Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i PC Gamer

NEED TO KNOW RELEASEJanuary 30, 2025 DEVELOPERInsomniac, Nixxes Software PUBLISHERPlayStation Publishing LLC LINK insomniac.games Following the ports of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered and Miles Morales back in 2022, Sony has now sped up the process of PlayStation to PC with Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. So, what better way to kick off 2025 than swinging through the streets with the highest performance and fidelity possible? In fact, this is now a 15-month turnaround for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 compared to the 47 months fans had to wait for the first Spidey release on Windows, and two years for the Miles spinoff. It seems Sony is finally realising the financial benefits of bringing its biggest titles to the platform, while those on Steam and the Epic Games Store can revel in accessing one of the…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASEJan 29 2025 DEVELOPERThe End of the Sun Team PUBLISHERThe End of the Sun Team LINK endofsun.com What’s that you say? A first-person exploration and adventure story-driven game, set in the Slavic fantasy world? A blurred line between myth and reality? Time travel? Yes please. Poland-developed The End of the Sun ticks a lot of PC gaming boxes in a post-Witcher 4 announcement world. And while it’s easy to see the word ‘Poland’ and think Witcher, the series that first springs to mind when watching The End of the Sun is The Elder Scrolls, specifically Oblivion, with its shimmering bloom lighting, forested national park vibe, and the way the camera zooms into objects of interest. A closer comparison, looking beyond the visuals, might be The Chinese Room’s…

RELEASETBA DEVELOPERSpace Goblin Studio PUBLISHERSpace Goblin Studio LINK s.team/a/2720920 An alien biologist crashes on Earth 300,000 years ago, and instead of immediately calling in planet-wide destruction or attempting to mate with the primitive inhabitants instead sets about cultivating the soil and making potions. What sounds like it might be a traumatic experience is rendered in a lovely, sunny graphical style and comes with a relaxed approach to survival. Your three-fingered, blue-skinned, highly educated protagonist requires carbon dioxide to breathe, and so must set up equipment to generate this from the native plant life. There are animals too, along with a newly emerging human population (who you can learn to communicate with), and some are friendlier than others. To tackle marauding creatures you can either hide and avoid them, or brew…

Obsidian calmly sifts through books in her new library, while Warren and Karlach unceremoniously chuck corpses out onto the street in broad daylight and Gale tries to use the Create Water spell to remove the bloodstains. In fairness, the corpses had no business being there and were merely an obstruction. How did I get here? Well, dear reader, we last saw Obsidian and Warren in the Blighted Village (and in issue 398) – unaware of the corpse-strewn future ahead of them. Though, they probably should have expected it, all things considered. Obsidian’s skills escalated to a terrifying degree in her pursuit for books, her sharpened silver tongue slicing through the Shadow-Cursed Lands. She talked every major enemy to death, barring Balthazar, Ketheric Thorm, and the legendary Myrkul. Spider lad and…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?An utterly gruesome narrative horror game about the worst workplace in history EXPECT TO PAY£11 DEVELOPERWrong Organ PUBLISHERCritical Reflex REVIEWED ONIntel Core i5 12600K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 MULTIPLAYERNo LINK store.steampowered.com/app/2475490/Mouthwashing/ I played Mouthwashing entirely in one sitting and had to lie down for a while afterward to recover. I felt vile, unsettled at what I’d seen over the previous three hours. Mouthwashing is about as classic a walking simulator as you can get mechanically, and while its stabs at more intensive gameplay fall a little flat for me, its narrative, vision, and atmosphere make it one of this winter’s standouts, a people’s champion of indie horror for very good reason. Feels like a scab being ripped off to let loose a firehose of…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A third-person hero shooter in which you play as various Marvel heroes in teams of six EXPECT TO PAYFree DEVELOPERNetEase Games PUBLISHERNetEase Games REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen 5 5600G, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 MULTIPLAYERYes LINK store.steampowered.com/app/2767030/Marvel_Rivals It seems like every moment of my spare time nowadays is spent in a hero shooter. When I’m not fighting for my life in Valorant, I’m doing the same thing in Overwatch 2 or with the bots in Team Fortress 2. So the last thing I really need is a hero shooter I actually enjoy and will, therefore, carve more time out of my day playing it: enter Marvel Rivals. Getting to know each of the eight launch maps is also a lot of fun I didn’t expect…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?An interactive first-person exhibition set in a fictional former quarry EXPECT TO PAYFree DEVELOPERThe Zium Society PUBLISHERThe Zium Society REVIEWED ONIntel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 MULTIPLAYERNo LINK bit.ly/ZiumExpo I can think of few better places to appreciate art than a mountaintop ringed with walkways and containing a photogrammeterised cat, but such are the upsides when you pluck art out of the physical realm and into a goddamn video game. The Zium Exposition is an interactive gallery mixing traditionally flat pictures, animated 3D sculptures and, excitingly, more interactive pieces, which whisk you off to separate worlds for more involved, enclosed experiences. It’s a fascinating blending of worlds. In a regular art gallery, you’re expected to slow down and to contemplate, to smell…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?The Smell Of Your Pipe-Smoking Great Grandad: The Game EXPECT TO PAY£25 DEVELOPERFrogwares PUBLISHERFrogwares REVIEWED ONIntel Core i7-7700, 16 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 MULTIPLAYERNo LINK store.steampowered.com/app/241260/Sherlock_Holmes_ Crimes_and_ Punishments/ Here’s my Dragon’s Den pitch: AirBnB, but it’s all locations from games. High on my list, just after Whiterun’s Drunken Huntsman, is Frogwares’ rendition of 221B Baker Street: a space where the deductive skills can flourish in comfort. A tumble of Persian rugs, elegant furniture, rustling notes and an invigorating sense of gentlemanly purpose. You can practically smell the crushed velvet and opiates. Does an excellent job of replicating the process of gathering clues I’d even pay money to stay at Crimes and Punishments’ Evesham station, the site of a missing train in the game’s…

