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59 Articles

“WARHORSE STUDIOS IS DELIVERING THE GAME IT ALWAYS WANTED TO”

The original Kingdom Come: Deliverance was notable for putting medieval realism and authenticity over the traditional fantasy trappings of sword-and-shield RPGs. And, despite being markedly rough around the edges on its release, it delivered an immersive medieval world. Now, Warhorse Studios is delivering the game it always wanted to make, with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II taking its gripping gaming experience to new heights. ROBERT JONES Twitter @rnicholasj This month Successfully vanquished hordes of blackguard console gamers while dressed in a full suit of medieval armor. For them, resistance was feudal. Get it? TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Email us at letters@pcgamer.com…

“WARHORSE STUDIOS IS DELIVERING THE GAME IT ALWAYS WANTED TO”

The PC Gamer team

JOSH WOLENS Twitter @joshuawolens This month Fought mano a mano and barechested with Hideo Kojima on top of PC Gamer Towers. Sweaty. HARVEY RANDALL Twitter @HJRwithpen This month Got pummelled by a series of beefy wuxia bosses. Oh, and in Phantom Blade Zero he… PHIL SAVAGE Twitter @Octaeder This month Tried, and then failed miserably within three seconds, not to compare Avowed to Skyrim. KARA PHILLIPS Twitter @KaraPhillipsA This month Realized that pooping on strangers’ heads is great fun. We’ve told her about that.…

The PC Gamer team

STARR-MAKING ROLE

You can’t fault Ben Starr’s commitment to the bit. Since lending his voice to Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy XVI, Starr has cemented himself as a fan-favorite voice actor: from shitposting on Twitter, to cosplaying as Tifa, to becoming a whole-ass meme thanks to a particularly bright light at The Game Awards. I couldn’t help but ask about all of it when I sat down to chat with him ahead of Final Fantasy XVI’s PC release. “I didn’t know what was going on because I was like, ‘I’m gonna put my phone away, I’m just gonna enjoy the night…’ And yeah, this guy tapped me on the shoulder, and went, ‘Excuse me, you’re a meme’. Then I looked at my phone and it had just blown up and I went,…

STARR-MAKING ROLE

HIGHS A dead cert Anti-cheat is coming to Deadlock. It half-lives! Fan-made Half-Life 2: Episode 3 effort Project Borealis has returned to life after years of silence. Pay pal Pocketpair pinky-promises not to turn Palworld into an F2P live-service game, “We are not changing our game’s business model.” LOWS Getting over it Former Sony Computer Entertainment Europe prez Chris Deering has a message for laid-off devs, “Get over it!” Ollie ollie…? Oxenfree will be completely removed from Itch.io next month. Age of Mythology: Resold Age of Mythology: Retold is charging $6 for 22-year-old jpegs, with players calling it “worse than horse armor”.…

Videogames don’t usually get second chances. They come out, they succeed or fail, a narrative sets in, and that’s it. There are exceptions: No Man’s Sky, Final Fantasy XIV. But those games were saved by the developers and propped up by a dedicated community. If a game is abandoned, slagged off, forgotten… it’s largely out of luck. Until recently Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite was all three. But Twitch streamer and fighting game personality Maximilian Dood loves the Marvel vs Capcom series so much, he’s put together (and is bankrolling) a development team to rescue its unsuccessful final entry. The mod they’re producing is called Infinite & Beyond, and it’s trying to give a forgotten gem another chance. To understand why this is a big deal you have to understand Infinite’s…

WHEN’S MAHVEL?

1997 MARVEL SUPER HEROES VS STREET FIGHTER The second entry was the first to include Marvel heroes other than the X-men. 1998 MARVEL VS CAPCOM: NEW AGE OF HEROES The third in the series, and the first to use Capcom characters from outside SF. 2000 MARVEL VS CAPCOM 2 Regarded as the greatest tag fighter of all time, Marvel vs Capcom 2 was the first in the series to introduce 3v3 play. 2011 ULTIMATE MARVEL VS CAPCOM 3 A revision of MvC3 released the same year, UMvC3 enjoyed strong sales.…

EMOTION CONTROLS

During the early stages of the Covid pandemic, Mickole Klein Nulud was spending a lot more time at home than usual, due to lockdowns. He was watching a lot of entertainment, and that sparked something inside him. “[After watching] some of those media, I got really inspired. They reached into my heart.” “What we did, was take inspiration from the people we knew growing up,” Nulud explains, “especially in school. I guess that’s how we made them feel real. It’s not just the characters, actually, it’s almost everything in the game. Getting things from our experiences growing up here in the Philippines.” Using something old and real to create something new and fictional is clearly an effective method; at least when it comes to creating characters who resonate with the…

