Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2015 i PC Gamer

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 DEVELOPER The Creative Assembly PUBLISHER Sega LINK www.warhammer.totalwar.com I’m in The Creative Assembly’s Horsham studio to see Total War: Warhammer again. This time I’m here for two things: an introduction to the Dwarfs and to play another Quest Battle, The Ambush of Thundering Falls. As ever, the devs are saving our first experience of the campaign for when they’ve actually got around to making the thing. The Dwarfs’ aim, at the campaign level, is to right ancient wrongs. “They have their own unique mission system where, if you do something to piss them off, it will launch a grudge mission,” says CA’s Jim Whitston, lead level designer. “They have to resolve all their grudges before they achieve their victory conditions.” The…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE TBA PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER Taleworlds LINK www.taleworlds.com Accessibility and difficulty aren’t mutually exclusive concepts. A lack of accessibility does create a level of difficulty, but not necessarily an enjoyable challenge. For Taleworlds, finding the right mix of both is the key to Warband sequel Mount & Blade 2 . Accessibility means a better UI that puts essential information within easy reach of the main screen. It also means a storyline – a guided chain of quests that will introduce key features and systems. “Once they’ve progressed and know how to play the game,” says Taleworlds’ founder Armagan Yavuz, “the storyline should take a backstep and just give the player general goals and options.” Mount &…

WHERE TO FIND YOUR CODE PRINT EDITION There should be a red card opposite this page with your codes on it. If it’s missing or looks like it’s been tampered with, tell your newsagent! If you have any problems at all, contact us via the address below. DIGITAL EDITION Codes will be sent out to digital subscribers – including Zinio and iOS – by email shortly after we’re on sale. If you’re reading on iOS, you need to opt-in to share information with the publisher when you subscribe in order for us to contact you. Sending out the emails takes a couple of days, so you may not receive yours straight away. If you didn’t opt-in or you’ve only bought a single issue, see below for further instructions. ANY PROBLEMS?…

Deep in a theatre in rainy Prague, bionic commando Adam Jensen is trapped in a closet. The door is the only exit, and that’s guarded by a bipedal robot loaded up with machine guns. There must be a way out; Deus Ex is all about choice. I search for a vent, because there’s always a vent. But with the exception of a big bin, the room is empty. I have fled into the most featureless and poorly ventilated space in the Deus Ex universe. I consider my abilities: my electric dash will get me killed slightly faster than ambling into fire. Cloaking isn’t going to help either. I press a button to bring up my gun. From here you can switch ammo types, add silencers and…

After 2014, when Alien: Isolation blew us away and The Evil Within reprised some of survival horror’s most well-regarded tropes, I was a little worried 2015 would be a quiet year for horror – outside of an endless nightmare spawn of bi-weekly Five Nights At Freddy’s sequels. Not so. Soma, from the creators of Amnesia and the Penumbra series, is Frictional’s most extravagantly realised horror setting yet: an underwater facility filled with ominous living technology. Andy was more taken with the world than the game in his review, but the fact that Soma has found an audience so quickly shows there’s still a healthy appetite for horror on PC when it’s done properly. Isolation might be the only one of its kind, but it’s far from the only horror show…

SAMUEL ROBERTS Specialist in FPS, RPG Currently playing Rocket League This month Got bumped down to ‘Bronze I’ in Rocket League 3v3 and wept. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Action, RPG Currently playing else Heart.Break () This month Hacked water and turned it into beer, like some kind of Happy Shopper Jesus. ANGUS MORRIS ON Specialist in Adventure, clowns Currently playing Dropsy This month Braved a fearsome ‘no clowns’ policy to buy a vampire mask. RICHARD COBBETT Specialist in Adventure, strategy Currently playing Big Pharma This month Became a drug dealer, but a wealthy one, so it’s absolutely fine. PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in RPG, strategy Currently playing Dragon Age: Inquisition This month Bid farewell to a great BioWare game, but screw the Deep Roads. MATT ELLIOTT Specialist in Action, puzzle Currently…

