Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2018 i PC Gamer

HIGHS Assassin’s Creed Odyssey With added romances and dialogue choices, we’re cool with Assassin’s Creedturning intoMassEffect. The Elder Scrolls 6 Details are thin on the ground but we’re already scrutinising the announcement trailer for clues. Hitman 2 A whole new instalment of one of the best modern stealth games on PC? Our garottes are primed and ready. LOWS Steam Valve’s refusal to police what goes on Steam is going to flood the store with all kinds of edgelord crap. Cyberpunk 2077 This looks incredible, but the wait for CD Projekt Red’s futuristic new RPG is going to be absolute torture. Shadow of the Tomb Raider We’re bored of stabbing people. Can we raid some tombs? Please?…

ISSUE 203, August 2009 ON THE COVER Star Wars: The Old Republic IN THE CHARTS Battlefield – Jordin Sparks 1 Remedy’s writer’s block horror adventure, Alan Wake, had an E3 demo this issue. Tim Edwards reminds us that the game featured a zombie JCB which wakes and then stages a monster movie-esque attack on the struggling author. We learned that hiding from a giant destruction machine inside a flimsy house is a bad idea. A better idea is blowing up the empty driver’s cabin with a flare. 2 Face Off asked “Are microtransactions the future of gaming?” Tim Edwards was right in that they took off. Ross Atherton was correct that they can be a pain. 3 Writer Logan Decker employed all of the tools in his arsenal for what…

LOOSE PAGES I HAVE MISPLACED MY LIST. IT’S LOST AMID THE DETRITUS OF MY DESK A tragedy has occurred. I have misplaced my list. It’s lost amid the detritus of my desk. You might think it would be easy to find, but you have underestimated how many printouts are piled on every surface. Still, I had a productive bank holiday catching up on shorter games. I completed Quadrilateral Cowboy, an entertaining heist hack-’em-up that felt like it was a chapter and some more complicated puzzles away from brilliance. Then I got stuck into Orwell: Ignorance is Strength. It had neat ideas around the malleable nature of truth, but I didn’t find the mystery as compelling as in the first game. Finally, I played Tacoma. I loved the detailed design of…

THE METRO SERIES HAS ALWAYS WORKED SO WELL AS A TIGHTLY DIRECTED SHOOTER I have a good sense of what Metro’s post-apocalypse feels like to touch. It’s greasy, it smells like oil, everything is covered in radioactive grit. The game sells its world beautifully with a thousand tiny details. It’s in the squeak your glove makes when you wipe your gas mask. It’s in the grainy paper of your map. It’s in the improvised weapons, which get dirtier as you carry them through a journey that spans a year of your character’s life. The first two Metro games are still some of the best-looking shooters ever made, now Exoduswill try to take that level of detail out of the Moscow underground into wide-open environments full of…

1 ORIGINAL SOURCE Croteam explained that CEO, Roman Ribaric, “came up with a design of a headless guy running straight at you carrying two bombs that looks straight out of on old Peter Sellers comedy”, adding, “He usually just handles documents and contracts. Go figure!” 2 DRAWN FROM LIFE In Samlore these enemies are reanimated Sirians – they look similar to humans so Croteam can look to real life for references. Some elements are modelled by hand, like the gloves. Others, like the shoes, are scanned using photogrammetry techniques before passing through the rest of the art pipeline. 3 SAY AAAAAAAAAAAAA! The original scream was recorded by CEO, Roman Ribaric. The headless bombers lack mouths, due to the aforementioned headlessness, so the screams actually emanate from a Life Control Unit…

Built by the Vailians decades ago, Fort Deadlight was overrun by monsters until it was captured by Captain Aeldys of the Príncipi sen Patrena, a powerful pirate faction. Aeldys uses the fort as a staging area for her exploits in the region, and has adorned its ramparts with heavy cannons to deter anyone looking to dethrone her. When she’s at sea she hands control over to a trusted ally, who just happens to be the scoundrel Benweth when the Watcher arrives. The fort welcomes any Príncipi loyalist, making it a popular pirate hideout.…

