Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2021 i PC Gamer

ROBIN VALENTINE Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Was reminded of a lot of gruelling. apocalyptic journeys to the supermarket the year. In January 2015, a tiny fiveman team released what would become one of the most iconic indie hits ever. The gloriously cruel Darkest Dungeon was one of the first games to fully realise the potential of Early Access, turning a year of community feedback into a launch so successful that... well, it led to here. Six years on, now a team of 20, Red Hook is working on a sequel so exciting we couldn't resist putting it on the cover. It's a big departure - it's a road trip, it 's a roguelike, and , most radically of all, it's got a hopeful streak. We could all use one of…

HIGHS Moneycraft Minecraft modders have earned over $350M since Microsoft bought Mojang’s block-builder. Arena Legends Apex Legends’ new 3v3 Arena mode is already a fan favourite here. Long war After six years, massive Doom mod Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony is finally available as a standalone game. LOWS Crypto woes HDDs and SSDs may become as hard to buy as GPUs if a new ‘proof-of-space’ cryptocurrency takes off. Out of Steam This year’s GDC survey found only 6% of developers feel Steam’s 30% revenue cut is well-earned. Nuclear winter Call of Duty: Warzone’s nuke event was a huge letdown, because we’ve seen it do better.…

Mythic Quest is a workplace sitcom about the dev team behind the most popular (fictional) MMORPG in the world. We talked to some of the actors and creators behind the show (which is co-produced by Ubisoft Film & Television) about the serious game industry issues it tackles with humour, how gamers and developers have responded to the show, and if there are any similarities between making a game and making a show abouta game. In Mythic Quest’s pilot episode, the team was scrambling to complete its first expansion, called Raven’s Banquet, and season two similarly begins with the gang hard at work on the next expansion: Titan’s Rift. And in some ways, it sounds like making the second season of a television show might not be all that different from…

Willem Dafoe’s face as the Green Goblin in Spider-Man still haunts me. I’ve been scared of Defoe for going on 20 years, and Twelve Minutes is proof that that fear remains strong even when I can’t see his ghoulish grin. Here at least I have good reason: he only went and choked me to death. That was the first time the aggressive cop, voiced by Dafoe, broke into my apartment and accused my wife of being a killer. It wouldn’t be the last. Twelve Minutes is a time loop game, a miniature Groundhog Day mystery that hinges on this break-in and the buried story behind it. Before I played Twelve Minutes, I didn’t expect my character to be aware of the time loop – I assumed this was a small…

YOU MAY NEED TO REFER TO A NEARBY POSTER TO TELL YOU WHICH WAY IS UP There is no fall damage in Sky Beneath, which turns out to be a lucky thing. Arcing over so my feet point perpendicularly to where they used to be, I drop to the wall of a lift shaft and then, with another 90-degree flip, drop all the way down it as far as I can go. The demo I run through gives a half-hour slice of the beginning of the game, in which our hero breaks into a run-down science facility while chatting with an off-screen ally, and attempts to get her ‘gravity suit’ powered up. Once this is achieved, she makes her way to the lift shaft in an attempt to access the…

YOU GET A PET WHO GROWS BIGGER AND MORE POWERFUL AS THE GAME GOES ON This sci-fi RPG puts you in the role of a team of wildlife protection agents on a planet where said wildlife is crucial to the survival of civilisation. Led by a figure known as the Conductor, you dispatch teams of Caretakers around the planet to protect a species of animal known as the Raun from poachers. The game’s closest analogue is probably XCOM, although play has three distinct phases rather than two. Each of the game’s four ‘Eras’ is split into various missions, which involve guiding one or several teams of Caretakers around a chunk of 3D terrain. Objectives vary from scouting sectors to tagging animals, but most will involve fighting poachers at some point.…

The world is dying. Tendrils of darkness crawl across the land, swallowing up everything but the battered road ahead and your flickering torch, the world’s last hope for salvation. The apocalypse has arrived – but if that sounds bleak, you’ve probably never played Darkest Dungeon. “The first Darkest Dungeon, the further you go down, the worse and worse and worse it gets,” says Red Hook co-founder and creative director Chris Bourassa. Chris is about to convince me that this game about the end of the world, full of lost souls and horrifying monsters, is actually about hope. Darkest Dungeon II is a road trip, a roguelike mash-up of Darkest Dungeon and The Oregon Trail about clawing your way out of the darkness, rather than descending ever deeper into it. LAST…

