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39 Articles

“PC GAMER HAS BEEN HERE FROM DOOM TO BALDUR’S GATE 3”

ROBERT JONES Twitter @rnicholasj This month Got lost in the PC Gamer magazine archive while digging out past issues. Was berated by Murray the Talking Skull. From the moment I started reading this grand old magazine back in the mid-1990s, I had no idea that it would go on to be the cultural touchstone it has become, nor that I would ever get the immense privilege to be editor of it. After all, PC Gamer has been here through it all. From Doom to Half-Life 2 to this year’s seminal Baldur’s Gate III, this magazine has always been there reporting on PC gaming’s biggest events and culture with authority as well as plenty of humor, too. As such, it is a huge personal honor to present this landmark celebration of 30 years of PC gaming. This is…

“PC GAMER HAS BEEN HERE FROM DOOM TO BALDUR’S GATE 3”

The Steam accounts of multiple game developers were recently compromised and used to update their games with malware. Fewer than 100 Steam users had the games installed when the malware was added, and they’ve been directly notified of the risk by email, according to Valve. The company confirmed details of the intrusion to PC Gamer. The updates potentially containing malware were “reverted and purged” within hours, and Valve advised any player with the games in question installed to run a full system scan with some decent anti-virus software. Although this attempt to use Steam to distribute malware wasn’t particularly effective, Valve has taken a major step to prevent it from happening again. From October 24, game developers are required to pass a two-factor authentication check before updating the default branch of a…

Special Report NVESTIGATES ALL CHROMED UP

When Gabe Amatangelo stepped into the director role for Cyberpunk 2077 in May 2021, morale among the team was low. The RPG had sold 13 million copies, yet was plagued with bugs and ran so poorly on older consoles it was pulled from sale on the PlayStation Store. CD Projekt’s stock price cratered. Cyberpunk’s former director had left CDPR after an investigation into workplace bullying. So when Amatangelo said yes to the job, that yes came with conditions. “Part of my conversation at the beginning with my boss and the board was: I believe in the team, I believe in this IP, but I want to do it right. And I’m going to need the support to do that,” says Amatangelo. “And they’re like, yes, you have the support.” From that…

Special Report NVESTIGATES ALL CHROMED UP

Secret Level THE UNSUNG HEROES OF DEVELOPMENT COMPOSE YOURSELF

Music captured Jason Graves at a young age, and never let him go. After becoming enamored with John Williams’s ET soundtrack, music became “an emotional touchpoint” for him. Singing lessons, piano lessons, and musicals were just the beginning; he’s been performing music in one way or another since elementary school. Graves went on to learn a variety of instruments, and in college majored in music. “I thought I was going to be an educator or a performer of some sort,” he says, “but I decided that what I really wanted to do was attempt to write the kind of music that emotionally charged me as a kid, and even now”. Thus he switched from general music study to composition. Today, Graves is an experienced composer, with an enviable CV that encompasses games,…

Secret Level THE UNSUNG HEROES OF DEVELOPMENT COMPOSE YOURSELF

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 3

In 20 years of Call of Duty baton-passing, Modern Warfare 3 presents a unique opportunity for persnickety fans like myself: Sledgehammer has been entrusted a direct sequel to Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare 2 reboot just a year after its release, with the same engine and full backwards compatibility with MW2’s guns and attachments. I imagine this is a pretty big deal for Sledgehammer. The Bay Area studio has spent a decade playing third fiddle to its more senior Infinity Ward and Treyarch collaborators, serving as a support studio when necessary and garnering a reputation as the “offbeat” CoD studio with Advanced Warfare (2014), WW2 (2017), and Vanguard (2021)—all entries that tried to reach beyond where CoD was, and either fell flat or didn’t make a significant mark in series canon. Simply…

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 3

Ever since FPS Dust 514’s 2013 debut and subsequent flaming out, a sizable segment of EVE Online fans have wanted one thing: Dust 2. The idea is something of a white whale for developer CCP: a first-person shooter that inhabits the same universe as its space MMO. EVE Vanguard is not Dust 2, however, because this time things have to be different. CCP is being extra cautious about how it frames Vanguard. This is a “module” of EVE Online being developed by CCP’s London studio in Unreal Engine 5, which will open its doors for a beta test in December 2023, and be asynchronously connected to EVE Online via a mechanic called corruption. The difference with Vanguard is that it’s designed on the core EVE Online principle of a sandbox experience where…

