGE FULL OF CIVILIANS NEED TO KNOW RELEASE December 2015 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER Frontier Developments LINK www.elitedangerous.com I’m on a pilgrimage to the Maia system, jumping between stars in the hope of experiencing an alien encounter. It’s the Elite Dangerous equivalent of that rooftop party scene in Independence Day, where, faced with a powerful and unknowable force, some choose to rush towards the ship, folksy greeting placards raised high above their heads. Admit it, you smiled when they were obliterated. My own encounter is less eventful, in that it doesn’t happen. There are lots of rumours about where to find the aliens and how to tempt them into intercepting your ship, but nobody really knows anything. That’s a…

1 FLORENCE Birthplace of Ezio and, many historians agree, the Renaissance itself. 2 FORLì An ancient city Ezio defends from a Templar assault led by Rodrigo Borgia. 3 VENICE Ezio joins the Thieves Guild here and plots to assassinate Emilio Barbarigo. 4 MONTERIGGIONI A town in Tuscany ruled and protected by the Auditores for generations. 5 SAN GIMIGNANO Ezio travels here to spy on a Templar meeting and to assassinate Vieri de’ Pazzi. 6 ROME Ezio travels to the Vatican for a final showdown with Rodrigo Borgia.…