Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i PC Gamer

A LESS EXCITING THEORY IS THAT IT’S SOME KIND OF REMASTER OF ARKHAM ORIGINS Welcome to 2017. Once upon a time that would be the title card for a dystopian science fiction film, but now it’s reality. The Spy embraces the future and moves with the times, but hopes you can find some solace in the fact that, no matter what happens in the world, The Spy will always be there, inexplicably uncovering rumours for the readers of PC Gamer. And if The Spy somehow fails to stop a nuclear missile launch (which hasn’t happened yet, touch wood) then your heroically dedicated rumour merchant will escape to a private bunker and tap them out in Morse code. If your hands haven’t melted off, tune your radio to emergency…

THE GRUNTS I GO UP AGAINST ALSO MOVE FAST, FLANKING AND ATTACKING AS A UNIT A number of changes to the old formula make BioWare’s coming space opera a exciting proposition. A new galaxy to explore, unexpectedly fast combat, and the demise of the old Paragon/Renegade binary moral choices. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a sequel that quickly establishes it’s more than just what’s gone before plus rudimentary tweaks. My hands-on time is with the returning multiplayer mode, where the improvements to movement, such as the ability to jump, feel particularly immediate. In another intriguing change, character classes are returning to multiplayer but not to singleplayer. So while you’ll have to decide between playing an Infiltrator, Engineer or Sentinel online, when playing new hero Ryder in the campaign you’ll simply pour…

ULTIMA UNDERWORLD: THE STYGIAN ABYSS Blue Sky Productions From the studio that would become Looking Glass, Ultima Underworld was the first to merge RPG with first-person action, laying the template for immersive sims to come. SYSTEM SHOCK Looking Glass Technologies Cyberpunk sci-fi that improved on Underworld by more elegantly integrating its core systems. Was bettered by its sequel, which was co-developed by Looking Glass and Irrational. ARX FATALIS Arkane Studios Arkane’s first game, also heavily inspired by Ultima Underworld. When Arkane started work on Prey, the developers were keen to make something with more RPG systems than Dishonored. DARK MESSIAH OF MIGHT AND MAGIC Arkane Studios Not a direct influence, but Dark Messiah excelled at physics- based slapstick. Prey has some of that spirit, like when you Gloo Cannon a…

ALEXIS KENNEDY FAILBETTER GAMES “Baldur’s Gate was the first game that made me feel like I was inside a genre novel, and it was the first game that made me care about my companions. They showed that you can take the elements of an RPG – the loot mill and the explorable map and the rest – and combine it with a tabletop sensibility, where context and motive and dialogue are important. Since then other developers have done similar things, and in some ways BioWare has gone even more mainstream, but that’s still at the core of what they do, and their body of technique has accumulated around it.” TYLER SIGMAN RED HOOK STUDIOS “The RPGs that have inspired us the most are rather old. The C-64 era and the…

HOW WE REVIEW 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…

This time, Marcus and his support cast are likable, funny people NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A silly open-world action game starring a powerful hacker. EXPECT TO PAY £40 DEVELOPER Ubisoft PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Windows 10, i7-6700K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 980 Ti MULTIPLAYER Two-player co-op, PvP invasions LINK www.watchdogs.com Hackers are often portrayed as computer savants hunched over a keyboard, sucking down a Diet Coke and writing script faster than the characters can appear on a dirty CRT. They’re performing sorceries a half-step removed from actual magic, exploiting people and systems without leaving the house. Watch Dogs 2 , an open-world action adventure set in the San Francisco Bay Area, turns hacking into a full contact sport. It’s the GTA template of a city,…

The squishing sounds, liquid explosions and flying limbs are fantastic NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A co-op horde shooter with detailed gore and lots of weapons. EXPECT TO PAY £20 DEVELOPER Tripwire Interactive PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Windows 10, Intel Core i5-3570, 8GB RAM, Nvidia GTX Titan MULTIPLAYER Online co-op best with six players, but can go much higher LINK www.killingfloor2.com My favourite gun is the medic’s HMTech-201 SMG. It makes a tinny plink plink plink sound as it arcs glowing blobs in a tidy line, kicking toward the sky like a scalpel swiping upwards. It’s one of the least deathcore weapons in Killing Floor 2 , where other players are carrying bloodied sawblades, katanas, or double-barrel shotguns, but it’s delightful to…

