Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2018 i PC Gamer

HIGHS Valve Gabe Newell says Artifact is just the first of several games from the studio. Will we finally get Ricochet 2? Prey Arkane is teasing what appears to be an expansion set on the Moon. We’ll know more at E3. Two Point Hospital Sega’s management sim is looking like a clever adaptation of Theme Hospital. Read more on page 24. LOWS Cryptocurrency It’s time for our monthly update on the price of graphics cards. Yes: they’re still ridiculously expensive. RAM Demand from smartphone manufacturers and datacenters is set to push RAM prices even higher. The White House Violent videogames have been propelled back into the spotlight. Welcome to the ’90s!…

1 As per the cover, we sent Tom Francis off with a packed lunch and dictaphone to investigate the sequel to Bioshock. Amongst the rest of the headline news we discovered Splicers had “evolved sock garters”. Tom F was actually talking to creative director Jordan Thomas about the game. You can find out what Thomas is up to nearly a decade on in Samuel’s preview of The Blackout Club on page 32. 2 Our quiz tasked readers with making and sending us Empire: Total War hats, helping to explain why we needed that brutal office clearout... 3 Band of Brothers – formerly EVE’s most powerful alliance – dissolved in spectacular fashion after one of its number defected to the GoonSwarm Federation. High-ranking player Haargoth Agamar betrayed the Black Nova Corp…

1 MORE IS MORE The Blood for the Blood God II pack adds extravagant gore to Warhammer II. “It can be quite excessive at times,” admits Anderson. “You end up drenched in a sea of blood with decapitated limbs all over the battlefield.” 2 TECH UPGRADE Tech developments mean Warhammer II can handle more blood and particle effects than games like Rome II and Shogun 2. Thus you can now have “a full blood explosion complete with flying gibs when units are cleaved in half”. 3 REFERENCE MATERIAL Realistic references are a starting point for new textures. Anderson spent a lot of time looking at pig carcass images to help with the gory chunks in the blood decals. It was surreal at first but she says, “It normalises after a…

CLOSING IN I’VE MOSTLY JUST PLAYED INTO THE BREACH I’ve had a productive month, thanks to a selection of smaller games. A Case of Distrust is a short, neat detective adventure. Chuchel is a short, neat comedy adventure. And Minit is a short, neat Zelda-like adventure. You’ll find reviews for all of them in the magazine. Beyond that, I’ve mostly just played Into the Breach – also reviewed this issue. While it may look short (and neat), it’s incredibly easy to lose hours trying to kill a swarm of bugs with my varied and versatile mechs. I’m also back playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. It hasn’t made my list yet – I’m only adding stuff that I start or finish this year – but I’m closing in…

MANY HEROES ARE FROM DOTA 2, OTHERS ARE ORIGINAL CREATIONS Valve has joined forces with Magic: The Gathering’s legendary creator, Richard Garfield, to create a trading card game set in the Dota 2 universe. For a general sense of what Artifact is like: if conventional card games are like chess (which I know they aren’t), then Artifact is the 3D version which Spock plays on the Enterprise. Each match plays out across three boards, representing the lanes from the Dota 2 map. You deploy cards in these lanes to help you destroy enemy buildings and protect your own. The base game has 280-plus cards and 44 heroes. A deck comprises 40 cards minimum (including 5 heroes). Swapping and…

IT’S A MERGING OF IDEAS BOTH OLD AND NEW, TO CREATE SOMETHING DISTINCT It’s a suicide mission, but not in the way I was hoping. I’m in control of four New Jericho soldiers who have been infected with an alien virus. They’re heading into battle one last time, on a mission to dispatch the mutants now occupying a New Jericho base. Our job is to secure the location and rescue any survivors. It’s not going well. Phoenix Point is the next game from X-COM: UFO Defense creator Julian Gollop. It’s a return to X-COM’s brand of turn-based tactics and high-level strategy. But this is an evolution of the genre, incorporating elements introduced by Firaxis’s recent XCOM series (the one without the hyphen). It’s a merging of ideas both old and…

