Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2017 i PC Gamer (US Edition)

Some players might feel a little burned by their experience with 2015’s Star Wars Battlefront. I loved the moments when it delivered the kind of spectacle we associate with the movies, but there was a lot of unrealised potential. This time, three developers are absolutely packing the sequel with content, including an expansive singleplayer from the Empire’s perspective. See my feature on p38, where I speak to Lucasfilm, DICE and Motive about making that happen. Enjoy the issue. SAMUEL ROBERTS EDITOR samuel.roberts@futurenet.com @SamuelWRoberts talk to PCGAME R Have your say! Tweet us @PCGamer Our team of writers JOHN STRIKE Specialist in Modern warfare, dogs This month Went back to Battlefield 4 after just a few months playing Battlefield 1. Maybe next time DICE will be able to crack our Art…

A lmost ten years ago, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare ended World War II’s grip on the shooter genre. Its red dot sights and Clancy-ish attitude to the war on terror firmly established Call of Duty as the world’s premier mainstream FPS and ensured a decade of copycats. Fond memories of classic CoD persist, however, and they form the basis of Battalion 1944. Kickstarted to the tune of £300,000, Bulkhead’s throwback shooter promises to bring back what you loved about Call of Duty 2 and Medal of Honor in a modern engine and with contemporary matchmaking tech. In terms of today’s shooters, the most important touchstone for Battalion 1944 is not Call of Duty, as it happens, but Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Bulkhead aspires to a similar kind of focus, both in terms of the…

On a ruined Earth, the last fragments of humanity are locked in a seemingly endless war with a robot army. Controlled by a mysterious alien intelligence, these machines have conquered the planet and driven the survivors to flee to the Moon. From here, in a facility known as the Bunker, humanity wages war on the invaders using machines of their own. Androids are sent to the surface to work with local resistance fighters and battle the enemy. And one of these androids is the protagonist of Nier: Automata, a combat model designated YoRHa No.2 Type B, or 2B for short. Automata is a sequel, but you don’t need to play the original to understand it. Which is for the best, as it was never released on PC. There are some references…

The Zero Escape series of visual novels is built on the game mechanic of revisiting past events and using your knowledge from the future to divert a dire fate. It’s not unlike when you used to slide a cheeky thumb into the pages of Choose Your Own Adventure books as a safeguard against a sticky end. The first to hit the platform was part three, Zero Time Dilemma: Perfectly playable on its own, but it needs this double bill to set events in motion. The series begins with 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. Nine contestants have nine hours to solve the puzzles behind nine individual doors if they’re to escape the deadly Nonary Game with their lives intact. The same goes for Virtue’s Last Reward, only with more rooms and a…

1 PATHOLOGIC: THE MARBLE NEST DEMO Here’s a hefty teaser for the upcoming remake Y ou probably didn’t play the original Pathologic, but if you did, you’ve almost certainly spent the last ten years barking at your most discerning friends to do the same. It was an unwelcoming, intelligent and surreal Russian adventure about... OK, so I’ll tell you what it was about when I’ve finished psychoanalysing every last polygon. That might be unnecessary, as a remake/reinvention is forthcoming that will hopefully realize Pathologic’s immense potential. Developer Ice-Pick Lodge released a two-hour playable demo The Marble Nest back in December, exclusive to backers. You may now bring that demo hurtling down your ethernet cable, however, as it was recently made available to all. It’s Pathologic all right: a two-hour slice of…

No gaming genre can generate stories quite like the colony sim. Almost entirely unique to PC gaming, colony sims task players with building and sustaining a habitat for a group of AI characters, which could be anything from dwarfs to demons. Although the player controls how the colony is shaped, constructing rooms or buildings, and filling them with useful objects, they do not control the inhabitants directly. Instead, the colonists interact with their surroundings and other NPCs via AI systems that simulate their needs and desires. Through these desires and the player’s ability (or inability) to meet them, colony sims produce incredible, incidental plotlines; tales of dwarves who delve too greedily and too deep, unleashing hordes of monsters into their fortress, of bitter rivalries between demonic creatures that tear apart…

