Magzter Gold (Sitewide Promotion)

Magzter Gold (Sitewide Promotion)

Digital Delivery

PC Powerplay December 16th, 2024 Digital Back Issue Cover

PC Powerplay Issue 307 (Digital)

(0)

Single Digital Issue

Issue 307

$3.95

Powered By Zinio

Zinio

Satisfaction Guaranteed

Instant Start

Subscribe Instead

1 Year Subscription

6 digital issues

$20.42

($3.40/issue)

Go to Subscription

View Subscription Options

Also available on ZINIO Unlimited logo

Get unlimited access to PC Powerplay (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines

1-month free trial

Renews at $8.99/month after trial.
Cancel anytime.

Get unlimited access to PC Powerplay (Digital) + Back Issues & 5000+ other magazines. Renews at just $8.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Start Trial Learn more

58 Articles

THIS IS AN RPG THAT FEELS EXCITINGLY FRESH AND UNIQUE

This month Spent an afternoon painting with The Paintress, which he told her was very palette-able. After making one too many painting puns, though, The Paintress erased him from existence. Fair. Thanks to spending many a night in my youth enjoying classic turn-based combat RPGs, such as those in the Final Fantasy, Suikoden, and Persona series, I now have a soft spot in my heart for these synonymously Japanese fantasy adventures. Clearly, so too does Sandfall Interactive, an exciting new French studio that next year is set to bring gamers Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a stunning new dark fantasy RPG adventure that not only builds on the established JRPG core in novel ways, but feels excitingly fresh and unique. We’ve got the scoop on page 34!…

THIS IS AN RPG THAT FEELS EXCITINGLY FRESH AND UNIQUE

UBI STRIKES BACK

If you’ve been following the general discussions around Assassin’s Creed Shadows, you’ll have probably noticed – if you’ve had the stomach for it - a great deal of fury about the game’s lead characters. The dual protagonists shown off for Assassin’s Creed Shadows are a shinobi, Naoe, and a samurai, Yasuke. Yasuke’s based on a 16th-century figure, an African who went on to be a retainer to Oda Nobunaga – this is also far, far from the first time he’s shown up in media, both Japanese and otherwise. Which is why it’s nice to see franchise head Marc-Alexis Coté finally push back against it with, for lack of a better phrase, his whole heart: “In Assassin’s Creed Shadows, we highlight figures, both fictional like Naoe, a Japanese woman warrior, and historical,…

UBI STRIKES BACK

HIGHS Pricey titles To appease a Steam user, Webfishing added a ‘Straight’ title – but it costs 9,999 fish bucks. Another surprise It only took eight years and an orchestral jazz cover but Persona 5’s Last Surprise finally won a Grammy. Finish the fight A group of Halo modders has delivered a playable version of the legendary Halo 2 Earth City demo. LOWS Nuked A hacker used a Call of Duty anti-cheat exploit to ban thousands of innocent players. Off to oblivion Bethesda is closing its Elder Scrolls card game. Bad signs Sony isn’t giving up on PSN sign-ins for its PC games – the company president says it’s necessary so people can ‘safely’ play them. LOWS…

Indie developer Ossian Studios is a bit of a people’s champion for a certain brand of RPG sicko (and I’m a certain brand of RPG sicko). Company founder Alan Miranda worked at BioWare on Baldur’s Gate II and Neverwinter Nights before striking out on his own. With the exception of an ambitious mobile RPG released in 2013, Ossian’s work hasn’t strayed far from Neverwinter Nights’ umbrella, with its portfolio mostly consisting of ambitious, unique RPGs built on NwN’s foundation – expansions like Darkness Over Daggerford that punch well above their weight. But now Ossian’s going bigger than before with the crowdfunded Pathfinder: The Dragon’s Demand, a standalone CRPG it’s building from scratch, based on the new second edition rules for the Dungeons & Dragons-derived system. Miranda, who’s directing, and lead designer…

PREVIOUSLY PLAYED

NEVERWINTER NIGHTS 2: MYSTERIES OF WESTGATE The final expansion to Neverwinter Nights 2 and Ossian’s first commercial release, focused on the city’s underbelly. THE SHADOW SUN A BioWare-style RPG for iOS and Android, with a setting inspired by ancient Babylon. Ossian’s sole non-NwN project to date. NEVERWINTER NIGHTS: DARKNESS OVER DAGGERFORD Developed as an add-on for Neverwinter Nights, revamped as a “premium module” for Beamdog’s remaster. NEVERWINTER NIGHTS: TYRANTS OF THE MOONSEA Updated re-release of one of Luke Scull’s NwN modules. A high-level adventure set in the Forgotten Realms’ inland sea.…

PREVIOUSLY PLAYED

JAPAN’S PC PARADISE

Unfortunately, social media has meant that old-school retro-gaming console chains in Japan such as Super Potato and Mandarake have now become well-known in the west, largely to their detriment. However, the Japanese PC gaming scene and its shops have managed to avoid this, remaining pretty obscure, and that’s what I want to talk about here. The Japanese PC business is not handled by small independent stores, as can be found in the west, but by large chains such as SofMap, Tsukumo, Pasokon Kobo, and Janpara. But between these chains there are differences in offering, some dealing only in new systems, while others lean into used systems, components or, yes, gaming PCs. DR MARCO ZANGIROLAMI Marco Zangirolami is an expert on the Japanese gaming industry, having reported on its PC, console and…