If you didn’t know that Nierwas the final game from studio Cavia Games, you might be able to tell from playing it. The action RPG feels like a final act: a swing for the fences characterised by anger, tragedy, and a desperate sense of sincerity. And like most desperate swings, it failed at the time: sales were poor, Cavia Games was absorbed into its parent company, and Nier’s creative director, Yoko Taro, moved on to ply his craft elsewhere. The combat is significantly more dynamic and fluid than in the original If Nier was characterised by desperation, Nier Replicant (technically named Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… but that’s just silly) is an act of love. Created by developer Toylogic and publisher Square Enix with the direct involvement of Taro and his regular…

Although Blade Runner has inspired three trillion and six movies, games, books, comics, albums, and cereals, only a tiny percentage of these have understood (or even triedto understand) the film. Throwing neon signs and Japanese words around your environment like a baby gleefully hurling porridge across the kitchen has nothing to do with cyberpunk. Here, however, we have a game that not only understandsBlade Runner, but thoroughly deserves to be mentioned alongside it. Y’know, like I just did. The writing is incredible, some of the best I’ve come across Your character is an android created with the sole purpose of running what is for legal reasons absolutely not a Voight-Kampff machine. The game (mostly) consists of a half dozen or so interrogations conducted with this machine. Usually you’ll be speaking…

Having spent several days agonising over how best to explain the complex premise of Quantum League, I’ve decided that the best course of action is to (partly) lie. So, I’m going to tell you that this is a competitive 1v1 or 2v2 FPS consisting of three-round matches. At the end of the first round, you travel back in time to fight alongside yourself for the second round; then time rewinds once more, so that you’re fighting alongside two previous versions of yourself. The inclusion of friendly fire actually makes perfect sense Let me give you an example. I’m playing a 1v1 point-capture match. In the last seconds, my opponent and I are both on the point, but they kill me just as time runs out. Time rewinds, the second round…

If there’s one thing games have taught me, it’s never to trust anyone in a lab coat who tells you they’re not a doctor. Even, and perhaps especially, if they work on the Clinique counter in Boots. This is how SOMAbegins, and the sense of all-pervading wrongness spirals from there. I feel sad going into it with some prior knowledge, because it must have been amazing to experience the first WTF moment cold, trying to piece together what’s going on from snippets of garbled information and environmental hints. The world is properly brilliant: the feral child of Rapture and the Sevastopol, literally dripping in horror, framed by menacing shadows. It looks fab, even now, like a real, intimidating place despite the speculative fiction trappings. The feeling of being in a…

After being endlessly hassled by monster fish in Song of the Deep, this feels like revenge. Megaquarium is Prison Architect for aquatic life. Or at least that’s how I’m playing it. I don’t care if you don’t want to be bullied by the bigger fish, King Demoiselle; you made the mistake of looking like an enemy from my last review. That thought aside, Megaquarium is just lovely: a gentle management sim that drip feeds you new options for progression and provides just the right level of complexity.…

Anyone who is not heartily sick of the words ‘blockchain’, ‘crypto’, and ‘NFT’ (and, indeed, mentions of quantum computing in these pages) may be interested to hear that, in a few years’ time, the whole thing might go away. It’ll probably be replaced by something worse, of course, but the argument over the subject is interesting. Could a sufficiently powerful quantum computer, one that’s not been invented as yet, bring the whole blockchain network down around our ankles? It’s easy, and often fun, to attribute remarkable powers to inventions of the future. Imagining VR that links itself directly to your visual cortex does not make it a reality, but quantum computers exist in the same way VR helmets do: the ones we know about are very early models that could…