EMOTION CONTROLS

THE CRYING GAMES

LIFE IS STRANGE Nine years after Dontnod’s adventure, I’m still not quite over that devastating ending (you know which one). What a ride. A SPACE FOR THE UNBOUND Another indie with luscious pixel art and beautiful, sorrowful storytelling that will stay with you for a long time. TO THE MOON This game won’t tug your heartstrings, so much as play a deeply complex and unerringly affecting concerto on them. WHAT REMAINS OF EDITH FINCH Essentially a collection of wildly inventive and beautifully told short stories, at least one of which will surely Get You.…

THE CRYING GAMES

A NEW GEN OF JRPG

After the positive reception of its recent remasters, Square Enix has greenlit a series of other remakes of classic games in its catalog, with Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven one of the most anticipated. Reworking the original game, which came out back in 1993, the remake is delivering an evolved take on the classic JRPG, with a fully 3D world now on offer along with a brand-new co-op mode, enhanced battle system, and a series of new difficulty settings. There’s also a very nice physical special edition of the game (see boxout) available exclusively through the Japanese Square Enix E-Store. To get the inside scoop on the Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven remake, PC Gamer spoke directly to the game’s producer, Shinichi Tatsuke, about bringing it…

A NEW GEN OF JRPG

METAL GEAR SOLID DELTA: SNAKE EATER

Metal Gear Solid Delta is Metal Gear Solid 3. “What a revelation,” you’re thinking, “I can’t believe this remake is a lot like the game it’s remaking”. But no, really, listen to me. Delta isn’t MGS3 the way that the Silent Hill 2 remake is Silent Hill 2 (see p26). Having spent an hour and a half with it, I can say this thing is a shot-for-shot, not-a-hair-out-of-place recreation of the original PS2 masterpiece that I regard as one of the greatest videogames ever made. Konami seems to have taken zero liberties. Close your eyes and imagine MGS3 in scintillating Unreal Engine 5 and you’re 95% of the way to experiencing what I saw. Aside from a dusting of mechanics from MGS5 and a couple quality-of-life features, this is the game…

METAL GEAR SOLID DELTA: SNAKE EATER

STALKER 2: HEART OF CHORNOBYL

I am, unfortunately, a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to videogames I—especially ones like STALKER. In my heart, I know that atmosphere has precious little to do with graphical fidelity, that a skilled artist can make a deeply immersive game with naught but a few pixels, some shillings, cardboard, and elbow grease. But there’s a reason I’ve never properly sunk my teeth into STALKER: Shadow of Chornobyl despite all the praise it’s gotten—and I have to admit it has quite a lot to do with presentation. The game never looked bad for its time, and its immersive atmosphere is rightfully lauded—but its visuals have had a short half life. It was developed in the X-Ray engine, but it gives off a Source engine smell that’s impossible to disconnect…

STALKER 2: HEART OF CHORNOBYL

SILENT HILL 2 REMAKE

I get the impression that Bloober Team knows what you think of it. Since the Istudio was announced as the force behind the remake of the beloved Silent Hill 2, it feels like the game’s fanbase has been sucking air through its teeth, waiting to see how badly Bloober messed up. I don’t think it has. Having spent three hours with the game, it’s not perfect, but I didn’t come away thinking the devs behind Layers of Fear and The Medium have massacred a classic. Instead, I think they’ve been inclined to play things safe, turning out a UE5 embellishment of the original that feels a lot like Silent Hill 2 filtered through the design ideas of the Resident Evil 2 remake. For die-hards and purists (terms I don’t use…

SILENT HILL 2 REMAKE

PHANTOM BLADE ZERO

I got to sit down and play Phantom Blade Zero at Gamescom, and came away feeling quite impressed. Judging by the reactions of my fellow demotriers, one of who managed to beat it a whole seven minutes before me (I’m not upset), it’s looking to be a sleeper hit. Phantom Blade Zero comes from S-Game, and it’s the studio’s first major effort and, as PC Gamer’s own Rich Stanton noted last year, it’s also inspired by an RPG maker game the team made back in 2010 named Rainblood: Town of Death. S-Game has since been pretty eager to draw a line between Phantom Blade Zero and soulslikes—revealing that while it’s certainly drawn inspiration, it’s definitely its own thing. Having got my hands on it, I’m in full agreement. Phantom Blade Zero feels,…

PHANTOM BLADE ZERO

The Skyrim-ness of Avowed has been much debated—Obsidian repeatedly downplaying the comparison, carefully setting expectations around its size and scope. Here’s the thing, though. Having now played through a dungeon-sized encounter, there is a comforting familiarity to Avowed’s moment-to-moment exploration. Avowed is a first-person fantasy RPG. I’m wandering around with a companion in tow, dual-wielding weapons, crouching in the darkness in order to sneak up on my enemies. The comparison to Skyrim is as obvious as it is inevitable, and as much as Obsidian seems to want to downplay it, I don’t think the studio needs to. The familiarity is a boon that accentuates the interesting things Avowed is doing that make it stand out. And while I only played for about an hour, I’m convinced. I want to see…