LAST TRAIN HOME

In the year 1918, the central European country of Czechoslovakia was born from the ashes of the First World War. That same year, Russia collapsed in civil war. It was a complex, messy and bloody time, and is the ambitiously chosen backdrop for Last Train Home, from Czech studio Ashborne Games. The demo for Last Train Home features the prologue and first leg of the full game’s exodus, around three to four hours of game. I dived in this week to get a feel for whether the studio could pull off such an ambitious concept. I’m very happy to report that, aside from micromanagement relying a bit too much on fiddly UI panels, this is shaping up to be a very compelling blend of genres, and a handsome-looking game too. Rather than…

LAST TRAIN HOME

What superhero movies often don’t show you are the back-street scuffles and brawls against androids in warehouses that take up so much of a crimefighter’s time. Capes, a turn-based tactics game, revels in these moments, giving a lower-stakes feel to things as you batter the bad guys. Capes follows a similar path to that of XCOM 2, in that it rises out of defeat. The story goes that, 20 years ago, superheroes lost their war against supervillains. Having and using superpowers is now a crime, a law enforced by a mysterious ‘Company’ whose operatives are uniformly bald. Capes casts you as an unseen overlord, controlling a team of new superheroes in their attempts to win back the city via turn-based combat. PLAYED IT Spitfire Interactive is headed up by former Sega and Gameloft…

DRAGON’S DOGMA 2

There really is no RPG quite like Dragon’s Dogma. It’s a big, weird, wonderful, terrifying, enthralling mess of an adventure that demands you meet it on its own bizarre terms, or else get savaged by wolves in the middle of the night. What a delight, then, to find a sequel more in love with its own brilliantly strange identity than ever. The thing I loved most about the first game was its sense of truly journeying across a fantasy land, so I decided the best way to get a sense of the sequel in the limited time available was to just pick a road and start walking. I’m not alone, of course—I’m joined by the series’ trademark Pawns, AI companions created by yourself and other players that aid you on your…

DRAGON’S DOGMA 2

In this landmark issue of PC Gamer magazine, we’ve naturally been reflecting on the history of PC gaming over the last 30 years, as well as where the industry is now. Back when PC Gamer was in its early years, many landmark PC games were released, but one of the most impactful was Star Wars: Dark Forces, a first-person shooter that set new benchmarks for narrative storytelling and technical wizardry in an FPS. Today, one studio, already known for its Jedi-level remasters of classic PC games such as System Shock, is reuniting this part of PC gaming’s past with its present like no other—Nightdive Studios will drop a full remaster of Dark Forces next year. Naturally, we thought there was no better studio to get together with to discus PC gaming’s past and…

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered

To find out more about Nightdive Studio’s incoming remaster of iconic first-person shooter Star Wars: Dark Forces three decades after the original’s release, PC Gamer sat down to chat with three of the team’s key members about their history with the game, as well as how it’s been upgraded for the incoming remaster. Did you feel any trepidation taking on the project of remastering such a famous and beloved FPS as Star Wars: Dark Forces? Larry Kuperman: I wouldn’t say trepidation but we approached this project with an appropriate level of respect for the work of art that we were going to be remastering. We understand how important the game is, and how many people were really influenced [by Dark Forces] —[and formed] their perception of what the Star Wars universe should…

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered

30 YEARS OF PC GAMING

PC gaming… it’s freakin’ brilliant isn’t it?! And PC Gamer magazine has been in lockstep with its rise and evolution at every point over the last 30 years. We’ve been there for the dizzying highs as well as the terrible lows, the radical industry shifts and the gradual cultural changes. Here, we look back on 30 glorious years of PC gaming, from its biggest game releases and most impactful events, through its iconic game changing hardware and software, and onto its most legendary characters. December 1993 Doom DEVELOPER ID SOFTWARE PUBLISHER IN-HOUSE Strictly speaking, PC gaming didn’t start with Doom. Spiritually though, it absolutely did. Doom embodies so much of what would define PC gaming across the next three decades. Its cutting-edge tech established the PC’s reputation as a premium gaming platform. Its immersive, satisfying…

30 YEARS OF PC GAMING

SILENT BUT DEADLY

It’s not often that a big-budget videogame feels like it was made according to my exact wishes, and yet Assassin’s Creed Mirage exists. What was once destined to be an expansion for Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla grew into a standalone throwback to the best of the series that valued stylish kills, freedom of movement, and stealth over quest logs and gear scores. Spiritually, it’s a straight bullseye. This is the purest stealth game Ubisoft has made in 15 years of AC, dense with rooftops, ziplines and fluffy carts of hay in one of the most beautiful cities ever realized in a videogame. When I’m perched on a ledge studying guard routes, mentally noting hiding places, or plotting a risky climb, Mirage feels like Ubi at the top of its game. It’s a…