Around our campfire, the men eat and sleep and sharpen their axes. I’m worrying about our profit margin. Our contract pays 400 crowns for taking out these bandits, but the fat little nobleman who hired our mercenary company didn’t mention that we’d have to charter a boat and march for a week just to find the job. Watching the miles tick by, I keep thinking the same thing: We’re barely going to break even. This is the kind of commander that medieval strategy RPG Battle Brothers has turned me into. In combat, I’m aggressive and decisive. But when the fighting stops, I turn into a miser. Every coin, every bandage is money we need to stay alive and equipped in this wonderful game of tactics and sellswords. My options are…

What if the most deranged doom-saying cultists are correct? Outlast 2 prods this question with a pointy stick until it bleeds, festers, and wails in agony. Structurally, it’s a very conventional first-person horror game, a string of tense stealth scenarios where you hide from monsters before they chase you through dense forests and flooded mines. The story is too opaque and the trial-and-error necessary to figure out most of the stealth sequences is maddening, but through it all, Outlast 2 is a striking train of depravity steered by a good old-fashioned fear of God. As a freelance journalist, you’re investigating the disappearance of a Jane Doe. Your wife is quickly kidnapped by a cult, the genesis of which is fascinating, mostly told through discarded letters and environmental cues. But the details are…

Federal agents Ray and Reyes are investigating a murder in the remote rural town of Thimbleweed Park. A body was found under a railway bridge on the edge of town, but none of the locals seem to know anything about it, or even who the victim is. The agents have a checklist of tasks to complete, including identifying the body and finding the murder weapon. But finding the killer won’t be easy, because this is a point-and-click adventure game. One of the first puzzles is taking a photo of the body, which covertly serves as an introduction to the concept of switching characters and swapping items between them. Ray has a Polaroid camera, because it’s the 1980s, and Reyes has the film. You get the idea. But this gentle start…

LOOK ING THE PART The best reactions to your new identity “The Shroud, then? More like a nutter.” “That a Silver Shroud costume? Hey, uh, no judgement, but isn’t that a kids’ show?” “Oh for Christ’s sake, did Kent put you up to this?” “Some of these losers think you’re some kind of legend. Like you walked straight out of a comic book.” I enjoyed my 70 hours with Fallout 4, but despite finishing Bethesda’s latest open-world RPG around a year ago, I find myself unable to recall much about it. Perhaps this is because it felt so structurally similar to the other 3D Fallouts and Elder Scrolls games, despite looking a lot nicer and having significantly better combat. Or maybe it’s because following up such a rich vision of a postapocalyptic American city was…

SAMUEL ROBERTS His hero shooter spirit animal is a feisty talking teacup sniper. PHILS AVAGE Mains Scout in Team Fortress 2, and so clearly has no taste. Samuel: Hero shooters, then, Phil. Or indeed any competitive game with a wide range of wild and wacky character designs. Clearly this is one of the biggest genres on the planet, and some of these characters resonate deeply. Overwatch’s Tracer, for example, is one of the most strikingly different, original, and iconic hero characters I’ve seen in the last few years. But for every hit, there are a few misses. Take Winston, for example. He’s a (presumably articulate) gorilla wearing glasses. What the hell? Phil: Whoa there, Sam. Let’s not condemn an entire genre based on one erudite ape. I agree that the…

P lease sign in to confirm your identity,” a deep, strangely reassuring computerized voice says from an unknown source. I raise a hand in the air and ‘type’ using sign language, and letters appear on the transparent interface floating in front of me, spelling out a name: Amy Ferrier. “Thank you,” the voice says. “Welcome aboard.” I hitch a ride on a moving platform as it speeds down a circular corridor. Through the big windows wrapped around it I catch glimpses of the blackness of space and the enormous, spinning centrifuges of the Tacoma lunar transfer station. “While aboard Tacoma station, please remember that all activity is recorded by AR recording,” says the voice. “All activity records are the sole property of the Venturis Corporation.” The platform comes to a…

