Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2015 i PC Gamer

HIGHS Satellite Reign Some of the best neon-signs-reflected-in-puddles effects we’ve ever seen. Sonic Dreams Collection The most demented game we’ve played this year. We’re still having nightmares. Lawbreakers Cliffy B’s new multiplayer shooter has a name, and it looks really fun and colourful. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain One of the best open-world sandbox games on PC, and a brilliant story generator. Resident Evil 2 announced – again Yeah, it’s a remake, but it’s a remake of one of the best horror games ever. LOWS Deus Ex: Mankind Divided If enough people pre-order, they’re releasing it four days early. Shameless. The Hitman film Another action movie full of slow-motion backflips. That’s not our Agent 47. Assassin’s Creed Syndicate Featuring a character who can magically turn invisible. Yeah, that’s…

Yes THE RISE OF THE EMERGENT SANDBOX MAKES THEM LOOK LIKE RELICS No THERE’S ALWAYS A PLACE FOR THEM – BUT A FEW LESS IS A GOOD THING Andy: After playing Metal Gear Solid V, I don’t think I can play a linear game ever again. Its freedom is so liberating, so intoxicating, that the idea of sitting through a heavily scripted campaign feels like a step backwards. More and more games are embracing emergent, systems-driven design – from Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to Rise of the Tomb Raider – and I think Call of Duty-style rollercoasters will soon be a thing of the past. Samuel: Young Andrew, I think you’ll find I’ve reviewed Metal Gear Solid V in this very issue and enjoyed it as much as you. However,…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 DEVELOPER Studio MDHR PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.cupheadgame.com The thing that everybody says about Cuphead is that it looks gorgeous. They’re right, of course: it’s like a 1930s cartoon, only without the racism. Suitably intrigued, I tracked it down at Gamescom to find out how it plays. The answer, it turns out, is like an incredibly difficult run-and-gun platformer. Cuphead, much like the recent Titan Souls, is a boss attack game. Rather than a linear series of battles, each level is accessed via a deceptively peaceful overworld map. Levels can be attempted in any order and each consists of a single screen containing a single boss. There’s no preamble or filler here. Cuphead is entirely focused around fighting these huge set-piece baddies.…

YAMATO One of only two Yamato-class battleships, not only was this the biggest battleship ever built, but it had the heaviest guns and armour of any battleship, able to destroy any other ship before they even got into range. It took 300 bombers to destroy the Yamato, hitting it over and over with torpedoes and bombs. BISMARCK Germany’s largest ever battleship is most famous for almost one-shotting the HMS Hood, then the pride of the Royal Navy. In revenge, Britain relentlessly pursued the Bismarck, resulting in it being scuttled three days after Hood’s demise after a hit from an obsolete biplane torpedo bomber destroyed her steering. GENERAL BELGRANO The Argentinian pride and joy, the General Belgrano was sunk by a British submarine while sailing away from the Falkland Islands –…

STEP ONE GET READY TO INSTALL There are a few ways to install Windows 10, but the most common is through an update utility that Microsoft has rolled out to Windows 7 and Windows 8 machines. It shows up as a little Windows logo in your taskbar. Through that application, you can download Windows 10 and then apply the upgrade without losing any of your computer’s files. Still, we’d recommend backing everything up to be safe. If you don’t have the Windows logo in your taskbar, there’s another easy way to grab Windows 10. Download the Windows Installation Tool from microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10. This tool will download Windows 10 and let you install it immediately, or copy it to a USB flash drive for installation on another machine. Go ahead and download…

GET INVOLVED Visit www.pcggw.com and click ‘join us’ at the top of the page. There you’ll find a description of the guild’s principles and its code of conduct along with a form to fill out. Submit your application and you’re away! Otherwise, you can find us in-game on Desolation EU. THE INDEX MINECRAFT Server 85.236.100. 145:26665 Link www.pcgukmc. enjin.com WORLD OF WARCRAFT Server Steamwheedle Cartel Link www.pcgwow. enjin.com THE OLD REPUBLIC Server The Red Eclipse Link pcg-mi.enjin.com Right out of nowhere, Guild Wars 2 went free in September. As the three-year-old MMO closes in on its first paid expansion, there are no longer any barriers standing between you and the base game - there isn’t even a subscription fee, and the microtransaction store remains entirely optional. You…

