Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2020 i PC Gamer

It seems like Gears Tactics knows that I could just sit behind cover, with overwatch activated, waiting for the Locust troops to stumble into my line of fire. Patience is a virtue, right? The problem with that proverb is it doesn’t account for sawing a bad guy in half with a chainsaw gun. Even in the context of an XCOM-inspired strategy game, chainsawing baddies in a shower of ludicrous gore is still the good stuff. Gears of Wars’ defining executions are also the key to the tactical combat, which pushes you to be aggressive in the face of enemy hordes. After mortally wounding an enemy, you can get close and execute them with a pistol smash to the head or a chainsaw vivisection, and that bit of ultraviolence psyches up…

I’m a right sucker for games that dip into real world history and mythology. I should just read some books, but a historical taster filtered through wild combat scenarios and action scenes doesn’t get old. Those lush, surreal God-of-War-esque backdrops are what the oral tradition was aiming for with all those myths anyway. Raji is set in ancient India, thousands of years after a major war in which the demons rose to take down the gods that tossed them into the underworld. By this time, humans have become lazy and incompetent and greedy, having forgotten the important art of alchemy, now indifferent to the deities that governed their past. In short: humans did the human thing, and now the demons have returned in order to kill them all. These aren’t…

DOOM 1993 The game that started it all, elevating 3D first-person shooters way beyond anything that had been released before. And it’s still really fun to play today. DOOM II: HELL ON EARTH 1994 A sequel that was largely more of the same, but with bigger, more intricate levels. There was also double the number of demons to slaughter. DOOM 3 2004 The third Doom, which John Romero was not involved in, had an increased focus on horror and atmosphere. It’s the least Doom-like of the main releases, but an interesting take on the series. DOOM 2016 In what may be one of the greatest reboots of all time, Bethesda and id Software brought Doom bang up-to-date in a wildly entertaining way with the simply titledDoom. DOOM ETERNAL 2020 And…

On Black Mesa: “I played probably five hours of the original Half-Life and then I said, ‘Well, what are you doing? Just go play Black Mesa cause they’ve just redone this in Source’. Then I just restarted, I startedBlack Mesa from the start. I played through all of that, and they did an awesome job. Such a great execution that I kind of didn’t want to go back and play Xen fromHalf-Life.” On underexplored potential: “WithHalf-Life, I feel like there was such a rich set of mechanics I don’t think that we exploited fully. I think we jumped to Half-Life2 immediately and then reinvented everything. I think there would have been a lot of room for further exploitation for the use of some of those mechanics and we just never…

HOW WE 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 reviews is to help you make buying decisions. To this end, we’re selective about what we review, and try to focus on the notable, interesting, exciting or surprising. DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT DLC might be new missions for a game, or it might be a single new item. If we think you want to know about it, we’ll review it. EARLY ACCESS Any released alpha, beta, or otherwise unfinished game that you can currently pay for. For these games, we won’t assign a score, but we will tell you whether they’re worth your time. THEY’RE BACK Whenever there’s a bargain or re-release…

One morning, a 27-year-old theoretical physicist turns up late for work and the next thing he knows monsters are spilling out of portals from another world. The Half-Life series is really just one long bad day at work, and Black Mesa is a Valve-approved, albeit entirely fan-made, chance to relive Gordon Freeman’s disastrous morning – but with prettier visuals, combat and physics lifted from Half-Life 2, bigger levels, and other upgrades. It’s almost comical how much of an improvement this is Black Mesa sticks closely to Half-Life in terms of structure. You take the tram into work, watch in horror as the resonance cascade floods the facility with aliens, dodge headcrabs in the office complex, clash with the HECU Marines, deal with giant tentacles in the blast pit, fight through…

BEAT SABER A tremendously fun musical rhythm game that might be almost impossible to stop playing. TETRIS EFFECT It’s a remarkable re-imagining of the classic game, and it is just perfect in virtual reality. SUPERHOT A creative and challenging shooter where bullets only move when you do. Can be tricky. ASGARD’S WRATH This is a massive and ambitious RPG you can spend dozens of hours on. NO MAN’S SKY An endless procedurally generated universe at your virtual fingertips.…