SILENT BUT DEADLY

RIDERS ON THE WORM

Arrakis, Frank Herbert’s inhospitable planet and the setting for Dune: Spice Wars, is arguably the most famous celestial body in science fiction. It sprang tailor-made for strategy gaming with its murderous terrain, political intrigue, and markedly differentiated factions vying for control of a priceless natural resource: the spice. That the foundations of the modern RTS were laid in Westwood’s Dune 2 was hardly a surprise. Like Dune 2, Spice Wars is an RTS, but it’s also a 4X affair, and a remarkably traditional one at that. It lets you lead one of six rival groups locked in constant struggle over Arrakis’ sandy expanse. Single scenarios and multiplayer battles are available, but the main draw is doubtless the 25-30 hour Conquest mode which unfolds over several missions, seeing me gradually tighten my…

RIDERS ON THE WORM

CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY

There’s one lap to go at Laguna Seca, an angry, bucking beast of a circuit in the California desert where I’ve so far been shepherding a Civic to a bang-average fourth place finish. But this is Forza multiplayer: it’s not over until the penalties are counted, the ‘mute all’ button is pressed and the checkered flag is taken. The leader has a problem: as they head into the infamous corkscrew chicane, they’re side-by-side with P2 in the braking zone. I can see on the minimap that this does not go well for either party. They’re both off track, and one of them clatters into P3 upon rejoining the track. I’m about to win the race. Except I don’t. I take those last corners so cautiously that one of the stricken corkscrew…

CONSERVATIVE STRATEGY

DEATH ON THE NILE

Total War: Pharaoh isn’t the best Total War game, but it is possibly the one I’m most impressed by. Creative Assembly’s chosen setting sits right on the precipice of military history. The Battle of Kadesh, which took place about 100 years before Total War: Pharaoh begins, is the earliest pitched battle that we have records of tactics and formations for. The most technologically advanced weapon of the time was the chariot. Compared to the military engine that powered Rome, or the wild armies of Total War: Warhammer, Pharaoh has precious few tools to create an entertaining simulation of warfare. And yet, Pharaoh is a deeply compelling strategy game. Although its battles are almost Shogun-like in their simplicity, the campaign is anything but, offering a fiercely challenging scramble for power over an…

DEATH ON THE NILE

What defines an immersive sim? Is it the multiple approaches, the vent-crawling, the exploration? No, it’s even simpler than that—it’s the sliding. Like most immersive sims, Babbdi lets you slide into a crouched position. It’s a movement that’s fun to perform—and movement is at the heart of Babbdi. It’s never been such fun to move around such a dismal location. Imagine Crackdown in a UK tower block: a game of puzzling your way up, down and around a concrete playground on a foggy day. The combat and stealth of the classic immersive sims have been jettisoned entirely, and all that’s left is the exploration and a goal to achieve by a variety of means: get the hell out. Secure a train ticket and flee this brutalist city. But first: stick your nose…

DIGITAL MONSTERS

To an obsessive tidier, Cyberpet Graveyard is kind of a hellish game, as it summons mischievous digital pets onto your desktop. Each critter is a separate program, and they do things like create files and move them around. For a certain kind of person (hello!) they’re about as welcome as a virus. That I find them cute anyway—that I’m smiling as I chase this critter around, in a moving window that’s spewing out miniature windows—says a lot about the extraordinary Cyberpet Graveyard. Is it a game? Mainly it’s a folder filled with images, and videos, and the digital pets themselves: little animated apps that bounce infectiously around your computer screen. The clown-like Hopson blows out kisses and looks terribly sad when you drag them around. Meanwhile, Louie likes to play on the…

DIGITAL MONSTERS

I often think about Raindrop, a tiny arcade-style game made by indie developer Shuhei Miyazawa. It’s such an innovative game—though, in an unpopular genre, it seems to have passed people by. I’m grateful for this opportunity to return to it, and bring this cat-in-the-rain saga to more people’s attentions. The gist is that you’re a cat, and you’re trying to cross the street in torrential rain. Dodge the raindrops as they fall and collect as many stars as you can, for a bonus. Every time you reach the exit your score is banked. Do you rush repeatedly to each exit until you’re finally hit by a raindrop? Or do you linger in each stage, dodging rain and catching stars to increase your combos? I can’t think of another arcade game that lets…

