Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2016 i PC Gamer

HIGHS Mirror’s Edge Catalyst The sequel no one expected is shaping up nicely, refining what made the original such a cult hit. Steam Controller The more we use it, the more we love it. The learning curve is steep, but it’s amazingly customisable. Dark Souls III The only explanation for From Software’s constant flow of great games is that no one there sleeps. Mods The XCOM 2 modding community is doing incredible things with Firaxis’s strategy epic. Evolution Studios Codemasters has rescued the talented racing game developer from closure and absorbed it. LOWS Virtual reality It’s here at last, but the pricetag means it’s still out of most people’s reach. The Division We’ve all stopped playing, and the lure of slightly better kneepads isn’t enough to win us back. Nostalrius…

COUNTER-STRIKE: GLOBAL OFFENSIVE DreamHack Zowie Open Austin May 6-9 Counter Logic Gaming, Luminosity and Team Liquid will all be returning to American soil, along with more underdog talents from the USA. DOTA 2 Epicenter 2016 May 9-16 The first chance to see the new teams created by this season’s roster shuffle before they clash at the Manila Major in June. Catch the Team Secret vs Evil Geniuses grudge match after Arteezy’s sudden departure. HEROES OF THE STORM Gold Series Hero League April 14-May 15 China’s premier HotS league finishes, with two qualifier spots available for the DreamHack All-Stars summer champs. DOTA 2 The Manila Major June 7-13 The last chance for teams to make their name at Valve’s final Dota Major of the year before this summer’s The International. There’s…

YOU’RE CONTROLLING AN ARMY OF THE UNDEAD RATHER THAN FIGHTING ONE NEED TO KNOW RELEASE July DEVELOPER NoClip PUBLISHER Gambitious LINK www.zombienightterror.com There are so many zombie games on PC, the idea of playing another is probably already making your brain glaze over. I felt the same when I loaded up Zombie Night Terror, but was surprised to find a genuinely fresh, imaginative take on the genre. It reverses the usual roles and has you control an army of the undead rather than fight one. The best way to think of the game is like Lemmings, but directed by George A Romero. You don’t control the zombies directly; you guide them by clicking icons that determine where they’ll move and what doors they’ll break down. They walk back and forth…

NO GUNS Some enemies still have them, but Faith never carries them, and the disarm move from the original seems to be gone. OPEN WORLD The City of Glass is now an immense web of obstacles to freeroaming, designed to be jogged across in any way you see fit. FIGHTING Positioning is everything if you’re standing still. If you’re running, Faith knocks enemies down one by one. LEADERBOARDS & TIME TRIALS Time trials lived in a separate mode to the story in the first game. Here, they’re dotted throughout the city. STORY This is a Tomb Raider 2013-style hard reboot, but it still features annoying characters wearing trendy clothes.…

1 ENDLESS LEGEND Diverse factions make this the most interesting 4X game you can buy – which is why we gave it one of our game of the year awards in 2014. 2 CIVILIZATION V After its expansions arrived, Civ V felt like the complete modern Civ game, and is still an excellent introduction to the genre. 3 GALACTIC CIVILIZATIONS III Stardock’s latest space conquest game is a sandboxy epic, and continues to be built upon with new expansions. 4 DOMINIONS 4 This Tom Senior favourite 4X strategy series retains a loyal audience thanks to its interesting enemy types and for being highly moddable.…

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…

JAMES DAVENPORT Specialist in Action, dying Currently playing Dark Souls III This month Faced a most brutal challenge: the PCG editorial meeting. LEIF JOHNSON Specialist in Strategy, conquest Currently playing Ashes of the Singularity This month Built thousands of friends. Forced them to do his bidding. CHRISTOPHER LIVIGSTON Specialist in Space, grabbing Currently playing Adr1ft This month Discovered that an astronaut’s job is mostly to grab stuff. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Action, adventure Currently playing Quantum Break This month Wrote four of this month’s reviews. Still had time to get some serious retweets. PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in RPG, robots Currently playing Fallout 4 This month Returned to the city of Baldur’s Gate. Didn’t enjoy the trip quite as much this time. BEN WILSON Specialist in Sports, management Currently playing Out…