Metal Gear used to represent ‘console stealth’, more puzzle-box than sandbox. Mazes to crack, bosses to figure out, and so on – great in its own way, but not the series you go to when you want to create your own stories. That’s all changed. The Phantom Pain has a little of old Metal Gear in its DNA, but it’s fundamentally about your decisions, your intuition. Somehow, this console-born stealth series has rolled onto the PC bigger and in many ways better than homegrown classics like Deus Ex and Hitman. There hasn’t been a tactical action game this good in years. If you miss the Metal Gear of years past, however, you might get a kick out of Volume. It offers a massive pile of stealth puzzle-boxes to pick through…

SAMUEL ROBERTS Specialist in Action, RPG Currently playing Metal Gear Solid V This month Tried to Fulton balloon home from the office. Went as you’d expect. CHRISTOPHER LIVINGSTON Specialist in RPG, simulation Currently playing Super Mega Baseball This month Hit the round ball with the round stick, as they do in America. TYLER WILDE Specialist in Action, puzzle Currently playing Volume This month Tip-toed in pursuit of the shocking truth: Volume is ‘pretty good, really.’ ANDY KELLY Specialist in Action, RPG Currently playing Satellite Reign This month Ventured into a neon cyberpunk dystopia. Looks nice! Bit wet. Considered moving. CHRIS THURSTEN Specialist in RPG, strategy Currently playing Act of Aggression This month Was inspired to watch Tim Curry saying ‘space’ in Red Alert 3 again. And again. ANGUS MORRISON Specialist…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A text-heavy turn-based RPG. EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Harebrained Schemes PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Windows 7, Core i5, 16GB RAM, GTX 780Ti MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.harebrained-schemes.com/ shadowrun A rooftop duel under neon floodlights convinced me that Shadowrun’s writing had at last met the potential in its mash-up of magic and cyberpunk. A charismatic elven street samurai, I’d presumably coasted in samurai school, because I could talk my way through a locked door but couldn’t hit a troll at two paces. Yet here I was, staring down an angry vampire upset at my late-night stock check of her boyfriend’s flat. If I lost, I’d enjoy life as a servile pawn; if I won, she might convince her other half to…

Then, the Postal Dude stopped being a “let God sort ‘em out” psychopath, and shifted to being an angry man with things to do. One day, that “thing to do” is get Gary Coleman’s autograph. This is a cheerfully dumb joke, presumably based on which celebrity they could afford. But it’s the perfect defusing backdrop to the inevitable violence. The progress through Postal Dude’s week, with his endlessly frustrated to-do list, made his anger feel disproportionate, rather than insincere. That’s a far better root for comedy than some arsehole who woke up angry and picked up a gun. Briefly, Postal 2 showed open-world ambition.…

1 THE OC The most impressive thing about the new design is the overclocking. Hitting 4.8GHz with a production CPU and a standard water cooler is great for gaming. 2 PRICEY The i7-4790K is £269 and this new chip is £335. That’s a big difference in price. Factor-in the expensive new motherboard and DDR4 RAM you’ll need to buy and the gap gets even greater. 3 POWER It’s not quite as dainty as the i7-5775C we saw last month, thanks to the i7-6700K’s far higher clockspeed, but it’s still 55W down on the i7-4790K peak draw. 4 DDR4 Having the latest memory tech is almost irrelevant in a gaming PC – DDR4 is mostly of importance on the server side of the PC industry. INTEL CORE I7-6700K ark.intel.com £335 CPU As…