JURASSIC PARK (1993) Developed by Ocean Software, this shooter features both top-down and first-person levels, and even a few puzzles. A strong debut for the series on PC. TRESPASSER: THE LOST WORLD (1998) An over-ambitious first-person game. Trespasser has become somewhat infamous for its laughably broken physics and bizarre, unwieldy control scheme. JURASSIC PARK III: DINO DEFENDER (2001) A platformer developed by Knowledge Adventure. The studio also released Scan Command, which used a weird barcodescanning peripheral. JURASSIC PARK: DINOSAUR BATTLES (2001) Another game by Knowledge Adventure, this time you’re pitting various dinosaurs against each other in Pokémonstyle battles. JURASSIC PARK: OPERATION GENESIS (2003) A first attempt at a park-building sim by Blue Tongue. A fun game, but the slow pace, dumb AI and repetitive missions let it down. JURASSIC PARK:…

Surely this is where it ends. One bug is attacking the train I’m defending. Another is about to destroy a building. Every time a building falls, I lose a Power Grid point. I’ve only got one left and once it’s gone, the Vek win. If you’ve played FTL , you’ll know the panic of a no-win situation. Into the Breach will bring that feeling back, and it’s wonderful. Developed by the same team, it’s built on the same roguelike progression, interplaying abilities and knuckle-gnawing tension. My Lightning Mech could run up to the bug attacking the train and lightning whip it, but that would destroy the train. This is impossible. Every move I try either fails to deal with both bugs or takes…

QUICK HANDS Harvesting energy from piles of dead zombies is achingly slow, so spend some points on this upgrade as soon as you can. LEG SWEEP Crouch and sweep the leg, Karate Kid-style, to knock a zombie on its arse. Comes in handy when one is lunging at you. CQC COUNTER That’s short for close quarters combat. If it’s good enough for the legendary Big Boss, it’s good enough for whoever you are. DIVE ATTACK If you’re standing above a horde of zombies, use this to deliver death from above with the melee weapon of your choice. SPRINT SWING Give your melee weapon some extra heft with this move, which lets you transition from a sprint to a powerful, high-damage swing.…

There always seems to be a way to wriggle out of trouble On paper, this alliance of two evergreen puzzlers makes perfect sense. If both games are brilliant, then bringing them together would naturally seem to equal brilliant squared. Yet it’s also an idea fraught with risk: there’s always a chance such a hybrid might dilute their individual excellence. Happily, as you’ve no doubt already guessed from the score, that’s not the case here. This spirited revival manages to offer the best of both worlds. Given that it’s harder to find an electronic device that doesn’t play a version of Tetris, this grandaddy of puzzlers warrants little introduction. It remains unassailably brilliant. But Puyo Puyo is no brash upstart, either. First released on the Famicom Disk System and MSX2 back…

WTWTLW’s stories are buried within a high-concept adventure that doesn’t improve on the simple experience of reading, but its stories are still worth telling. With that in mind, here are some related books that you won’t have to hold the ‘W’ key down to read. WORKING STUDS TERKEL A collection of ’70s interviews with Americans about their jobs. A captivating document about what it means to ‘work,’ and the most similar experience to playing WTWTLW that I can think of. DUSK OF DAWN W.E.B. DU BOIS Du Bois’ 1940 autobiography, as well as his catalogue of other texts (look for a collection!), are necessary, and powerful reading if one wants to begin to understand race in the United States. THE GRAPES OF WRATH JOHN STEINBECK It’s clear that much of…

Welcome back to Blendo corner! This month: a game that is about six minutes long and somehow manages to do more with that time than most story-driven games do in six hours. It’s a playable staccato time-lapse heist love story that will teach you Bernoulli’s principle. It only has a handful of moments, but each has a little flourish that will make you go, ‘Oh!’ Like actual honest-to-god art, Thirty Flights lives as much in your imagination as on the screen: as such, it defies any sort of quantitative evaluative measure you might throw at it. With that in mind, I grant it 90 PC Gamer Objectivity Points.…

There was a time when mechanical keyboards were the talk of the town. Now they’re less of a luxury and more of a commodity – yet some people still aren’t convinced by them. Nonetheless, there’s still plenty of choice out there so I’ve grabbed five of the most popular to see what they offer. Dancing digits at the ready… Q&A Why mechanical keyswitches? Mechanical keyswitches last longer than rubber membrane-type keys, and feel responsive throughout their life. Blue/Brown/Red? Cherry MX has three main keyswitch types. Tactile (Blue and Brown) have a bump as you press the key, giving you physical feedback. Meanwhile Red provides a linear motion with no feedback when the switch has been activated. Which switch is best? Blue and Brown are preferred by typists. However, for gaming,…