PIXIE A spirited hacktivist. Sebastian falls in love with her, but she has a boyfriend already. Damn. HANK A laid-back porter at the Hotel Devotchka who teaches you the basics of hacking with the modifier. B E R N D A beer-loving German tourist who shares the hotel with you. I hacked his bank account. I feel bad. MOZ A charming man with a marvellous quiff who looks suspiciously like a certain Mancunian singer. BOWER A sharp-suited bureaucrat from the sinister Computer Ministry. Fashionable, but not to be trusted. ARAKI An enigmatic woman of few words. One of the best hackers in the Lodge, but has no time for small talk.…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Multitasking space-shooter about cooperation and lasers. EXPECT TO PAY £11 DEVELOPER Asteroid Base PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON i5-3230 CPU, 8GB RAM MULTIPLAYER 2 players LINK loversinadangerous spacetime.com Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a colourful two-player cooperative shooter in a randomly generated universe. It’s also an examination of character. How well can you cooperate with others in stressful situations? Do you react rapidly to threatening changes? If you plan on spending an eternity alone, will you take a dog or a cat? (Correct answer: dog.) It’s a game that succeeds by asking you to do too much with too little. Your spacecraft is sliced in half like a peach, revealing eight rooms serving different functions. One controls the engines, another the shields.…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A rotating vehicle simulator pregnant with FMV. EXPECT TO PAY £11 DEVELOPER No Goblin PUBLISHER In-house MULTIPLAYER None FIRST REVIEWED N/A LINK www.roundaboutgame.com Between the work of No Goblin’s Dan Teasdale and Her Story , FMV games are better than they’ve ever been. And yes, I realise that’s akin to praising the least inflamed cluster of haemorrhoids in the geriatric ward. Roundabout transplants Kuru Kuru Kururin – a beloved Gameboy title in which you navigate a spinning stick around a maze – into a city, adds the psychotic gratification of making bloodspats of innocents, and injects a plot that involves, at one point, learning to swim from a drug-induced skeleton. The acting is perfectly matched in its…

U32E850R Samsung £825 Boasting 32 inches of Samsung Ultra HD PLS panelled beauty, this massive monitor sounds promising. But for such a high price tag you want something really special, like the ultrawide Acer opposite. This too sports FreeSync, but without the slight increase in response rate the Acer offers. www.samsung.com 80 % VORTEX S PC Specialist £799 The smartly specced Vortex S is a Core i5 Skylake gaming PC around half the price of the Core i7-based rigs I checked out last month, with excellent 1080p performance. The spec includes a GTX 960 graphics card and a 240GB SSD, making this a great all-rounder and good base to build from. www.pcspecialist.co.uk 83 % G29 Logitech £299 If you’re serious about racing games – whether the new Dirt Rally or…

TOTAL £2714 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…

THIS MONTH Spent too much on FIFA packs, must now eat canned tuna. ALSO PLAYED How Do You Do It? Before I lost my ambition and people skills around the age 12 or so, I always said that if I became a football manager, step one of my career would be locking everyone in a room for 24 hours so they could get to know each other and – unless I opened the door to find they’d all fought to the death – hopefully play better football as a result. Sadly, there’s no such option in FIFA 16’s new Ultimate Team Draft. Ultimate Team is essentially a trading card metagame within FIFA 16 where you buy and sell players online to build dream squads. In Draft, the biggest addition since…

1 C I G A R Churchill famously loved chomping cigars, and I hear he also battled the odd zombie after the war. Reflect on WWII, and fill your lungs with tar and nicotine, with this. www.bit.ly/KillingGear1 2 POPE HAT Zombies are notoriously anti-organised-religion, which is why this extravagant papal hat should be your first line of defence in the endless war against the undead. www.bit.ly/KillingGear2 3 FLATCAP The must-have accessory for every shotgun-wielding country nut. Wear with a beard and thick-rimmed glasses for the perfect ‘2015 Guy’ party costume. www.bit.ly/KillingGear3…

