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40 Articles

“LEAGUE OF LEGENDS IS ONE OF PC GAMING'S MOST PLAYED GAMES”

League of Legends, now celebrating its 15th year, remains to this day one of PC gaming's most played games. This is a MOBA that had more than 150 million players enjoying it last year at its peak, and which boasts over 160 champions to play as. As you might expect, LoL also has one of the most vibrant communities in PC gaming. Despite this immense success, though, LoL's maker Riot Games is just getting started, and with its latest content update is shaking things up like never before. Turn to page 34 for the exclusive inside scoop. Enjoy the issue. ben.mansill@futurenet.com…

“LEAGUE OF LEGENDS IS ONE OF PC GAMING'S MOST PLAYED GAMES”

Veteran developers from RPG specialists like Obsidian and BioWare had an interesting Twitter exchange recently, and collectively reckon that the temporary death of the CRPG in the early 2000s was down to retailer meddling. A conversation between Nathaniel Chapman (a designer at Timberline with former credits at Blizzard and Obsidian) and Josh Sawyer (studio design director at Obsidian) discussed the role that retail giants formerly played in the life and death of game genres: and not with approval. “I completely forgot how big a deal it was for Best Buy/Walmart/etc buyers to see your game, which determined your shelf space and thus your sales,” said Chapman, in response to which Sawyer noted Walmart had been “prudish” about content in the past (while hypocritically clearing the shelves for GTA). ACCORDING TO SAWYER, IT…

HIGHS Mod life Check out Daggerfall Unity, a rebuild of Bethesda's 1996 RPG Pre-Portal Portal: Revolution is a free fan-made and Valve-approved seven-hour prequel to the Portal games. Heroes of the mod Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm has now become a fully featured StarCraft 2 mod. Minecraft Leg-Ends Moang and Blackbird are wrapping up development on Minecraft Legends. Starry eyed Star Citizen's Legatus bundle offered everything in the game for… $48,000 to you, good citizen. Post-Portal N64 whiz James Lambert got two thirds of the way through the demake Portal 64 before the cease-and-desist landed. LOWS…

THE UGLY EPIDEMIC

PCPP INVESTIGATES There's an epidemic of ugliness in multiplayer shooters, and its cause goes by many names. Skin. Bundle. Drop. Outfit. Coating. Or the most generic: cosmetic. Unassuming at first and quiet by nature, Cosmetic Uglification is a viral affliction infecting the best shooters of our time. When left unchecked, all semblance of aesthetic cohesion is sacrificed at the altar of individual expression, exclusivity and FOMO. Every shooter I love is becoming visual ooze before my very eyes. Signs of cosmetic uglification are everywhere: in spec ops soldiers trading tactical vests for diamond-laced streetwear, elite operators wearing Lara Croft cosplay, commandos going loud in pyjamas. As seasons rage on, live service games garner years of stylistic baggage unique to our post-Fortnite world. It's become normal to watch shooters that once flaunted a…

THE UGLY EPIDEMIC

THE TRYHARD CALL OF DUTY Every shooter has a fancy mask guy who's trying way too hard to look cool. Just take it off, eejit. THE SOMEHOW $40 VALORANT Looks cool. You want it, but immediately lose your appetite once realising it costs more than a dinner for two. THE META HUNT: SHOWDOWN The callsign of a sweatlord. Fashion doesn't matter here, as long as it grants a slim profile or camouflage. THE BUNDLE HALO INFINITE You want a cool gun skin, but you're not getting it unless you buy ten other things you don't like.…

DEMONSTRATION MAN

THE UNSUNG HEROES OF DEVELOPMENT While studying computer science with an emphasis on game development, Tobias Graff worked part-time for some of Germany's biggest mobile gaming companies. Soon after that, he founded Mooneye with some friends from university, entering the industry full time; and later, the company branched out into publishing games from other developers. In 2016, Mooneye launched a Kickstarter for its first game, Lost Ember. It was successful, and so other people came to Graff and the team for advice on building a successful campaign. They were happy to help, but there was only so much they could do. “We were basically working nonstop on the game; we couldn't really afford to take time off to help other developers,” says Graff. After Lost Ember's release, which was also a success,…