I’d like to take a journey to the bottom of games, now, if you’ll entertain me for a moment. Clicker Heroes is Steam’s most popular free clicker game. In it, you click on monsters to make them pop. When they pop you get some gold, and you use this gold to buy and upgrade unseen characters who do a certain amount of damage over time. The numbers go up, which feels nice, so you do it forever. Eventually, you – real you – will die, because your time is finite. Clicker Heroes’ time is not finite, however. It will give you things to click on forever. I’m not angry that somebody made Clicker Heroes, nor that it found popularity. I’m angry that it works on me.…

Q&A H370 or Z370? The H370 and Z370 are your main choices for chipsets that support Intel’s latest processors. H370 is cheaper but lacks overclocking and fast memory support, making it ideal to pair with a cheaper processor such as the Intel Core i5-8400. Do you need overclocking? Overclocking gets you extra performance, but for gaming it only matters if your graphics card isn’t already the performance bottleneck. Saving on your CPU and mobo could save you money for a better graphics card. Is it worth spending more? The sort of thing you miss out on with cheaper motherboards are higher-quality audio, USB ports, power buttons and post readouts, better overclocking, and extras like lighting and fancy heatsinks. What setup did you use? Core i7-8700K, GTX 1080 and 16GB Corsair…

MOTHERBOARD Strix X470-F Gaming Asus £180 Get the most from the new AMD Ryzen 2700X with this matching X470 motherboard that’s packed with features. PROCESSOR Ryzen 7 2700X AMD £284 Easy to overclock and with huge performance out of the box, AMD’s new flagship CPU is the one to go for. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce GTX 1080Ti Turbo Asus £805 Prices of GTX 1080 Ti’s don’t seem to have dropped as much as other cards but you’re still saving a decent amount. COOLER Kraken X62 NZXT £125 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 £386 Ryzen is the one processor that does benefit hugely from higher-frequency memory. This kit is…

THE OLYMPUSKERBALEV TEST PROJECT In 1975 Russia and the USA launched a joint mission for the first time. This mod does an amazing job in recreating the look of the spacecraft involved. Seeing trivia about the real-life flight made this mod a charming, educational project. 2001 - A SPACE MISSION PACK KSP’s most recognisable friendly voice, Scott Manley, teamed up with another modder to create missions based on 2001: A Space Odyssey. Missions include landing near the Monolith on the moon and docking commuter space flights at space station terminals. RESEARCH FLAT EARTH Did you hear about the guy who built a steam-powered rocket and launched it, trying to get a good enough view to prove the Earth is flat? This actually happened in California in March 2018, and you…

MATILDA Reign: 1069 – 1101 Death: Killed in battle, age 55 Notable traits: Ambitious, diligent, stressed Achievements: Founded the Kingdom. TOMASINA Reign: 1101 – 1154 Death: Depression, age 74 Notable traits: Stressed, possessed, sympathy for Islam Achievements: Lost, recaptured and re-lost Jerusalem. RAINERO Reign: 1154 – 1163 Death: Natural causes, age 54 Notable traits: Stressed, cruel, drunkard Achievements: Got deposed for being a petulant gobshite. ANTONIA Reign: 1163 – ???? Death: Still alive and kicking Notable traits: Gregarious, erudite, weak Achievements: Won a Crusade at 18 years of age.…

PHILIPPA WARR Specialist in Strafing This month Somehow found herself embroiled in the madcap japes of Serious Sam 4 developer Croteam. Not very serious. RICK LANE Specialist in Crouching Twitter @Rick_Lane This month Donned some shades for another look at immersive sims. Quite serious. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Planning Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Discovered the many ways you can bring down a pirate. Light serious. SAMUEL ROBERTS Specialist in Stabbing Twitter @SamuelWRoberts This month Found that Ancient Greece was full of murder jerks. Pretty serious.…