1 POOL OF RADIANCE  The first game that brought a version of AD&D to the home computer. You control a party of six adventurers attempting to aid the overrun city of Phlan, through first-person exploration, conversation and third-person mass combat. 2 EYE OF THE BEHOLDER II  Taking a first-person click-to-attack perspective, Eye of the Beholder was the first VGA RPG from SSI and spawned two sequels. The first sequel is the best of the trilogy, with much better interactions and a larger area to explore. 3 GATEWAY TO THE SAVAGE FRONTIER The introduction of the Neverwinter region to videogames, which would later lead to Icewind Dale and the many games called Neverwinter or Neverwinter Nights. Features dwarves, giant squid, and more. 4 DUNGEON HACK  A first-person roguelike, this 1993 game…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER Amplitude Studios LINK www.yourvision-theirfuture.com The four Xs of the 4X genre each describe an outward action. Explore: you’re discovering new land. Expand: you’re taking that land. Exploit: you’re mining that land. Exterminate: you’re murdering that land’s former owners. You’re never asked to care about what’s happening inside your empire. Your population is happy just to not be on fire. With Endless Space 2, Amplitude wants to turn the focus inward. Its citizens aren’t a homogeneous blob of approval. Rather, each belongs to a distinct race, culture or political group. The team show me a mid-game scenario playing as the Sophons – Endless Space’s tech-focused geek squad. They’re weak, fearful, and have just discovered a nearby race of world-eating machine insects. Unsurprisingly, they’re…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE TBA DEVELOPER Paradox PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.heartsofiron4.com Hearts of Iron IV is a game that asks ‘what if?’ It’s a historical wargame featuring myriad ways for history to fork off into theoretical directions. What if France had declared war in response to Germany’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland? What if Poland had become part of the Axis? What if Einstein had gone back in time to – no, wait, that was Red Alert . Then there’s the biggest ‘what if’ of all. What if Paradox took its World War II grand strategy series and tidied it up with a clean, easy to understand interface? My own attempts to play Hearts of Iron III have always ended in failure, thanks largely to the…

Kids these days have no idea that Star Wars games used to be amazing. I was a young man in their golden age, back around 1995-2004. I have a strong memory of buying the X-Wing Alliance issue of PC Gamer, with the brilliant image of the Millennium Falcon racing towards the Death Star that went on the CD-ROM cover. And I have seen many interactive Battles of Hoth – enough of them that I can tell you the best one is, controversially, in Shadows of the Empire, because it’s impossible to use harpoons and tow cables in the original Battlefront version. EA’s new Battlefront has a Battle of Hoth that blows all previous efforts clean out of the snowscape, partly because it’s obviously had money thrown at it, but also…

Time to upgrade Andy In PCG 283, Andy Kelly says he doesn’t use his Microsoft account on login with Windows 10 because it’s “much slower”. When I login with mine, it takes literally an eye blink to get to the desktop. While I haven’t found Cortana to be that useful so far, I see no reason to disable it. I’m not especially paranoid about being tracked and the RAM and CPU usage is negligible unless your machine sucks. Perhaps it’s time to upgrade, Andy? Mike Fulton The time Andy’s referring to is how long it takes to search his desk for the scrap of paper containing his old, unused Microsoft account password. As for Cortana, even small reductions in CPU usage are welcome, especially if, like Andy, you need tens…

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…

DROPSY Voluminous clown trousers ideal for stashing items; rubbery, malformed arms are an optimal hugging tool. Performance slightly marred by PTSD. DOG Expertise in earthworks and excavation; can double as a gravedigger should the need arise. Made happiest by weeing on fire hydrants or similar. MOUSE Takes small spaces in its tiny stride; enjoys provoking robots in downtime. Has initial trouble overcoming fear of waistcoated rats. CANARY Loves: flight; birdseed; knocking things off carefully arranged shelves; adequate funeral arrangements. Hates: mines.…