Since the very beginning of the hobby, videogames have been hugely influenced by tabletop games – but some certainly wear that influence a lot more on their sleeve than others. Trials of Fire is a roguelike that combines about as many mechanics inspired by tabletop games as you possibly could. Turn-based combat over a hex-grid, like a board game; character actions dictated by the drawing of cards from a deck, as in a CCG; levelling up, loot, and narrative events that trace their origins back to pen-and-paper role playing. It all comes together wonderfully. Despite combining so many well-worn ideas (and having so much competition in the rapidly expanding roguelike word salad genre) its fights feel like a refreshingly different take on turn-based strategy. Clever twists – like having to…

DANNY PUDI (BRAD) BREATH OF THE WILD “My son is making fun of me at this point. You still haven’t finished this game?” CHARLOTTE NICDAO (POPPY) ANIMAL CROSSING “It was actually one of the ways that I would hang out with my mom, who was back in Australia.” JESSIE ENNIS (JO) TETRIS, TWO DOTS “I recently was caught by my screentime app and found out how many hours I spend playing.” DAVID HORNSBY (DAVID) FIFA “I’ve gotten into FIFA 21. I’m playing weekend league now. I’ve got a club team with some high school friends.”…

Anyone who’s read Rivers of London will feel right at home with the intro to Last Stop. Having hilariously stolen a policeman’s helmet, two teens from 1982 try to escape into the London Underground, pursued by plod, where they find a mysterious green-glowing door and an even more mysterious stranger. One steps through, the other holds back. An adventure from the creators of 2016’s Virginia, Last Stop makes use of a similar flat-shaded Unity-powered aesthetic. While major characters are detailed, background figures have a distressing lack of facial features. Player characters stand stiffly when not controlled, and bump into things a lot when they are. Two characters wear the same shoes, but don’t seem to notice. It’s not all bad though. Last Stop is split into three narratives, selected by…

In the fiction of this new Mortal Kombatfilm, I like to imagine there’s a whole crew of workers hired by thunder god Raiden to set up the lighting for the tournament arena. Floodlights with coloured gel filters to set the mood. Torches for ambiance. Maybe a few big honkin’ spotlights to make sure everyone knows it’s fight night. It must’ve been as disappointing for them as it was for me when the fighters decided not to bother waiting for an arena and just started killing each other in whatever dark alley, dark temple, or dark house they happened to be in at the time. The lighting union will not forget this betrayal! Whether to help hide its CG effects or to set a dark and serious tone, the new Mortal…

Are you new to motorcycle racing games? Well let me tell you this: MotoGP 21 is going to be really difficult. But what am I saying – perhaps you’re a perennial hundred-hour player in Milestone’s long-running bike sim, with every braking zone from Losail turn 1 to Valencia’s Adrian Campos corner memorised. Guess what: MotoGP 2 is still going to be really difficult. This series has taken a turn simwards since its move to UnrealEngine in 2018, but this year’s release represents the most noticeable shift in difficulty and realism in years. In particular, changes to suspension and braking make themselves felt in every corner entry and apex, demanding a different approach than last year’s game asked of you. And if you didn’t play any of last year’s game: oh…

The story of Smelterbegins with Adam and Eve and the downfall of Eden, and ends with freeing an empress from a crystal prison and racing to stop a megalomaniac demon from taking over what I presume is a section of Hell. It’s a side-scrolling action-platformer with a real-time strategy overland map, a tower-defence strategy game and a top-down shoot-’em-up, interweaving multiple indie-friendly genres – and not for its benefit. Bare-bones RTS without direct unit management or tech trees The awkward blending of genes is just as weird as the story, which transports Adam and Eve’s fall from Paradise into a world of mailbox-shaped monsters, hidden labs, and a flying mask named Smelter. Eve wants to find Adam, while Smelter wants to restore his lost empire of Zirms, who resemble dark…

If you’ve ever hidden under the covers in fright, perhaps because you’re scared there might be a ghost, then you’ll sympathise with the plight of the nervous hero of Beasts of Mehetia: a child battling monsters in a fiery volcano. His main weapon is his courage, and his main form of defence is, er, closing his eyes. This doesn’t make the monsters go away, but it does give him a moment to come to his senses, without them in sight to hinder his recovery. Courage is a resource you use to battle enemies: one point of courage does one damage, and if you run out, you’ll expend precious HP instead. While courage does recover naturally over time, this will only happen if there are no enemies present, or if you…