DEMONSTRATION MAN

1 month PACIFIC DRIVE RELEASE Ql, 2024 | DEVELOPER Ironwood Studios Drive to survive in this run-based driving adventure. Scavenge resources from the anomaly-filled Olympic Exclusion Zone, upgrade your car and complete missions. NIGHTINGALE RELEASE February 22,2024 | DEVELOPER Inflexion Games Explore, craft, fight and survive in dangerous Fae Realms either on your own or with friends. You play as a Realmwalker in this visually punchy fantasy world. HOMEWORLD 3 RELEASE March, 2024 | DEVELOPER Blackbird Interactive The new game in the classic sci-fi series promises to deliver a stunning space-based RTS that makes the most of three-dimensional movement. Incoming in March. 3 months STAR WARS OUTLAWS RELEASE 2024 | DEVELOPER Massive Entertainment What's looking like the biggest Star Wars game of 2024, Outlaws sees you play as rogue scoundrel Kay Vess in an open-world adventure set in the Outer Rim. STALKER 2: HEART…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Out Now (Early Access) DEVELOPER Novarama PUBLISHER Novarama LINK united1944.com United 1944 was bleeding out before my eyes. The first day I played this WWIIthemed squad shooter, there were barely enough players to fill a single server. Each day, the number has dwindled. The life draining out of a young, promising game, barely days into Early Access. As it stands, United 1944 is two surprisingly different games sharing a set of mechanics. One, a 16vl6 team shooter that draws equal inspiration from Day Of Defeat Battlefield, Fortnite and survival sandboxes. The other, a low-stakes take on the extraction shooter formula that doesn't feel nearly as well thought out as its big-team counterpart. Between them, a game with a lot of potential, at least when there's enough players to fill a match. In the primary team-play mode, Domination,…

SOLIUM INFERNUM

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Feb 14,2024 DEVELOPER League of Geeks PUBLISHER League of Geeks LINK soliuminfernum.com Hell may be other people, but getting those presumably extremely unmotivated and uncooperative other people to form into a mighty legion and fight for you must be a difficult undertaking. You can make diabolical threats, of course, but they're already damned and tricky to persuade. Who'd want to rule Hell? Astaroth would. In Solium Infernum (that's ‘only hell’ for the non-Latin speakers out there) Satan has disappeared, and the remaining top order of demons are left to fight it out for the throne. Hell is, conveniently, divided up into hexes, which turns the infernal regions into the perfect place for a spot of turn-based strategy, with the legions of the damned and their champions zooming about one hex at a time, carving up territory…

SOLIUM INFERNUM

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE February 22,2024 DEVELOPER Ironwood Studios PUBLISHER Kepler Interactive LINK pacificdrivegame.com In the mid-20th century it seemed that new science, from DDT to nuclear power, would save us all. By the time the ‘70s rolled round, the legacy of ignorance, corporate greed and government arrogance was clear. So it was, in one beautiful corner of the Pacific Northwest. Amongst the redwoods and fir trees, research into a potentially limitless energy source – LIM – unleashed a series of increasingly deadly anomalies. In the end the government evacuated the population, walled off the whole peninsula and left it to descend into eldritch chaos. This is the setting for Pacific Drive, a debut first-person driving-survival-adventure game by Seattle-based Ironwood Studios, a proudly anti-crunch group with an eclectic track record in the industry. A humble delivery driver, you get sucked into…

RAILROADS & CATACOMBS

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Sep 15, 2023 (Early Access) DEVELOPER Felipe Aulló PUBLISHER IndieArk LINK railroadsandcatacombs.com The name may conjure images of a goth railway management game in which you transport skeletons between the ossuaries beneath Paris, but in reality Railroads & Catacombs has far more in common with Darkest Dungeon than Train Sim Underworld. Although that actually sounds like an excellent idea for a game. Instead of a carriage or staircase to convey you between areas, here you're on a train. It's a rickety locomotive that requires coal, scavenged from your victories in the field, and it gradually fills with characters and extra cars as you travel and upgrade. New recruits come through a portal to replace those lost in the wilds surrounding the track, while decks can be fiddled with or have cards removed by a Railmancer, who…