FIFA’s life-swallowing online offering is stronger than ever NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? FIFA without the brown paper envelopes stuffed with money. EXPECT TO PAY £50 DEVELOPER EA Canada PUBLISHER EA Sports REVIEWED ON GTX 980 Ti, i7-3770K CPU, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER Online, co-op and competitive LINK www.easports.com Reviewing FIFA 16 for PC is a tricky proposition. After a certain point, there’s a limit to how much you can improve something like this. Sure, EA Canada has yet again laid out an all encompassing soccer simulating smorgasbord that boasts immaculate presentation and dizzying production values. But it’s hard to fight off the feeling that this season’s effort is more a glorified DLC pack than the full priced annual update you’d hope for. No Touch Dribbling.…

Empty barracks doomed my expedition more than any other cause NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A wasteland caravan management sim. EXPECT TO PAY £16 DEVELOPER Skyshine Games PUBLISHER Versus Evil REVIEWED ON Windows 8, Core i5, 8GB RAM, GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.gobedlam.com From inside my Dozer, I watch the wasteland roll by. A fortress on wheels, the Dozer carries thousands of passengers, a squad of soldiers, numerous supplies, and vats of artificial meat. It’s a brutal solution to a brutal problem: get these pilgrims across an apocalyptic desert to the paradise beyond. The hostile gangs of mutants out there are one kind of obstacle, but the harsh laws of supply and demand are a tougher one. Bedlam is a turn-based roguelike about taking risks and making hard…

URSA MAJOR “I see a star-crossed liaison with a burly, persistent stranger. They’ll try to grasp you in their big, strong arms, but you should aim to challenge their head, not their body. ‘Ursa Major’ is French for ‘big military bear’, you know.” CETUS “You will meet a lithe stranger who loves the ocean. Wear them down with physical activity (shoot them) then challenge their intelligence (shoot them, but this time in the head). You will end up coiled together for eternity.” ORION “Your fate is intertwined with that of an outdoorsy, fashion-conscious stranger. They might seem icy and aloof at first, but your unquenchable passions will soon... heat things up. (That means you should burn him.)” KING CEPHEUS “It’ll take a while to break down the defences of this…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A farewell to Inquisition, and the Inquisitor. EXPECT TO PAY £12 DEVELOPER BioWare PUBLISHER EA REVIEWED ON Intel i5-3570K, 8GB RAM, GeForce GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.dragonage.com As Chris pointed out when he reviewed Jaws of Hakkon (PCG 279, 80%), BioWare’s DLC releases tend to fall into a few broad categories. Jaws of Hakkon was a quality side-chapter that stood aside from Inquisition’s main campaign. The recent Descent was as disposable as Mass Effect 3 ’s Omega – only worse, because it was set in the bloody Deep Roads. Inquisition’s final DLC, Trespasser…

I tried to find a legitimate copy of Metal Gear Solid on PC, but nothing came up. So I’ve taken the bold and lazy step of reviewing other games that came up in that search. This remake of Metal Slug 2 might not have kick-started a genre, but it did come to be the side-scrolling run-and-gun’s most unexpectedly charming representative – mainly because of the impressive bosses and likeable animations. Topless hostages magicking you a collectable; dramatic death heart-clutches; and best of all, the moment the word “IN!” flashes above a camel you’re supposed to , “ON ” I’m choosing to interpret this as a camel sex joke.…

TOTAL £787 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…

THIS MONTH Rescued an old friend for the second time. ALSO PLAYED Dropsy, SOMA It’s been 46 hours since I last played Phantom Limbs, the first proper mission in Metal Gear Solid V. It’s a simple one: infiltrate an enemy base and rescue a prisoner, Miller. When I first did it, I only had the most basic equipment and was still getting used to the game. But now I have all manner of high-tech gadgets and modded weapons, and I know it inside out. So I thought it’d be fun to try it again, but this time fully kitted out. I equip Snake with a level 3 tranq pistol, which has a long range and an extended clip, and a non-lethal sniper rifle with a suppressor. I’m wearing an upgraded…