JAPAN’S PC PARADISE

After the big success of spooky horror game Platform 8, Kotake Create (a talented studio from Kyoto) has finally revealed some details of their new upcoming title: Strange Shadow. Developed with Unreal 5, the game starts with your spaceship crashing on an unknown planet, where you’ll then proceed to be hunted by gigantic monsters of various kinds. For those who are familiar with Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan manga, there are quite a few similarities, as in this run-and-hide thrill game you’ll have to find a way to not only save your life, but also discover a way to escape from the whole planet! Coming 2025.…

TOWER OF DRUAGA

Bandai Namco created a special box set for the 40th anniversary of Tower of Druaga, which was made by legendary Japanese game dev, Masanobu Endō, who the likes of Hideo Kojima and Shigeru Miyamoto have paid tribute to as a major inspiration. The limited-edition box includes four books totalling over 1,200 pages, which include Tower of Druaga’s game proposal document, as well as a smorgasbord of illustrations, developer commentary and interviews, an original soundtrack CD and a reprinted instruction card for the game. The box costs 25,000 yen (~$250), and will be available only through the Bandai Namco Japanese site.…

TOWER OF DRUAGA

POST-FINAL FANTASY

By the time you read this, the last game from the father of all the JRPGs, Hironobu Sakaguchi (the man behind the whole Final Fantasy Saga), will be out and playable on PC via Steam. Originally funded by Apple in 2018 and released four years later on Mac in two parts, Fantasian Neo Dimension on PC comes with a series of improvements and optimisations, including 4K graphics and an English language dub, as well as three difficulty levels (the Mac release only had one, and it was hard). The game’s score is composed by the iconic Nobou Uematsu and, in terms of quality, is once again at the highest level. The entire soundtrack is available on Spotify for free, too.…

POST-FINAL FANTASY

1 month INDIANA JONES AND THE GREAT CIRCLE RELEASE December 8, 2024 | DEVELOPER Machine Games Indy’s back with a new whip-cracking adventure that is set between the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Hype! ASSETTO CORSA EVO RELEASE January 16, 2025 | DEVELOPER KUNOS Simulazioni A driving simulator geared towards hyper realism, EVO promises plenty of top marques and racing thrills, with different classes spanning across the history of motoring. SNIPER ELITE: RESISTANCE RELEASE January 30, 2025 | DEVELOPER Rebellion The violent sniper simulator returns, promising new stealth and tactical third-person combat mechanics, as well as a fresh campaign set within the heart of WWII-era France. 2 months SID MEIER’S CIVILIZATION VII RELEASE February 11, 2025 | DEVELOPER Firaxis Games The…

What scares me? In real life, the answer to this is heights and octopuses, but when it comes to videogames there’s nothing quite as scary as a robot: inhuman metal enemies that can soak up an unknown amount of punishment and just keep on coming. It’s robots that are the scariest thing you’ll face in Arc Raiders, a PvPvE extraction shooter set in a post apocalyptic future where a robotic menace has driven mankind deep underground, only emerging to try and get supplies from the ruined world above. It’s the latest game from The Finals developer Embark Studios, and it feels like it could be a perfect entry in the extraction genre if you’ve not played one yet. It’s fun but it also just stands out with several good ideas…

THE THING REMASTERED

I had no idea what to expect from The Thing Remastered. I’ve always been a fan of the film, but I was far too young to play the original game back in 2002, so I was excited to get a chance to see what all the fuss was about for myself. Dropping into Outpost 31 in Antarctica, my rag-tag group and I had the simple goal of evacuating survivors and eliminating enemies. This seemed simple enough, but as I said before, I’ve seen the movie, so I knew what was going to be waiting for me around the next corner (hint: there are shape-shifting killer alien life forms around). But before heading into the research facility, I decided the best course of action would be to get a bearing on my…

THE THING REMASTERED

There are times when videogames mirror real life. In Mirthwood’s case, it’s the fact that I’m always hungry. A bread chunk barely lasts me a few axe thwacks at a tree, and a baked apple carries me for a few steps before my stomach is growling at me once more. It’s a real vibe-killer in my ongoing desire to fulfil my cosy medieval peasant fantasy, and only one of many things making an attempt on my life. The game advertises itself as a life sim RPG, but it often feels more like a survival game. I’m making it sound like I don’t like Mirthwood, but I do. Bad Ridge Games is a two-person team, and it’s crafted something that could be special. It’s a delightfully darker take on your Stardews, throwing…

With its glorious ’90s-style graphics, rapid boomer shooter action, and delightfully on-point publisher of Apogee Entertainment, Wizordum recaptures the flavour of classic fantasy FPS games like Heretic and Hexen with aplomb. And that recapturing also includes the frustration of not knowing where that one sodding switch is that opens the one sodding door you need to go through in order to progress the game. Unlike the ’90s, though, the internet (and specifically YouTube) exists, so getting help is a lot easier than ringing the Wizordum tips hotline. That’s good, as when you’re not getting stuck finding the silver key to open the silver door, or that elusive switch that actually looks like a wall decoration, in Wizordum you’re flying through a series of brightly coloured fantasy levels, ranging from villages to…