Is Dark Souls here because of the new sequel? No. I just noticed the last three games began with ABC. I’m in the difficult position of loving Dark Souls, but not liking it. I love the lore, but I never discovered it. I knew the thrill of victory as impossible enemies became trivial, and I even enjoyed it when those trivial enemies briefly became impossible again as I lost my composure. But after I got killed a dozen times by the Moonlight Butterfly – yes, I know that’s very early – I simply became distracted by another game, one with a warm open-world map, full of achievable objectives and inevitable progress. If anything, Dark Souls is a game that should review me. I would be found wanting.…

1 WAT ER COOLING INSTALLED There’s nothing quite like having your own watercooled system. The parts in this behemoth would easily set you back an extra £600 if bought separately. 2 GARGANTUAN CHASSIS This case is a true tower of power. The Phanteks Enthoo Primo comes in at a staggering 250x650 x600mm. It also weighs an absolute ton with all that hardware inside. 3 SLI CARDS Not all games have been built to take advantage of multiple GPUs, but with DirectX 12 right around the corner, this will soon be a thing of past. This is excellent future-proofing. 4 KING OF THE OVERCLOCKS 4.7GHz is monstrous for an i7-6700K, and with all that watercooling behind it, it’s unlikely to hit 55°C even under load. Sweet, silent, gaming. OVERCLOCKERS INFIN8 TOXICITY…

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 Hydro H110i GT 280mm Corsair £92 Quiet, cool and capable of providing even the most aggressive overclocker with more than enough headroom to hit that 5GHz mark. MEMORY Savage Black 16GB @2400 MHz Cas12 Kingston £100 Thanks to insanely low timings, these two 8GB sticks of DDR4 are more than enough. POWER SUPPLY Supernova 850W…

MY THRIFTY WOOD ELF HASTENS TO THE CLOSEST SHOP TO SELL THE STILL WARM CHAINMAIL HOLLY NIELSEN THIS MONTH Inadvertently turned Oblivion into Lemmings. ALSO PLAYED Stardew Valley I’m standing in the cold grey Nordic town of Bruma. Expressionless NPCs acknowledge my presence with either an overly jovial “HELLO” or strangely omniscient statements about my various levelled skills. I’ve now spent a good minute watching a steady stream of town guards tumble from the city walls. They follow their patrol diligently, even when the route means flinging yourself off the battlements like a steel-clad Lady Macbeth. I’ve played this game for hundreds of hours in the ten years it’s been out, first on the Xbox 360 and now on my laptop (usually in bed with a cup of tea –…

1 REAL COMPANY LOGOS Swap the fictional, lawsuit-avoiding logos with their real-life counterparts, for that extra touch of authenticity. This affects everything from signs to billboards to cars. www.bit.ly/AmericanTruck1 2 REAL ENGINES AND SOUNDS Modder Wilson212 has added a range of new engines painstakingly modelled after the real things, featuring accurate torque, horsepower ratings and sounds. www.bit.ly/AmericanTruck2 3 REALISTIC MIRROR FOV “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear”. Not in American Truck Sim, which fudges its mirror FoV to make it easier to park. This mod undoes that. www.bit.ly/AmericanTruck3…

“The peculiar whimsy of a sitcom from the 1970s” NEED TO KNOW RELEASED March 1994 PUBLISHER Virgin Interactive DEVELOPER Revolution Software LINK www.revolution.co.uk After the success of its first adventure game, Lure of the Temptress, UK-based Revolution Software was ready for its next project. An early idea was to develop an adaptation of Alan Moore’s acclaimed comic Watchmen, which led to a meeting between Revolution co-founder Charles Cecil and artist Dave Gibbons. The Watchmen game never came about, but Gibbons and Cecil became friends and decided to work on something original together. Gibbons wrote a story outline, titled Underworld, which laid the groundwork for what would eventually become Beneath a Steel Sky. Set in Australia in the wake of some unspecified apocalyptic event, it’s the story of a man named…

JOHN STRIKE Specialist in Skulls, weekend working This month Worked his gorgeous arse off on a Sunday night to bring this lovely Dawn of War reveal issue to you. Have a nap next month, John. TOM SENIOR Specialist in Adeptus, Astartes Twitter @PCGLudo This month Took a break from the internet and flew to Relic to get a first look at Dawn of War III. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Time travel, Twitter Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Wandered through the English countryside and felt British things (Andy is Scottish).…