The humble controller is easily overlooked by a PC gamer. We’re too distracted by our light-up keyboards and ultralight mice. But it’s a good time to start paying attention to. There are a range of new technologies vying to change controllers forever, and the expectation of what’s good is changing constantly. Take the Hall effect, for example. This is popular among gaming keyboards but has become one of the most requested features for controllers over the past couple of years – a request that many manufacturers are keen to meet. Then, when you think the dust has settled, along come TMR sticks that claim to be even better. The best things about the controller market, however, are the prices. Unlike gaming keyboards and mice, the controller market is ruled by…

The cat I’ve been looking for is tantalisingly close. I’ve been on its trail for ages and, if I can only go eyes-on with it, then I’m going to really take Indy’s adventure to the next level. No, I’m not talking about the main plot MacGuffin that kickstarts a globe-trotting romp in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, one where he needs to track down a stolen cat mummy, but instead the cutesy side-quest in the game’s Vatican hub world where you need to find and photograph cats. Yes, Indy has 100 percent got his priorities straight here. I know the cat is close as I can hear its plaintive meowing, which at this stage of frustrated non-finding is definitely taunting Indy. I literally find myself saying, “Where’s that blasted…

We said it on these pages back in September 2024 (check issue 401) that Japanese publishers are abandoning Sony’s exclusives policy, and Square Enix’s president Takashi Kiryu truly showed it off last month when, in front of the whole world at The Game Awards, he announced without any prior notice that Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will be available for PC this month. The second instalment of the everlasting JRPG saga sees the remake trilogy continue under the guidance of Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura. Rebirth picks up the FFVII Remake story, following hero Cloud Strife and his companions, after they escape from the dystopian city of Midgar and proceed on an epic adventure across the planet while pursuing series antagonist Sephiroth. Expect plenty of action, as well as chocobo riding.…

1 month SID MEIER’S CIVILIZATION VII RELEASE February 11, 2025 | DEVELOPER Firaxis Games The latest instalment in the long-running 4X strategy series, Civ VII lets you create kingdoms and rule as many legendary leaders throughout history. KINGDOM COME: DELIVERANCE II RELEASE February 11, 2025 | DEVELOPER Warhorse Studios Henry and Hans return for more medieval adventures. A massive open world that’s twice the size of the original game as well as expanded combat system are on offer. AVOWED RELEASE February 18, 2025 | DEVELOPER Obsidian The anticipated first-person fantasy RPG that is definitely not like Skyrim. A small delay means Skyrim fans can now look forward to playing it in February, 2025. 2 months KILLING FLOOR 3 RELEASE March, 2025 | DEVELOPER Tripwire Interactive In the far future of…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASEFebruary 28, 2025 DEVELOPERCapcom PUBLISHERCapcom LINK monsterhunter.com/wilds I’ve never needed much story from Monster Hunter. Each game’s plot follows a predictable pattern: something is upsetting the ecology, and you need to battle a few dozen frenzied lizards until you and the Hunter’s Guild uncover what never-before-seen creature is responsible for the turmoil. But Monster Hunter never suffered for it. Its megafauna are majestic enough, its combat climactic enough, its cast of pun-slinging NPCs charming enough that even a barebones narrative could suffice. After playing through the first five hours of Monster Hunter Wilds, however, I’m just as excited to see more of its storytelling as I am for indulging in its latest iteration of dinosaur swordfights. In late November, I visited Capcom’s headquarters in Osaka to spend…