OK, let’s start with the ‘B’ word: EVE Frontier is a blockchain game. If that makes your eyes glaze over you’re not alone, because blockchain has been little but a buzzword for rubbish games that all seem to have an element of the cash-grab to them. But developer CCP, albeit cautious, thinks it has something to offer. EVE Frontier is “not a blockchain game [but] a game that utilises blockchain”, and what sets it apart is the heritage of EVE Online itself. To my mind the most remarkable MMO out there, EVE Online’s player-led philosophy makes it a giant ongoing social experiment, riven with chaos and opportunity, and Frontier aims to somehow take this further. The basic idea is a survival game controlled in a meaningful way by players, where…

PC PowerPlay loves a 4X, and it’s no wonder these sci-fi games are huge favourites, offering depth, extended playtimes, and the feeling that there’s always something new out there. Beyond Astra takes its cues from the usual suspects and adds some spice of its own too. An immediate thing that grabs you about Beyond Astra is the smooth zooming between open space and a planet’s surface. The game’s worlds themselves are adorable, tiny little spheres with different surface conditions covered in large buildings and clouds that bulge up from their surface like the ‘tiny planet’ photo-editing effect that twists a landscape into a ball. Asteroids and space habitats feature too, as well as megastructures such as Dyson rings and even a black hole. There’s a bit of Spore to be…

BEYOND. FRONTIERS

A comment on the Steam page for Beyond. Frontiers makes an extremely good point, “Not every space trading combat game has to be Freelancer”. The influence that particular 21-year-old title has over the genre can’t be overstated, however, and in Beyond.Frontiers’ jumpgates and asteroid mining there’s a definite resemblance. PLAYED IT Beyond.Frontiers is about to go into early access, and currently has a rather unstable demo available. Its dev team describes itself as having six members and zero years of experience, and there’s a Patreon arrangement in place for funding. Freelancer isn’t the only influence on the game, with snippets of Galaxy on Fire and Freespace 2 as well. In action, it’s exactly the third-person space shooter you might want it to be, ships leaving drive trails behind them and…

BEYOND. FRONTIERS

TWILIGHT BLADES

As the hulking monstrosity lurches towards us, a stitched together abomination that looks like a huge, corrupted Edwardian-period children’s toy, Expedition 33’s youngest team member, Maelle, draws her rapier and issues a battle cry that seems to reach far beyond her attitude to embody her fighting style. Maelle’s delivery of “Finesse and grace!” sounds like a ideological riposte to the grotesqueries of the broken world around her, as well as its Nevron denizens. It feels like a mantra Maelle is determined to live by in this apocalyptic, dying world to the very end, regardless of if she and her companions reach and best their adversary, the mysterious and calamitous Paintress. It also feels apt in describing what surely will be the most elegant and excitingly fresh new RPG of 2025.…

TWILIGHT BLADES

SWORDS AT SUNSET

GUSTAVE A talented engineer, Gustave has spent his life up to this point defending the city of Lumière. Now, in the final year of his life, he has joined Expedition 33 to hunt down and defeat the Paintress. LUNE One of Lumière’s foremost mages, Lune is responsible for charting the team’s path on its journey. She is determined to unravel the mystery of the Paintress and the wider world. MAELLE A 16-year-old orphan who never felt Lumière was her home, Malle is by far the youngest of the team’s members. She hungers for exploration and a chance to forge her own destiny. SCIEL A former farmer, Sciel is a cheerful and serene warrior who has come to terms with the painful reality of her likely death. The Expedition will either…

SWORDS AT SUNSET

As huge RPG fans here at PC PowerPlay, right now we’ve got serious hype for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. However, despite getting to see a good slice of the game, many things remain unknown about this new IP, so we spoke directly with some of its key developers, including its creative director, Guillaume Broche and art director, Nicholas Maxson-Fancombe, to get some much-wanted answers. Could you talk about the game’s core concept of the monolith and the Paintress? GB: We had this idea of, “OK, there’s a monolith, and the age [painted on it] is going down, and people are disappearing, younger and younger.” And then we said, “OK, how can we do an interesting story around this?” It’s such a big, fascinating mystery, this concept, that we really wanted to…

PERSONA 5 Not only, in its Royal incarnation, the best Persona game Atlus has ever made, but also one of the best JRPGs ever made too. The combat system starts out simple, but blossoms into deep complexity. FINAL FANTASY X This game, along with sequel X-2, delivers classic turn-based Final Fantasy combat, along with one of the series’ most loved settings and characters. Strong HD remasters are available today on PC. SEA OF STARS A love-letter to the classic ’90s JRPG Chrono Trigger, this game delivers rich visuals and engaging combat. The bright, colourful 2D graphics are a joy to behold, too. A top choice for PC handheld play. BALDUR’S GATE III Well, we’ve got to mention it, haven’t we? The fantasy RPG of the decade that won every award…