A KNIGHT’S TALE

Kingdom Come: Deliverance did something that no other RPG had tried to do before when it released back in 2018: create a game based in a fully-realized medieval world that prided itself in depicting the times and the lives of its characters in a very realistic way. Here was an RPG in which Henry of Skalitz, the game’s raised-by-a-blackmith peasant protagonist, was no ‘chosen one’ superhuman fantasy hero, cutting down foes with ease left, right and center, but instead a regular guy who needed to approach medieval life and the decisions he made in it with both eyes open to the world around him. Insult a noble? Then there’s going to be genuine consequences for the lowly Henry. Get caught stealing bread? Henry’s going to be branded, imprisoned and tarred reputationally as…

A KNIGHT’S TALE

MEDIEVAL METROPOLIS

Kuttenberg is one of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II’s showpiece new destinations, offering up a proper, large-scale medieval town to explore, inhabit and quest in. Compared to the original KC:D’s biggest built-up area, the small market town of Rattay, Kuttenberg is many orders of magnitude larger and has been modeled with incredible detail and with plenty of period-accurate character. Most impressively, every single citizen in Kuttenberg has their own life and routine that they proceed with every day, imbuing the medieval metropolis with a consistent sense of realism. In medieval times, Kuttenberg was a powerhouse central European trading post.…

MEDIEVAL METROPOLIS

Go get the authoritative Tinside scoop on Kingdom Come: Deliverance II’s newly upgraded combat system, PC Gamer spoke directly with Viktor Bocan, the man who not only created it for the first Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but who is now also overseeing how the combat system evolves in the sequel. What was your overall goal when originally designing Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s combat system? Well, we wanted to introduce you to the sword fighting that is real enough. You know, it’s a medieval game. It’s a realistic game. We always wanted the combat to feel realistic. The most important thing was the authenticity—that you really felt that you are sword fighting, and that enemies are sword fighting, and that you are danger, and that they will kill you if there are a…

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FINDING IMMORTALITY

Sigil, The City of SDoors, isn’t like other cities. It’s not a place of orderly brick walls and cobbled streets, fuggy taverns and candlelit keeps. It’s not inspired by myths, fairytales, or folklore, and it can’t be contained in a single aesthetic; steampunk, biopunk, dieselpunk look sensible and uniform next to Sigil’s rusting, jagged architectures; an inn may look like a chitinous fossil, a shop of curiosities may be framed by massive blades that look like they were designed to deter the grasp of a wrathful deity. And that alley over there? Watch closely, and it may just give birth to a new street before your eyes. Even though you can eventually become familiar with Sigil’s web of dreamlike rules—where a door might be a bloodstained cloth, or a key takes…

FINDING IMMORTALITY

STORY MODE (OPTIMAL) Thief Class: WIS 18+, INT 15+, DEX 14+, CHA 13 Torment is a story-led game, and this type of build ensures that you get the maximum amount of exposition through dialog options (via high Intelligence) and recollection of memories (via high Wisdom). The Thief class is best suited to this type of playthrough, as it unlocks the Stealth skill, which you can use to skirt around some of the more frustrating combat encounters in the game. BRUTE MODE Fighter Class: STR 16+, WIS 17+, CON 12+, CHA 12+ The Nameless One is, by default, a warrior, and if you find it too unbecoming to skulk around in the shadows, then boost those strength stats, pick up a two-handed hammer, and get swinging. High Strength is good for…

MORTE “Women were the reason I became a monk… and, uhh, the reason I switched back” ANNAH “Oh yeah, you trying to sit in my lap would make a grand tale… and a short one.” DAK’KON “It is said that what a flawed man sees, his hands make broken.” FALL-FROM-GRACE “Time is not your enemy, forever is.” IGNUS “When the Planes burn and all life is but torches, then Ignus shall at last be at peace.” VHAILOR “Nothing on all the Planes that can stay the hand of justice when it is brought against them.” NORDOM “I think therefore I am… I think.”…

Can we agree that we all have that one game studio we think about more than others? For me it’s Ubisoft. Ubisoft has the reputation of a trend-chasing collection of studios that make the same types of open world games over and over, but not enough people talk about the cool, unexpected, or just plain weird little touches its games have that no other massive publisher would ever green-light. I’m talking about the good stuff, like Assassin’s Creed Mirage’s robust codex of ancient Baghdad museum pieces, Rainbow Six Siege’s overkill destruction engine, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s ambitious exploration mode that turns every waypoint into contextual directions so you develop a real sense of mastery over the planet’s geography. Star Wars Outlaws is both sides of Ubisoft: it’s conventional and safe…