THIS MONTH Shivved a guy on my block for being mildly sarcastic. ALSO PLAYED GTA Online, Rocket League I’ve just wandered into a prisoner’s cell and beaten him to death because two guys asked me to. I’m new in Butcher Bay, the sci-fi prison constructed exclusively to detain gruff men, and the only place the guards can’t stop you killing someone is in a prison cell. Start a fight outside, in say, the courtyard, and you get zapped by the guards and carried back to your cell. My reward for killing the prisoner, known as Molina, is a knuckleduster and a bit of respect from the other inmates. It’s not the sort of choice I would make in an RPG, but for Riddick, a man who killed a bunch of…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASED 2008 PUBLISHER Bethesda Softworks DEVELOPER Bethesda Game Studios LINK www.fallout.bethsoft.com When you emerge from Vault 101 you’re blinded by a bright, white light. Having spent your entire life in an underground fallout shelter, you’ve never seen the sun before. Then your eyes adjust and the Capital Wasteland fades into view as Inon Zur’s haunting score swells. This is the moment that defines Fallout 3 , and all of Bethesda’s RPGs: gazing across that bleak, broken vista brimming with possibilities, and deciding where to go and what to do first. Seven years on, it still has impact. With Fallout 4 on the horizon, I thought it was time for another journey through the nuke-battered ruins of Washington DC. Stepping out onto that hill, watching the vista…

MONEY DOWN Phil invests $40,000 to start the strand, the goal of which is to liberate a prisoner. FIRST GUNFIGHT Packed in a shitty hatchback, PCG battles its way through a gang hideout to steal a plane. BUS THEFT Now the team has to steal a prison bus. One problem: the attack copter guarding it. BOAT RAID Tom H and Sam steal the prisoner’s car from an enormous container ship. KILLING SPREE The gang splits into two teams, and has to shoot lots of guys for unclear reasons. PRISON BREAK Tom H posing as a prisoner, Tom S as a guard, they drive the bus into the prison. TA K E- O F F Flying the getaway plane, Phil rescues both Toms. Samuel defends in the chopper. S U C…

C H I N ATOW N 1 9 74 An Oscar-winning neo-noir mystery starring Jack Nicholson as dogged private detective Jake Gittes. A modern classic, to which L.A. Noire owes a lot. L.A. CONFIDENTIAL 1997 Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, and Kevin Spacey give career-best performances in this tense thriller set on the crime-ridden streets of post-war LA. DOUBLE INDEMNITY 1944 Perhaps the best example of the film noir genre. This beautifully-shot tale of an insurance scam gone horribly wrong still looks stunning 70 years later. MULHOLLAND DRIVE 2001 David Lynch’s typically dreamlike ode to the city of Los Angeles is among his best work, revealing the ominous underside of Hollywood.…

GRAND THEFT AUTO V www.grandtheftauto.com GTA V’s singleplayer is a tour-de-force of open-world design, but it’s the online heists that keep me coming back. The masterstroke is giving each player a clearly flagged role, thus ensuring that everyone has their moment in the spotlight. It feels amazing when these intricate plans finally come together. TEAM FORTRESS 2 www.teamfortress.com Don’t be put off by its millions of updates. Team Fortress 2 is as pure and enjoyable as the day it first released. Yes, the Scout can throw milk at people now. Yes, the Heavy has boxing gloves made from mutated bread. It doesn’t really matter. Put enough bullets in them, and they all die the same. HITMAN: BLOOD MONEY www.hitman.com Stealth in Hitman is a fascinating thing. Most levels feature public…