THE FILM GRAVITY, BUT WITH A SPACE DOG INSTEAD OF SANDRA BULLOCK As a child, The Spy dreamt of the dusty plains and agitated buffalo of the Wild West. It was a time of stoic heroes, gubernatorial villains, and the untoward rogues that preyed on both. Many a night, The Spy fantasised about great train robberies, daring bank raids and tense duels. Not of partaking in them, you understand – The Spy had long since perfected larceny, and had progressed to the field of light treason. Instead, it was the ease of getting away with it that appealed. Just imagine! No satellite surveillance or Interpol wanted list – just a horse, a big sack of money, and an unconscious local Sheriff tied up in a cupboard. But when The Spy…

EVEN WHEN EVIL WINS, IT SEEMS, SOMEONE HAS TO CLEAN UP THE MESS NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 DEVELOPER Obsidian PUBLISHER Paradox LINK www.tyrannygame.com In some ways, Obsidian’s next RPG feels like a sequel to a game we haven’t played or a story we’ve never read. Tyranny , which is built on a modified version of the tech used in Pillars of Eternity , doesn’t depict the beginning of an epic struggle between good and evil. Instead, it takes place in the aftermath of such a conflict, in which evil has triumphed and a world that has been shattered by the great war is now slowly trying to recover. “We started off talking about what are the traditional stories in RPGs,” Obsidian lead producer…

“WE WANT TO HAVE BATTLES THAT FEEL APPROPRIATE FOR THE 40K UNIVERSE” There’s no shortage of Warhammer 40,000 games right now. At one end, you’ve got the game that graces our cover this month, and at the other you’ve got 40K games as obscure as chess-alike Regicide . Eternal Crusade is an ambitious foray into massively online shooter territory that’s currently in Early Access, and has been worked on by Behaviour Interactive, founded by former members of Age of Conan team Funcom. It looks like a pretty convincing facsimile of the 40K universe, like a slightly nicer version of Relic’s Space Marine , even though as a shooter it feels like there’s a long way to…

1 WEST GASH Western highlands, bordered by mountains. The ebony deposits here are the source of the Caldera Mining Company’s riches. 2 BITTER COAST Humid, salty swamps dominate this largely uninhabited region. The isolated islands and caves are used by smugglers, who make use of the dense fog. 3 ASCADIAN ISLES Fertile soil means lots of farms; floating netch are bred for their fine leather. The large city of Vivec is found in the south. 4 MOLAG AMUR A fiery land, populated by lava flows and lakes. The ash storms of the Red Mountain coat the entire region in a fine layer. 5 THE RED MOUNTAIN Also called Dagoth-Ur, this volcano lies at the centre of Vvardenfell, dominating the entire island. It is enclosed by a giant magical barrier.…

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, Sonic: Lost World 40%-49% This game is functional, but majorly flawed and disappointing. Examples Firefall, Star Trek, Armikrog 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, Just Cause 3, The Division 70%-79% Good, but not a classic. This score is a recommendation, just not a glowing one. Examples Broken Age, Batman: Arkham Knight…

Spider people sucked my face off, fire witches reduced me to ash NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A difficult dark fantasy action RPG. EXPECT TO PAY £40 DEVELOPER FromSoftware PUBLISHER FromSoftware, Bandai Namco REVIEWED ON Nvidia GTX 980 Ti, Intel Core i7-6700K, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER Co-op and PvP LINK www.darksouls3.com I’m friends with a giant now. He tosses spears taller than me a thousand yards to keep a white birch safe from cursed villagers, and I can respect that. The whole village is visible from atop his tower, all its ramshackle buildings and tortured denizens whose worship of a rotten greatwood has clearly gone awry. My job is to bring the ashes of the Lords of Cinder back to their thrones to prevent the apocalypse. Maybe it’d be better…

I was having more fun with an RTS than I have in a couple of years NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A real-time strategy game that lets you build up thousands of units. EXPECT TO PAY £40 DEVELOPER Oxide Games PUBLISHER Stardock REVIEWED ON Windows 10, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 MULTIPLAYER Up to 6 players LINK www.ashesofthe singularity.com Stardock’s new RTS clearly sees itself as a phoenix of sorts for SupCom and the genre in general. For the most part it succeeds in spreading its wings, tossing out the speedy tactics of StarCraft II in favour of a more determined, thoughtful approach, while carpeting the playing field with thousands of fighter planes, hovering battleships, and tanks. It’s an RTS for…