PYKES SYNDICATE Leader: Gorak Found on: Toshara, Akiva The first main faction that Kay encounters. They’re a tough, but fair bunch of crooks that share Toshara with the Empire. They’re the most buttoned up, money-minded gang of the bunch. CRIMSON DAWN Leader: Qi’ra Found on: Toshara, Kijimi This is the same gang that Han Solo tangles with his standalone movie, and it’s run by his ex. Crimson Dawn is an underhanded faction, smart and manipulative, but will always offer Kay an option to get on their good side. ASHIGA CLAN Leader: Queen Ashiga Found on: Kijimi The smallest gang in Outlaws, the Ashiga are an insular group with a tight grip on its homeworld of Kijimi. They only have one real enemy, Crimson Dawn, but some elements of the faction…

PLASMA Standard red shooty bolts that come in rapid fire and heavy variants. You can upgrade accuracy and cooling as well as damage. ION Used for solving puzzles and to quickly scrap droids or shields. Can be converted into a shotgun blast. POWER Charged shots to destroy obstacles and kill just about anything. The grenade launcher variant is also fun.…

This roguelike deckbuilder is a game with its tongue so far in its cheek that it would be in danger of losing that tongue if someone were to, say, punch it in the face. Unfortunate, given that this fun, clever riff on blackjack is often face-punchingly frustrating. If you’re a living saint who knows nothing about the sinful world of gambling, blackjack is a game wherein you and your opponent take turns drawing from individual decks of playing cards. You’re both trying to get a score that adds up to 21. Make a higher number and you bust, meaning you’ll almost definitely lose, unless your opponent is courteous enough to bust too. D&DG’s first twist is that you have a consistent pool of 100 health to worry about, and every…

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. A lot. Sins of a Solar Empire 2’s journey to launch has been an extremely confusing one. It technically left Early Access on the Epic Games Store (very quietly) a while ago, but that 1.0 version was actually missing some big things, like the final faction, and in sore need of some polish. Now it’s finally arrived on Steam, though, and I have some good news: it’s brilliant. The dynamism inherent in each map is the headline attraction. Sins 2’s solar systems are not static maps. Planets and asteroids—collectively referred to as gravity wells, the territory in which all the game’s action takes place—now move along predetermined paths. And if you don’t pay attention to the movement of the heavens, you’re just inviting…

CLASH OF THE TITANS

ANKYLON TITAN The warship of the TEC Enclave is a tanky support ship that can chip away at enemy vessels. CORONATA TITAN The Advent Wrath’s mightiest vessel can turn enemies against each other. RAGNAROV TITAN The pride of the TEC Primacy fleet is a long-range beast with a railgun. VORASTRA TITAN The Vasari Exodus’s nimble titan is able to teleport within gravity wells. ERADICA TITAN The Advent Reborn’s titan can hold its own, but can also sacrifice friendly vessels to heal itself. KULTORASK TITAN The Vasari Alliance’s titan uses nano-tech to either damage or heal other vessels.…

CLASH OF THE TITANS

TEC PRIMACY Militant traders who spout propaganda and demolish fleets with their offensive powerhouse titan. TEC ENCLAVE Economy-minded turtlers who can put an extra starbase in every gravity well they control. ADVENT REBORN Spiritual cyborgs who can resurrect ships and sacrifice worlds to harm nearby enemies. ADVENT WRATH Puppet masters who can control enemy ships, buff allies and rapidly colonize gravity wells. VASARI EXODUS Planet-consuming aliens who are masters at gobbling up resources to fuel the relentless war. VASARI ALLIANCE Silver-tongued aliens keen to collaborate with other factions.…

GODS AND MONSTERS

How are the mighty fallen. RTS was the beating heart of PC gaming once, now surviving on the platform’s periphery as indies, remakes and remasters. Enter Age of Mythology Retold, not a 100% faithful translation of the 2002 original but, as the name indicates, a modern interpretation. This is a particularly tricky kind of alchemy to pull off, and although there are some tonal mis-steps such as the voice acting it largely succeeds in knowing when to stick and when to twist. For anyone who didn’t play the original: It’s more or less Age of Empires set in mythical eras, where powerful hero units and mythological beasts fight alongside conventional military units. Friendlier and slower–paced than Starcraft’s ruthlessly aggressive take on RTS, but built around the usual rock–paper–scissors game of…

GODS AND MONSTERS

A Tauren paladin rattled up on his mount right in the middle of one of World of Warcraft: The War Within’s final quests. It would’ve been nice to see a sweet conversation between two major characters, but the scene was interrupted. It wouldn’t have bothered me normally, except there are glimmers of an older WoW here, one where I actually care about its story and which I thought we’d left behind. World of Warcraft: The War Within is an expansion that thrives off of its characters and their tender interactions. Missing even a second of a conversation to another player passing by reminded me that, oh right, I’m playing a 20-year-old old MMO, and the other half of it is all about funneling you into a routine that makes numbers…