MOTHERBOARD Z370-A Pro MSI £109 What better place to start than with MSI’s Z370-A Pro. With plenty of expandability, it’s perfect for any entry rig. PROCESSOR Core i3-8100 Intel £100 Intel’s new Coffee Lake processors add an additional two cores to the lineup. Think of this as a Core i5 processor, but cheaper. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce GTX 1060 3GB Inno3D £260 The GTX 1060 3GB is the clear choice of graphics card for this price of build, and this month Inno3D is offering the best value. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) @2400MHz Corsair £95 DDR4 prices are still high, however this Corsair pair is a good value option. POWER SUPPLY 500BQ EVGA £50 It may be cheap, but this 500W PSU is more than enough to handle any budget build.…

WHITE NIGHT Created by Tanshaydar, this popular custom story is set in a hospital where you wake up as a patient with no memory of how you got there. This story has more than a hint of Silent Hill and Jacob’s Ladder about it. ABDUCTION Set a year after the events of The Dark Descent and once again starring original protagonist Daniel, this story by Anxt has some pacing issues towards the end, but is otherwise a fine extension of Frictional’s story. THROUGH THE PORTAL Another continuation of The Dark Descent by DamnNoHtml, this time taking you to the bizarre alien world hinted at in the ‘portal’ ending. Notable for featuring some very un-Amnesia environments. TROLL STORY If you actually prefer loud jump scares to Amadeus’ slow-burning horror style, this…

IT’S PERFECT FOR A MORE LACKADAISICAL GAMER LIKE MYSELF There’s something about finally landing a jump onto an aircraft hangar, only to teeter on the edge and flop unceremoniously down onto a friend who’s playing hide-and-seek in a miniature car, that makes you appreciate the silliness of Burnout Paradise . Taking the game away from the typical racing structure and setting it in an open world was a move lauded by many critics and fans, and kept me playing for hours. Paradise kept the series’ impactful racing, but added diversions that made it feel like a brand-new experience – perfect for PC players coming to Burnout for the first time. Despite not being a petrolhead, it was astonishingly easy for me to fall in love with, because…

ANDY KELLY Specialist in Simulation, dinosaurs Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Can he unearth Jurassic World Evolution details for our cover feature? Andy finds a way. PHILIPPA WARR Specialist in Indie, plants Twitter @philippawarr This month Is quickly establishing her brand in PC Gamer as, “I have thoughts about plants and mosquitos.” TOM SENIOR Specialist in Strategy, elephants Twitter @PCGLudo This month Returned to Dominions for a new diary – only this time with less sacrifice and more elephants. SAMUEL ROBERTS Specialist in Immersive sims, PCGamer.com Twitter @SamuelWRoberts This month Took a break from the PC Gamer website to write about The Blackout Club.…

Game jam Event Game release Esports PC Gamer 26 MAR - 2 APR APRIL FOOL’S JAM As you read this, the April Fool’s Jam will be over. Head to www.bit.ly/foolsjamto find a selection of games designed to fool you. 12 APR BRITISH ACADEMY GAMES AWARDS Watch as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds vies for the Multiplayer award, or as Gorogoa tries to wrestle a Game Innovation trophy away from Breath of the Wild. There’s a strong list of nominees this year, so tune in and cheer on your favourite developer. 13-15 APR EGX REZZED The younger, smaller sibling of Eurogamer’s EGX show takes place in Tobacco Dock, London. Rezzed has more of an indie focus than EGX, which means games like Ooblets and Chucklefish’s Wargroove will be playable on the show floor. Check…

SIMPLY PUT: DEVELOPERS STEAL, CONSTANTLY, FROM THEIR OWN WORKS AND ONE ANOTHER Last month, I examined the concept of dialogue in games, and how simple dialogue systems can still be a pain to create, even if you’re using a template. This month, I decided to speak to some of the developers not using standard dialogue and choice systems. Contrary to what I expected, these designs weren’t necessarily more difficult to create than a standard choice or text format – they weren’t even new , per se. They were harvested. “We did not want to make episodic games like The Walking Dead or Life is Strange,” Big Bad Wolf, the studio behind episodic adventure game The Council, tells me. “These games have their own…