Spectacle is aptly named—it’s a visually resplendent throwback to a bygone age. Evoking games like Shadowgateand Uninvited, it’s a first-person adventure where half of the fun is stumbling into deadly encounters. Perhaps I shouldn’t linger by that giant snake, much as I’m curious. Cue hilarious game-over screen. Today, these sudden deaths are seen as outdated design—and rightly so, when we have to return to a previous save. But Spectacle just reverts things to before the encounter. You get all the fun of the custom death, then carry on with your puzzling business as if it never happened. That’s really the only modern concession in a game built on the shoulders of those old ‘Macventure’ games. However, with modern hardware comes the power to dream a little bigger. This is still a game…

It’s rare that the ‘lone hero against hordes of enemies’ trope lands. There are always moments where it feels like the game is helping you feel like a badass, and somehow, on some infinitesimal level, you know you’re being lied to. Doom is different. There’s a sense that the hordes of hell are protecting themselves from you, not the other way around. Games are often about feel. Doom might appear cardboardy and flat now, but two minutes into its violent, irresistible loop and you almost forget how it looks. The movement is slick and almost sickening, like that GIF of a cooked chicken sliding out of a can. There’s a sense of perpetual motion that feels as immediate and satisfying as many modern shooters, but noticeably different, like a carnival shooting…

It’s fascinating looking at comments from people who played The 7th Guest as children. It’s a mix of nostalgia and swallowed trauma, like visiting a vintage fair with someone whose grandpa choked on a Pog. It’s not that it’s scary, as such. The performances are flamboyantly camp. It’s stilted and strange. And the lead villain, Henry Stauf, looks more like a disgruntled gamekeeper than a grand supernatural menace. But there’s a pervasive eeriness to everything that’s still gripping. After years of acclimatisation, we have an idea what to expect from horror films and games, but The 7th Guest’s idiosyncrasies make it entirely unpredictable. It’s from a time before the rules were written. The presentation definitely helps. The voiceover is cozy, strange and soporific, like sliding into a suspiciously warm sleeping bag. And…

You often wonder, playing a game from 1993, which 2020s tropes will age like milk. The setting and story of Gabriel Knight feel quite current. I can imagine a TV show about a rugged occult bookstore owner investigating dark mysteries. But everything else would be different. He wouldn’t ride a motorbike and wear a long leather coat. He wouldn’t have a voice like Duplo being tipped onto a wooden floor. And he wouldn’t make jokes about violating human rights or ogling his secretary’s legs. But functionally, there’s loads here that feels rich and current. The dialog options are deep and voluminous. There are multiple endings. And the presentation still feels crisp, perhaps because of recent point-and-click games, such as Unavowed, which reference the same systems. Best of all, though, is the…

UNWRAP THE ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE

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UNWRAP THE ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE

“I took on the role of DPS while my friend lured Radahn around his arena”

Nothing has made me more desperate for a proper co-op mode in a Souls game than the Elden Ring Seamless Co-op mod. Brutal bosses and treacherous caves are a lot more fun with a friend by your side. But unlike FromSoftware’s own version of co-op where your ally can only stick around until you defeat a boss, the mod gives both players an all-day pass to the entirety of the Lands Between. The Seamless Co-op mod itself is a miracle. FromSoftware’s games are not particularly friendly to modders and, historically, adding any kind of multiplayer to a game seems to be difficult. Somehow, the mod’s developer, LukeYui, made it work well enough that you can play through the entire game, quests and all. It has its fair share of bugs, but…

“I took on the role of DPS while my friend lured Radahn around his arena”

“Suddenly I’m invested in politics”

Having a catwalk-off in PHANTOM LIBERTY I think it’s the moment when I get blown off my feet by the crashing Space Force One presidential jet, its inferno-clad, exploding engines singeing my very ragged cropped hairdo as it almost scalps me, that I realize that I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this gig. This is especially true because I, as a person, am already rapidly fading away thanks to my consciousness being overwritten by a long-dead rockstar (don’t ask!). Oh, and did I mention that I’ve just accepted a certain-death mission to extract the president of the New United States of America from the most dangerous area of Night City, one controlled by an armed-to-the-teeth private military company? Yeah, I’m fucked. EXTREME PREJUDICE More out of a desperate, animalistic…

“Suddenly I’m invested in politics”

“I just beat a satanic monk to death with a lavatory seat, and it felt good”