Ihaven’t looked, but I expect there are thousands of ASMR videos about Abzu. Calm voices narrating as you paddle past swaying kelp and shoals of brightly-coloured fish. I’m comatose just thinking about it. It’s a testament to Abzu’s chill that you can even feel relaxed while riding a shark. The most stirring moments come from the sense of freedom, both in terms of where you go and the lack of a time limit. I also don’t mind the story, even if the inevitable ecological message feels like the bit at the end of the nature documentary where Sir David Attenborough makes us feel bad about how we’re ruining the ocean and all crabs now live in discarded yoghurt pots.…

Want a gaming monitor? Then get one with a high refresh rate. On that we all agree. Everything else is pretty much up for grabs, and boy are there plenty of features to ponder with the latest gaming panels. Deciding between an IPS or VA panel is already a conundrum and a half. And what about panel, size, shape and resolution? Is the 16:9 aspect ratio still the most versatile or is ultrawide the way to go? Oh, and price. The best high refresh rate monitors ain’t cheap, unfortunately. But nor are they necessarily megabucks. If you feel you can’t answer any of these questions then don’t fret, we’re here to help. For we’ve done the testing, played the games, and made our conclusions in the hope of offering you…

1 EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS Beeple’s collage, based on his popular Instagram, sold for $69.3 million. 2 THE PIXEL Digital artist Pak sold The Pixel, which is literally a grey square, for $1.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction. 3 JACK DORSEY’S FIRST TWEET A piece of internet history? Perhaps, but is it worth $2.9 million? 4 CRYPTOKITTIES DRAGON Got 600 Etherium ($1.45m) burning a hole in your hardware wallet? Why not buy a virtual pet?…

Switzerland’s rolling hills and snowy peaks seem like the ideal destination for a bit of peace and quiet. But in the horror game Mundaun, instead of being charmed by Swiss countryside, my first day in the snowy Alps ended with me scrambling around in the dark fending off monstrous wicker men with a broken pitchfork. My first day in town has been, in a word, surreal. The game’s heavy charcoal hand-drawn visuals really should have been my first clue that this was not going to be the getaway I had envisioned. A little bit of context: you play as a young man named Curdin, who has returned to the secluded rural village of Mundaun after receiving a troubling letter. The local priest has written that Curdin’s grandfather has tragically died…

UMURANGI GENERATION umurangi.tapiki.io Umurangi Generation is loud, angry, and unabashedly political in a way that puts the rest of the medium to shame. But it’s the virtual handheld camera that sells it, asking you to create art for art’s sake at the end of the world. Say cheese, giant squid. You’ll be like the David Bailey of a dying dystopia. TEARDOWN teardowngame.com I know there’s a good, smart heist game buried under Teardown’s phenomenal destruction tech. But since adding Steam Workshop support, I’ve left those crime puzzles behind to go yeet buildings at other buildings with GMod-inspired gravity guns. Why steal a safe when you can steal a skyscraper? HALO: THE MASTER CHIEF COLLECTION halowaypoint.com It’s 2007. Toby McGuire’s Spider-Man just went emo, everyone’s listening to Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend, and…

If I asked you which game developer you’d consider Oscar-worthy, how would you respond. Maybe one of Sony’s ‘prestige’ first-party studios? Perhaps a narrative-heavy developer like Telltale or Dontnod, or a triple-A powerhouse like EA or Ubisoft? Instead, the academy has chosen to award Respawn Entertainment with the prestigious award – and it wasn’t even for the wall-running FPS series it’s known for. A DOCUMENTARY FOLLOWING A 90-YEAR-OLD FRENCH RESISTANCE FIGHTER Colette, a short documentary following a 90-year-old French Resistance fighter as she visits the German concentration camp where her brother was killed, won the Oscar for Best Documentary (Short Subject) at this year’s Academy Awards. It’s a fantastic short, exploring pained family dynamics, resistance, and the brutality of Nazi rule in a tight 20 minutes. But it’s also an…