HIGHS LOWS Divinity: Original Sin 2 Larian has hired veteran RPG scribe Chris Avellone to pen its upcoming sequel. Rocket League Still one of the most intense, exciting online multiplayer experiences on PC. Far Cry Primal Ubisoft’s series takes an interesting new angle, throwing players back to the Stone Age, complete with mammoths. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Square Enix has scrapped its daft ‘augment your pre-order’ scheme. Hooray. Dirt Rally A great Early Access rally sim, with constant updates. Do the developers ever sleep? Konami Turning beloved series like Silent Hill into pachinko machines. A tragedy. The Gamechangers The BBC’s GTA drama was cringeworthy and, Rockstar says, made up. Modding Too many games are making modding difficult, when it should be the opposite. Rock Band 4 Sadly, plastic instrument-based music…

Yes STEAM HAS GIVEN PEOPLE THE POWER TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST BAD PORTS No THIS WAS A ONE-OFF CASE BASED ON A HEATED FAN REACTION Samuel: I’d love to believe that it was solely the Steam refund policy that led to Batman: Arkham Knight being pulled from sale, after PC users were ambushed with such a terrible version of the game (which had banners all over Steam on launch day – a bit embarrassing), but I don’t think it was. The negative press and social media reaction to the port was, I would speculate, enough to make Rocksteady Studios feel like it had no other choice but to correct the multitude of problems it was plagued with. There’s never been backlash to a port like that before, and so I…

HEROES OF THE STORM What is it? Five-on-five lane pushin’ with an emphasis on unique map objectives. How is it judged? Best-of-three series on a rotating selection of maps. What’s the format? Group stages followed by a single-elimination bracket. The top two teams go to the World Championship at BlizzCon in November. My first experience of competitive Heroes of the Storm revealed a game that, at first glance, feels more passively cautious than its lane-pushing cousins. Despite its accelerated pace and focus on five-on-five battling, it’s also a heavily strategic game where a single death massively reduces a team’s chance to respond to threats. This powers a metagame that’s all about beefy warriors, mass-healing supports and a lot of roaming as a group. Throughout the two-day main event,…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Spring 2016 DEVELOPER Ghost Games PUBLISHER EA LINK www.needforspeed.com Welcome to the crazy world of 2015, where a Need For Speed game has more story than a Metal Gear Solid sequel. I should be more against it than I am: the word ‘bae’ is used twice in the first minute of the first cutscene without a trace of irony, for example, but it’s actually quite a fun way to structure a game that seems to be a best-of compilation of the series. Need For Speed’s story is conveyed through live-action cutscenes that sometimes insert your own car into the background, with five supporting characters that each represent a discipline in car culture: there’s speed, style, build, crew and…

We’re coming up to the biggest and best season of PC games in years. Making sure you’ve got all the best games during this time of year can be a costly endeavour, particularly as we hit November and there’s non-stop hits coming each week. The ideal scenario, of course, is to pay less for the big games you want to play this year and in the near-future. Better too, if you need to upgrade your PC, you want to get a better price on the components you need to make that happen. Beat My Price, from bespoke offers, gives you a way to save on the PC games you want to play, as well as the PC components you want. Find a product you want to buy from the likes…

Since the beginning of time (the ’80s) PC gamers have sought to change or modify their games. And since the days of San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto has always had an impressive modding scene. In GTA V on PC, the quality bar has already been set incredibly high after only six months – just look at the amazing creations we’re bringing you in this feature. Just one word of warning. While Rockstar hasn’t made a comprehensive statement about its policy on mods, it has said it will ban anyone taking mods online – a method of preventing cheating in GTA Online. I recommend uninstalling any mods before venturing online, just in case you set one off by mistake and get banned. You have been warned. STAR DESTROYER JJxOracle seems to…

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…

ALIEN Dark, industrial horror in an atmospheric and isolated setting. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Cold, hard sci-fi and a rogue AI. I, ROBOT Explores the morality of creating artificial intelligence. BATTLE STAR GALACT ICA Sentient machines turn on their creators. GHOST IN THE SHELL Digital people inhabiting machine bodies. THE THING A remote base stricken by an unknowable, powerful force. NEUROMANCER Artificial intelligence breaking free from its limitations. SYSTEM SHOCK 2 A villainous AI that uses people as avatars.…