Now here’s a surprise, a new game from the creators of Mutant Year Zero: The Road to Eden, announced and released in under two weeks. I’m not sure what’s more surprising – that developer The Bearded Ladies would drop a new game with next to no warning, or that they’ve made another stealthy turn-based tactics game that isn’t a Mutant Year Zero sequel. Instead, it’s something new in setting, yet familiar in play style. You’ll find yourself repeatedly raiding the same motel Corruption 2029 is set in a dystopian semi-post-apocalyptic America, split into a forever war between two indistinguishable factions: the enemy NAC (New American Council) and the player-aligned UPA (United Peoples of America). These wars are fought between ‘units’, soldiers that have been so heavily cybernetically augmented that they…

Left for dead with a bullet to the head: it’s hard to think of worse ways to end a Friday night. Beaten and bloodied in the snow, Mr Wolf is thirsty for blood – taking you along on his gore-soaked quest for vengeance across a stunning, painted frontier. Here’s the thing about revenge though – it might be sweet, it might even be best served cold. But satisfying as it may be, it can get old fast, and it’s not long before Bloodroots’ cathartic quest wears thin. This is some bloody gorgeous revenge, mind. Were it not for the buckets of viscera and constant cussing, you’d think Bloodrootswas lifted straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon lineup. Kill Bill painted in the sharp, bold strokes of Cartoon Network’s late-’90s heyday.…

MOTHERBOARD ROG Maximus XI Code Asus £337 Immense overclocking potential, and a look that’s barely even recognisable as a motherboard. Space-age PCB tech. PROCESSOR Core i9 9900K Intel £460 Intel’s new 5.0GHz, 8-core monster rules the roost in the CPU market. And it comes in a fancy nine-sided box too, so there’s that. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2080Ti Black Edition EVGA £1,080 EVGA’s custom design is considerably cheaper than Nvidia’s reference card, and with great cooling. COOLER Kraken X62 NZXT £99 The Kraken is the culmination of three of our favourite things: an infinity mirror, a 280mm radiator and slick braided cooling. MEMORY Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3200 Corsair £170 Faster than you could ever reasonably hope to make use of unless you plan to edit three 4K movies at once,…

When it comes to videogames, I’m a terribly nosey person. I will go out of my way to rummage through an NPC’s belongings, hang around to eavesdrop on conversations and inspect every corner of the environment. So when a game lets me delve into the desktop of a personal computer, I am more than ready for a snoop. Fabricated desktops have become a popular space for videogame storytelling, with developers transforming the virtual interface from a simple computer layout into a theatrical stage. Looking through text conversations is the new dialogue, photo files provide world-building, and the humble recycle bin is a treasure trove of hidden secrets. I totally understand how creepy I sound. Looking through a stranger’s personal computer in real life is deeply invasive, but desktops can be…

ANDY KELLY Specialist in VR self-isolation Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Chatted to the legendary John Romero, and managed to resist mentioningDaikatana. JAMES DAVENPORT Specialist in Perfect… timing Twitter @my_beards This month Made it to PAX East, the last videogame event before the Great Cancellation. RACHEL WATTS Specialist in Horror games for the colour-blind Twitter @rachel_wattts This month Discovered just how scary a screen of only black and white pixels can be. FRASER BROWN Specialist in Going viral Twitter @FraserIBrown This month Delved into the coronavirus’ impact on gaming. Don’t worry, he wore gloves.…

Like most people in the 21st century, The Spy’s sense of self-worth is derived from how much better The Spy is than other people at handling a crisis. And let The Spy tell you: The Spy is absolutely nailing this working-from-home quarantine thing. Provisions? The Spy has no need of your panic-bought pasta and tinned tomatoes. The Spy once spent an extended period in the jungles of Borneo, based on an admittedly foolish hunch that Rockstar might have buried some GTA VI secrets there, and discovered a fondness for insects as a source of protein. Exercise? Forget a standing desk, The Spy operates from a squatting desk – years of crouch-walking through waist-high grass having blessed The Spy with thighs the size and density of tree trunks. Social distancing? It’s…