You can also kick barrels at enemies and flip tables to shield yourself NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A top-down shooter with rogue-like elements and a shedload of guns. EXPECT TO PAY £10 DEVELOPER DodgeRoll Games PUBLISHER Devolver Digital REVIEWED ON Intel i5, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER Local co-op LINK www.dodgeroll.com/ gungeon Enter The Gungeon has a gun fetish. The story revolves around a giant bullet and a gun that can kill the past. Enemies are mostly bullets, the end-of-level lift is a shell casing, the in-game art is modelled around gun paraphernalia. It’s the latest in a long line of top-down roguelike shooters, taking its inspiration from standouts Nuclear Throne and The Binding of Isaac .…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? The platformer that didn’t launch Snake Logan to fame. EXPECT TO PAY Free on GOG.com DEVELOPER Apogee PUBLISHER 3D Realms MULTIPLAYER None FIRST REVIEWED N/A LINK www.3drealms.com/ catalog Human memory is a capricious wee chap. Take 1993. My memory is fine with the fact that I was singing along to Animal Nitrate while I booted up Windows 3.1 for Workgroups on my brand-new multimedia Apricot Pentium 60 MHz home entertainment system, with a really clacky keyboard. I’m also happy to remember that my second year at university was defined not by a thorough understanding of Land Law and Equity & Trusts, but by a profound oneness with the Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball machine in the Noble’s arcade in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens. (I…

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 Elite Black DDR3 – 8GB (2x4GB) 1600MHz Team Group £30 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…

I DID LIVE IN THE COUNTRYSIDE. IT WAS BORING AND FULL OF JERKS AND COW SHIT PHIL SAVAGE THIS MONTH Moved to the country, became rich and cantankerous. ALSO PLAYED Hitman, Fallout 4 I came to Stardew Valley as a cynic. I’d seen screenshots, I’d seen praise, I’d seen it topping the Steam chart. It’s a sickeningly cheerful RPG about farming, I thought. Can it really be that good? Yes, it really can. I’ve now played for over 25 hours, and I’m creeping towards the end of my first year in Pelican Town. After the initially overwhelming introduction to Stardew Valley’s many activities, I gained an economic foothold via the fishing minigame. It’s a pleasant time waster, and easy enough that I could haul in a decent catch in a…

AT SOME POINT I’LL SWITCH TO THE SECOND OF THE THREE MOVES I CAN RELIABLY PULL OFF BEN GRIFFIN THIS MONTH Harnessed the elements to beat someone up. ALSO PLAYED The Division I’ve chosen Rashid as my main character because facing him is annoying and I feed off misery. This so-called ‘master of the turbulent wind’ scraps like a Henry Hoover on a revolving dance floor. Like a greased hula hoop falling down some stairs. What else? Er, a bumble bee in moon boots? A smoke ring from the mouth of a bastard. He’s tricky is what I’m saying, and that’s why I’ve won against the best players in our office, my technique being if I don’t know what I’m doing then they don’t either. When the match starts I’ll…

YOU HAVE TO WONDER WHY THEY DIDN’T JUST MAKE DIRECTOR’S CUT IN THE FIRST PLACE NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2015 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER inXile Entertainment LINK www.bit.ly/WasteDC Like checking the soles of your shoes and finding you haven’t stepped in something you thought you had, inXile’s Director’s Cut of its 2014 RPG Wasteland 2 is high on life’s sliding scale of pleasant surprises. Released 13 months after the original (and free to those who bought the original PC version), the Director’s Cut presents an even meatier roleplaying experience with newly added voiceover work, tweaks to the combat, and a generous package of skill modifiers and modding support, all overlaid with a patina of additional graphical polish from the…

BRAZIL Terry Gilliam’s cult dystopian sci-fi thriller is set in a similarly bleak brutalist city, run by a totalitarian government obsessed with bureaucracy. METROPOLIS Class division, social unrest, and the perils of technology loom large in this pioneering 1927 sci-fi epic by German director Fritz Lang. MAD MAX They share a post-apocalyptic Australian setting, and artist Dave Gibbons partly based Foster on Mel Gibson’s haunted road warrior. BLADE RUNNER Union City’s urban sprawl is reminiscent of the grim, rain-soaked futuristic Los Angeles seen in Ridley Scott’s neo-noir masterpiece.…