Kara Phillips: At this point, Stardew Valley feels like the gift that keeps on giving. When you first play it feels like you’ve got a whole world at your fingertips – everything feels so new and exciting. But the best part of Stardew is no matter how long you’ve been playing, this feeling doesn’t go away. Even when you’ve decided to speedrun to Ginger Island, restore the community centre in your first year, and fill the library with everything you find. With a lot of farming simulators, it’s pretty easy to get bored of completing the same tasks every single day – cultivating your crops and tending to your animals – but so much time has been put into making Pelican Town lively enough that even winter is an exciting…

Evan Lahti: Imagine the feeling of stumbling upon, perhaps while excavating some beige office tomb that has laid untouched since the ’90s, a sealed box of 50 never-released retro games. This is the jackpot feeling UFO 50 delivers, rediscovering the pleasant imperfections of games from another era at whatever pace you’d like. UFO 50 is a passion project created in Gamemaker by Derek Yu, Paul Hubans, Eirik Suhrke, Ojiro Fumoto, Jon Perry and Tyriq Plummer, an indie dream team, and a piece of its joy comes from discovering the varied tastes of these creators. What makes the collection a singular creative achievement is the way it lovingly reproduces the charming flaws and timeless merits of games from the ’80s and early ’90s. When I had trouble beating Overbold, a roguelike…

Jacob Ridley: Do you ever get that cosy feeling when driving down a road at night? A light rain spattering against the windscreen as your wipers move to and fro with a gentle squeak. That’s the feeling Pacific Drive captures. Except there are weird junkyard alien-type-things and mystery mannequins. You might find yourself improving your weaponry or armour in many survival games. Not this one. The only thing you’re fending off are rust, failing electronics, and years of neglect on a station wagon. A station wagon that is your only companion in the Pacific Northwest and seemingly the thing trying to kill you most of all. A series of increasingly frustrating car-based gaffes mean you’re never short of a need to venture into the wilderness looking for materials. For me,…

TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS

Harvey Randall: I had the pleasure of reviewing Tactical Breach Wizards when it came out this year, and it really is a prime example of a game that defines exactly what it’s here to do, what vibe it’s here to capture, and then proceeds to get full marks on every one of its own set goals. When the only problem a game gives me is that I wish there was more of it, I can confidently say it’s a banger. As for the why, well, Tactical Breach Wizards’ mechanics are just plain magic – each character has their own specific niche that manages to interact strategically with their fellow spec-ops spellcasters in inventive ways. That’d be enough to make it a solid 17-20 hours of fun, but its story is…

TACTICAL BREACH WIZARDS

Lincoln Carpenter: There is too much to say about Caves of Qud, but it never quite feels like I’ve said enough. It’s a roguelike’s roguelike: A science-fantasy wasteland populated by a rich gnarl of combat systems and procedural world-state simulations that have no qualms about leveraging their brutality against you. Qud has an absurd breadth of possibility to offer: I’ve started games as two-hearted barbarians and ended them as winged, railgun-toting scorpion-men. I’ve entered Qud as a cyborg gunslinger, and within a few levels and chance augmentation procedures in Becoming Nooks I no longer needed my pistols, because I was throwing force knives that I could 3D print with my mind. I’ve started as many new playthroughs just to try a new idea for a centaur rifleman or steel-plated pugilist as…

THANK GOODNESS YOU’RE HERE!

Kara Phillips: A lot of the time, when I say a game makes me laugh, what I really mean is I exhaled through my nose at some point in a half-hearted way that barely equates to any sort of laughter. But Thank Goodness You’re Here! actually had me open-mouth cackling through the vast majority of it. Between its ridiculous character design and its quickfire slapstick dialogue, I can’t stop trying to convince everyone around me to play it. It’s not a challenging game – most of the jobs you’ll complete are minigames that involve simple puzzle-solving or very easy platforming. But that plays to its favour, giving you more time to admire the world and characters that Coal Supper has created. Never in my life have I played a game…

THANK GOODNESS YOU’RE HERE!

Jake Tucker: STRAFTAT makes me feel old. Not like the way my knees crunch as I get out of bed each morning or the way I don’t understand TikTok, but in the way STRAFTAT channels the FPS games that I used to waste hours in as a teenager. The 1v1 battles sound hypercompetitive: the ‘two players enter, one player leaves’ styling at the heart of STRAFTAT may evoke the Thunderdome, but there’s an inherent ridiculousness because of the collection of random levels that lays things out like Mario Party for murderers. In one you’ll fight in a maze of corridors with assault rifles, in another you’re sliding down an icy slope hurling landmines at each other, or fighting each other with repulsor guns and knives as you try to knock your…

Elie Gould: Manor Lords came out at just the right time for me. Before landing on this medieval city builder/management game, I played quite a few horror games and Metroidvanias, which can honestly be pretty tiring. So it was refreshing to be tested by a game in a different way. Instead of needing to perfect reaction times, I had to do mental gymnastics to figure out whether this was really the right place to start an arable farm or solve trade issues by flooding the market with sheep. I’m not saying that I mastered this city builder, but I sure had a lot of fun growing my quaint town into a serious political and economic centre. Andy Edser: Manor Lords is the sort of strategy-based city builder that I’d probably mess around…