“I COULD DO THAT GARAGE IN JUST UNDER 25 SECONDS” If you’re still seething over Driver’s infamous car park level, you might well blame series creator Martin Edmondson. But the real culprit is the film that planted the idea in his head some two decades earlier. The Driver (1978) was a crime chase thriller in which a wheelman proved himself by flinging an orange Mercedes between the pillars of an underground garage. It’s all there: the handbrake turns, the speed test, the reverse 180 – even the slalom that would-be drivers found so tricky to master. “It was actually the first film I ever went to the cinema to see,” Edmondson explains. “My dad had to go first just to check it wasn’t too violent.” The level’s difficulty, however, is…

FAMILIES WILL REMEMBER YOUR WRONGDOINGS FOR GENERATIONS So Kynseedis an RPG about growing up, getting old, and dying, which is quite ironic since it feels like the game has been on Steam in various builds since forever. It actually first appeared on the platform back in 2018, when GreenLight was still a thing, and it’s now finally out. Well, in Early Access at least. Although the game’s development timeline is somewhat lengthy, it’s understandable looking at the scope of the game. After jumping in and starting a save in the most recent build, the Apothecary update, it’s almost overwhelming how much there is to do. It’s a life sim RPG like Stardew Valley but with less emphasis on farming. You have a farm as your main source of income –…

IT’S A SLIMMER STRATEGY GAME, BUT THAT ALSO MAKES IT A LOT LESS DAUNTING Space tyrants always seem like they’re having fun, just going around shooting lasers at planets they don’t like. But it’s all a facade. I’ve been trying to conquer the galaxy in Star Dynasties, but I’ve been too busy dealing with scandals and feeling sorry for myself. Things aren’t going well for Duke Fraser. My mum, who was also my best general, just died. I had to exile my brother after he had an affair with my wife. I’m having an affair of my own, and it might be a little bit responsible for a civil war. And you know what? I don’t think we even know how to make lasers. I’m pretty sure I can salvage…

BIRD AND BEAST PILAF Meat and poultry cooked with rice and stock. Eat this dish and the damage you take while guarding enemy attacks is reduced. TOCHITURA DE PUI A savoury stew made from the meat of a rare bird, which lives somewhere in the village. Gives you a large permanent HP increase. SARMALE DE PESTE Cabbage roll stuffed with fish. The Duke says they’re “so light you’ll feel weightless”, which gives you a permanent movement speed boost.…

I’m strapped into the passenger seat of a car somewhere in the American midwest. I don’t know how I got here, just like I don’t know how I’ll end up alongside the next four drivers I hitch a ride with in Hitchhiker. In an even vaguely real-world context, this scenario could be a little alarming, given how vulnerable I am as an amnesiac hitchhiker with no sense of direction. But as soon my driver, a raisin farmer called Vern, starts musing about everything from relationships to philosophical raisin-based analogies, a wave of comfort washes over me and I’m all aboard for the ride – wherever it may take me. You only get glimpses of the relationship itself through flashbacks Why our protagonist is hitchhiking across America will eventually become clear…

In the varied history of horror film, there’s a subgenre known as portmanteau or anthology horror, in which short tales of dread are collected and often linked by a running narrative or character. If on a Winter’s Night, Four Travelers slots neatly into this tradition, as its three protagonists converge on a train setting to tell their dreadful tales of rejection, delusion, and messing with forbidden lore. The first story, The Silent Room, offers a short, sharp shock in a hotel room, as a man named Carlo awaits his lover, Patrick. Like the other stories, it’s set in the 1920s: not an especially good time to be gay, particularly when one man is more comfortable with himself than the other. Saying any more would spoil it, as it’s over before…

Launching a ship is difficult. It imposes stresses on the vessel not experienced during standard operation. It presents a significant, often dangerous engineering challenge. In 1860, after eight years of planning, two people died launching Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s SS Great Eastern. It’s so difficult, in fact, that sailors do anything they can to bless the maiden voyage, which is why we smash bottles of champagne on the hulls of new ships. Despite this, I’d still rather launch a 32,000 ton steam ship with salad tongs and half a can of WD40 than try to fire up Sea of Thieves on the Microsoft Store again. It simply won’t load. I reinstall, switch drives, and even consider breaking a bottle of champagne against my PC. In the end, I move the whole…