We’ve all been there. Playing an FPS online, planning some harmless violence, when bam! You’re killed by an unseen sniper. If only there was a way to go back in time, aware of your opponent’s location and actions, to turn the tables. Well, now there is. Probably the easiest (and least exciting) way to explain the basic premise of Quantum League, is in terms of bots. You play for 18 seconds, then you’re returned to the starting point. You then play for another 18 seconds, this time alongside a bot which repeats your previous actions. You’re then returned to the starting point again, to play for a final 18 seconds, now alongside two bots (one repeating your actions from the first turn, one repeating your actions from the second). Still…

Two decades ago, Shogun: Total War spawned a history-spanning strategy series, several spin-offs and even a detour into Warhammer. Almost all of them are unified by tactical real-time battles, turn-based empire-building, and a foundation that was established all the way back in the late 1990s, during Shogun’s development. But the first concept for the game looked very different. In 2000, Creative Assembly released its hybrid. There was diplomacy, trade, ninjas going around murdering people; then you’d quickly have to switch gears so you could micromanage individual units and crush your enemy in real-time scraps. These fundamentals haven’t been changed, but before the studio came up with the enduring formula, it was creating a traditional Command & Conquer-style RTS. SHOGUN CONTROL The first change came when graphics cards started appearing, giving…

Well, the great dry spell of games releases is officially over – and what a way for the waters to return. There’s a new Doom and it’s excellent. There’s a new Half-Life and it’s excellent. Hell, Black Mesa even came out, finally. Guess what: it’s excellent too. Games reviewers have a bit of a reputation sometimes for being jaded cynics, happy to see big releases fail. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course – we’re just as excitable and hopeful about games as any fan. For these three releases, part of me was tempted to just post transcripts of our giddy, joyful Slack back-andforths in lieu of actual reviews. And now that id and Valve have broken the seal, there should be many more thrilling releases to come…

Here’s what’s likely to happen the first time you kill a zombie in this VR-exclusive survival horror game. You’ll get in close to the approaching walker, knife-in-hand. As it lunges for you, you’ll try to stab it in the head, but the blade will glance off. You’ll start to panic, jabbing wildly. Out of desperation, you’ll pull your arm back so far your shoulder creaks, and thrust the blade forward, finally splattering through flesh and bone. A scintillating tension engine where every decision matters Saints & Sinners’ nuanced simulation of knife/skull action is as remarkable as it is harrowing. Not only does it make each zombie encounter surprisingly unique (and also fraught with apprehension) it also effectively communicates your personal journey as a survivor in The Walking Dead’s world. After…

From Crazy Machines to Kerbal Space Program, gaming enables players to indulge their inner crackpot scientist, constructing wildly ambitious contraptions before scratching their heads and muttering “a little more hydrazine” at the resulting mound of slag left over from when their masterpiece exploded. Whereas Kerbal is a feast of fudged rocket science, Besiege is more like engineering tapas, breaking its challenge down into tiny, tasty morsels. The best and funniest way of learning in Besiege is through failure In a premise that’s vaguely reminiscent of Dungeon Keeper, Besiege points you toward a perfectly nice fantasy realm and orders you to ruin it. Only instead of building dungeons, you’re building siege weapons. This realm is split into four separate kingdoms, each of which comprises around a dozen individual levels. The levels…

ASPECT OF DAWN Smite enemies with a big ol’ hammer and holy energy. Expect a big light show and lots of sacred damage. ASPECT OF WAR This guy’s all about fire and frenzy. Pillars of fire, blades of fire, explosions of fire – he really sticks to his theme. ASPECT OF INFINITY This cosmic space angel deals a lot of aether damage and warps time and space, creating clones or ripping holes in reality. ASPECT OF FLESH And there’s the gross one. This Aspect is covered in tendrils and makes enemies bleed with bone weapons. Lovely.…