If you’re hungry for a classic adventure from an unfairly overlooked series, this should fill your Quest For Glory hole. Not only is it the best, but you get to explore a cave with rooms delineated by juicy, suppurating hoops. There’s a good lore reason for this, and it’s a fun Lovecraftian reason that contains phrases like “Eldritch Abomination”. As if that wasn’t enough to make this essential, it’s also an unexpectedly sophisticated story of sacrifice and bittersweet triumph, with puzzles largely solveable without calling up a long-defunct premium rate tip hotline. Excellent game, would bumhole again.…

WHICHEVER MACHINE OF THE OMEN RANGE YOU CHOOSE, YOU’LL BE IN SAFE HANDS FIND OUT MORE ONLINE hp.com/go/omenbyhp TWITTER @OMENbyHP HASHTAG #DominateTheGame If you want to enjoy the competitive edge in gaming, and spend hours practising and improving your technique across the gamut of PC titles, you’re looking for something to help. Something positive. Dare we say, a good Omen? Well, we do dare even though it’s a bit cheesy, because OMEN by HP’s range of high-end gaming PCs is good enough that you’ll overlook that rotten pun. First up, the OMEN X by HP. This beast is designed for gaming from the ground up – a revolutionary tower with no equal, frankly ludicrous amounts of power and an innovative cooling system utilising (in some builds) liquid cooling and an…

MOTHERBOARD ROG Maximus VIII Hero Asus £174 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 £260 Intel’s top-of-the-line Skylake processor. Its new chipset includes important memory/ storage speed boosts. GRAPHICS CARD GTX 1080 Founder’s Edition 8GB EVGA £620 Nvidia’s GTX 1080 is the new king of the hill. Although a little pricey, this superfast card is perfect for 4K gaming. COOLER Hydro H110i GT 280mm Corsair £100 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 CAS 12 Kingston £60 The low timings make these mid-range DDR4 sticks perfect for our advanced build, too. POWER…

1 SILENT CROSSING There aren’t enough foggy, haunted towns in games, so hooray for this nifty tool that randomly generates spooky hamlets – hamlets that look like they’ve escaped from the PlayStation era. www.bit.ly/ProcJam1 2 ACRE 6 Brendan Chung’s Cookie Clicker-style RPG rewards the player with bountiful quests, loot and XP, as they wander around an endless fantasy world. A bit hollow, but funny and very slick. www.bit.ly/ProcJam2 3 WEREWOLF IN THE WILD That moody, flickering art style wouldn’t look out of place in a horror film (one that would ideally come with a seizure warning). As a werewolf, explore a frightening landscape at high speed. www.bit.ly/ProcJam3…

MINA TANG Your primary handler after going rogue. Nice, but also maybe lightly betrays you? Even though you never get the chance to broach the subject? It’s a bit confusing. ALBATROSS Your contact in the G22 organisation – and a potential ally for even-headed, stealthy types. Hangs around with a mute teenager. Definitely not creepy. SIE A Russian stereotype with a large machine gun and a penchant for innuendo. You can have aggressive sex in the final mission if that’s what gets you going. SCARLET LAKE A journalist. She’ll publish any info you send about Halbech’s wrongdoings. Also she’s an assassin who shoots the guy you’re trying to protect. Surprise! STEVEN HECK Nolan North, here playing a wacky yet lovable psychopath who loves torturing colleagues for comedy. Voted most likely…

LOST IN TRANSLATION A tourist who doesn’t speak English. Use a dodgy translator app to find out where he wants to go. DAREDEVIL LIV Perform a series of increasingly dangerous vehicle stunts while vlogger Liv films you and takes all the credit. PARADROID This guy thinks a flying drone buzzing over Silicon Valley is a surveillance device. Chase it down and catch it for him. FRAGILE CARGO Deliver some fragile, and possibly cursed, ancient Egyptian artefacts to a museum in the city without damaging them.…

PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Immersive sims, aliens Twitter @Octaeder This month Went to Texas for the second time in six months. Almost died of the heat. Again. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Taxis, Silicon Valley Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Confessed to his secret life as a San Francisco taxi driver in Watch Dogs 2. See p126 for details. TOM SENIOR Specialist in Warhammer, robots Twitter @PCGLudo This month Took a break from the internet to share his current PC gaming picks with us on p128.…

ANDY KELLY used to live in a VR world, but found it to be a world of lies. SAMUEL ROBERTS wants a future where his family and friends are all glitchy replicas. IS VIRTUAL REALITY GAMING DEAD ALREADY? Yes THE MAGIC HAS WORN OFF, AND I CAN’T SEE THINGS CHANGING ANY TIME SOON. No IT MAY TAKE A WHILE TO WIN GAMERS OVER, BUT WE’LL GET THERE. THE DEBATE IS OVER, BUT WHOSE VERSION OF REALITY MADE YOU WANT TO THROW UP? LET US KNOW @PCGAMER Andy: When I joined PC Gamer, there was an Oculus Rift DK1 in the office hidden under a pile of jumpers. So I rescued it from its knitwear hell and began a love affair with VR that would last a good few years. I…

MISCHIEF-MAKERS INVITE YOU ALONG TO PELT SOME POOR GUY’S HOUSE WITH SHIT Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an ambitious game – as evidenced by its realistic combat system and topographically accurate recreation of the Kingdom of Bohemia in the 15th century. It may have a small map for an open-world RPG, but that compactness becomes an asset for the interwoven world Warhorse Studios is creating. The condensed map is a web of overlapping systems that encourage player improvisation, and it also makes you accountable for every NPC interaction – however minute. Fail a quest and the game continues, forcing you to find another solution; walk through a village covered in blood and your reputation in that area, as well as with each individual who sees you, will plummet (though…

TRACKER CAT PROWLS THE NEARBY AREA, TRYING TO IDENTIFY THE KILLER I’m watching a naked man do yoga through his window. Behind him, a woman is lying in bed, smoking. The implication is obvious. SMAC Games’s Maciek Strychalski makes the comparison to Where’s Wally. Not the post-coital tableau. Rather, he’s referencing all the hidden jokes and details found in each picture. Tokyo 42 is full of hidden jokes and details. It’s a 3D action game that takes place in a colourful cyberpunk city. Zoom out, and the world is a surreal, vibrant diorama set atop an intricate sprawl of rooftops that poke above the clouds. Zoom in, and you start to see the intricacies, Easter eggs and in-jokes. The action is reminiscent of the early, top-down Grand Theft Auto games,…

COMBINE SOLDIERS HALF LIFE 2 HL2’s cannon fodder are fascinating for one reason. What’s behind those masks? Are these once-human entities controlled directly by the Combine, or are they just trying to get by? THE CITY WATCH DISHONORED The Watch come to life through Corvo’s magic Heart, which offers insight into their lives, and reveals a complex moral spectrum from noble soldiers to depraved psychotics. SLIGS ODDWORLD The cybernetic, tentacle-faced guards of Rupture Farms, Oddworld’s sligs are a prime example of lacing humour and menace into even the lower orders of your game’s enemies.…

CD Projekt RED’s Marcin Blacha foresees plenty of creative exchange between smaller independents and big studios in years to come. “The school of RPGs focusing on player immersion will work to perfect the art of cinematic storytelling and depicting believable characters,” he says. “Big-budget games will continue to try and reach as broad an audience as possible, and smaller studios will focus on innovation and explore the genre’s nooks and crannies. Developing and publishing games will become easier, but the rapidly growing number and diversity of games will result in only the most innovative titles standing out of the crowd. “I think mainstream role-playing games will look to ambitious indie games for inspiration more often, which even now was the case for some of the stories that we featured in…

Goodbye, 2016. Whatever your thoughts about the year, it definitely happened. And it contained some great games. We awarded 13 scores of 90% or higher across 2016, from Pony Island (91%, PCG 289) to Dishonored 2 (93%, PCG 300). Now we end things with Watch Dogs 2. Is Ubisoft’s open-world hack-’em-up the last great game of the year? Not according to our reviewer, who gave it an unspectacular 68%. For James, the lack of depth to combat and stealth systems is the cited reason for his disappointment. (Although – as a cheeky counterpoint – I’ve had a lot of fun mucking around in its gloriously detailed open world, doing cyber-crimes and getting into some ridiculous antics.) Ubisoft’s other release, Steep, also gets a mediocre rating – here thanks to skiing…