RAILROADS & CATACOMBS

ESCAPE FROM TARKOV: ARENA

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE December 17, 2023 DEVELOPER Battlestate Games PUBLISHER Battlestate Games LINK arena.tarkov.com Escape From Tarkov has some of the most satisfying gun fights in any shooter, with one well-placed bullet being all you need to win a fight and a map design that makes positioning key, so it makes sense to make a game that is all about that experience. Escape From Tarkov: Arena is that game. Built on the same engine as the regular Tarkov and using all the same systems, it could be classed as a new mode that is being sold as a separate title. But this is Tarkov as you have never seen it before. Without the large maps, the focus on looting and the fear of losing your best gear Arena gives you the chance to shoot people to your heart's content,…

ESCAPE FROM TARKOV: ARENA

CREATING A RIFT

After almost 15 years, League of Legends remains one of the most popular PC games in the world, boasting over 100 million players every month. But keeping a game fresh and exciting for that long is no easy task, especially with so many people to please, so Riot Games has taken some risks with the new 2024 season. Updating League of Legends is not simple at the best of times. With millions of players to keep happy, each patch has to improve things in some way but not break everything that players love. Throughout most of the year the risks are minimal for a new patch, with one arriving every two weeks Riot tends to keep them relatively small, making balance changes and introducing one or two new things at once,…

CREATING A RIFT

WHAT COULD 2025 BRING?

TELEPORT CHANGES Teleport “leads to some stagnation in pro play” according to the devs, so it's on the list of things to explore further. NEW BASES After years of looking the same, 2025 could be the year we get a visual overhaul of the bases and how they are set up. SPLIT PUSHING Split pushing was on the agenda for 2024 but was cut early on, so 2025 could be the year it gets an overhaul to make it viable. DRAGONS After the success of Baron changes this year, the team wants to see if they can do the same for Dragons next year.…

WHAT COULD 2025 BRING?

THE HISTORY OF GRAND THEFT AUTO

1997 Grand Theft Auto Where it all began The project that became Grand Theft Auto began life as an isometric fighting simulator similar to Syndicate Wars. Too similar, in fact. When Bullfrog made its sci-fi sequel public, GTA’s developer DMA Design changed trajectory, coming up with a plan for a top-down vehicle game called Race ‘n’ Chase. Race ‘n’ Chase's design document describes it as “a fun, addictive and fast multiplayer car racing and crashing game”. But the defining lines in the document have little to do with racing. “It will also be possible for players to get out of their car and steal another one,” the document reads. “This will mean controlling a vulnerable pedestrian for a short time. Trying to steal a car may result in an alarm being set off which…

THE HISTORY OF GRAND THEFT AUTO

One of the wonderful, tragic things about Warhammer dwarfs is their terminal decline. A realm that once spanned the Old World has been shattered by the incursion of orcs, goblins and vile ratmen. Most attempts to rebuild their empire end in disaster. It's an endless cycle of failure, loss and shame, and they're extremely grumpy about it. That's about to change. The Age of Reckoning is upon us. The Immortal Empires mode in Total War: Warhammer III offers the most complete and detailed map of the Old World that exists. It stretches far east, to the lands of Grand Cathay, and back west to the New World of Lustria and Naggarond. But the conquest that follows isn't about scale. It's about detail. In this feature, we're going to concern ourselves with…

Unique among Warhammer Fantasy stories in that it features a teenage (in dwarf years) female protagonist, this is basically a disaster movie in a Dawi hold. Everything goes wrong and it'll make you sad, in a good way. GRUDGE BEARER BY GAVIN THROPE An epic tale that basically sums up why there's no dwarf word for ‘forgiveness’. Like the Dammaz Kron in-game, it's a collection of wrongs that must be set right, and what that actually means for the dwarfs involved. SKARSNIK BY GUY HALEY If you fancy seeing the everlasting war between greenskins and dwarfs told from another perspective, this is for you. Although if anything, it'll make you even more afraid of the brutal cunning (or cunning brutality) of Skarsnik. HONOURKEEPER BY NICK KYME Read this if you want a reason to start a…