LA NOIRE A lavish anthology of dark crime stories set in a post-war Los Angeles. HER STORY An experimental, non-linear mystery comprised entirely of police interrogation clips. DANGANRONPA A schoolboy is held hostage by a mysterious villain and forced to solve a series of murders. BLADE RUNNER This detective adventure follows a rookie cop on the hunt for rogue replicants. THE LAST EXPRESS A gripping tale of murder and deception set aboard the famous Orient Express in 1914.…

“WE WANTED TO TELL A STORY THAT AIMS FOR THAT IMAGINARY ESCAPISM” If you ever snuck into the woods as a child, hoping to find mythical creatures, or searched valiantly for a portal into another world, The Wild at Heart feels like it’s being made just for you. Currently in development at indie studio SleepNinja Games, it tells the story of two young friends who uncover a land of magic and monsters on the borders of their sleepy hometown. It takes place in a small coastal town called Willowvale, which sits alongside a deep, sprawling forest. While exploring the woods one day, the game’s protagonists Wake and Kirby discover that there are friendly spirits living among the trees, and they’re being protected by an order called…

BRACHIOSAURUS Enormous herbivores that lived 160 million years ago and whose necks could reach as high as 30 metres. CERATOSAURUS A carnivore that existed 150 million years ago, which had a set of horns on its head and a tail for swimming. EDMONTOSAURUS A billed dinosaur that roamed the earth 73 million years ago. Its beak was used for crushing plant matter. TRICERATOPS One of the most recognisable dinos thanks to its three distinct horns. Existed around 70 million years ago. GALLIMIMUS These ostrich-like dinosaurs, active 70 million years ago, could run at speeds of 60mph.…

Warhammer: Vermintide II doesn’t believe in easing you in gently. I’ve played three missions so far, and failed each of them – destroyed by the combined might of rat ogres, Chaos Sorcerers and Stormvermin. More so than the first game, the sequel values levelling and progression, and that means you’ll fail a lot early on. It can be deflating, but as Steven makes clear in this issue’s lead review, it’s hard to deny how good it feels to slice your way through an army of rats. We’ve packed a lot into this issue, because quiet periods no longer exist on the PC release calendar. There’s a little of everything: from the joyous arcade fun of Puyo Puyo Tetris to the tightrope act of continued existence in Surviving Mars, to the…

CHAOS SPAWN This nightmarish monster can grab party members and chew on their face in order to regenerate lost health. CHAOS TROLL Vomiting is never cool, especially when this troll coats you in puke to slow your movement speed so he can thrash you about. RAT OGRE These giant rats don’t need any nasty tricks to massacre your party – they’re fine doing that with their bare hands. STORMFIEND Equipped with two flamethrowers, the Stormfiend can quickly pin your party down. Aim for the weird baby on it’s back.…

BURST BEAM “Fire a piercing beam that decreases in damage the further it goes.” You look smart. Have I got the gun for you. Uh, yeah, it does also melt buildings. A bit. SHIELD PROJECTOR “Shield tiles from damage.” Nah, it doesn’t do any damage, but look at the positives: you get to watch the apocalypse from total safety, yeah? UNSTABLE CANNON “Powerful projectile that causes damage to shooter as well as the target.” Let’s not focus on getting a little dinged! Just think about the other guy. ROCK ACCELERATOR “Launch a rock at a tile, pushing adjacent tiles.” Everyone likes to blow off a bit of steam by chucking a massive rock at a bug, am I right? AERIAL BOMBS “Fly over a target, dropping an explosive smoke bomb.”…

A colonist has died,” Surviving Mars’ AI assistant warns me in its detached, robotic voice. By the time I’m looking at the dome where she’s kicked the bucket, four more colonists have joined her. It quickly becomes a cascade, with people collapsing and gasping for air in every dome. In an alarmingly short space of time, my sprawling extraterrestrial colony of hundreds is decimated. Surviving on this inhospitable world is no mean feat, but it’s worth the effort. Famine, dehydration, domes cracking and exposing their denizens to the deadly world outside – my first colony ended up being a lesson in the folly of setting up shop on Mars. Over 300 colonists perished. It started peacefully, however, with cute drones and pressure-free building projects. Humans don’t…