RELEASEMarch 4 2025 DEVELOPERTwo Point Studios PUBLISHERSega LINK s.team/a/2185060 Following the Hospital and Campus, the Two Point formula now takes on history with its usual reverence and seriousness. The game switches things up from previous games with a change of focus: now, instead of caring for the patients or students, building the museum itself and making it interesting is the goal, something that looks like an improvement. Museums are cool. No really, they are.…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A sprawling science-fantasy RPG EXPECT TO PAY£25 DEVELOPERFreehold Games PUBLISHERKitfox Games REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen 9 5900, 32GB RAM, AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT MULTIPLAYERNo LINK cavesofqud.com Across the great salt desert there is a jungled plateau encircled by mountains and speckled with the ruins of an advanced, ancient civilisation. At its centre lies the Spindle, a towering cable that stretches into and through the heavens. This is where your stranger arrives, the protagonist in an epic science-fantasy RPG full of engrossing stories and elegantly designed, deep world simulation. It’s the best one I’ve ever played. A seasoned player can burn through the main story in 15 hours Caves of Qud is a traditional roguelike RPG in form, a top-down, turn-based game that relies on text…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY£17 DEVELOPERColor Gray Games PUBLISHERPlaystack Some detectives are driven by a rigid sense of morality: order must be restored, criminals punished, justice served. In contrast, I’m apparently driven by a sense of ‘let me see what weird shit is inside your pockets’. It’s a righteous bonus if any crimes get solved in the process. Curse of the Golden Idol, for me, is as much about uncovering all those dark personal secrets as it is about deductive reasoning. It’s a game that makes me want to delete all the DMs from my phone and throw away any incriminating receipts, just in case I spontaneously combust and an inquisitive detective has to piece together all the shameful aspects of my life. Morsels of information can be plucked…

Yes, you’re sick of seeing those two particular characters in print. Everyone is, at this point. Nevertheless, Nvidia’s increasing focus on artificial intelligence bears some scrutiny. Because when the company that’s previously held an historic stranglehold on the computer graphics market suddenly sees all its profits coming from elsewhere, there are going to be consequences. Asked which use case of AI excited him the most at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference in San Francisco earlier this year, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang told the audience it was computer graphics. “We can’t do computer graphics any more without artificial intelligence,” he said. “We compute one pixel, we infer the other 32. I mean, it’s incredible… And so we hallucinate, if you will, the other 32, and it looks temporally stable,…

KEY Budget build PC gaming is for everyone. Pick these parts if you want to build a new, well-rounded PC for a good price. Mid-range build You want to run every new game at 1080p 60fps. This recommended build will see you through. Advanced build You’re looking for the best PC on the market and superior components. But you still want to spend smart. BUDGET BUILD Enjoy 1080p gaming without breaking the bank MOTHERBOARD B660M Pro RS ASRock £112 This is as cheap as we want to go while still offering room for expansion and upgrades down the line. PROCESSOR Core i5 13400F Intel £170 With ten cores, six of them the Performance kind, this Raptor Lake Core i5 is fantastic value and a great all-rounder. GRAPHICS CARD Radeon RX…

T he YouTube algorithm keeps threatening me with videos about how the new Dragon Age is a crime against gamers. I haven’t watched any of them, but my recommendations still overflow. However, I’ve enjoyed most of my time with the game. Not all of it, of course. Like too many BioWare RPGs, Veilguard frontloads its worst companions. This time the Carth Onasi you suffer before you’re allowed to hang out with the cool kids is Neve, a detective whose schtick is being Sherlock Holmes without deductive grandstanding, drug addiction, or the ability to put emphasis on words. It didn’t take long before I met more memorable companions, though – a Grey Warden griffin dad, a surly qunari hyper-focused on dragons, and a necromancer who acts like Vincent Price hosting The…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASENov 20, 2024 PUBLISHERGSC Game World DEVELOPERGSC Game World LINK STALKER2.com It’s been a 15 year wait, but STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl finally arrived, and it’s brought with it many mutants and monsters, artefacts and anomalies, and plenty of jank, glitches and bugs. In other words, in all the best and worst ways, STALKER 2 (which is actually the fourth STALKER game) is just as glorious and frustrating a STALKER experience as it ever was. And if you know anything about the STALKER series, it’s got a devoted and dedicated modding community. Mods for STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and STALKER: Call of Pripyat are still being worked on and released, and those games are from 2007 and 2010, respectively. I think every STALKER fan would agree…