MOTHERBOARD Z170 Pro Gaming Asus £120 The latest revision of our favourite gaming motherboard, with an M.2 PCIe x4 slot, Intel network port, USB 3.1 and SLI support. PROCESSOR i5-6600K Intel £156 Intel’s new Skylake processor is nearly as fast as an i7 for gaming. Comes with some important memory/storage speed boosts. GRAPHICS CARD GTX 970 4G MSI £270 Offers the best price/performance ratio right now, and MSI’s model is cheap and overclockable, with a quiet cooler. COOLER Hyper 212 EVO Cooler Master £25 If it ain’t broke... the Hyper 212 EVO is a great cooler for the price. Save a bit of money in your mid-range build. MEMORY Ballistix Sport(8GB) Crucial £90 8GB of reasonably fast DDR4, and one of the cheapest deals you’ll find. Corsair is reliable, and…

SAMUEL ROBERTS THIS MONTH Got upset inside a rocket-powered car. ALSO PLAYED Grand Theft Auto V, Mirror’s Edge Last night I went to bed at 2.30am. I couldn’t go to sleep on a loss. In Rocket League, the ranking system means you start on zero and work your way up. I reached 400 in my first week of playing and I’ve been languishing in the mid-300s ever since. When this night started I was on 356. I’m now down to 340. It hurts. It hurts so bad. Your fortunes hinge on the other players you’re paired with caring as much about progressing as you do. There’s nothing more annoying than being in a match where an amateur teammate is climbing on the roof of the goal instead of defending. I…

1 PUNITY FREEWARE Exclusively second on PC Remember Silent Hills ? Konami would rather you didn’t, but the Hideo Kojima/ Guillermo del Toro collaboration was announced to much fanfare during Gamescom 2014 with the release of ‘PT’, a ‘playable teaser’ consisting of a few rooms of horror. Unfortunately it was only available on the PlayStation 4. Then double unfortunately Silent Hills was cancelled and Konami attempted to wipe PT off the face of the Earth, blocking all downloads so that only those console-owners who already had it installed on their machines could enjoy it. Enter aspiring game developer Farhan Qureshi, who spent over a 100 hours recreating PT in Unity down to the tiniest detail. While it isn’t the real thing, it is the closest we’re going…

SAMUEL ROBERTS I have an eclectic mix of tastes shaped by the various gaming phases of my daft young life, very few of which are of any merit. COMPETE ONLINE ROCKET LEAGUE www.rocketleague.psyonix.com I’ve become enchanted by this surprise Steam summer hit, which is essentially rocket football. Since summer will be over by the time you read this, we may have already moved on to other videogames, but regardless, this is one of the best low-commitment competitive experiences you can have. SURVIVE ALIEN: ISOLATION www.alienisolation.com That we live in a world where a credible, gorgeous and brilliantly-paced Alien survival horror game happened is wonderful. After the 25 nerve-wrecking hours it takes to reach the end of the story, you’ll still want to jump into the challenge rooms just to experience…

CHRIS THURSTEN Specialist in RPGs, Dota 2 Currently playing Metal Gear Solid V This month Bids us farewell as deputy editor and heads into a brave new world of electronic sports. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Horror, cyberpunk Currently playing Metal Gear Solid V This month Decided he was done with scripted action games forever, because of Metal Gear. JOHN STRIKE Specialist in FPSes, sausage dogs Currently playing Battlefield 4 This month Won’t be moved by Star Wars Battlefront even though it’s the perfect combo of his interests.…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 DEVELOPER Paradox Development Studio PUBLISHER Paradox Interactive LINK www.stellarisgame.com As of last February, the average playtime of Crusader Kings II was 99 hours. The longest playtime was 10,500 hours. Paradox’s grand strategy games are large, complex affairs, but I’m not convinced there’s enough variety to keep things fresh over that length of time. Stellaris is Paradox attempting to create a game that justifies their fans’ obsession. “It’s a radical departure,” Henrik Fåhraeus, director of Paradox Development Studio, tells me, contrasting the game with the studio’s previous work, “but in some ways it’s still the same.” It’s still a pausable real-time game, for one thing, with the option to speed up and slow down…

This month’s cover game is also our free gift in this month’s issue of PC Gamer. Well, actually there’s two download codes this month – one for new Wargaming.net users and the other for existing players of World of Warships, the free-to-play arcade naval battle sim. The invite code gets new users a three-day premium account, which offers boosts to your experience and credit in that time, as well as one ship slot. The bonus code offers existing users a selection of items for use in the game, as well as an extra ship slot and the Tachibana ship pictured to the right of this text. The extra bundled items are 10 engine boosts and 10 smoke generators for use in battle. You can download the World of Warships client…