Wes Fenlon: Satisfactory is a different game for me depending on the week. Recently I found myself in the thick of the jungle on the far side of the map from the friendly green plains I’d first started building in; I had to go a long way to find iron deposits rich enough to let me build a towering, multi-floor factory dedicated to modular frames. They’re just boring metal cubes, but for a week I obsessively arranged a perfectly balanced system of inputs and outputs for each individual component – the iron rods, the iron plates, the steel pipes – until the sum total of all that effort amounted to 21 frames per minute and a glass penthouse overlooking a waterfall at the edge of the world. Did I need to…

METAPHOR: REFANTAZIO

Mollie Taylor: As I’ve grown older and found myself with less free time, I’ve largely fallen off the JPRG train. But Metaphor: ReFantazio has pulled me right back in and reminded me why I adore this genre so much. The game feels like an adult Persona – swapping out high school for high fantasy – crafting a gripping story and beloved characters that I came to deeply care for. I’ve fallen in love with Scouse dogs Fidelio and Basilio, while Hulkenberg’s relatable love for food provides much-needed respite between the intense battles for the throne. The Archetype system is also genuinely fantastic, reminiscent of the old-school Final Fantasy job systems. It creates far more freedom than I ever felt I had with my Persona teammates, and I had a ball…

METAPHOR: REFANTAZIO

ELDEN RING: SHADOW OF THE ERDTREE

Tyler Colp: My favourite expansions don’t just answer questions or continue the plot from the original game, they stretch your imagination for what is even possible within it. Shadow of the Erdtree completes Elden Ring like it was always supposed to be there, adding surprising new weapon types, gorgeous new areas, and brutal new enemies. The entire thing is built like the original Dark Souls; it’s not exactly a corkscrew world, but it certainly feels like it as you drop down into dungeons and resurface in a place you caught glimpses of 20 hours before. The Land of Shadow is dense with secrets and structures that slowly unravel one final, masterful story in FromSoftware’s tremendous action RPG. Fraser Brown: Shadow of the Erdtree lets you murder gods with your stinky feet.…

ELDEN RING: SHADOW OF THE ERDTREE

Morgan Park: When Helldivers 2 comes up in conversation years from now, people will probably bring up its genius approach to live service gaming. Arrowhead had me glued to the edge of my seat for the early months of 2024, signing into the game almost daily to find a new piece of gear, unexplained winged beast, or cheeky communication from a fictional Super Earth. Arrowhead turned millions of casual shooter fans into roleplayers drafted in a galactic war, but after its narrative eventually slowed to a crawl and updates got rarer, I’m still playing Helldivers 2 because it’s just that good. Its fundamentals are sturdy and unexpectedly sophisticated – guns pack a punch that you see in every severed bug leg or shredded Automaton chestplate – and its ballistic model…

Robin Valentine: Balatro might be the most unassuming game we’ve ever given this high honour to. At a glance, it looks more like a game that would’ve come pre-installed with Windows 98 than the best release of 2024. Even in motion, it doesn’t look much – just playing cards floating around. Where are the wizards and laser guns? But you only have to dip one toe into Balatro’s murky waters for it to suddenly grab you and yank you down into its bottomless depths. The moment you win your first round, fumbling for whatever poker hands you can put together, you’re hooked – and as you explore all the possibilities of its bizarre deck-building, you’re drawn in further and further, until you’re having inexplicable conversations with people about ‘ante 0’ and…

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

To borrow a phrase from the legendary fictitious king Théoden of Rohan, “How did it come to this?” Dragon Age: The Veilguard is now out and, as our review details, it has had much of its original Dragon Age identity exorcised. A slick, visually impressive action RPG it is, and one that younger gamers with no experience of what came before, but with a deep love of Marvel superhero movies, will no doubt enjoy. There’s gaming to be had here, yes. But this shallow, Marvel-i-fied Veilguard is 100 per cent not what the PCPP team, and I’m sure plenty of other Dragon Age fans, wanted from this game. The current BioWare has created here a good game objectively, but has also cast aside so much of what made Dragon Age…

This month’s Marvel-i-fied reviewers…

LAUREN MORTON Specialist in Tragic backstories Currently playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard This month Flirted with everyone on her team. Oh, and in The Veilguard she… RICK LANE Specialist in Chatting-up mascots Currently playing Planet Coaster 2 This month Spent far too long riding the ghost train with Planet Coaster 2’s shark mascot Bodhi. MATT ELLIOTT Specialist in Train martinis Currently playing Over The Alps This month Was found rat-arsed in Innsbruck clutching his new novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Gamer. JON BOLDING Specialist in Space fascism Currently playing MechWarrior 5: Clans This month Created his own MechWarrior clan. It’s name? Clan McMuffin Eater. TED LITCHFIELD Specialist in Eating haggis Currently playing Judero This month Went to a chip shop in Newcastle for a fight. Needless to say, he got battered!…