I've already completed Cultic, a recently released retro-style FPS developed by Jasozz Games and published by 3D Realms. It’s a fulfilling spiritual successor to Monolith’s 1997 classic Blood, but now I need a new challenge, can I complete the first level unarmed? I’ll be throwing objects instead, and I’m cheating slightly by classing the axe as an object, but only because it’s chuck-able. Other throwable items include chairs, barrels and Tabasco sauce bottles, to name but a few. I awake in pit of corpses and dash to the first door I find. Inside the building are cell blocks, and within the cells are toilets. It transpires that smashing the porcelain to pieces transforms the toilet seat into a throwable object, so within the next 60 seconds I pick it up, carry it…

“I just beat a satanic monk to death with a lavatory seat, and it felt good”

“The narrative should obscure these systems, but Bethesda drops this ball”

My eight-year-old has ADHD so I hear “I’M BORED” a lot. I remind myself that’s a function of his operating system, a complex set of emotions and processes. Otherwise, I’d just point out the million things he could do and complain about his inability to enjoy them. I am playing Starfield, and I am BORED. A million things to do and I’m not enjoying any of it. Now, I’m not neurotypical either, but I don’t think I’m the issue. Videogames rely on the metagame. We hear someone talking about the barkeep with a problem, we hear “quest”. Progress. But the best games make us forget all this by weaving an illusion. They make it easy to choose to believe in a story to spark your imagination. Starfield fails spectacularly in this regard. Mechanically,…

“The narrative should obscure these systems, but Bethesda drops this ball”

BALDUR’S GATE III

A weird property of videogames is that, no matter how long they’ve been in development, as soon as they release about one million voices will shout in unison, “Hey, how come you didn’t include this feature we were obviously going to want?” For Starfield, it was city maps, because instead of proper street maps the RPG launched with sparse dot fields that look like abstract illustrations of loneliness. For Baldur’s Gate III, it was the ability to change your appearance mid-game, as well as the option to boot co-op characters from your party so that you aren’t stuck with your friend’s green-haired bard named Sherlock Gnome. Bethesda’s still working on the maps, but remarkably, Larian has already added both of those requested features in just over a month, and has made…

BALDUR’S GATE III

It’s not that we weren’t expecting modders to immediately blast off into Starfield or anything… but golly! Just a few weeks after Bethesda’s space RPG launched, there aren’t just hundreds of mods for Starfield. There are thousands. Thousands! And if the Elder Scrolls and Fallout games are any indication, there will be thousands more by the end of the year and tens of thousands in the years ahead. That’s just fine, because Bethesda’s biggest RPG ever has plenty of room for improvement. There’s a ton of jank on display in Starfield, a few bugs here and there, some pesky UI issues, a few systems that could use improving, and overall just lots of little minor annoyances that can be solved by modders. Thankfully, they’re not wasting any time. NICE VIEW As you begin…

GET STARTED IN STARFIELD

1 STRONG START Do you want an endless parade of bounty hunters chasing you? Origin Traits are an important narrative element of your playthrough, so be sure to pick wisely. It’s worth remembering that many Origin Traits can also be disabled if they get annoying. Take a hike, fan! 2 PRACTICAL KNOW HOW While it can be fun to choose your Background based on an imagined backstory, it’s more important to pick practically here, since it alters your skillset and what you’ll be able to do in space. Some skills are definitely more useful than others, such as Piloting. 3 BOOST PACK Speaking of useful skills; make sure to grab the Boost Pack Training ability as soon as you can. Starfield doesn’t explain this, but if you don’t have that skill, you can’t use your…

GET STARTED IN STARFIELD

THE BIGGER THEY ARE, THE BARDER THE Y FALL BALDUR’S GATE III PART 2

DIARY PERSONAL ADVENTURES IN GAMES EXTRA LIFE When we last saw Pillius Flenk, he was allowing his bravado to write checks his conflict-avoidant ass was unlikely to cash. WBy agreeing to help everyone he sashayed into after escaping the crashing nautiloid, he got himself into something of a pickle, especially since he had no genuine intention of acting heroically. Via a combination of over-promising, under-delivering and avoiding physical exertion, he reached a point where his only option was to creep into a goblin stronghold to rescue a druid; an unwelcome task for a man less courageous than Donald Trump on a polished staircase. Flenk, you’ll remember, is a mewling weakling with the fortitude of a sugar sculpture on a drizzly day; a prey animal, albeit one who wants you to believe…