When it originally launched on the Switch last year, Daemon X Machina was met with a muted response. By releasing an early demo seven months before release, developer Marvelous’ attempt to get user feedback backfired and resulted in players being turned off by what was (at that stage) an unpolished product. But now it’s got a second shot at success on PC, and it’s one it absolutely deserves. Controlling your mech takes one or two missions to get used to It tells the story of a world recovering from a major catastrophe. The moon has crashed into the planet, and the resulting wreck has been emitting a strange energy that’s not only turning all artificial intelligence sentient, but also turning it against the human race. As luck would have it,…

For serious streamers, there’s nothing worse than not being heard during your broadcast. Your microphone tends to be the unsung hero of your entire streaming arsenal. When choosing the best microphon, there’s one thing we look for above all else: can you be heard loudly and clearly? Whether you’re looking to start a podcast with your buddy where you rank MCU movies, or doing a retro games stream, USB microphones are becoming more and more popular. Figuring out which mic is best for you comes down to how you’re planning on using it. XLR mics offer the best studio-quality sound, but are very pricey. USB mics, on the other hand, are easier to set-up, a lot cheaper, and play well with most audio software. Also, note the microphone’s polar patterns,…

MOTHERBOARD GIGABYTE Z390 UD Gigabyte £98 Surprisingly feature-rich for a budget board, this proves a fine home for 8th gen Intel chips. PROCESSOR Core i3-9100f Intel £68 An incredibly nippy quad-core CPU for the price, Intel’s 9th gen budget chip skips integrated graphics for affordability. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2060 KO GAMING EVGA £299 Nvidia’s latest GPU generation isn’t just for top-end machines thanks to EVGA’s take on the 2060. COOLER Hyper 212 Evo CoolerMaster £30 Even a budget build can benefit from a good CPU cooler, letting you enjoy a quieter, cooler system. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 16GB Corsair £73 16GB of RAM gives you plenty of breathing room when running multiple programs, and Corsair’s selling this kit cheap. POWER SUPPLY CX-M Series CX550M Corsair £51 A UK price spike…

There are several presets available for the expanded character creator mod called RaceMenu for turning a character into Geralt. Some are better than others, so I landed on this Geralt face reminiscent of The Witcher 2 by Vengeance2. I always seem to struggle bending RaceMenu to my will, so my Geralt ended up slightly, well, different. Fortunately the scar and hairstyle were close enough – along with the Witcher Eyes by Oaristys – that I decided my Geralt would suffice.…

Peace may be rarer than potatoes in ancient China, but that won’t stop me from trying to play Total War: Three Kingdoms as something vaguely resembling a pacifist. My last attempt wasn’t smooth sailing. I may have started the game at war with the tyrant Dong Zhou and his vassal, the Han Empire, and I may have used this as an opportunity to expand my own borders. I also might have convinced my coalition partner Liu Bei to murder the son of a warlord named Tao Qian. But in my defence, Tao Qian murdered my faction leader Cao Cao’s father and then died before I could exact my revenge. As the saying goes ‘An eye for an eye always leads to peace’. Fortunately, my latest attempt kicks off in more…

Prior to creating Bridge Commander, California-based developer Totally Games worked on a number of classic space sims, including the X-Wing and TIE Fighter series. It was then approached by Activision in 1998 to make a game based on Star Trek, and the studio spent six months researching, designing, and testing out ideas, until it settled on giving players the chance to sit in the captain’s chair aboard a Federation starship. Totally Games later developed PC flight sim Secret Weapons Over Normandy, before shifting its attention to mobile games. Its final release was back in 2011.…

1 Crack open the bag containing this issue’s PC Gamer and you’re treated to a stark, bold cover featuring Kerrigan as the star. This issue teased the return of the world’s most popular RTS. Looking back, StarCraft II transformed PC gaming and popularised esports worldwide. Here’s hoping Blizzard is still capable of one day recapturing that magic. 2 Marsh Davies’ preview of The Witcher 2 had this great pun: “From rags to witches”. And also revealed CD Projekt Red’s plans following the flawed first game. 3 Jim Rossignol celebrates the PC’s most arty games, fromThe Path to Passage to, er,BioShock. 2010 was a hotbed of indie experimentation, which – if you look at PC gaming today – never really ended. Here we highlighted some of the early trailblazers of experimental…