This month’s Marvel-i-fied reviewers…

Dragon Age games have long faced the same problem as Dragon Age protagonists: the utter impossibility of pleasing everyone simultaneously. Arriving a decade after Inquisition, with hopes and expectations as granular as demands for cameos from minor characters and RPG features from 2009’s Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age: The Veilguard is trying to please a lot of people. Like a protagonist playing ‘yes man’ to every faction, Veilguard has ended up likable, but too broad in its appeal to love like I love clunkier Dragon Age: Origins, endearingly messy Dragon Age 2, or overambitious Dragon Age: Inquisition. The first ten hours of Veilguard are disorienting, even for a certified Thedas lore dork. It opens with my hero Rook and series fan-favourite dwarven archer Varric Tethras arriving in the magical city…

PASSION FOR FACTION

CROWS Antiva’s guild of contract assassins hold court in Treviso as the city’s protectors. MOURN WATCH An elite group of necromancers guarding the dead and their secrets in Nevarra. GREY WARDENS This international league of knights are sworn to fight The Blight. VEIL JUMPERS A group founded by elves exploring ancient ruins and artefacts in Arlathan Forest. SHADOW DRAGONS A movement of resistance fighters opposing corruption in Tevinter. LORDS OF FORTUNE A rowdy group of treasure hunters and dragon slayers hailing from Rivain.…

PASSION FOR FACTION

MechWarrior is back and going harder than ever with a completely standalone game confusingly titled MechWarrior 5: Clans, some five years after MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. It’s the classic campaign of mech-tweaking and smashing enemies, but Clans is a bold game that improves on the classic sim-lite action of MechWarrior by adding a more modern, story-driven framing. You can bring up to four friends along on the linear campaign as you seek to conquer human civilisation – the massive and numerous neo-feudal Inner Sphere states – as the militaristic Clans, a warrior-ruled caste society that sees itself as the true inheritor of human history and the Inner Sphere states as tyrannical oppressors. MechWarrior games have divided genre loyalties: they’re shooting-first action games, and at the same time they’re a simulator of…

CLAYMATION CALEDONIA

“Weirdness” can often feel like an affectation. Judero could have only been made by Talha Kaya and Jack King-Spooner, two independent developers who crafted a vision of the Scottish Borders entirely out of action figures and modelling clay. Judero is a game with the kind of rough edges and pleasant surprises that could only come from an artistic vision, and it’s one that will continue to stick with me. Judero casts you as the titular Judero: a rough-hewn warrior-priest clearly crafted out of Milliput and a GI Joe action figure. Judero uses real, physical models for its digital assets: full-on stop motion in its cutscenes while the gameplay uses sprites in 3D environments like the original Doom. The music is also a real treat: acoustic guitar-driven folk tunes that set…

CLAYMATION CALEDONIA

If you’re thinking about comparing Starship Troopers: Extermination to Helldivers 2, stop right there. Sure, they’re both co-operative multiplayer shooters that involve blasting thousands of alien bugs, each inspired by Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 satirical sci-fi flick. But apart from that, they’re totally different games. Helldivers 2 is a surgically precise slapstick comedy. Extermination is a much broader, weirder, rougher affair. Often, the results of this are fair to middling, while parts of Extermination are outright terrible. Yet when all of its ideas come together, its action is every bit as thrilling as Arrowhead’s farce. Extermination’s main event is its 16-player cooperative missions, in which four squads of four players work together to withstand the arachnid menace for the glory of the Federation. These missions vary slightly in their structure, but…

At some point when I wasn’t watching, Call of Duty’s campaign became a bad stealth game. Gone are the perspectives of the faceless soldiers, replaced with characters who look and feel like they came from a Netflix Original movie. When Black Ops 6’s campaign occasionally channels the bombastic scope of its predecessors, it rocks, but all too often it’s bogged down in tedious espionage. I’m usually the CoD fan who actually cares a lot about the campaign, but it’s those shortcomings pushing me towards this year’s stellar multiplayer offerings. Black Ops 6 has lightning fast gunfights that exploit a weighty new movement system to give old and new modes alike a distinct, John Wooesque flair – and what’s more ’90s than that? Black Ops 6 begins with an op gone…

Back in the early 2000s when I last visited Disney World, my favourite parks out of the whole archipelago of attractions were the water parks. The squealing chaos of the Typhoon Lagoon’s tsunami-generating wave pool. The terrifying, trunks-eroding descent of Blizzard Beach’s Summit Plummet. Blissfully bobbing along the lazy rivers. Oh, the lazy rivers! Forget Space Mountain or the Tower of Terror, give me a big rubber ring and let me bake my belly in the glorious Floridian sun. Playing Planet Coaster 2 has reaffirmed my belief that pools rule, rides drool. Water attractions are the big new addition to Frontier Developments’ theme park sim, adding a new dimension to what was previously a comprehensive but unadventurous coaster creation kit. This is as well, because the sequel still coasts on…

POWER One of the most frequently used heatmaps, this shows you the energy distribution across your park. VISITOR EXPERIENCE This heatmap shows the general mood of visitors, but you can also track hunger, thirst and so on. SCENERY One of the most useful heatmaps, this shows you which parts of your park look lush, and which are visually lacking. PROFIT Crucial for tracking which shops and rides are hot, and which are not. Easy to sort out as well in the game.…