SAMUEL ROBERTS There’s no pattern to the games I like, because I am a man of many faces. A liar, if you will. Or a fraud. FIREWATCH www.firewatchgame.com I enjoyed orienteering my way through the Wyoming wilderness of Firewatch, despite initially struggling to use the game’s map and compass. I would recommend this to anyone who wants to feel like they’re in a real place that’s far from home. Unless you live in Wyoming, in which case play Grand Theft Auto V. HITMAN www.hitman.com By the time you read this, Hitman will have the all-new Sapienza level to explore on top of its existing Paris mansion locale. While it’s rough around the edges at this early stage, what a brilliant sandbox of a stealth game, full of ways to experiment…

THEIR TARGET? THE PARCEL DELIVERY GUYS, WHO THEY INEXPLICABLY DESPISE NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 DEVELOPER Mode 7 Games PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.frozensynapse2.com The first Frozen Synapse was an excellent turn-based tactical strategy about simultaneous action. The challenge was in predicting your opponent’s movement and to respond accordingly. Clear combat rules and a turn preview function let you engineer the ideal outcome, but only if you’d correctly anticipated your enemy’s plan. Deception and deduction were your weapons. Also assault rifles and shotguns. Frozen Synapse 2 will offer more multiplayer modes and unit types. A new reactive orders system will expand the tactical possibilities by allowing you to use conditional commands – specifying an action to take if an opposing unit makes a specific move. As a…

IT FEELS LESS LIKE A FOLLOW-UP AND MORE LIKE STARTING AGAIN WITH THE SAME IDEAS For almost eight years we’ve lived in a world with infinite Assassin’s Creeds but just one Mirror’s Edge . What’s fair about that? The series with free-running that’s almost entirely automated with one button becomes a runaway success, while the far more intricate, complex alternative doesn’t get a look in. Thankfully, digital sales and speedrunners have kept Mirror’s Edge alive, and what we have in Catalyst is a sequel that feels more like what the first game should’ve been. Reflecting on my three or so hours of playing Catalyst it feels less like a follow-up in the traditional sense and…

For those of us who’ve never played a Dark Souls game, the reverence fans have for the series can be mystifying. And yet, here comes Dark Souls III, and it’s yet another meticulously crafted work – filled not just with challenge, but also intricate, sprawling level design, excellent combat and subtle storytelling. Maybe it’s on the rest of us to catch up. Dark Souls is undoubtedly this issue’s highlight. Elsewhere, there are lots of games that fall short of a glowing recommendation. Namely, Quantum Break. It’s a good (not great) shooter, and another UWP game afflicted with performance problems. This month also features our first VR review, for the Oculus Rift’s flagship game EVE: Valkyrie. Alas, it’s not the killer app needed to mitigate the device’s high price. LET US…

WARRIORS OF SUNLIGHT Rewarded with Sunlight Medals after successful co-op summon. WAY OF BLUE Summons friendly Blue Sentinels if you’re invaded. BLUE SENTINELS Automatically summoned into Way of Blue player world for protection. BLADES OF THE DARKMOON Same function as Blue Sentinels, but player is dark blue. ROSARIA’S FINGERS Pale Tongues rewarded for successful invasion. Traded for respec, etc. MOUND - MAKERS Ambiguous co-op and PvP covenant. Can attack or help summoner. WATCHDOGS OF FARRON Summoned automatically to help other invaded covenant members. ALDRICH FAITHFUL Summoned automatically to help in specific late game area.…

BARREL This barrel lets you bombard your enemies with fish, which then flop about the place, uselessly. VERTEBRAEK- 47X A mix between an AK47 and someone’s spine, this gun fires rounds that home in on enemies. GUNGEON ANT Unlike regular ants, this fires balls of fiery death and fuel. Who says a creature can’t just be a gun? BEEHIVE Bees! Bzzz. Far Cry Primal isn’t the only game that gets to use bees as weaponry. Bees are big in 2016. PEASHOOTER This gun hits like a handful of peas but reloads with an adorable popping sound.…

KANSAS CITY ROYALS Begin the game with ten four-star (or better) prospects and over $30 million to spend on free agents. Perfect for a sustained challenge 2017 to 2020. NEW YORK YANKEES Perhaps the most despised team in all of American sports – but with an in-game payroll of $222 million, you won’t be complaining. BOSTON RED SOX The Yankees’ great rivals won it all in 2004, 2007 and 2013, and start with $36 million for free agents and contract extensions in the hope of another title. CHICAGO CUBS The romantic’s choice, having failed to win baseball’s biggest prize in 109 years. A pitching staff stacked with quality provides a strong chance of breaking that. ST LOUIS CARDINALS The most appealing team if cash is your priority. $80 million for…