After thousands of hours spent in combat with orcs, androids and enemy militants, it’s become harder to find novelty in videogame violence. While Steam overflows with trucks, farms and city builders for when I’ve grown battle-weary, violence remains the mode of interaction, even in triple-A RPGs that tout player freedom. Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says that’s not going to change as long as we all keep buying it. In a YouTube video that went public on New Year’s Day, Cain responded to a viewer who asked whether he thinks we’ll ever see triple-A RPGs move beyond violence as the default way for players to interact with the world. Cain’s answer was simple: big-budget RPGs will centre combat as long as combat sells. “Companies make games – and in general, products…

Who is Final Fantasy for these days?” is a question without an obvious answer, but it’s one that Square Enix must reckon with. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI failed to meet sales expectations according to Square’s own financial report, creating a whirlwind of takes on why, and Final Fantasy’s future in general. What seems clear is that the era of Final Fantasy as the Japanese role-playing game series that comes to mind when the genre comes up has ended. That’s not to say no new Final Fantasy will fly off shelves, but the last 15 years have shown that it is, more often than not, selling a few million copies per game rather than 10 million-plus, like Final Fantasy XV managed. Which means that the issue has…

Considered by Famitsu to be one of the best games of all time, Tales of Graces is the foremost chapter of this long-running JPRG saga. The Tales series has been Namco’s response to the RPG genre for, literally, decades, but Tales of Graces was initially released in Japan only on Wii. However, its stratospheric sales, forced Bandai Namco to release it for the PS3 too, which saw its sales top almost 200,000. And now, due to a new-found focus on PC gaming within the Japanese gaming industry, Bandai Namco is releasing the remastered version of Tales of Graces for PC, too. Minimum specs start at an Intel Core i3-8100/AMD Ryzen 3 3100 and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 550Ti/AMD Radeon HD 7770, while recommended specs sit at an Intel Core i5-8400/AMD…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASEJanuary 31, 2025 DEVELOPERJump Over the Age PUBLISHERFellow Traveller LINK fellowtraveller.games C itizen Sleeper – the first game – has a very special place in my heart. Its themes mirrored the rhythm of my own life beat-for-heartbeat, as I moved out into the world for the first time: to go somewhere, alone, without any guarantee of safety or happiness, is a terror. The first game presented a harsh, but idealistic picture of what that experience is like – yes, the forces of the world are fierce and yes, becoming safe is an uphill struggle. Community is difficult to find, and some people don’t make it at all. But it is possible. What was, at first, a difficult resource management game soon became a storybook, as I…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASEJan 20, 2025 (Early Access) DEVELOPERBillionworlds PUBLISHERDaedalic Entertainment LINK s.team/a/1561960 Most 4X games have you start from nothing and building an empire that reaches the stars, or at least achieves a cultural victory over your opponents, but Yeild! does things differently. At the beginning of the game there is a monolithic central power, and you are one of a scrappy bunch of upstarts trying to bring it down. Now, if you spend much time thinking about the Roman Empire, you’ll know this is roughly what happened. It’s 401AD, and the peninsula-dwelling pasta-lovers are in decline. The empire is struggling to govern such a vast realm, and around the edges there are opportunities for other powers to nibble chunks out of its lands. Which of course is exactly…