ISLE OF DORN This is the most classic-feeling zone and it’s probably because it’s also the home of the Earthen. RINGING DEEPS This is a massive industrial cavern with pockets of lava and iron structures that’s under Dorn. HALLOWFALL A subterranean zone lit by a mysterious crystal that can glow with golden brilliance in the daytime. AZJ-KAHET Below Hallowfall is the capital of Warcraft’s spider-like Nerubians, and its scale is enormous.…

I wish I’d kept track of how often I said “What the heck is that?” while playing Core Keeper. It must have happened a dozen times in the first dozen hours alone, like when I came across a conch shell the size of a school bus or stumbled upon a subterranean castle 20 times the size of my base. And let’s not forget when a caterpillar as big as a passenger train came stampeding through the tunnel I was exploring. WTF? Core Keeper’s got a lot in common with survival games like Valheim, plus plenty of Minecraft DNA, and even a smidge of Stardew Valley: bizarre sights, unexpected encounters, and delightful (though dangerous) surprises are just a few things I want from a procedurally generated co-op survival crafting sandbox, and…

Over the course of its roughly eight-hour story campaign, Space Marine 2 presents the Warhammer 40,000 setting at a whole new level of spectacle. It feels huge, authentic, and visually sumptuous—the kind of proper, grown-up, big-budget experience fans of the tabletop game have been dreaming of for years. But the sad truth is that I was tired of actually playing it before those eight hours were even up. It’s disappointing, because the game does make a fantastic first impression. As Space Marine warrior Lieutenant Titus, returning from the first game, you’re dropped straight into a war against the insectile tyranids, and it’s simply awe-inspiring looking out at the horizon and seeing their forces crawling over an entire mega-city. Saber Interactive’s swarm tech, already perfected in otherwise limp co-op shooter World…

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

The game’s third pillar, a competitive mode called Eternal War, wasn’t playable during the pre-launch period. I’ve since gotten to give it a try, but to be honest I’ve found it the most disappointing of the three modes. It’s a very basic PvP offering with boxy maps and three simple mission types. To allow for quick kills, the durability of your marine is dialed way down, which makes them feel paper-thin, and though it lets you play as a Chaos Space Marine, their implementation is full of lore inaccuracies—surprising given how authentic to Warhammer 40K the rest of the game is.…

BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

Somehow, Slider has turned the worst parts of adventure games into one very fine puzzle game—and a generous one, given the lack of a price tag. I’m talking about sliding tile puzzles, which tend to be shoehorned into adventure games for reasons unknown, inciting audible groans whenever I’m forced to complete one. Why am I playing—and enjoying—Slider, then? With its monochrome, top-down world comprised of sliding puzzle pieces? Primarily, it’s because of how charming it is. It has such a lovely cast of characters: memorable little pixel peeps who find themselves adrift in a world that’s been shattered into pieces. You have the power to put it right, one region at a time, by pressing Tab and sliding these world tiles around. On a basic level, you need to connect…

I can’t be alone in missing licensed platformers (right?), even if their quality was variable, to put it kindly. So I was happy to fire up Super Dassalo Land, a new game playable on GB hardware, but also in your browser. What’s it licensing? An actual person, comedian Tommy Dassalo, who has been shrunk down and inserted into his notebook. Stages reflect the inside of his head, with World 1 being themed around ramen, and World 2 reflecting his late-night obsessive phone use. Part Comix Zone and part Mario, it’s a hyperactive, funny throwback with some good ideas that doesn’t outstay its welcome. We’ve got to talk about the pixel art, which (like most of the game) was done by Game Boy wizard Gumpy Function, who has made some of…

Saddled with an enormous debt, you can hardly pass up the opportunity to become a Clot Management Specialist on a living meat planet known as Carrion Prime. It’s exactly as fleshy as you’re expecting, as you oversee a blood pumping operation in this stressful horror game. It all starts simply enough, as you push the button to start the pump and then hang back, just in case anything goes wrong. At first it’s leaks from nearby pipes, which are easily fixed with your wrench, and then unsettling blockages (toothy fish, mostly) that need to be plucked out and fed into the nearest grinder. But the scariest part is having to put on a diving suit and ride the lift down into the blood sea to clear an intake pipe. Coagulation…

Is it possible to forget you’ve written an entire book? The premise of Alan Wake, on the surface, seems absurd. But I’ve started re-re-reviewing games for this column that I’d literally covered only months before, so perhaps it’s feasible. Maybe I’ve already re-reviewed Alan Wake and this is actually a clever metacommentary (I have, but it was years ago, so it’s fine). That’s the level of cleverness that Alan Wake aspires to: the sort of cozy, self-referential attention to detail that makes you feel valued because you know the source material. It’s refreshing that the game makes zero effort to obscure its influences. The actual first words in the game are ‘Stephen King’. And episodes of Night Springs, a fictional anthology that’s a naked celebration of The Twilight Zone, play…