Seasons don’t fear the reaper. Nor do the wind, the sun, or the rain.” It’s a song I’ve heard a million times – but never like this. The classic Blue Oyster Cult chorus floats above the downtempo drumbeat from Post Malone’s ‘Better Now’, the synth pads from J Balvin and Willy William’s ‘Mi Gente’, and a light piano flourish from Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’. The result is haunting, a chillhop medley that sends goosebumps up your spine. Then it’s over, or rather ruined, as Blue Oyster Cult’s poetic ode to everlasting love is interrupted by the opening synth from ‘Party Rock Anthem’, and everyone in the room winces and then starts laughing. Harmonix is revealing its new game, Fuser and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. I…

This striking adventure casts you as a rogue virus fighting to avoid deletion in the ruins of a digital world. Its low-poly art style and neon flair brings the visually arresting world of ‘Mainframe’ to life – a setting on the brink of disaster as it approaches an AI singularity. Structurally it feels like a mix of metroidvania and immersive sim, encouraging you to explore and offering rather more ways to deal with obstacles than just shooting them to bits. The malfunctioning subroutines standing in your way can be fought, but it’s also possible to hack your way around them, subverting interconnected functions in the environment to your ends. With enough command of machine logic, you can mess with everything from the doors, to power lines, to even the enemies…

In the winter of 1993, Dallas, Texas-based developer id Software released a game about a space marine killing demons, and a legend was born. Doomset the standard for the first-person shooter on PC and beyond, and was one of the first videogames to bleed into mainstream pop culture. It was critically acclaimed, technically groundbreaking, a sales success, and is still considered by a huge number of people to be one of the best games of all time. Today, co-creator John Romero runs his own studio in Galway, Ireland. He’s currently working on Empire of Sin, a turn-based strategy game set in Prohibition-era America. This is a far cry from Doom, but the landmark shooter is never far from his mind. In 2018, Romero released SIGIL, a brand new Doom episode.…

I recently spoke with Vincent Adinolfi, an indie designer working on a game called Heartworm. It’s low-poly 3D survival horror, so when he brought up influences like Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and even Dino Crisis, that was to be expected. But then he mentioned Valve’s classic 1998 FPS. “I’ve tried to take cues from games like Half-Life in the way that Valve uses environment design to naturally develop the narrative,” he says. It’s not the first time I’ve heard developers namecheck Half-Life while making games very different to it. Its effect on the way games tell stories transcends genres. Which is surprising given how few other 1990s shooters even had stories. John Carmack of id famously said stories are as irrelevant to games as they are to porn, which explains…

JAMES DAVENPORT Specialist in Lead exorcisms Currently playing Doom Eternal This month Had to keep checking his blood pressure between sessions. TYLER WILDE Specialist in Forest navigation Currently playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps This month Wasted days trying to figure out what Ori actually is. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Xen meditations Currently playing Black Mesa This month Fought a cleverly re-imagined, beautifully rendered giant alien testicle. CHRIS LIVINGSTON Specialist in Improbable sequels Currently playing Half-Life: Alyx This month Started using the phrase ‘killer app’ unironically. FRASER BROWN Specialist in Min-maxing Currently playing Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem This month Tried to build a perfect warrior in a decidedly imperfect world. TOM SYKES Specialist in Special ingredients Currently playing The Supper This month Baked a tasty pie. Hold on,…

Sequel Ori and the Will of the Wisps is a much larger and more complex metroidvania than Ori and the Blind Forest, and as a result, it can be sloppier. Bugs and inconsistencies frustrated me along the way, especially as I had no guides to help. But Will of the Wisps is also one of the best-looking 2D games ever made, and navigating it feels fantastic – its physics are just right, so leaping and dashing through it is just intrinsically fun. It’s not just the map and story that’s bigger. The combat is much more involved than it was in Blind Forest – though still isn’t great. It’s hard to see what’s going on through all the visual noise, and Ori’s own sword combos can obscure enemy animations. I…