THE BIGGER THEY ARE, THE BARDER THE Y FALL BALDUR’S GATE III PART 2

TRANQUILITY LANE

People will tell you the best part of Bethesda RPGs is the sidequests, and sometimes that’s true. But one of the most Wild Wasteland moments in Fallout 3 is part of the main storyline, sitting right there on the critical path. Your quest in Fallout 3 is to find your dad, Liam Neeson. It’s a better hook for an open-world game than the search for your son in Fallout 4, because everyone knows Liam Neeson can take care of himself. Bouncing across the Capital Wasteland, you’re free to take your time safe in the knowledge you can return to Dad Quest later on. You finally track the deadbeat down to Vault 112, where you expect some kind of dungeon crawl, maybe a fight with some mutants or vault dwellers. You find something…

TRANQUILITY LANE

Syndicate is a game that stirs strong feelings within me, and the realisation that it’s now 30 years old plunged me into a pit of nostalgia for my teenage years. I’ve owned Syndicate four times, and played it on three different platforms. Three were on PC, the game coming as a selection of floppies in a big black box with a bright green sheath around it, then a CD-ROM in a small green cardboard case, then as a download in its Syndicate Plus incarnation. Only the last one still works. I also played it on the Amiga 500, and later the PSP port of the Super Nintendo conversion as part of the dreadful EA Replay compilation. It’s a game that’s most at home on PC, however, as even in 1993 the…

DE AL WALKER FINAL FANTASY XIV finalfantasyxiv.com → Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker has been a mixed bag, but it’s still one of the best RPG stories I’ve experienced, and you can now play two whole expansions for free. That’s like, three 30-40 hour stories for nothing. Well worth a play if you like this sort of thing. PARRY EDUCATION SEKIRO sekirothegame.com → Sekiro passed a lot of my friends by, but it has a ton of good ideas, as evidenced by Lies of P and Lords of the Fallen borrowing from it. Give it another shot with an open mind, and parry ’til your fingers are numb. It’s worth it, I promise. RISK OF FUN RISK OF RAIN 2 riskofrain.com → Risk of Rain 2 still rules. Games like this need to be tough enough to make your eventual god builds…

THE GRAPHICS CARD GREATS

The last 30 years have included some landmark moments in PC gaming hardware, and PC Gamer’s very existence as a magazine dedicated to gaming on a personal computer speaks volumes for the importance of those years for our hobby. In that time, it has covered the rise of 3D graphics, simulated physics, LAN parties and online gaming. But the mag has also captured the rise of one particular piece of hardware that makes it all possible: the graphics card. In 1993, at a Denny’s roadside diner in East San Jose, Nvidia was founded, intent on creating a 3D accelerator to beat the rest. It would have its work cut out for it trying to dispatch 3dfx, which rose to prominence with the creation of the Voodoo Graphics card in 1996. From the…

THE GRAPHICS CARD GREATS

ANTIQUE CODE SHOW

“ If you thought 1993 was a good year for PC junkies,” wrote the LA Times on Christmas eve 1993, “just wait until 1994. Prices will continue to plummet, just as they did in 1993”. Firstly, can we all agree to go back to calling ourselves PC junkies? And second, that quote captures a pivotal moment. Home computers were indeed becoming more affordable year on year, and a storm was gathering that would birth PC gaming as we know it. Id Software knew this when it launched Doom in December of ’93. Future Publishing knew it when some forward-thinking execs had launched the first issue of a magazine called PC Gamer a month previously. People had been using computers to play games since there had been people, computers and games, but…

ANTIQUE CODE SHOW

In 2023, we turn up our noses if we don’t like the RGB lighting strips running along our graphics card. In 1993, the select few enthusiasts who ever dared meddle with the inner workings of their home computer were delighted just to correctly identify their VGA card. Quite aside from the astronomical rise in computational power since issue 1 of this magazine hit the shelves, we’ve seen an equally dramatic transformation in the way desktop machines are put together. It’s basically nerd Lego now, a toybox of multicolored parts that fit together in an outrageously proportioned, liquid-cooled display cabinet. But when PC Gamer launched, upgrading your computer was beyond daunting. And yet people braved it nonetheless. Driven forwards into the gaping maw of a PC’s razor-sharp case panels by a combination…

BUYER’S GUIDE

KEY Budget build PC gaming is for everyone. Pick the parts 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 TOTAL $1,106 MID-RANGE BUILD Our recommended build for playing the latest games TOTAL $1,568 ADVANCED BUILD Go above and beyond with a PC powerful enough to end worlds TOTAL $5,648…

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