Rightly or wrongly, the only technology that really matters to me is whether mirrors will reflect your character in games. So many modern, big-budget games just fog them over or smash them up, but here’s a free indie game where mirrors don’t just show your character – they’re essential to the story. Funeralopolis: Last Days drops you into an Eastern European apartment complex, as some weird, supernatural shit goes down outside. That weird stuff begins on the periphery of your oppressive, Brutalist city, but gradually inches closer to home as you tune into your radio and peep out the window at the other tower blocks. When was the last time you saw the sun? What’s all this chatter about a mysterious substance discovered in a local mine? Why is the…

‘Rooting around in someone’s computer/phone’ has become a genre unto itself, with even the most innocent examples making you feel like you’re invading someone’s privacy. That thought never occurred to me as I explored the contents of Vile’s PC, as there are secrets here that need to be brought to the light. As you click on .exe files and emails and visit the websites frequently haunted by the owner, it quickly becomes clear that he’s a piece of shit. He’s obsessed with a (fictional) actress named Candy Corpse who has starred in several extreme horror films, and he posts on a fan forum dominated by creepy stalker talk. There are light moments, thankfully, but this is a story that only gets darker as you pull at the threads, putting on…

TRAIN OF THOUGHT

I’ve played a lot of puzzle games, and usually the thing that most excites me is the New Idea: how it stands apart from the crowd of Sokoban clones and Portal-likes happily populating the internet. But that feels like the wrong tack with Raide, a game of intimate, tactile puzzling and unravelling secrets. If there is a big idea – some mechanic that sets it apart from the other train-based puzzle games (and there are quite a few) – I haven’t found it. The rules of the game are simple: you’re laying track segments between distant points, to connect houses together. In each level, you’re given a pile of track bits, and you must use every piece in the puzzle, even if a simpler solution presents itself. These rules are…

TRAIN OF THOUGHT

Being a proper sim racer means equal parts fanging it hard on the track, and pondering endlessly about your gear. Sim racing is a never-ending incremental upgrade process. Almost everyone starts with a cheap and cheery Logitech G27 or G29 clamped to their desk ‘just to see if I’m really into it’, then the river splits and you either stick with that or go all-in and build a rig. And near the top of the Mt Everest of planning and budgeting that goes into rig creation – which almost certainly includes needing a dedicated PC – sits the ponderous question of ‘should I go for a single screen, triples, or one huge very wide screen? You might start with a single screen, but you’ll never stop thinking about how great…

ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS

VR Unbeatable immersion and a sense of ‘being there’, but your face will be sweaty and itchy after 30 minutes and you’ll knock your drink overt when you reach for it. VR is fantastic for short sessions but impractical for long races or training sessions. TRACKIR OR TOBII Head tracking that lets you look around. Excellent for flight sims, but a bit jarring and unnatural for racing sims. Removes the sense of being physically planted in a car and can cause motion sickness for some, and does take a bit of getting used to.…

ALTERNATIVE VIEWPOINTS

COMPETITIVE GAMING MICE

Y- ou’ll find partnerships with esports organisations or individuals brandished across most gaming mice these days. Developed with insert game name or player here is no longer a unique selling point. But when the competition is fierce and there’s no longer one specific competitive gaming mouse to buy, how do you choose between them? There are a few big name brands in the gaming mouse industry. You might’ve heard of them: they’re Logitech and Razer. Both companies can lay a claim on offering the best mouse for FPS gamers or the best sensor for competitive play, but they’re not the only two manufacturers that can. In fact, we’ve seen some excellent entries in recent months that are definitely good enough to sway us away from the well-known models. Burst II Air TURTLE…

COMPETITIVE GAMING MICE

MSI MPG 491CQPX QD-OLED

With monitors growing in size and new panels now offering some very interesting choices, the new MSI MPG 491CQPX QD-OLED presents a very compelling option for extreme gaming. This is a 49-inch beast with stats to match its imposing size. It’s functionally quite similar to Samsung’s G9 Neo, which I’ve reviewed, but has the edge in a couple of appealing ways. Most pleasingly, it doesn’t force you to use a remote like the Samsung does, and the MSI’s OSD is one of the best I’ve ever used. The Samsung was not. The hero stat is the fast 240Hz refresh. MSI has a similar MPG 491CQP model that tops out at 144Hz, and this is largely similar to that model in most other respects. Which is a good thing, because both…

MSI MPG 491CQPX QD-OLED

Logitech G915 X Lightspeed

The Logitech G915X Lightspeed is the top-of-the-line keyboard from the market-leading peripherals maker. Mechanical, packed with RGB and sporting Logitech’s low-profile keys, the G915X is a refresh of the widely loved G915 which debuted in 2019. It’s releasing with a lower price than its predecessor (down $30) and subtly different designs across the board. Being the most expensive board Logitech has available, this is the pinnacle of Logitech’s gaming range. It includes a Numpad, media controls, a volume scroll wheel and quick buttons for switching between Bluetooth and the wireless dongle, adjusting keyboard brightness and activating ‘Game Mode’ (which cuts off the windows key to avoid misspresses). The board is also capable of wired use, with a battery life of up to 800 hours with the lights turned off, though…

Logitech G915 X Lightspeed

“The first fish I caught was a puny 12cm crayfish from a pond”