REVENGE INCARNATE

37% MURDERING GROBI SCUM The good things about goblins is that there are lots of them, and killing them feels amazing. It does take rather a lot of time, though. 8% GRUMBLING The beer was too flat. The enemies too soft. The elves too nearby. 12% RETAKING Actually retaking the dwarf holds we set out to liberate. 24% PEST CONTROL Skaven are everywhere in the Old World. Including, apparently, beneath the holds Belegar already owns. An inconvenient distraction. 19% FLOUNDERING Faffing around trying to save our floundering High King.…

REVENGE INCARNATE

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 of a significant game, our expert will…

The cinematic FPS adventure game Crysis, released back in November 2007, quickly become known as a technical showcase for the next-generation of PC gaming graphics. To run Crysis at anywhere near its maximum settings on release required a monster of a PC gaming rig, loaded with state-of-the-art components. The result was that most PC gamers didn't experience Crysis as its developer, Crytek, intended. Fast forward to today, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora seems to be actively pursuing its own Crysis point. If you can run the game on its maximum ‘Unobtanium’ settings, then you're in for a spectacular, next-gen visual treat. However, like our review this issue reveals, right now many PC gamers won't get that experience or, even a stable one.…

This month's mad reviewers…

NOAH SMITH Specialist in Painting himself blue Currently playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora This month Learned the Na'vi language. Used it to say naughty words. RICK LANE Specialist in Merry men Currently playing Gangs of Sherwood This month Wore green tights and disappeared into the woods after dark. Wouldn't say why. JODY MACGREGOR Specialist in Hunting heretics Currently playing War hammer 40,000: Rogue Trader This month Had his presence announced by a flying robot skull in a wig. DANIELLA LUCAS Specialist in Scrooge McDuck quotes Currently playing Disney Dreamlight Valley This month Released a rap album with Scrooge McDuck called ‘Money Bin Mad’. MATT ELLIOTT Specialist in Totalitarianism Currently playing Tropico 5 This month Demanded everyone in the PCPP Towers bar salute while hailing him as ‘El Presidente’.…

This month's mad reviewers…

THE FRONTIER IS CLOSED

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora transcends its progenitor series Far Cry with awe-inspiring presentation, a captivating world and tense combat, but at present it's buried under a mountain of technical trouble and it could take months to unearth a genuinely great game with patches and driver support. When it's working, navigating Pandora is a total joy: sprinting at mach five across the forest floor and parkouring across the serpentine tree roots that connect dense jungle brush to rock formations suspended in zero gravity. Avatar's psychedelic Ecco the Dolphin's colour palette meets Starship Troopers’ industrial scifi look is translated beautifully from film to game, and the skyboxes especially are some of the best I've ever seen. The sheer density and variety of reactive flora and fauna is stunning. The whole thing is jaw-dropping. The…

THE FRONTIER IS CLOSED

Like its babbling crew of outlaws, Gangs of Sherwood tries to compensate for its fundamental shortcomings with a brash persona and propulsive energy. It's a fast-paced, four-player shooter-slash-brawler with a vividly drawn alt-fantasy world, a knockabout comedy tone, and lively combat. Unfortunately, these colourful distractions fade away all too quickly, revealing Robin Hood rummaging through your purse as he tries to lift $58 out of it. Oddly, what I like most about Gangs of Sherwood is the thing I was least convinced by before playing – the setting. Gangs of Sherwood takes the familiar Robin Hood tale and plonks it in an alternate, sci-fi history. Generally I'm not a fan of gaming's fixation with alternative takes on Robin Hood. But Gangs of Sherwood quickly won me over with its vivid combination…