A game about a zombie apocalypse taking place inside an Apple II. You drive west in a station wagon, juggle supplies and fuel, and fend off the undead in a string of bleepybloopy minigames. Organ Trail makes you name all of the survivors in your party, with the express purpose of creating stories about your friends. Like how both Tom and Sam managed to get bitten while taking a piss in the wilderness, only somehow Sam managed to do it twice. Or how Pip broke both her arms and a rib while sitting in the passenger seat of a car. It’s charming and £4, though worth paying double to get the expansion. Bonus tip: wind up pedants by describing Organ Trail as ‘retro FTL’.…

CRUCIAL MX500 500GB  www.crucial.com £110 SSD The SSD market has been dominated by Samsung in recent years but, with the arrival of the MX500, Crucial has wrestled away one of the Korean giant’s crowns. This drive offers as much performance as you need for a rock-bottom price. It’s the new choice for SATA SSDs. While SATA SSDs aren’t exactly the pinnacle of performance, that’s sort of the point. You buy a SATA drive because you’re looking to balance performance with price. Samsung’s SATAs may offer the best performance, but are priced too close to NVMe drives. The MX500, offers nearly as much performance for a lower price. Just how fast are we talking? Well, this drive will hit 563MB/s sequential read speed and 520MB/s sequential write speed, which is almost as…

MOTHERBOARD Z370 Tomahawk MSI £135 This is a nice-looking bit of kit at a good price. Couple that with two M.2 slots, and it’s the perfect place to house that Core i5. PROCESSOR Core i5-8400 Intel £160 Intel’s latest boasts six of its Coffee Lake cores, with great single-core performance. It even gives last-gen’s i7 a run for its money. GRAPHICS CARD GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX EVGA £550 Trying to balance prices, we’ve opted to drop down to an SC Gaming card. Don’t worry, you only lose out on a very minor overclock. COOLER MasterLiquid Lite 240 CoolerMaster £45 This 240mm, dual-fan, all-in-one liquid CPU cooler is ludicrously cheap, but performs well and stays quiet, too. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) @2666 Corsair £170 16GB is the minimum amount…

STELLARIS 2.0’S CHANGES ARE DEFINITELY FOR THE BETTER In C.J. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station, Earth expands to the stars by constructing a network of space stations, and ships jump from one to another. The stations are the glue that holds space together. Stellaris ’ huge 2.0 patch isn’t just named after Cherryh, it practically uses her novels as a design document. Version 2.0 is bold, changing fundamental aspects of Stellaris, and it all starts with the map. Before 2.0, borders were vague blobs, with empires laying claim to systems they’d never visited. But what was analogue is now digital: if you have a starbase in a system, you own that system. It seems simple but, coupled with the fact hyperlanes are now the only way to travel between…

The last time I played fantastical 4X game Dominions for a diary feature I ended up sacrificing hundreds of blood slaves to cast the game world into a screaming eternal night. My demon apes, led by an inanimate lump of rock called Balboa, fled to a floating island where they were finally annihilated. My enemies even killed Balboa’s dog, the bastards. I think I can do better, and the release of Dominions 5 is just the excuse I need to forge a new godly identity and lead a new fantasy race to glory. This time, I vow, I will be good. There will be no blood slaves. Instead I will woo my competitors with heavenly grace as the ruler of the old kingdom of Arcoscephale. This…

DUNGEON KEEPER A little dated, but still a perfect coming-together of theme, design and humour. SYNDICATE This one is desperately deserving of a remake. No, not that remake. MAGIC CARPET Blew minds due to its visuals and speed: both have, obviously, been exceeded. THEME PARK Nostalgia will carry you a long way, but there are lots of good sims nowadays. POPULOUS An important moment in game design, but not really a lot of fun to play today.…

PHILIPPA WARR Orchids are called orchids because their swollen roots look like testicles and ‘orchis’ is Greek for testicles. HEXCELLS INFINITE  www.matthewbrowngames.com The third game in Matthew Brown’s Hexcells puzzle series is the best. Infinite is named after the infinite puzzle generator mode it contains, but the real joy is in the handcrafted puzzles which make up the rest of the game. A must-play for anyone who enjoys minimalist logic puzzles like Picross. A HOUSE OF MANY DOORS  www.pixeltrickerygames.com A wonderfully atmospheric exploration and survival adventure in the vein of Sunless Sea. The similarities meant it was hard for A House of Many Doors not to vanish into Sunless Sea’s shadow, but over time I’ve felt a growing urge to return to my metal centipede for more narrative thrills. GLASS…