Ventura Bay is uncannily empty, a lush but lifeless location NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? An open-world driving game delving into street racing and tuner culture. EXPECT TO PAY £50 DEVELOPER Ghost Games PUBLISHER EA REVIEWED ON Intel i7 x980 3.33GHz, 9GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti MULTIPLAYER Online LINK www.needfor speed.com It’s like a nightmare. You’re trapped in LA and the sun never shines and you’re living out of your car and everyone keeps talking to you about driving techniques. When they’re not taking in person, they’re calling you all the time. It’s hell. It’s the setting for new-gen Need for Speed . After a relatively unimpressed response on console, Ghost Games has used the interim to tune the PC port. It now has…

There’s no hiding the fact this is a 15-year-old engine NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A meaty, campaign-length expansion for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition. EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Beamdog PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Windows 10, 8GB RAM, i5-3570K, GeForce GTX 970 MULTIPLAYER Six-player co-op LINK www.siegeofdragonspear.com As a historical artefact, Baldur’s Gate is important. As an RPG, it’s huge and expressive. But as a moment-to-moment experience, it can be something of a chore. Siege of Dragonspear is an expansion for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition . As an add-on – albeit one that takes the form of a full length campaign – it’s forced me to reevaluate if Baldur’s Gate is actually worth expanding.…

Ever wondered what process goes into selecting the games for review on these pages? Wonder no more! I could say “this 3D puzzle platformer shares Alan Wake’s themes of light and dark”, but in all honesty it just popped up in Steam’s auto-suggest while I was looking for Contra. Contrast is an emotionally pregnant game in which a young girl and her imaginary friend negotiate a Paris full of unpleasant 2D adults. Dawn, your friend, can slip into darkness and use shadows as platforms, leading to occasionally interesting real-world manipulation to create paths for her. Original and atmospheric, even if the platforming can feel greasy. Worth investigating.…

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 Kraken X31 NZXT £60 To get the most out of a good CPU you need a cooler to match. The Kraken X31 is powerful, quiet and great for overclocks. MEMORY Vengeance LPX (8GB) Corsair £50 8GB of reasonably fast DDR4, and one of the cheapest deals you’ll find. Corsair is reliable, and…

ANDY KELLY THIS MONTH Ate some gourmet dog nibbles. ALSO PLAYED Hyper Light Drifter Some of the best humour in Broken Sword comes from the weird, seemingly useless junk filling George’s bottomless pockets and the reactions when he shows it to people. In the first game, The Shadow of the Templars, he carries a soggy greasepaint-soaked tissue halfway around the world, and waving it in people’s faces is met with disgust. And I loved the running gag of people always having an excuse not to shake his electric-buzzer-trapped hand. In the second game, The Smoking Mirror, it’s a box of gourmet dog biscuits he’s got hold of that creates some of the best laughs. Everyone George meets, be they military general or art dealer, is asked if they want one.…

ASSHOLE Hard Ass dialogue choices always succeed but squad can’t use Kiss Ass or Smart Ass. HEAVY HANDED Increases base damage from melee attacks but greatly reduces base crit chance. MANIC DEPRESSIVE Attributes change randomly by plus or minus 2 every 10-15 minutes. PSYCHOPATH Successful attack gains bonus hit and crit chances but bonuses are lost, with interest, if you miss. FAINTING GOAT 35% chance of fainting if hit by a crit. Next attack will miss but you get pushed back in the combat order.…

THE RULES 1 walkthroughs Don’t look at any or FAQs for answers. 2 wall Use ’ the interface old ‘verb , and no object highlighting. 3 LucasArts Andy Kelly hint is your line representative. I never played Day of the Tentacle , despite its reputation as one of the best adventure games ever made. With the remastered edition now available, Andy has challenged me to finish it without a walkthrough. It’s my chance to experience the game as it was meant to be played – without the safety net of the internet. In the spirit of the era, I can use Andy as my very own LucasArts helpline. Be warned, there are puzzle and plot spoilers throughout this article. I’m not too bad at modern adventure games…