Top 100: the overlooked I fully understand the ocean of PC games you had to wade through to choose only 100. But I must point out a few games I feel that you might have overlooked. I feel the original Quake played a key role in what we expect after we beat our FPS, bringing forth some serious game mods changing how the game looked and felt. EverQuest, aka EverCrack. This game not only met the standard for MMORPGs at the time, it set a new standard. Without it, would WoW be the same game as it is now? This game could suck a year of your life away and you would have thought only a month had passed. Alone in the Dark. Wow, did this game give me goose…

Wherever possible, we finish a game before finalising the 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 the reviews section is to help you make buying decisions. ALPHAS & BETAS This means we’ll review any released alpha, beta or otherwise unfinished game that you can currently buy. For these games, we won’t assign a score, but we will tell you whether they’re worth your time in their current state. DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT DLC might be hours-long new missions for a game, or it might be a single new item. Either way, if we think you want to know about it, we’ll review it. THEY’RE BACK Whenever there’s a bargain or re-release…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? An open-world stealth sim rooted in the series’ complex history. EXPECT TO PAY  £45 DEVELOPER Kojima Productions PUBLISHER Konami REVIEWED ON Intel I5 4460@3.2GHz, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 MULTIPLAYER Coming soon LINK www.konami.jp/mgs5 I’ve failed this assassination mission three times now. Each attempt, while searching for an enemy informant who can tell me where my target is, I’m almost immediately spotted by an enemy guard tower in a nearby camp. Spooked by the sudden gunfire, my potential victim makes a prompt getaway by helicopter. The chopper moves too fast for me to hit it, and it’s gone. Mission failed. But how about this: screw the informant. How can my target escape if I make sure there’s no helicopter to begin with? The…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Zombie survival horror, set in an overrun London. EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Straight Right PUBLISHER Ubisoft REVIEWED ON Intel i7 x980 3.33GHz, 9GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.bit.ly/1KDelej The PC port of Ubisoft’s first-person survival horror game ZombiU , Zombi takes place in an undead-infested London. After stumbling into a safehouse you begin undertaking missions for its unseen caretaker. With only a small backpack to carry what you find, you’ll constantly have to make tough choices about what supplies to take or leave behind as you progress through the story missions. While a lone zombie isn’t much of a threat, facing several at once is extremely hazardous. It often takes several shots…

1 HEADQUARTERS This is where you start main story missions, and where most of the adults seem to hang out. 2 AIRSHIP STATION The airship station lets you quick-travel to different parts of the map, for a price. 3 CLASSROOM My favourite bit, because it has a Tonberry (ominous knife-wielding tiny man) perched on the teacher’s desk. 4 CHOCOBO RANCH There’s a whole part of the school dedicated to breeding the series’ iconic yellow chickens. 5 COMMON ROOM May as well be the common room from any of the Harry Potter films. Looks comfy.…

PAPA SANGRE A game for phones that takes place in the underworld, where you tap the screen to walk and navigate past monsters in the gloom. ROCK VIBE A music game based on Guitar Hero that swaps the latter’s scrolling fretboard for vibrations that tell you when to strum. THREE MONKEYS A game that casts you as a hero blind from birth – and thus, best equipped to save a world plunged into darkness. AUDIOQUAKE A modified version of Quake that uses continuous audio cues to tell you where you are and whether you’re currently being shot.…

DUNCAN WU Your foster brother and a former cop; perhaps understandably less than psyched for shadowrunning. GOBBET A rat Shaman whose hobbies include melting flesh from bones and hitting sod all with her SMG. RACTER The Russian drone enthusiast who occupies your ship’s basement-cum-steel foundry. We’ve all got one. ISOBEL Dwarf and decker, whose mission in life is to make megacorps regret their choice of password. GAICHU Sure, he needs human flesh to survive, but who wouldn’t want a bulletproof samurai on-side?…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? An expansion set in Eír Glanfath’s snowy north. EXPECT TO PAY £11 DEVELOPER Obsidian Entertainment PUBLISHER Paradox Interactive REVIEWED ON GeForce GTX 970, Intel i5-3570K @ 3.4GHz, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK eternity.obsidian.net If Pillars of Eternity is Baldur’s Gate , then The White March is Icewind Dale – and not just because they both feature chilly, snow-covered settings. The focus in this DLC expansion is squarely on combat and dungeon-crawling, so anyone looking to sink their teeth into a rich story will be disappointed. But if you can’t get enough of Pillars’s deep turn-based combat, and like a challenge, it may be worth a…