Swimming in games is always bad. So why do I quite like Song of the Deep, a game that’s just one great big underwater level? It’s partly to do with presentation. The missing-dad storyline and Irish narration make it feel I’ve stumbled across a sad Scandinavian animation on Netflix. I respect protagonist Merryn’s engineering skill: if I built a homemade submarine in a day it would essentially be a submersible tomb. And while it’s not especially challenging, it’s a pleasant experience nonetheless: like going to see the expensive aquariums at the back of the pet shop and accidentally discovering your missing father floating next to the algae scrubbers.…

I am an idiot for not playing more of Nier: Automata when it first came out. Yoko Taro’s hybrid RPG-meets-brawler-meets-shoot’em-up caught my interest the first time I played it back in 2017, but after getting to the end of the first of its many endings I just didn’t stick with it. Nier: Automata had me a little confused. I just didn’t get it at first. But I do now. I’ve been replaying Nier: Automata in anticipation of Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… (yes, that’s it’s actual name), the remade prequel released this month. Also it’s spring and there’s not a whole lot of new games to play. But I’m so glad I randomly decided to give Automataa second chance. WHAT’S BRILLIANT IS THAT THESE CHIPS AREN’T JUST FOR YOUR COMBAT ABILITIES The…

Playing Elite: Dangerousis like parenting – you are continually overestimating and underestimating the abilities of both your ship and child. You think your Vulture could just take on that wing of Deadly-ranked Eagles after an hour of swatting away sad little gangsters, then find yourself floating home. Similarly, my five-year-old son’s suggestion that he play that game where you “become like a police officer, but not, and shoot space pirates” should have given me pause. However, after a lockdown grinding the Lego Star Wars games past the point where anything has maintained its lustre, I thought this was a good idea. Elite has been woven into my being for 37 years. Could I hand down my love of the big black? Besides, while bounty hunters are pretty much the bad…

The great thing about playing a deep and rich RPG like Fallout: New Vegas is that the choices you make can ensure each playthrough will be a little bit different. But despite playing the game a number of times since its release in 2010, I’ve never had a playthrough turn out quite so different as when I installed the NV Randomizer mod. The mod, as you can probably guess from the name and a quick glance at the images on these pages, randomises the hell out of Fallout: New Vegas. Which is why within just a couple hours of beginning my game I was already armed with a hammer capable of one-shotting most enemies, a talking coyote had asked me to submit to a credit check, and I’d met an…

NEED TO KNOW DIFFICULTY Medium TIME Three hours VITAL LINKS  Best indie games: bit.ly/3aREBEH Overclocking guide: bit.ly/3tOoyi9 Top RAM: bit.ly/3xhZcLR WAITING GAME 1 The hardest, and most important, thing is to be patient. No, perhaps you won’t be exploring Night City, Enoch, or Verdansk at the highest settings with frame rates in triple figures, but try to keep an open mind for now. GOING BACK 2 Tuck into the less-demanding games in your pile of shame while you’re waiting. You may even find that, when the GPU shortage of 2020/21 ends, today’s cutting-edge experiences may benefit from a hefty discount when you’re ready. SMALL FRY 3 Or if you’re up-to-date on your backlog, take this opportunity to expand your horizons with indie games. On storefronts like itch.io you’ll find cheap,…

Broken Sword is a game that knows every great mystery needs a killer premise to hook you in. It begins with an American tourist on vacation in France, sipping coffee outside a Parisian cafe. Then a guy dressed as a clown blows it up. Most people would fly home and try to forget about it, but George Stobbart is not most people: he’s an adventure game protagonist. You know what those guys are like. Vacation be damned, he wants to know who tried to kill him – and he’s going to find out by picking up a bunch of random objects and solving puzzles with them. Developed by UK studio Revolution Software and released in 1996, Broken Sword is one of the best point-and-click adventure games ever made. It’s beautiful…