We've just defeated a cult, foiled a plot, saved a world. A bureaucrat says the triumphant parade has already been organised. We'll get to ride a battle tank, and halfway it'll stop and a small crowd will mob us. It's all stage-managed. The mob has been carefully vetted, as the bureaucrat explains, “Members of the military. Young people, attractive and physically fit. A few healthy children.” In moments like this, Rogue Trader nails the dystopian satire of Warhammer 40,000. When I want people to know how important I am, I have a robot skull in a barrister's wig that flies around announcing my presence and title. One of the entertainments at a coronation is just ‘shooting prisoners’. SUBTLETY'S FOR COWARDS Rogue Traders are an ideal part of Warhammer 40,000 to make a videogame…

OUT OF THIS WORLD

After a short stint wandering the orange canyons of Cocoon's opening area, you come across a curved groove in the ground. At one edge sits a large metallic ball, which you grab and yank until it reluctantly leaves its rectangular base, yet remains connected by a chewing gum string. Once the gum's elasticity approaches its limit, the base starts to move too, gliding across the mouth as if you're opening a zip. As a puzzle adventure, the joy of Cocoon is in figuring out how to overcome obstacles and progress, but it's also in the execution. Taking hold of the ball in this instance is an obvious course of action given that the beetle-winged humanoid you guide around can only manipulate the world via a single action button. You drag the…

OUT OF THIS WORLD

You can see why the original House Flipper was such a hit. Its cosy fantasy of home ownership and fulfilling work was a soothing balm after a miserable day at the office, and that fantasy is only strengthened in this sequel. The basics remain the same: jobs appear in your email, from cleaning tasks to full-on home renovation, and you can use the profits to buy properties from the auction house, ready to be glowed up and flipped for a profit. Accept a job and you'll appear outside the house with your bag of tools. Bin bags to collect the rubbish, one measly cloth to wipe down the surfaces, a roller for painting, and so on. I haven't played the previous game, but the interface for managing these tools seems neater…

DISNEY CROSSING

Over the pandemic everyone seemed to find comfort in the gentle virtual maintenance of their Animal Crossing islands. Pootling about, talking to villagers, and designing things just so. Nothing else has come close to replicating that weird state of zen that comes with pulling weeds and paying debts. Until now. Disney Dreamlight Valley is very much like Animal Crossing in that you start on a barebones island, hunt down some tools, help out a money-hungry animal (this time it's Scrooge McDuck rather than Tom Nook) and gradually shape things to your liking. The valley starts off in a right old state, having been overcome by The Forgetting, a curse leading to boarded-up buildings and an infestation of giant thorns. Slowly, you start to clean up, and things go from derelict chic…

DISNEY CROSSING

LEAVE IT TO BEAVERS

The basic idea baked into a city builder is that I'm creating something to last. So when Against the Storm presented me with the premise that each of my handmade habitats would be wiped away by a terrible tempest as part of an unavoidable, cataclysmic cycle, I wasn't sure how to feel about it. But it is one of the most clever, engaging, and endearing strategy games I've played in years. In the world of Against the Storm, some kind of horrifying, magical disaster has turned the once-idyllic fantasy countryside into a rain-soaked, ruin-strewn morass in which everything outside of the magically-shielded capital, The Smoldering City, is annihilated by hurricane-force gales every year. As the queen's viceroy, your job is to set out during the brief windows during which the land…

LEAVE IT TO BEAVERS

WILD ADVENTURES

Experimental, genre-bending approaches to interactive storytelling have always been inkle's stock-in-trade, from the increasingly ambitious multi-part adaptation of Steve Jackson's Sorcery! to the high-seas intrigue of Overboard!. And A Highland Song is arguably inkle's most multi-faceted work yet. Moira McKinnon has never been to the sea. She does not get along with her mother who insists she cannot go to school because she wouldn't fit in. Her father has been absent for all her life and her little brother is a bore. So when Uncle Hamish, a kooky lighthouse-keeper who regularly mails her postcards with fanciful stories about heartbroken selkies and furious giantesses, asks her to visit in time for Beltane – the Gaelic May Day – she does what any restless teenage girl would do in her place. She hurriedly…