GTX 950 GAMING 2G MSI £140 The old GTX 750 Ti was one of my favourite GPUs ever; ruthlessly efficient and able to deliver genuine 1080p gaming from a bus-powered card. The GTX 950 is the modern update to that GPU, but with its 90W TDP it needs wiring-in to the PSU. That’s a real shame, but this card now gets dangerously close to GTX 960 performance at a cheaper price. www.msi.com KRAKEN PRO Razer £65 I can understand why it happens, but it doesn’t mean I like the fact gaming headsets almost always have an overinflated bass sensation. The Kraken Pro loves the bass, but when you’re not in a booming firefight audio feels unbalanced. The ear-cups are also slightly small and create an uncomfortable vacuum feel around the…

MOTHERBOARD ROG Maximus VIII Hero Asus £172 Fantastic overclocking and stability, with a great UEFI BIOS from Asus. M.2, USB 3.1 and on-board power, reset, CMOS, etc, buttons. PROCESSOR Core i7-6700K Intel £263 Intel’s new top-of-the-line Skylake processor. Its new chipset includes important memory/ storage speed boosts. GRAPHICS CARD GTX 980 Gaming 4G MSI £415 Right now the GTX 980 is the best value single-GPU card for ultra 1080p and 1440p gaming, bar none. COOLER H90 Corsair £75 Quiet even under heavy load, the H90 gets the cooling job done with a single 140mm radiator, easily fitting a variety of cases. MEMORY Ripjaws V Series DDR4 2666 16GB G.SKILL £116 16GB of fast DDR4. RAM speeds make only a small difference, but the 2666 starting speed is stable and widely…

CHRIS THURSTEN THIS MONTH Messed with Two-Face’s WiFi, hid the Penguin’s Kindle. ALSO PLAYED Dota 2, Smite, Dragon Age: Inquisition Perhaps in tribute to the issues that had it removed from sale, I’ve been playing Batman: Arkham Knight not as a man, a symbol, or something more than both of those, but as a persistent technical problem. I’m crouching on an overhead wire above a rooftop occupied by the Arkham Knight’s militia. Red searchlight beams attached to sentry guns sweep the dark corners. One soldier controls a buzzing drone that flies in a lazy orbit just below me. Through detective mode I can see a handful of other armed guards, including one with a deadly shotgun, and a medic with a defibrillator. Over time, Arkham Asylum’s self-contained puzzle-stealth has given…

1 MAKE MY SONIC A character creator that riffs on Sonic fandom’s love of drawing new characters (Google your name + ‘the hedgehog’ and see what comes up), and then adds procedurally generated names. 2 SONIC MOVIE MAKER Film six-second video clips of Sonic and friends. Just ignore that they are frequently splayed out under cars, rolling around in a vaguely sexual manner or on fire. 3 MY ROOMMATE SONIC Sit on a couch watching TV with Sonic while Dr Robotnik, watching, texts you suggestions on how to flirt with him. Yes, this can be played with an Oculus Rift.…

A few pieces of story DLC were released for Mafia II. Joe’s Adventure is the best, revealing what Joe got up to while Vito was in prison. It has some fun missions, but a clumsy car chase on a frozen lake and a forced stealth section sour the experience. Jimmy’s Vendetta is very different, scattering 32 missions around Empire Bay concerned with combat and driving rather than storytelling. Neither are essential, but Joe’s Adventure is worth a look if you fancy playing as Vito’s loudmouth partner in crime.…