You know when you’re being an ironic self-parody, and it occurs to you that you’ve become a patchwork of self-deprecating insincerity as fragile and translucent as a pensioner’s skin? Well, it turns out that doing a “bumholes for doors special” really tests the elastic limit of your own tee-hee-willies schtick. When you find yourself rummaging around in your brain for memories of a slurping egress, and clutching at Halo 3, because... well, that counts as a PC game, right? I mean, modders have ripped up Halo Online and turned it into Halo 3, haven’t they? Anyway, that bit with High Charity definitely has bumholes for doors. So let’s hear no more on the matter.…

1 POWER DRAW At idle the Core i7-7700K runs rings around the 6700K, pulling a mere 43W vs 56W. However, under load the tables turn with the 7700K drawing 110W vs the 6700K’s 93W. 2 CORE COUNT Kaby Lake still hasn’t brought six-core processors to the consumer market. Although available for HEDT processors, Intel doesn’t seem to want to include them yet. 3 TEMPERATURES My testbench is a Core i7-7700K with a NZXT Kraken X61 280mm radiator. At idle I saw temperatures stay steady at 27˚C, and under load (@4.5GHz) they only rose to 42˚C. 4 PCIE LANES Although the core only supports 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes natively, the Z270 chipset supports an additional 24. More than enough for dual SLI GPUs and any PCIe storage you can muster. PROCESSOR…

MOTHERBOARD Z170-A Pro MSI £81 Our budget build’s gone through an upgrade thanks to this new Z170 chipset. Plenty of capacity for upgrades in the future. PROCESSOR Core i3-6100 Intel £96 Grants access to that brilliant Z170 chipset, is super energy efficient, and delivers meaty performance even in AAA titles. GRAPHICS CARD RX 480 AMD £200 AMD’s new budget card has incredible performance for the price, just pipping the GTX 970 in our benchmarking tests. MEMORY HyperX Fury Black 8GB @2133 Kingston £29 DDR4 packs higher speeds, better energy efficiency, and larger capacities. 8GB is still perfect for most games, too. POWER SUPPLY EVGA 500W 80PLUS Certified ATX12V/EPS12V EVGA £33 A reliable PSU with enough juice to run your CPU and a reasonably power-hungry GPU. SSD Torch LE 120GB SSD…

After weeks of radio silence, Hello Games has released a huge update for its colourful space sim. It’s called Foundation, and the studio describes it as “a foundation for things to come”, promising that it’s the first of many free updates. Many felt short-changed by the original release, specifically by how shallow it was compared to the endless breadth of its procedural galaxy. And that’s one of the many things this update addresses, giving you a lot more to do besides mining, crafting, and travelling between near-identical planets. It’s a step in the right direction, but is it enough to tempt back lapsed players? One of the best new additions is Creative mode. This gives you infinite resources, so you can freely explore the galaxy without the constant need to…

1 GREYBOX (AMERICA) Alpha Protocol HQ, located somewhere in America. You work for them for a bit, but then you don’t. That’s 21st century job security. 2 SAUDI ARABIA I think that we can all agree that terrorists are bad. Let’s just hope that this doesn’t lead down a rabbit hole of betrayal. 3 ROME You’re here to find out Halbech’s connection to terrorist group Al-Samad. Doing so involves putting a civilian’s life in danger. The feels! 4 TAIPEI Stop the assassination of Ronald Sung, Taiwan’s leader and an advocate for independence. This requires a dry cleaning employee. 5 MOSCOW Discover the connection between Halbech and the Russian Mafia. If you’re wondering if this will result in a disco boss fight, it will. 6 GREECE You visit Greece twice, both…