WILD ADVENTURES

In Last Train Home, a military management game and tactical RTS, you're in charge of the Czechoslovak Legion as the Russian civil war breaks out. Unable to return home by going west, you make a desperate plan: capture an armoured train and traverse Siberia. Your management of the journey is both on the train, assigning jobs and doling out supplies, and on the battlefield, controlling units of ten soldiers in pausable, tactical RTS battles. Last Train Home is not so much concerned with historicity as with giving you a glimpse into the desperate mood of a time and place. The Czech legionaries don't want to fight on either side of the Russian Civil War. They really just want to go home, but nobody wants a large band of unaligned armed soldiers…

CLEVER CLASS COMBOS

MEDIC + MG Both medics and machine gunners tend to hold back during stealth segments, so drop expensive abilities like suppressive fire and carry a medical satchel instead of taking an extra soldier. Gun ‘em down, patch ‘em up. GRENADIER + SCOUT You might think that giving the scout very loud grenades is bad, but using their scout ability to peek over a wall and then throw grenades from a stealthy position is the height of tactics. Plus, the grenadier's sprint is handy too. RIFLEMAN + WORKER Riflemen use fitness to be ultra-tough, and their willpower passive lets them add it to combat effectiveness. Where does worker come in? Guess what stats they pump doing all the upgrades you need? DOCTOR + ENGINEER Both of these benefit from intelligence, but you won't use this engineer to run…

CLEVER CLASS COMBOS

A FAMILY AFFAIR

The Roottrees are Dead stands on the shoulders of Tim Sheinman's Family, a similarly browser-based detective game that had you investigating a music scene and filling in a family tree of linked musicians. In Jeremy Johnston's Roottrees, it's a literal family tree, as you've been hired by a mysterious client to decipher the complicated genealogy of the Roottree family, and determine who will inherit the family fortune, after a terrible plane crash. Sitting down in front of this big flowchart late at night, mug in hand, soft jazz music piping out of the browser tab, it really makes you feel like a detective. Sheinman fans will immediately be at home as they fill in names on the family tree, with the game confirming your right answers and adding more documents to…

A FAMILY AFFAIR

EVERY WITCH WAY

I'm not sure that I've seen lore used as a punchline before, but it's a beautiful running gag in this urban fantasy where witches are real, and they wield submachine guns. Every titbit about the setting is delivered so matter-of-factly by the noir-style narration that it only highlights its inherent absurdity. Here we have witches that dress like Payday robbers, hiding the green skin of the witch from The Wizard of Oz. And they use Tommy guns because, well, I suspect because it makes for a catchy title. The urban fantasy of The Dresden Files has been mashed down into one half-hour game: a gorgeous, first-person adventure game where you interview suspects and solve simple puzzles across a modern city. You play as a sentinel, investigating the murder of a man in…

EVERY WITCH WAY

The Two Rivers Hypothesis is pure aesthetic and atmosphere, with little beneath that – but what aesthetic and atmosphere. It's a game where you pilot a submersible around a dark and flooded facility, exploring tunnels until you discover the ending. But it's not a simple case of pressing WASD and waggling the mouse around. No, it's all mouse-driven, with on-screen buttons for moving the craft in the cardinal directions, going up and down and turning, as well as moving the camera. Controlling the craft is an exercise in mild frustration, then, that feels appropriate for the bulky thing you're steering. It should feel cumbersome to explore this place, inciting fear as you blindly turn a corner and drive it down another pitch-black corridor. As you find your bearings, you're assailed by emails…

MAINSTREAM GRAPHICS CARDS

The most popular graphics card of a generation is rarely the best-performing. Instead it's the one the most people can reasonably afford. The most popular cards, according to Steam's monthly hardware survey, are the RTX 3060, GTX 1650, and GTX 1060. Unsurprising, but what's somewhat more shocking is you have to look pretty far down the list to find any high-end GPUs noted at all. THERE ARE HEAPS OF OPTIONS AVAILABLE TO THE BUDDING PC GAMER Nvidia and AMD sell higher volumes across the lower rungs of the GPU market. The so-called ‘mainstream’ cards. What constitutes a mainstream graphics card is a constantly shifting definition and not easily defined by price alone. In the early days of PC gaming, $800 was kingly money to spend on an add-in card, whereas nowadays that's…