The Spy doesn’t punch in and out of a building unless it’s some kind of lair or a launch party for a disruptive new San Francisco tech startup. In The Spy’s line of work, after all, you get to choose who and what you punch – and which hours you work, which slow Tuesdays you assign to founding extrajudicial paramilitary groups and which weekends you spend ignoring crises of all kinds. Not so for the hardworking and undoubtedly talented people who spent years creating Metal Gear Solid V. In August the Japanese financial paper Nikkei published an article detailing the alleged working conditions at Kojima Productions during the development of the game, rumoured to have factored into Hideo Kojima’s decision to leave the series. Konami is alleged to have installed…

1 CPU CONTAINER You don’t want to go so extreme that LN2 starts sloshing about. The CPU container is a thermo-conductive coolant pot mounted over your processor. 2 K-TYPE PROBE CPUs respond differently across the range of nitrogen temperatures, so it helps to know what those temperatures are. This does exactly that. 3 VASELINE If you like your PC pretty, LN2 isn’t for you. Components must be sealed against condensing water. No specialists tools needed here: just regular Vaseline. 4 EXPERT ADVICE Unless you have a lot of spare parts, watch the pros before decanting your first flask of liquid nitrogen. Roodt’s tutorials start here: www.bit.ly/roodtcooling .…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE December DEVELOPER Io Interactive PUBLISHER Square Enix LINK www.hitman.com There was a moment, right at the start of Hitman’s Gamescom presentation, where Agent 47 walks in front of a news broadcaster’s camera. She cuts the take, and mutters something under her breath about the interruption. It’s a seemingly small, insignificant moment, but one that gives me hope that the new Hitman could be the best yet. “Say you drop a weapon somewhere,” Io’s studio head, Hannes Seifert, says. “A guard seeing the weapon will go there and check it out. If it’s a bomb, he will disarm it. He will bring it to the armoury in the basement. It means that you can make guys smuggle stuff in…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 DEVELOPER From Software PUBLISHER Namco Bandai LINK www.darksouls3.com The hour I spent with Dark Souls III recently wasn’t quite a stellar experience. It was running at 30fps (mostly consistently, though one rooftop area sent that dipping into the teens) and a locked 1080p. The 27-inch monitor two feet from my face didn’t do the game any favours, either. The early 2016 release is still months away, however, and the plan is to make the game as good, if not better, than Dark Souls II on PC. I’m excited to see the PC become an increasingly important platform for the series, but at the same time, I came away feeling that this may be the instalment that triggers fatigue. Every time someone…

1 SQUEAKY BUM TIME This thing that looks like a mouse pointer is my carrier, the X Hakuryu. I’m heading in exactly the opposite direction to the enemy on autopilot. The hollow bombs next to me are squadrons waiting to land. 2 A MAZE ZINGER This is where only cruisers and destroyers fear to tread – battleships and carriers would be sitting ducks to torpedoes and guns in this mess. 3 ALL YOUR BASE This is the objective of every map, the base. Domination maps have up to five of these and you can win a game without firing a shot, just by capturing and holding the flags. 4 THE HUNT FOR RED BOATS Red is the enemy. These three ships have clustered together – a tough battleship shielding two…

00%-10% A game of absolutely no value. Are you playing one of these games? Take 3d6 emotional damage. Examples Big Brother 11%-39% Yikes. Technically broken, or so fundamentally flawed that it’s ultimately not worth any time or money. Bad. Examples The War Z 40%-49% This game is functional, but majorly flawed and disappointing. Examples Firefall, Star Trek 50%-59% Mediocre. If it has any interesting ideas, they don’t work well. Might suffer from bugs or technical issues. Examples Primordia, Painkiller: Hell & Damnation 60%-69% An interesting idea poorly expressed, or a derivative idea executed averagely. Comes with caveats. Examples SimCity, Mortal Kombat X 70%-79% Good, but not a classic. This score is a recommendation, just not a glowing one. Examples Broken Age, Shadowrun Returns 80%-89% A great game with exceptional moments…