TOM SENIOR I’m only truly alive when I’m inside a robot punching another robot to death. TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER www.totalwar.com The Wood Elves, also known as the best elves, have invaded Total War: Warhammer. Get a treeman or two and a million archers and smash up some Orcs. This is not the deepest or most complex Total War that The Creative Assembly has made, but it’s got bags of character for a wargame and is surprisingly easy to dip into. TITANFALL 2 www.titanfall.com The pilot compartments of Titanfall 2’s mechs look so cosy I want to crawl inside and have a nap. There’s no time for that, though, on account of all that raucous man vs bot warfare. This magnificent FPS has some of the best movement systems in any…

In March last year, we launched the PC Gamer Weekender to a warm reception from a devoted PC-playing audience. The atmosphere at London’s Old Truman Brewery was extremely positive, and not just because the chicken wings stand outside the venue served the best blue cheese sauce I’ve had in my life (I’ve been back five times since). It was because it felt like a new kind of event, one so specifically about celebrating PC gaming culture that it had its own enthusiastic vibe. I got to meet readers of the website and magazine all weekend, and as such I’m delighted we’re bringing the event back on February 18-19, at the Olympia in London. For the 2016 show, we provided a mix of hands-ons, including Dark Souls III and Total War:…

I HAD TO MAKE ADJUSTMENTS BASED ON WIND DIRECTION, BULLET DROP, EVEN RAIN There’s something romantic about being a sniper. You have to monitor your targets carefully, learn their patterns, and be mindful of their tendencies to lean, yawn, or pick their nose lest you miss your shot and all hell descends upon you. It’s a morbidly intimate experience, and one that makes you value each sporadic kill. The Ghost Warrior series has been attempting to capture that experience for two games now. How successful it’s been seems to depend on whether you’re a reviewer or a gamer, the combined sales figures – north of five million – having defied lukewarm critical opinion. Ghost Warrior 3 marks a break with the past, replacing linear, heavily scripted missions with open-world rural…

immersive sim is less a genre than a design philosophy. Its roots extend back to Looking Glass and Ion Storm. Ultima Underworld, Thief, Deus Ex and System Shock were the template for a new way of thinking about first-person design – where immersion is heightened through dependable systems and NPCs who respond to the player’s actions. It’s why JC Denton’s boss admonishes him for walking into the women’s toilets. Immersive sim developer Arkane Studios has, in recent years, been more focused on action and stealth. Dishonored’s combat is fast and decisive – you can disable a guard instantly by a chokehold or sword to the neck. Prey feels different, more deliberate. “Dishonored is probably…

1 THE HENCHMAN KILLER One of the laziest characterisation tropes for a villain is that, with minimal provocation, they will brutally murder one of their own subordinates. Just to show us how terribly evil they are. “It’s ineffective, because we immediately lose any sense of this being a real person,” says Tom Jubert. 2 THE MIND-CONTROLLER The original plan for Dragon Age’s Loghain was that he would be mind-controlled by the more powerful Archdemon. “My feeling was that this deprived Loghain of agency,” Gaider says. This is true, but it also deprives the mind-controller of depth. The best villains are those who subtly manipulate others to do their bidding, rather than using force. 3 THE WORST CRIME IMAGINABLE Early in the story, they will do something unspeakably depraved. “We see…

“As a lesbian who used to be a literal church choir girl, I discovered the hard way that sometimes a person can be lovely, virtuous and charitable and still hold an utterly hostile opinion towards something about you that you may not be able to help. Not only that, but it’s easy to fall into this trap yourself. I thought I was better than those ‘other girls’ who wore ‘slutty’ clothes and giggled while smoking in the bushes at school. Now one of those girls works in the nursing home doing a great job looking after my gran who has dementia. “That’s a hard job, it takes a lot of grit to do that. Perhaps those girls all had admirable qualities I was too wrapped up in my own Hermione…

Having helped resurrect the old Infinity Engine style of RPG with Wasteland 2, Brian Fargo and InXile hope to introduce multiplayer to a roleplaying campaign without, somehow, causing the entire project to implode on the launch pad. “Multiplayer in narrative-driven RPGs has been surprisingly unexplored, and I think there are many possibilities there. For example with Wasteland 3, we want the multiplayer to be an extension of our singleplayer story, one where you and your friend make choices and overcome challenges together. But again, our hallmark is choice and consequence, so it’s also possible your friend makes certain choices you disagree with and you both have to live with the consequences. This is a natural extension of our story-driven, reactivity-focused design.”…