R eleased back in 2003, Jedi Academy was, by most accounts, a really good game. Age hasn’t been kind to it. Try it today and you’ll notice that the graphics don’t hold up, the AI is shoddy at best, and the presentation and design are relics of the mid- 2000s. Despite that, it’s still fun—a testament to the strength of the combat, and the quality of its realization of the Star Wars universe. Jedi Academy is also highly customizable, with populated servers and a bustling mod scene. These are invaluable tools for one small community, called JEDI. Initially a clan of players who were skilled at Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, they transitioned to being a roleplayfocused community when they moved over to the game’s successor. Since then, JEDI has…

It took nearly eight years, but Bayonetta is finally available to play on PC. And despite originally releasing on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 back in 2009, this is no mere historical curio. Bayonetta is still one of the best—maybe even the best—hack-’n’- slash action games around. And this PC version is now the best version you can buy, offering 4K support and smooth, stable framerates. This is how you port a classic. Summing up the plot seems futile, because Bayonetta is about a witch with guns strapped to her stiletto heels who can eat angels with her hair. Things only escalate from there. The world offers a sprawling backstory and detailed lore, but the main plot focuses on Bayonetta, her relationships, and her amnesia, which leaves her with only flashes of her life before she…

Following on from the interestingly flawed Sir, You Are Being Hunted, The Signal From Tölva is a game about adapting to and managing your limitations. Which is exactly what developer Big Robot has done: This tiny British team has defied its constraints with a rugged and characterful sci-fi shooter that skilfully blends splendid world-building with taut action. You explore the planet Tölva remotely, hijacking a surveyor robot to investigate the signal in question. Other surveyors will happily ignore you—though later you’ll be able to recruit them to fight alongside you— but robot factions (Zealots and Bandits) scattered across the map will shoot on sight. You have a handful of objectives at any given time: As you complete them, you gain access to better gear, and rank up. It’s technically open-world but there’s some…

The hardest enemy I had to fight in Yooka-Laylee was the camera. The minions sent by evil corporate book-napper Capital B were easily killed, but wrestling the third-person camera into submission was like trying to get an actual bat to ride on an actual iguana. Guiding Yooka the iguana and Laylee the bat on a quest to collect magical Pagies brought both a welcome sense of nostalgia and all the familiar flaws of N64-era 3D platformers. Yooka-Laylee is a sequel in everything but name to Banjo-Kazooie, made by much of the same team. It has the same cheeky dialogue, the same collectibles, and pretty much the same moveset for your interspecies buddy duo. But Yooka-Laylee also brings with it the same terrible camera and dull combat, and some aspects of what made…

With its latest free add-on, Total War: Warhammer is complete. But as any Games Workshop customer will tell you, Warhammer games are never really finished. While The Creative Assembly has moved on, what it’s moved on to is more Warhammer—the second game is out later this year, and previewed earlier this issue. While we’re all waiting for that, I’ve been playing this final DLC, which makes the NPC faction of Bretonnia playable. These humans differentiate themselves from the Empire with semi-French accents and feudalism. While their Imperial neighbors march into the Renaissance, all gunpowder and middle class, Bretonnians stay medieval thanks to a goddess who keeps their dated ideas about nobility sacrosanct. In Bretonnia the divine right of kings isn’t hypothetical: The Lady of the Lake gives magic powers to royals. Make…

TONY ELLIS Has edited enough words about games now, thanks. It’s been an adventure. 80 DAYS SEE THE WORLD www.inklestudios.com/80days Like all the best travel fiction, somewhere along the way this admirably written adventure stops being something you’re reading and becomes a real journey you’re on—a seemingly endless procession of colorful incidents, once-in-a-lifetime sights, arduous setbacks and incredible experiences. Take a trip. METAL GEAR SOLID V PLAY WITH BALLOONS www.konami.com/mg/mgs5 Every mission has as many different ways to tackle it as you can think of—I once stopped a convoy at the last second by throwing a sedated enemy officer in front of it. The genius is that however you do it, it always feels like the coolest way, and that you’re the badass star of a madly over-budget action movie.…