If you were to tell me that the game director of the now legendary single-player open-world dark fantasy action-RPG, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, had decided to leave CD Projekt, establish a new studio, and then create his own original single-player open-world dark fantasy action-RPG, then you’d have my attention. But if you told me he was doing that with a team of passionate, experienced, creatively free developers who, together, were building on that storied legacy by evolving the genre in some genuinely fresh, exciting ways, then you’d find me flying out to Warsaw, Poland, to speak with Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, along with other key game developers, posthaste. And what I discovered at Rebel Wolves was one the most exciting new virtual worlds in gaming. EMERGING FROM SHADOW Let’s cut to…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A pachinko machine you can actually manipulate into a strategic little roguelike EXPECT TO PAY£12.30 DEVELOPERnewobject PUBLISHERRaw Fury REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon Graphics MULTIPLAYERWell, you can share your tables with other players. Does this count? LINK store.steampowered.com/app/2667120/Ballionaire In 2007, a game called Peggle was released. In 2008, the world suffered a global economic crisis. To this day I refuse to believe these two facts were unrelated. Peggle was as all-consumingly moreish as it was simple – it was essentially just a pachinko machine, where you fired a ball into a screen full of ‘pegs’. The only agency you had was the direction you fired the ball in. After that, all you could do is sit back and watch, making it…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?Sci-fi Metroidvania with sublimely satisfying parry-flavoured combat EXPECT TO PAY£25 DEVELOPERRed Candle Games PUBLISHERRed Candle Games REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon Graphics MULTIPLAYERYes LINK store.steampowered.com/app/1809540/Nine_Sols Six months. That’s how long poor Red Candle Games spent trying to come up with a combat move for its debut Metroidvania that was as unique as Hollow Knight’s downward slash. Personally, I would have given up after six minutes. Thankfully, the developer was made of more disciplined stuff, and its efforts have paid off magnificently. Because I think Nine Sols’ swordplay has every Soulslike of recent times beat (yes, even the one about the shadowy tree). If you’re not a fan of parrying, then take 90 points off the review score You play as Yi,…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?Vampire Survivors with forethought and a late-’90s aesthetic EXPECT TO PAY£5.50 DEVELOPERChasing Carrots PUBLISHERChasing Carrots REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen 3700X, 32GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 MULTIPLAYERNo LINK store.steampowered.com/app/2218750/Halls_of_Torment/ Halls of Torment’s most obvious difference from its most obvious inspiration is that it expects you to click to attack. No sir, none of that Vampire Survivors laxity here. You’ll make inputs to hit enemies and you’ll like it. At least for the ten seconds or so before you head into the settings menu and turn it off. But there’s a reason HoT starts like that: it’s a mission statement. Yes, it’s saying, you’re one little guy against an army of hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of other little guys, and yes, you’re sucking up experience gems…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAYFree DEVELOPERBeyond Booleans LINK bit.ly/TheAnchorite You’ve been locked in a tower for the good of the kingdom in this interactive adventure, which wouldn’t feel out of place as an episode of The Twilight Zone. This is another example of a short, twisty story told in the adventure game format – one of the best trends of recent years. Your initial goal is not to escape, but initially to do just what is asked of you, by a disembodied voice speaking outside your door. There isn’t much going on in your three small rooms. You’ve been illuminating a manuscript, but sometimes your clothes need washing, or you run out of ink, and all these problems require a bit of thought and a spot of item-combining…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY£8 DEVELOPERSpike Chunsoft PUBLISHERSpike Chunsoft There’s a certain type of humour that Japanese games manage which often defies the rules of tone and decency. “Yes, there has been a kidnapping, and lives are in danger, but relax! There’s still time to make jokes about my coworker’s screensaver.” You’re not being flippant; just helping break the tension. Instead of ruining the sense of immersion, the often erratic tone of 428: Shibuya Scramble actually helps draw you in. You start to feel like you know the characters, and however odd they are, the narrative dissonance gradually fades into the background over the course of 30 or so hours. It’s surprising that it’s as effective as it is: despite some cinematic sequences and the use of real actors,…

How our hands have set in place over time. Our muscles and tendons have grown around the WASD keys like the roots of an old tree, permanently warped into the recesses, little finger instinctively hovering over left shift. The same goes for our controllers, a presence once viewed with suspicion on our desks as an interloper from console shores, but now an essential, instinctual way to reach into a game and impose your will on it. THE MAGNAVOX ODYSSEY COST AN EYE-WATERING $99.95 AT THE TIME But there was a time when that domain, the territory where we rested our digits, was up for grabs. Even before mouselook, and the days of warring keyboard control layouts, one peripheral was at the centre of many a setup, and made you feel…

I was told that the best way to approach Wrong Organ’s first-person retro-horror game Mouthwashing was to know absolutely nothing about it. Sadly, despite my best efforts, I was unable to avoid some small tidbits of information. This didn’t ruin my experience, but it did rob me of some amazing plot twists. Mouthwashing’s nonlinear story means that you begin in the middle of the narrative, at a critical turning point, when everything begins to go wrong. Sitting in the cockpit of the Tulpar, a cargo spaceship, an alert pops up on the screen telling me to shift course right to avoid an oncoming asteroid, but I turn left straight into the massive space rock. There’s yelling, fire, and a ton of protective foam, which patches up all the holes I’ve…

I f you’re a millennial like me, you probably grew up in an age of kitschy little browser-based MMOs where the main function was, let’s be honest, the chatroom. Games like Club Penguin and Toontown are relics of a bygone era, not just because what players want has changed, but because the internet itself has changed, too. If games like Roblox, Club Penguin and Toontown feel like the shutdown of gentrified malls you used to hang out in, Webfishing feels like an abandoned warehouse that’s been retrofitted out of spite. It’s an adorable little fishing game where you go to the lake or the ocean, fish, and turn those fish into dollars. That cash money can then be used to upgrade your rod, lures, bait and so on – or…