IF WE MUST START POINTLESS CHANGE.ORG  PETITIONS ABOUT ANYTHING, LET IT BE THIS Numbers: do you understand them? Do you really? Perhaps you think you do. The Spy maintains no such illusions. Years of speeding along the videogame rumour highway will quickly divest you of the notion that the curly pictograms we put next to the names of shooters mean anything at all. Do you remember how Battlefield 1 , comfortably the 15th Battlefield game in the series, was called ‘ Battlefield 1 ’? Rumour has it that the 16th Battlefield game, likely to be called ‘Battlefield 5’, is in development at DICE under the production name ‘Battlefield 2’. There’s already a game called Battlefield…

MENDEL This upcoming space plant genetics sandbox actually started life as Owen Bell’s NYU thesis project. PLANT TYCOON A simple gardening sim from a pre-microtransaction age. Breed and crossbreed plants in your greenhouse. NICHE This mixes turn-based strategy and survival with genetics. Breeding alters species strengths and weaknesses. ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW LEAF Not a PC game, but I need to vent. I’m trying to breed blue roses and it’s the hardest thing in the universe! ARGH!…

HOUSE OF LEAVES This bestselling novel shares traits with the perspective shifts used by William Faulkner in books like As I Lay Dying, becoming a touchstone for developers such as Jake Elliott experimenting with evocative text formatting. ROGUELIKES These are an increasingly regular inspiration for story-based titles, with their emergent systems and wide range of randomly generated possibilities finding their ways into games including Ambition: A Minuet in Power. TOMB RAIDER Some of inkle’s most prominent inspirations for Heavenly Vault are adventure games like Tomb Raider. Games that, though they step outside the bounds of the ’pure’ adventure, tell a characterful story in a 3D world. THE LAST EXPRESS This wildly ambitious adventure game is another inspiration for inkle’s Heavenly Vault. Set aboard the Orient Express, players are left to…

“WE WANTED TO FEEL LIKE YOU’RE NOT REALLY THROWING ANYTHING AWAY” Immediately after finishing the Two Point Hospital developer interview transcription I… well, I should have started writing this preview, but what I actually ended up doing was booting up Theme Hospital and curing a swarm of patients with comically swollen heads against a soundtrack of jaunty music and toilet noises. Two Point Hospital is both a standalone game in a new, broader setting and, inescapably, a spiritual successor to Bullfrog’s 1998 hospital management simulation. Partly that’s because of the structure and tone of the game – comedy and medically-themed design – and partly it’s because the studio is being led by Theme Hospital’s lead developer, Mark Webley, and lead artist, Gary…

CLASSICS STARCRAFT Two decades after it was first released, Blizzard now offers its strategy space opera free of charge. The bundle also brings you the Brood War expansion’s fresh crop of campaigns, tilesets, units and upgrade advancement. One of the longest-serving games on the esports circuit, the pro scene is largely over for StarCraft, but the top players can still make a few bob in the tournaments that remain. That means in addition to being a free game, you could pump up your actions-per-minute and earn an infinite return on your zero investment. PC Gamer: offering sound careers advice since 1993. PW www.bit.ly/starcraft-free THE ELDER SCROLLS II: DAGGERFALL Boasting a 63,000 square mile map, Daggerfall is an enormous RPG set in the Breton homeland of High Rock. It features many…

STEVEN MESSNER Specialist in FPS, rats Currently playing Warhammer: Vermintide II This month Got on-the-job training as an exterminator. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Action, Kojima Currently playing Metal Gear Survive This month Wished he could enter a portal to a world where Kojima was still in charge of MGS. FRASER BROWN Specialist in Sims, xenobiology Currently playing Surviving Mars This month Tried to feed a colony full of Martians without the help of Matt Damon. HANNAH DWAN Specialist in RPG, Ignis Currently playing Final Fantasy XV This month Was incredibly wrong about Prompto being the second worst boy. It’s Gladio, obviously. CHRIS SCHILLING Specialist in Puzzle, another puzzle Currently playing Puyo Puyo Tetris This month Enjoyed two great puzzle games that play great together. TYLER WILDE Specialist in Adventure, waiting…