Tweak the code in a glass of water to reduce your sleepiness, then drink it NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? An open-world adventure game with hacking. EXPECT TO PAY £19 DEVELOPER Erik Svedäng, et al PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON GeForce GTX 970, Intel i5-3570K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.elseheartbreak.com The world of else Heart.Break() is not like our own. In this strange place, atoms have been replaced with bits, enabling people to hack into, and alter, the very fabric of reality. With the right tools, you can dive into almost any object’s code, edit it, and change its behaviour – to solve problems, cause mischief, or just for fun. It’s also a game about love, friendship, and finding your place in the world –…

During one game, the ref was apparently bribed by my opponent NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Turn-based fantasy football, the roleplaying game. EXPECT TO PAY £35 DEVELOPER Cyanide Studios PUBLISHER Focus Home Interactive REVIEWED ON Windows 10, Intel i7 4GHz, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 Ti MULTIPLAYER 2 players, local, online LINK www.bloodbowl-game.com This is a turn-based fantasy boardgame loosely resembling American football. Functionally, it’s fairly simple: teams pulled from the Warhammer races do a lot of punching, grunting, and bleeding. Players position their athletes on the line of scrimmage, then take turns performing up to one action with each. Each athlete has a specialisation. You’re encouraged to tackle, maim, or kill anyone, whether on offence or defence. My favourite component is evaluating player movement. It’s simple strategic fun.…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A mix of puzzler, tycoon game and city builder, where you run your own pharmacology empire. EXPECT TO PAY £19 DEVELOPER Twice Circle PUBLISHER Positech Games REVIEWED ON i7, GTX 970, 8GB RAM MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.bigpharma game.com Headache? Blocked nose? Don’t mind being tormented by nightmares? Ask your doctor about Ibuprofane today – the cold medicine guaranteed to have you saying “Holy shit!” Just the latest product to roll off the proud conveyor belts at Big Pharma Inc, where our motto is “No disease too big or small, as long as it’s profitable enough to be worth our time. (We’re really very busy!)” Big Pharma is a mix of puzzle game, management game and even a little bit of…

OK, here’s an actual stealth game, which makes the Metal Gear theme seem suddenly appropriate. This is a well-discussed series, and my words won’t change a thing – so I just want to talk about rope arrows in the recent reboot. The Metal Age’s rope arrows attach to any sensible surface, making them feel like a flexible, subversive tool for redesigning a level. In the remake, they only attach to specially flagged points, making them a see-this, do-that tool of the robot. It’s such a miserable reduction in ambition for a tool that was as exciting on first use as the gravity gun. Thank you that is why Thief 2 is good in about 100 words by me.…

TOTAL £1515 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…

THIS MONTH Bid farewell to old jobs. And in the game. ALSO PLAYED Metal Gear Solid V, Diablo III Back when I was a PC Gamer rookie, I made a major mistake. While talking to an editor I mentioned in passing that I played Minecraft. Specialisation is like catnip to editors. They go crazy for the stuff. The news spread, and then Minecraft released on consoles. Soon, I was ‘The Minecraft Guy’ – the point of contact for any Future Publishing editor in need of a tips guide or mod round-up. This, at least, was not as bad as the time I became ‘The MMO Guy’ – a period that ended with me emerging, malnourished and incoherent, after a full week locked in my bedroom playing Firefall. Minecraft was an…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASED November 2011 OUR REVIEW 65% EXPECT TO PAY £25, Steam LINK www.rockstargames.com I’ve been to Los Angeles, and I didn’t like it much. It’s hot, it’s crowded, it’s filthy, and you can’t walk anywhere. But as a setting for a work of fiction, it’s one of my favourite places. From Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, the City of Angels is a resonant setting for a story. A lot of games are set there, but only one captures the dark, romantic urban sprawl found in the best LA fiction: Rockstar’s ambitious, flawed detective adventure L.A. Noire . Compared to Grand Theft Auto V’s dense parody of the city, L.A. Noire’s setting doesn’t look all that impressive – at…