HALF-LIFE: KLEINER Perform teleportation experiments on your loved ones. And you get a nice pet headcrab. HALF-LIFE: BREEN A city management game where you work your way up from Combine bootlick to betrayer of the human race. HALF-LIFE: DOG You’re a giant rampaging robot who can throw cars around and rip Striders’ brains out. Cathartic as hell. HALF-LIFE: BARNACLE Just stick your tongue out and wait. Something tasty is bound to come along eventually. HALF-LIFE: G-MAN You can teleport and stop time, plus all you really do is show up and peer at people when they least expect it.…

Walking sims have carved their own corner in games. Their focus on telling stories through engaging environments gives diverse and personal topics the space they need to be fully explored. The Suicide of Rachel Foster’s eerie hotel looks like the perfect stage for such an experience, and its story of a young woman having to uncover the truth of her past in the decaying building is an interesting hook. But where thoughtful storytelling elevated the walking sims that influenced it so heavily, The Suicide of Rachel Foster falls short. What begins as a compelling ghost story turns quickly into a melodramatic soap opera that churns sensitive topics like suicide, child grooming, and teenage pregnancy into baseless drama to the point where it’s just plain gross. I felt like it was…

HINGE STEERING Here, the front wheels are controlled by adjustable hinges. This is the most flexible steering model, but is hard to control and easily broken. OPPOSING-FORCE The inner wheels provide drive, while the outer wheels have opposite turning circles. This gives precise motor control, but the vehicle can only turn while stationary. TORQUE STEERING A wheel weighted by ballast sits on top of the machine, generating torque when it spins. This lets you turn and move at the same time, but it has a large turning circle.…

MOTHERBOARD X470 PRIME X470-PRO Asus £140 Tasteful RGB (if that’s your thing) and substantial heatsinks make this a fine base for any AMD build. PROCESSOR Ryzen 7 3800X AMD £300 Once our top-end pick, AMD’s Ryzen 7 is still as formidable but now realistic for mid-range builds, too. What a time to be alive. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2060 KO GAMING EVGA £299 Nvidia’s latest GPU generation isn’t just for top-end machines thanks to EVGA’s take on the 2060. COOLER Hydro Series H55 Quiet Edition Corsair £60 Tidy and quiet, the H55 will unlock our CPU’s overclocking potential and look good through your case window while it does so. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) @2666 Corsair £73 16GB is the minimum amount of RAM we’d recommend for a system of…

LU BU The greatest warrior of the Three Kingdoms period. XIAHOU DUN Xiahou Dun is Cao Cao’s right hand man. LADY WU Leader of the Duchy of Wu. Cao Cao’s biggest threat. LADY BIAN Cao Cao’s wife and general in her own right. HE YI Charismatic warlord and part of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. DIAN WEI Master duellist and Cao Cao’s formidable ally. DONG MIN The Imperial usurper. Murdered his adoptive father. YUAN SHU Yuan Shu is a minor northern warlord. CAO CAO Our peaceful faction leader and strategic mastermind. LIU YAO Shu’s opposite: a minor southern warlord. LIU BEI Cao Cao’s coalition partner and the loveliest warlord in China. YUAN SHAO Cao Cao’s other coalition partner. Bit of a dick tbh. ZHENG JIANG The deadliest woman in China and…

DELTA QUADRANT PACK – JL STUDIOS In Star Trek: Voyager, the titular starship got lost in the dangerous, uncharted Delta Quadrant. This pack includes 44 ships and 20 planets from the show, including Voyager itself and several Borg craft. CROSSFIELD CLASS – THATGUYBRIAN This adds Discovery’s Crossfield class starship to the game. If you’ve ever wondered if the Discovery could take the Enterprise in a battle, this is your chance to pit them against each other. DEFIANT BRIDGE – LUROK91 If you fancy a change from the game’s default bridge designs, this replaces it with that of the USS Defiant – a warship that played a major role in the events of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. BETTER STARFIELD – IGNIS Bridge Commander’s default starfield is distractingly bad, with the…