A good journal can bring purpose and humanity to a game. Instead of a dry list of completed missions, the likes of Arthur’s notebook from Red Dead Redemption 2 become a tactile record of everything you’ve done: a personal list of bludgeonings and robberies, punctuated by the occasional sad drawing of a bison. When I pitch the “best journals in games” listicle, Norah Everhart’s will certainly be on there. It looks beautiful butit’salsoanessential way of recording clues. This is handy, especially for anyone (me) without the capacity for differentiating seven different types of triangle. Best of all, the clues Norah the Explorer records are arranged in a way that makes it obvious when you’ve missed one. The puzzles ask more of me than I expect from most mystery games. You…

If my crime is killing people who probably deserved it, then lock me up now. Malcolm, my husband, went into the deep for being a philandering proto-fascist; Clarrisa was a mewling adulterer; and Lady Armstrong took her martinis dirty, like a dog licking vomit out of sock. Disposing of them is a public service. Reading this back, I wonder if Overboard! is bringing out the worst in me. It’s a compact, immediate, amusing take on the golden age of detective fiction; the best of Dorothy Sayers, blended with the pace and charm of 80 Days, garnished with some revealing self-analysis. It’s perhaps worrying that I got away with murder on my first attempt, even if I did get blackmailed afterwards. And while my favorite moments in Overboard! often involve throwing…

“Ninja Turtles have turned out to have this wonderful longevity”

I’ve been seeing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles everywhere, lately. There’s a new TV show out, my favorite board game just announced a TMNT crossover, and hell, I couldn’t even walk through town without seeing a bunch of luminous green tie-in bath bombs in the window of Lush. Some would argue I’m just proving very susceptible to a big marketing push for the series’ 40th anniversary, but I choose to believe it’s fate. As a kid, the Turtles kind of passed me by—clearly now the universe is telling me to course-correct. Of course, I’m only truly capable of processing things when they’re in the form of a videogame, so the final sign to set me on this path was 2022’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge being given out for free…

“Ninja Turtles have turned out to have this wonderful longevity”

“Kay Vess, galactic tomb raider”

I should have seen it coming really. The moment Kay Vess, space scoundrel, approached a very, very familiar-looking crack in a rock face and, with an all-too-familiar side-on animation, proceeded to squeeze her body through it, pausing mid-crack to take the familiar look back. Yes, Lara Croft lives once again and, being candid, it’s not just this incredibly similar animation that makes me feel like I’m playing Crystal Dynamics’ fourth entry in its Tomb Raider series, most likely called Galaxy of the Tomb Raider, rather than Star Wars Outlaws. Kay Vess, galactic tomb raider, can do plenty of other things that feel incredibly Crystal Dynamics’ Tomb Raider, too, including climbing walls, jumping between ledges on walls, cracking a light when entering dark places to raid, throwing and using a grappling…

“Kay Vess, galactic tomb raider”

“Tying all three games together is an excellent (if plunderific) soundtrack”

Not entirely sure what I expected, putting a set of batteries into an obviously haunted doll, but my curious hubris was rewarded by a violent death within the inventory screen, normally a safe space away from Cursed 2’s roaming ghouls and ghosts. I wasn’t even mad. Clever scares are exactly what I’m looking for in a horror game. All the more impressive that it came from a rough and crusty-looking DOSstyled freeware adventure. Developed by Disaster Squad productions—one-man studio Paul Tokach—you could be forgiven for overlooking the original Cursed. Developed in just one week in 2009, it was a charming enough ‘my first game’ project. A first-person horror point-and-click adventure tribute to the likes of Shadowgate, but with a chunky, MSPaint-ish pixel art look and a smattering of simple arcade…

“Tying all three games together is an excellent (if plunderific) soundtrack”

“Yuv onle got vegan sausage rolls? ’Ad rather shit t’bed”

England can be a funny place to life. My journey from the north to the south of the country has been a 17-year challenge to find just one decent meat and potato pie (a delicacy where I’m from). Over the past two decades I’ve had no other choice than to purchase and transport meat and potato pies across multiple county lines, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever taste the carb-laden pastry concoction I long for again. It is with tremendous enthusiasm then, that I discover the game Thank Goodness You’re Here! and get to play out my pie-craving lifetime side-mission in this joyful indie slap-them-up. It’s set in the north of England, and you play as a small, yellow traveling salesman, charged with meeting the mayor of the…

“Yuv onle got vegan sausage rolls? ’Ad rather shit t’bed”