D-HORSE The easiest way to get around Afghanistan without stealing an enemy vehicle. STRENGTHS Offers a quick way out of hairy situations. You can shoot from horseback. WEAKNESSES A bit awkward to steer, has no function in combat by himself. QUIET Enemy sniper-turned-ally who wears a ludicrous bikini-and-pants combo to battle for some reason. STRENGTHS Picks off enemies at a distance, gets deadlier with time. WEAKNESSES Isn’t always that trigger-savvy in the heat of battle. D-DOG Wild dog puppy who Snake rescues early on, which later grows into a big scary bastard. STRENGTHS Senses enemies around you, and can attack or distract soldiers. WEAKNESSES None, he is a dog. D-WALKER An armoured mech walker with custom weapon and gadget kits. A hi-tech marriage of dog and horse. STRENGTHS Fast and…

MAX MAX 1979 Max is shot in the knee in the original film. In the game, Max will clutch that injured knee and limp for a few moments after taking a fall. ROAD WARRIOR 1981 Max had a faithful dog, imaginatively named ‘Dog’, and he’s got one in the game, who helps him sniff out landmines. BEYOND THUND ERDOME 1985 In the game, there’s a brawl in a metal dome as the crowd chants “Two men enter, one man leaves.” FURY ROAD 2015 Like the film, the game features War Boys and Buzzards, deadly electrical storms, and someone is even used as a ‘blood bag’.…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A real-time stealth puzzler with 100 levels and a level editor. EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Bithell Games PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Core i5-3570, 8GB RAM, GTX Titan MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.volumegame.net Volume is a pretty good stealth game. Its title could be Pretty Good Stealth Game , and I would agree with it. As a futuristic Robin Hood tale, it’s not quite so good. It’s often amusing, but its comments on wealth distribution and moral responsibility are ultimately pretty mundane. Meanwhile, its protagonist, Rob Locksley, sounds so bored I expected him to give up on saving the world halfway through to watch YouTube videos. As 100 stealth levels, Volume is pretty fun. It’s played from an overhead perspective,…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? An open-world cyberpunk strategy game. EXPECT TO PAY £22 DEVELOPER 5 Lives Studios PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON GeForce GTX 970, Intel i5-3570K @ 3.4GHz, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.satellitereign.com The rain never stops falling on Satellite Reign’s isometric future-city. It’s derivative of countless cyberpunk cityscapes, but amazingly atmospheric regardless. Video ads cycle on huge billboards, reflected in puddles on the pavement below. Police drones float past, spotlights scanning for trouble in the gloom, and futuristic cars buzz along the roads. It’s like Blade Runner if Ridley Scott had filmed it with a tilt-shift lens. It’s in this dystopian urban sprawl that you, owner of a small corporation with big ideas, must make your mark – which is easier said…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A cartoony baseball game. EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Metalhead PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Intel i7 x980 3.33GHz, 9GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 MULTIPLAYER Local only LINK www.superme gabaseball.com This is a casual and heightened version of baseball. Lantern-jawed players pound their tree-trunk bats against the plate, burst into tears after strikeouts, and sweat rivers when they’re under pressure. It’s still a well-made baseball game, though. The controls are easy to learn but take real practice to master, and getting a clutch hit, making an amazing play, and scoring the winning run are just as satisfying as they are in more serious baseball sims. Unfortunately there’s no online multiplayer to speak of, only local. There’s no baseball economy and no signing, trading, or…

It’s easy to think yourself into misanthropy. To transpose your own darkest emotions into the souls of the folk who love you. To dismiss altruism, assuming that your sense of debt was their intention, rather than a desire to help. Misanthropy wears the cloak of brutal honesty, like cynicism wears the flayed skin of critical thought. Postal plays to the maelstrom of hard-done-by public injustice. But its anger is insincere, its humour empty. And worst, the isometric shooting is less engaging than the anti-intellectual bullshit that pops up between levels. It’s not even offensive – it’s like Scrappy Doo trying to start a fight with a bored ghost.…