JAMES DAVENPORT Specialist in Action, cyber Currently playing Watch Dogs 2 This month Achieved peak San Fran by playing Watch Dogs 2 in San Fran. PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Adventure, voyeurism Currently playing Orwell This month Watched the internet habits of millennials. It’s about 90% Poe Dameron shipping. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Xtreme, snow Currently playing Steep This month Once climbed a mountain, thus was the most qualified to review Steep. TYLER WILDE Specialist in Shooters, violence Currently playing Killing Floor 2 This month Became so entranced by KF2’s gore that we’re now questioning if he’s really Canadian. LIEF JOHNSON Specialist in Zombies, Christmas Currently playing Dead Rising 4 This month Forgot that zombie entrails don’t make for a suitable Christmas tree decoration. JODY MACGREGOR Specialist in Strategy, trees Currently…

1 YOUNG FRANK WEST A once revolutionary ‘ordinary guy’ hero, Young Frank West is a bit of a jerk and he’s willing to let people die for a prize-winning photo. But he finds his heart, making clever and corny jokes. 2 CHUCK GREENE A former motorcycle racing champion, Chuck’s more serious than Frank, but it works due to his love for his infected daughter, who needs daily medicine to keep her from turning. 3 OLD FRANK WEST The shift in voice actors jars a bit, but Dead Rising 4 shows us an older, more cynical Frank whose humour has shifted to the dad joke variety. 4 NICK RAMOS The only things that make Ramos stand out are his mysterious past and his growth as a character as Dead Rising 3…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? More space, more dirty doors. EXPECT TO PAY £30 DEVELOPER The Creative Assembly PUBLISHER Sega MULTIPLAYER None FIRST REVIEWED PCG 272, 93% LINK alienisolation.com Now, as you know, I am a solemn individual, who loathes the cheapening of videogame discourse. But once I get my teeth into a subject, I like to dive in. And Prey’s sphincter doors were genuinely captivating. Watching them quiver in anticipation, and then enthusiastically go full goatse when you got near them... Whoa. Bit on the keen side there, doors. Have a bit of self-respect. Anyway, this isn’t the only game to feature this bold art direction. My friend, former boss and writer on Alien: Isolation, Will Porter, told me about the doors in The…

CLOUD STINGER HyperX £50 HyperX’s budget headset is a fantastic offering. Delivering a crisp, clear soundscape thanks to its 18Hz to 23KHz frequency response, it also has a comfortable feel and sleek looks. It fits the bill without being overly expensive. My only niggle? No retractable microphone. That said, no other headset compares at this price. www.hyperxgaming.com NAOS QG Mionix £110 Mionix is trying to revamp the gaming mouse, with a heart rate and galvanic skin response sensor. Seeing your heart rate spike during a game is entertaining, but the Naos is crafted to suit palm grippers with large hands, and it doesn’t feel as well- rounded as the Castor. www.mionix.com KRAKEN 7.1 V2 Razer £100 This variant resolves a lot of issues I had with the Kraken.…

MOTHERBOARD Z170 Pro Gaming Asus £111 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 £195 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 1070 FE Nvidia £400 The new king of midrange, this card is perfect for high refresh rate 1440p gaming, and gives you a monitor upgrade path. 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 Savage Black 16GB @2400 MHz CAS 12 Kingston £60 Thanks to insanely low timings, these two 8GB sticks…

As an exaggerated snapshot of life in the 2010s, it was inevitable Watch Dogs 2 would include an Uber-like taxi company. In this alternate reality it’s called Driver San Francisco – a nod to Driver creator Ubisoft Reflections, who designed the game’s vehicle handling – and allows Marcus to make some extra money on the side as a taxi driver. Grand Theft Auto had taxi missions years ago, but there wasn’t much to them besides driving from A to B against the clock. In Watch Dogs 2 they’re more bespoke, with stories and a few surprises, and this elevates them above the usual open-world filler. Uber is famously controversial, with stories emerging of drivers…