A- lone in an off-putting but sterile-looking Santa Monica hotel room, with the ocean to one side of me and a vast network of Chipotles to the other, I turned to my laptop for a hit of human connection. On Steam’s top-sellers list, I found a game that seemed suitable for hotel-grade Wi-Fi: Webfishing. It’s a fishing game, but really it’s a cosy hangout game with little lake and seaside environments, emotes, props and text chat. Like all of these social games, though, the server’s wallflowers (myself included) never muster more than a ‘hello’ or a question about the controls unless some particularly outgoing player drums up a conversation – and there was no such bon vivant on the server I joined. TYLER WILDE THIS MONTH Silently bonded with strangers by meowing…

“The first fish I caught was a puny 12cm crayfish from a pond”

“Irreverent bloody FPS carnage”

ROBERT JONES THIS MONTH Told Syn to suck it down. ALSO PLAYED Pillars of Eternity, Diablo IV A- s I slide down a sloped metal gantry, my chainsaw leg (yup, you heard) carving its way through a host of AI-controlled augmented superfreaks, spraying gore all over the place in sync with a totally bitchin’ electrosynth rock soundtrack, I’m suddenly reminded why the PC gaming ’90s is, and always will be, etched on my soul. I’ve stepped into the shoes of Johnny Turbo – half-metal, half-human, all-murder machine, a boomer shooter hero who sits somewhere between Duke Nukem, Doomguy, and The Hacker from System Shock, as an all-’90s FPS hero who never stops moving, killing or flicking the finger to foes. God, Turbo Overkill is fast. Johnny Turbo, whose chainsaw leg activates at…

“Irreverent bloody FPS carnage”

“Set-pieces like the ruined factory manage to be incredibly deep”

I- don’t even know how long it’s been since I played Metal Gear Solid 3. It’s a game I’ve perennially wanted to revisit, but I’ve found myself stymied by platform exclusivity: I like playing games on my PC, or a handheld. I could never bother to shift my butt from my desktop to my couch for the PS3 version, but I did try my hand at this game’s 3DS port like some kind of sick freak – impressive, but not how The Game Was Meant To Be Played™. A year after its initial release, the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection is finally in a fit enough state that I didn’t feel bad blowing $30 on it. I loaded it up on my Steam Deck and have been working my way through MGS3…

“Set-pieces like the ruined factory manage to be incredibly deep”

“It shows you piles of corpses, then revels in its mechs and grimdark”

I- t’s a little tragedy when a game isn’t what we want it to be. I wanted the stealth in Star Wars Outlaws to have the intricate yet logical beauty of say, Hitman. I wanted Last Train Home to be turn-based. I want Far Cry to stop undermining its own open worlds with invisible walls made of bullet sponges. Sometimes you shrug, sometimes you get over it, but sometimes it means quitting, uninstalling and seeing if Steam will refund you. As an opinion, this is all fine, but if you’re writing about games, it’s not a valid criticism. The Forever Winter isn’t an FPS version of This War of Mine. That’s what I was looking for. This is not its fault. It’s my problem. But, it was kind of the USP of…

“It shows you piles of corpses, then revels in its mechs and grimdark”

THE PCPP INVESTIGATOR

When the tall, slender elf stepped into my office early one morning. I'd thought at first I was still dreaming. She was beautiful, with her long golden hair flowing down and across her shoulders. But in a New York minute I was snapped to reality by the revelation that Anna was merely a cosplaying fan of a popular MMORPG, fantasy Crown, and had booked it here from the game's annual convention following the murder of her fellow Fantasy Crown player. Rusty. “Oh Dick, you’ve got to help me,” Anna pleaded over desk. “Rusty's been killed and nobody knows what to do. This was his first convention, too. He'd been so happy, he'd been telling everyone all day at the event how pleased he'd be after getting his character 'just the…

THE PCPP INVESTIGATOR

In This Issue

Description

Details

Reviews

Recent Digital Issues Browse all

Recent PC Powerplay Digital Issues Browse all back issues

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription February 5th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 302: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription December 4th, 2023 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 301: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription October 2nd, 2023 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 300: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription July 31st, 2023 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 299: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription February 17th, 2025 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 308: $3.95

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription December 16th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 307: $3.95

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription October 14th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 306: $4.13

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription August 12th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 305: $4.39

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription June 10th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 304: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription April 8th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 303: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription February 5th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 302: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription December 4th, 2023 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 301: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription October 2nd, 2023 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 300: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription July 31st, 2023 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 299: $4.16

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription February 17th, 2025 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 308: $3.95

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription December 16th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 307: $3.95

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription October 14th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 306: $4.13

PC Powerplay (Digital) Subscription August 12th, 2024 Issue

PC Powerplay (Digital) Issue 305: $4.39

Reviews

0

0

0

0

0

No reviews yet

Ask a Question

Be the first to ask a question about this product

Please enter content for the question.

Please enter at least 10 characters.

Your question can not be more than 150 characters.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Submit Processing...

Thank you for your question! Your question has been submitted and will be published soon.

Answer this question

Please enter content for the answer.

Please enter at least 10 characters.

Please enter your first name and last name.

Only letters allowed for first name and last name.

Please enter your email.

Submit Cancel Processing...

Thank you for your answer! Your answer has been submitted and will be published soon.

OK

×