BARDIN, THE IRONBREAKER Able to taunt enemies, the Ironbreaker is the tank of any group. They also negate any attack once every 20 seconds. KERILLIAN, THE HANDMAIDEN Kerillian’s Handmaiden career makes her an impossible-to-hit melee expert that can dodge extra long distances. KRUBER, THE HUNTSMAN The Huntsman can dish out absurd amounts of damage. He can also vanish temporarily and regenerate ammo with headshots. SALTZPYRE, THE ZEALOT This fanatic does more damage the lower his health is, and his special ability will charge him forward in a fiery blaze of death. SIENNA, THE BATTLE WIZARD Capable of torching hordes of Skaven, the Battle Wizard is a powerful mage who needs to cool down frequently or risk burning up.…

DUST Mars is very dusty. That’s a problem for solar panels and anyone with serious allergies. It can’t be avoided, but not building dust-spewing mines near other buildings helps. TORNADOS Martian tornados wreck everything in their path, and they always seem to find a way to take out the life support. All you can do, really, is get the hell out of the way. METEOR SHOWERS Even the sky hates you. Early warning systems can be unlocked, and even automated lasers, but until then, you’ll just have to hope a rock doesn’t strike one of your domes. THE COLD Some areas get so cold that domes can’t properly protect the colonists. Heaters can keep everyone toasty, though that means you’ll need to put stress on your power supply.…

NOCTIS LUCIS CAELUM Emo hasn’t been in fashion for years now, and Noctis’s brand of disinterest isn’t exactly kingly. PROMPTO ARGENTUM An improvement on Noctis, Prompto is the most relatable: unsure of himself, but ultimately always doing his best. GLADIOLUS AMICITIA Perhaps the definition of a brute with a heart of gold, Gladiolus isn’t afraid to call anyone out on their shit. IGNIS SCIENTIA As the smartest, most cunning, and wittiest member of the gang, Ignis is the sort of person you’d rely on for anything.…

ZOWIE ZA12 www.zowie.com £55 The ZA12 is a ambidextrous mouse that’s all about delivering excellent gaming performance without the frills. It achieves this thanks to its excellent PixArt 3310 sensor and simple but comfortable shape that suits all grip styles. However, plenty of other gaming mice deliver the same while including a few more features for the same price. 72 % SAMSUNG 860 EVO 500GB www.samsung.com £150 The successor to the 850 Evo, the 860 Evo is the new mainstream SATA SSD champion. It uses the company’s latest TLC 3D NAND and MJX controller to deliver performance that all but maxes out what the SATA interface can deliver. However, the Crucial MX500 delivers all but identical performance for less. 75 % SAMSUNG 860 PRO 512GB www.samsung.com £210 The Samsung 850 Pro used to…

MOTHERBOARD Crosshair VI Hero Asus £235 The best Ryzen board out now. It provides a stable backbone for any early adopter looking to join the red core revolution. PROCESSOR Ryzen 7 1800X AMD £290 The 1800X, combined with 32GB of 3200 MT/s, dominates both single and multicore tasks with ease. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce GTX 1080Ti Turbo Asus £825 The GTX 1080Ti isn’t cheap so any chance to knock money off the price is one we’ll take. This Asus version does just that. COOLER Kraken X62 NZXT £130 The Kraken is the culmination of three of our favourite things: an infinity mirror, a 280mm radiator and slick braided cooling. MEMORY Vengeance LED RGB 32GB @3200 Corsair £376 Ryzen is the one processor that does benefit hugely from higher frequency memory. This…

KIT-KAT VENDING MACHINES Videogame candy sponsorship didn’t survive the previous century, for whatever reason. FAXES Like a black-and-white motionless Snapchat sent to your parents’ printer, with a phone grafted onto the end. MULTIPLAYER MENUS LIKE THIS Back in my day of dial-up, we earned our dozen or so minutes of functional multiplayer. INTEREST RATES ABOVE 1% How to explain this… right, so, there’s this thing called a mortgage and it kind of makes you want to cry……