MAINSTREAM GRAPHICS CARDS

“Two wolves ran out of some trees and killed me almost instantly”

With its cheerful, kid-friendly looks and the trend of survival games being a bit more forgiving these days, I figured Fortnite‘s new Lego survival mode would be a fun crafting sandbox where you bonk monsters on the head with swords and grab their loot. I was wrong. Lego Fortnite does not pull its punches. You know how your first full in-game day of Minecraft can wind up being a harrowing survival experience? It's almost the same here. I spawned alone, though into a shared world – a nice feature of Lego Fortnite is once someone has given you their world key, you can play in their world even if they're not online. Morgan and Tyler W had played a bit already, but were both working (like suckers) when I started. I could…

“Two wolves ran out of some trees and killed me almost instantly”

“Its soundtrack by Thorr is incredible”

I deliver chainsaw death to the demon horde, all the while dodging incessant gunfire, balls of fire and flying, shrieking, flaming skulls. Oh, and did I mention I'm doing this in hell, with lava and poison-filled pits all around? This is John Romero's SIGIL II, the hard-as-nails unofficial sixth episode for Doom, and it's simply awesome. As someone who played the OG Doom when it released, I played and loved Romero's first return to making full episodes for the game that made him, John Carmack, and the rest of the id Software team development legends back in the 1990s, with the original SIGIL released back in 2019 dramatically rekindling the original Doom fires. And there was no better fire stoker than Romero, who always brought an extra level of Doom Guy…

“Its soundtrack by Thorr is incredible”

“Rogues can be tanks. Mages can be healers. Nothing's off the table”

I played World of Warcraft vanilla back in the day – before any expansions came out – and I was bad at it. I was a human rogue with ‘leet’ in his name, and I somehow levelled into my mid-40s without even touching poisons. In my defence, I was 12 years old at the time. Ultimately, I was too much of a noob to really get it. Before WoW Classic happened I dipped my toes into private servers, and I didn't really get it as an adult either. WoW Classic – as Folding Ideas’ Dan Olson puts it – isn't actually that hard, at least, not in the classical sense. It's a game where patience and foreknowledge trump mechanical skill. The appeal for try-hard guilds lies in going back to the game…

“Rogues can be tanks. Mages can be healers. Nothing's off the table”

“Pushes me to beat every level without taking a scratch”

The Ghostrunner series of games are as cool as they come. The futuristic cyberpunk megastructures. The slick first-person combat. The dynamite synthwave beats that fuel every jump, slide and/or wall run. The cyber-assassin protagonist who wields a katana. Even the name itself, Ghostrunner, is ridiculously cool. It immediately offers intrigue. Developed by Polish studio One More Level, the original debuted in 2020 and did reasonably well in terms of sales at 2.5 million units sold globally. While it was great to see a Best Action Game nomination for Ghostrunner 2 at The Game Awards 2023, in a way I still think it's quite overlooked by general audiences. It's essentially Blade Runner meets Mirror's Edge for anyone looking in from afar, something that you would think would be able to grab the…

“Pushes me to beat every level without taking a scratch”

TRYING TO GET RICH QUICK IN STARFIELD

Meet Jett Johnson. A wise-cracking 24th-century jerk-of-all-trades who at one time made the Kessel Run in 11 parsecs, or so he tells people. Jett's been doing these odd jobs for a while now; once a pro, now he's gotten sloppy. The end goal is to earn enough credits to retire somewhere desolate and peaceful at the edge of the galaxy, where he can live away his days drinking cocktails with teeny tiny umbrellas that wouldn't look out of place in the hands of Del Boy. Another few years should do it. Anyone who has jumped into Bethesda's new space epic will be well aware that Starfield begins in a mining outpost, the last place my plucky protagonist wants to be. I've decided that Jett isn't a fan of caves… or mining……

TRYING TO GET RICH QUICK IN STARFIELD

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