MOTHERBOARD H81M-P33 MSI £34 A bargain-priced microATX board that pairs nicely with the Pentium G3258, letting you overclock into 4GHz+ territory. PROCESSOR Pentium Anniversary G3258 Intel £48 Ludicrously cheap and overclockable, the dual-core G3258 rivals far more expensive processors in gaming performance. GRAPHICS CARD AMD R9 380 2GB Sapphire £159 AMD’s R9 380 is a refreshed R9 285, but it still packs enough power to handle 1080p gaming at a decent price. COOLER Hyper 212 EVO Cooler Master £25 A legendary cooler, still the best for its very reasonable price. Overclock to your heart’s content with this. MEMORY Crucial Ballistix Sport 1600MHz (8GB) Crucial £40 Cheap, low-profile, and reliable. Does its job. The best 8GB you’ll find. POWER SUPPLY EVGA 500W 80PLUS Certified ATX12V/EPS12V EVGA £33 A reliable PSU with…

MATT ELLIOTT THIS MONTH Fixed history in Medieval II: Total War. ALSO PLAYED Rocket League, Rocket League, Rocket League Stories in Total War appear without warning, like aunts on damp Sunday afternoons. Attila and Rome II deliberately construct these stories, letting you make decisions that nudge the narrative in whichever direction you choose, but I prefer the accidental drama of Medieval II. I’m drawn back to Medieval II: Kingdoms after reading about the Crusades: a compelling period of history, rich in tales of dashing Norman princes, religious fervour and the taut diplomacy of the Byzantine Empire. Specifically, the battle of Manzikert, in which the once-supreme imperial army was crushed by the Turks. It makes me sad, because the Byzantines were always my favourite faction, which is a bit like picking…

ANDY KELLY THIS MONTH Enjoyed a game-inspired holiday. ALSO PLAYED Pillars of Eternity, Satellite Reign Last month I spent a few days in the Outer Hebrides, on the Scottish island of Lewis and Harris. An unusual destination for a summer holiday, sure, but it’s a wonderful place – especially if you want to escape the bustle of city life. It was, in part, a trip inspired by Dear Esther. I found The Chinese Room’s barren Hebridean landscape so evocative that I had to see the real thing. Returning to the game after my break, I immediately recognised the rugged brush, craggy rocks and slate-grey skies. It’s an uncanny recreation of a part of the world that’s desolate and empty, but also strikingly beautiful. It’s amazing how good the game version…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASED August 2010 PUBLISHER 2K Games DEVELOPER 2K Czech LINK www.bit.ly/1hYwIz7 Reviews for Mafia II were mixed. Most of the negative ones complained that, compared to Grand Theft Auto, its open world was sterile and empty. But they were missing the point. If you play Mafia expecting GTA with hats, you’re going to be disappointed. Play it as a story-led linear shooter and it’s one of the best examples on PC. The city is there, sure, but it’s really just a backdrop. A detailed film set designed to give the story a rich sense of place. Empire Bay is a local corner shop to GTA V’s giant department store, but it’s…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASED October 2012 OUR REVIEW PCG 246, 92% EXPECT TO PAY £20, Steam LINK www.dishonored.com Dishonored without Dunwall would still be an excellent game. It nearly was. Arkane’s supernatural immersive sim was almost set in medieval Japan, and almost in London in 1666, before it settled on a city of its own creation. This is a game about meticulously crafted environments waiting to be cracked apart with your assassin’s toolkit: it’s about power and freedom and cunning, about you and your choices. It could be set just about anywhere, but I’m glad it wasn’t. Dunwall is one of my favourite videogame places, providing the context and atmosphere that allows Dishonored’s well-designed systems to output an experience with real artistic integrity. In…

FROM THE HOUND PITS PUB Look out from the shoreline to spot many mission locations, including the palace and Kaldwin’s bridge. Keep an eye on that clocktower in the distance. FROM THE DISTILLERY DISTRICT Turn around after leaving Samuel’s boat and you’ll see that same clocktower. You’re a few miles further down the river, on the same side as the Hound Pits. FROM KALDWIN’S BRIDGE You cross Kaldwin’s Bridge from the Hound Pits side to the clocktower side, and from the top you can see how the bend in the river conceals mission locations. FROM THE ESTATE DISTRICT The Boyle manor takes place right beneath the clocktower. By this point, Corvo’s missions have taken him all the way along the coast and into the upper city.…