I’m the ideal company employee. As soon as the ship lands, I’m off running toward the entrance or fire exit with no torch or weapon to weigh me down or take up precious item slots that could be used for scrap. I head in completely blind and race around, gathering as many shiny things as possible, like some demented magpie. Usually, I’m heading back to the ship with my stash before anyone else even sets foot in the interior. It’s not much, but it’s certainly honest work. After taking my loot back to the ship, my strategy is to hang around transporting everything my crewmates find from the interior’s entrance, all while skittishly preparing to take off and leave everyone behind at the first sign of danger. I may not…

MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE

Superhero fatigue? We’ve all felt it. Marvel’s star-studded roadmap of blockbuster movies and videogames has no end in sight, and you had better get used to the cape and cowl if you don’t want to miss out. My issue is, Marvel can never resist bringing out the big guns. It’s all Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain America—yawn. Where’s my Diablo-lite APRG where I can play as my favorite comic book hero, mustachioed SHIELD agent Dum Dum Dugan? Never mind, I found it. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance had a healthy lineup of 23 playable characters when Raven Software released it in 2006, and the novelty of building your own Marvel team-up in couch co-op helped the game score a cult following despite it being otherwise unexceptional. But the Marvel Mods forum community is astir…

MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE

HOW TO GET STARTED IN STAR WARS OUTLAWS

BET BIG 1 One of the best ways to make credits in Star Wars Outlaws is by betting on Fathier races. You’ll encounter these on Canto Bight when Valek gives you a tip on a rigged race. Read the tip datapad, note the info, and use it to identify the winning Fathier. BREAK THE BANK 2 Another way to get a lot of credits is by breaking into Syndicate vaults. These loot caches are concealed in most Syndicate districts and you can access them by acquiring three keycards. Make sure to hack the terminal in the vault room to get map markers for these. BACKDOOR 3 When sneaking into restricted areas and Imperial bases, remember that there’s almost always a secret way in. It might be a cliff passage that lets you grapple…

HOW TO GET STARTED IN STAR WARS OUTLAWS

FALLOUT 4: LUCKIEST MAN ALIVE PART 3

This is my final entry in my attempt to play Fallout 4 on Survival difficulty with a luck build, and so far I’ve experienced little in the way of either survival or luck. It’s been a grueling, merciless struggle to take even the smallest steps forward, to the point where I only completed a single quest in the previous entry. Anything that can kill me has done so dozens of times, with every battle carrying a precipitous risk of instant death that often costs me chunks of progress. However, since we last strode out into the Commonwealth (and immediately trod on a landmine), I’ve been grinding away in the northeast of Fallout 4’s map to improve my fortunes. I solved the mystery of a missing trade caravan near the walled…

FALLOUT 4: LUCKIEST MAN ALIVE PART 3

LUCK PERKS REVISITED

WINNER CRITICAL BANKER Triggering crits at will has saved my life more than any other Luck perk. Still not enough to stop me dying constantly, but it is very helpful. RUNNER-UP IDIOT SAVANT Idiot Savant’s XP bonuses are handy when you’re useless at everything, and the perk is easily exploitable through repetitive tasks. PERSONAL BEST MYSTERIOUS STRANGER While a little too random to rely on, the Stranger’s appearances are often helpful and always entertaining. DNF RICOCHET Bullets bouncing back to kill their enemies sounds like an instant winner. But the fact it only triggers at low heath is next to useless.…

LUCK PERKS REVISITED

BALDUR’S GATE III’S DARK URGE

I’m always a squishy nice guy in RPGs. Even when my character’s some kind of badass dual-dagger edgelord, I always approach them as more of a rebellious scamp than a remorseless killer. So when Larian showed a player origin for Baldur’s Gate III who would bite companions and kick squirrels, I didn’t think it was for me. But then I saw the game’s lead writer, Adam Smith, describe The Dark Urge (affectionately called Durge by fans) as potentially having the “most heroic” story arc in the game, and that got my mind racing. Whether you want to be a sicko fantasy Francis Dolarhyde freak, a noble hero resisting their heritage, or something in-between, The Dark Urge offers one of the richest, most satisfying ways to play Baldur’s Gate III, as…

BALDUR’S GATE III’S DARK URGE

INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS

SQUIRREL KICK Most players have the option of kicking wee Timber, but Durges have no choice but to punt the little critter. BARD BASH Setting the tone for the rest of the game, the Durge will brutally murder the bards Alfira or Quil Grootslag in Act 1. HAND BITE ‘Fantasize’ about biting Gale’s hand in his intro scene, and you’ll actually do it, and then he won’t join your party. CLERIC KILL The Durge’s big quest for Act 2 is to betray both factions, killing Isobel and throwing the story off its rails. DRAMA Through dialog options or barks, Durge is always going on and on about the impending death of all things. OMNICIDE Make it to the end of the game as a loyal, evil Durge, and the results…

INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS

For 15 years, I’ve felt like a fake immersive sim fan. My relationship with Thief, one of the earliest imm-sims and PC stealth games, resembled the stereotype of an adult trying to finally finish that copy of Moby Dick they keep by the bed: I kept Thief and its sequel, The Metal Age, permanently installed, would try to begin a new playthrough of one or the other every few years, and I’d always stall out somewhere in the campaign, usually about a quarter of the way through. I’ve developed a history, love, and nostalgia for Thief and Thief 2, but I’ve never rolled credits on either—until now. After gelling with New Blood’s Thief-inspired sneaker, Gloomwood, and finding myself enticed by the release of the wildly ambitious Thief Gold fan campaign,…

OUTL AWS FOR LIFE RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption2 As part of one of the most infamous gangs of outlaws, you need to lie, cheat and steal your way through America while deciding whether or not to trust your own ideas or stay loyal to the gang that raised you. I’ve never cried so much while playing a game. TAKE EM DOWN MONSTER HUNTER RISE monsterhunter.com/rise Big weapons, bigger monsters, and now an insatiable craving for dango made by cats, Monster Hunter Rise has it all. I’ve spent hundreds of hours being thrown across the map by beasts, but no matter how many times I get knocked down I will never stop getting up again. CHAOS INCARNATE JUST CROW THINGS unboundcreations.com/games/crowy I love birds so much I’ve often thought about…

HANDHELD GAMING PCs

We’ve experienced a new form factor take hold of PC gaming over the past few years: the handheld gaming PC. Advancements in onboard graphics chips and chip manufacturing technologies means we now have the low power, high performance processors required to make a fully-fledge gaming PC able to fit inside the pockets of a man with very sizable pockets. That’s progress. It all kicked off with the Steam Deck. There were a handful (get it?) that arrived prior to that, except they weren’t very good. Nowadays a smorgasbord of Windows-based handhelds are available thanks to the performance offered by AMD’s Ryzen 7 7740HS and Ryzen Z1 Extreme—effectively the same chip—powered by the 780M iGPU. But where do manufacturers go next? New and improved Ryzen AI chips are only available in…

HANDHELD GAMING PCs

As hard as it is to conceive now, 25 years ago both computing and the internet itself were new and poorly understood entities. There were constant ads on TV for internet literacy courses in which frowning 40-somethings were guided through tasks like sending an email by a grinning technician in a colorful shirt and a headset mic. This sudden onset of life-changing beige machinery was happening so quickly, and none of us had the slightest idea how any of it worked. Which is how it came to pass that when my supposed friend Luke Woodroffe told me, one day on the school bus, that I could just download a better graphics card for my PC, I didn’t immediately disregard the notion. It was as simple, he told me, as entering…

STAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

ELDEN RING In theory, the 60fps lock can be bypassed by Lossless Scaling, but artifacts and frame pacing blunt its effectiveness. FLIGHT SIMULATOR 2020 Even the mighty 4090 struggles to render Earth at 4K60 without a little help from DLSS 3. F1 24 A racing game with an elbows-out online community: the perfect conditions for running a synced 120/240fps. CYBERPUNK 2077 Ah yes, Cyberpunk. We meet again. Not so cocky now that we can run you at 60fps with ray tracing on, are you?…

STAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

Here’s something nice and comforting about track racing: you know what’s going to happen next. While nearly every other genre is constantly trying to defy and subvert your expectations about what lies just around the corner, some even introducing procedural generation so that even the game doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, in sim racing it’s about doing the same thing, over and over again, but better. And that gives it a unique advantage: it’s easier to teach someone how to be quick around a track than it is to teach them how to win a round of Counter-Strike 2 or score a goal in FC24, because there are fewer variables. When you’re hotlapping for a new record you don’t have to factor in what anyone’s doing around you,…

EA FC24 Imagine playing an offline match against a team that used skill moves. It’d be like your dog turning round and talking to you. COUNTER-STRIKE 2 It can see you quicker and aim better than a human, yet the CS AI still looks like a drunk wedding guest being asked to leave. FALL GUYS Full games against AI opponents, whenever you like. It’s the holy grail for lockdown favorite Fall Guys, and it’s still not happened. PUBG Vehicles are still a mystery to the AI fodder of Erangel. Pity them: they exist only to wear silly outfits and get run over.…

THE PCG INVESTIGATOR

I don't know about angels, but it’s fear that gives men wings. So when the formerly alcoholic bulldog named Dogulus Rift, who I'd adopted after getting his old drinking buddy Peter Molyneux back on his feet, lunged at Betty Sue and sank his teeth into her arm, I felt death’s creeping grip and knew it was time to fly. The CGC operative who'd survived the previous gunfight, distracted by his boss’s cry of agony, was therefore too late as I threw myself at his waist, taking him down. Blood dripping down my shirt, I landed a huge right hook to his face. The blow knocked him unconscious, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't follow it with a series offurther blows that left my knuckles covered in more…

THE PCG INVESTIGATOR

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