Game jam Event Game release Esports PC Gamer 3 JULY RED FACTION: GUERRILLA RE-MARS-TERED Buckle up, because this is going to be a pretty rough month of not very much happening in the world of PC gaming. At least you can play this remastered edition of the one good Red Faction game – the one that lets you hammer away at a dystopian Martian colony. 1 – 31 JULY CLIMATE JAM Throughout the month, participants of this jam will be creating games themed around climate change. Head to www.bit.ly/ccgj-18 for details. 6 – 8 JULY ESL ONE COLOGNE It’s the “cathedral of Counter-Strike”,but who will be the bishop? Presumably that’s what we’ll learn at the event. 10 JULY SHINING RESONANCE REFRAIN Have you tried to use Steam’s upcoming tab? It’s…

“PERSPECTIVE QUICKLY SHIFTS FROM THAT OF A DEVELOPER TO THAT OF A PLAYER” Games are not built in sequential order, one level or area after another until the job is done. Instead, they’re composed of pieces that are built sporadically. Some developers even advise building the first sequence in a game at the end of a project, so that you can draw on the lessons you learned throughout the process to create a smooth opening. Demos, then, can be something of a Frankenstein’s monster. “The simple truth of the matter is demos are showing something which looks like a final product long before there’s a final product,” says Jason Stark of Ninja Pizza Girl dev Disparity Games. “Even when you do show a finished game you often have to change…

STEPHEN’S SAUSAGE ROLL It’s better to chip away at this solid puzzler over time than binge on its difficult levels. GLASS MASQUERADE Digital jigsaws made from beautiful stained glass as part of a fictional international fair. TINY BUBBLES Alter bubbles to solve puzzles. The physics are inspired by the designer’s grandfather’s work. CYPHER Matthew Brown, of Hexcells fame, explores cryptography via hands-on challenges. GOROGOA Stunning and austere, this lets you line up tiles in order to tease out its mysterious tale.…

So just how serious is Serious Sam 4 ? Well, given that I am watching one of its developers merrily crunching through a shrieking alien horde using a combine harvester while also picking off stragglers with shotgun bullets, I’d say it’s exactly as serious as you would desire from the series. In fact, my whole visit to Croteam’s Croatian studio is peppered with moments exactly as serious as this, both in-game and IRL. For example, there was the music studio, full of complicated doors and sound dampening. It isn’t used as it’s not quite ready (and hasn’t been quite ready for years) so the music is recorded in an office just opposite the not-quite-ready-studio. While visiting this part, Croteam’s head of music, Damjan Mravunac, sang a sad…

ince 2011, PC gaming has been blessed incredible second wave of high-concept immersive sims. Starting with Deus E Revolution , the last few years have seen Ex games, two Dishonored games, a ne Thief game, and Prey , which for all intents and purposes is a spiritual successor to System Shock . All of these games embrace the ideals that made Deus Ex , Thief and System Shock so striking in the ’90s – emergent play, player agency and complex level design – reforged with new aesthetics and exploring different ideas and themes. It’s been a wonderful…

1 COURT The fort’s social hub, where pirates meet to drink, brawl and share stories. Benweth will come down here to play the harpsichord, but only if the party is sufficiently raucous. Good rum will help. 2 DOCK Hidden beneath the fortress, this berth is where the Príncipi sen Patrena stores its valuable ships. If you agree to help Lamond kill Benweth’s crew here, he’ll steal his ship from under his nose. 3 DONJON No, I haven’t spelled dungeon wrong: this is a word for the innermost keep of a castle. This is where Benweth is holed up, protected by guards. Getting in won’t be easy, but you can get creative. 4 DUNGEON Even pirates have rules, and anyone caught misbehaving in Fort Deadlight will be sent to the dungeon.…

Jurassic World Evolution is the biggest release of the month, but not necessarily the best. Sure, this is a game in which you manage an island full of massive lizards, and can even sedate and airlift them – watching as their sleepy bodies flop adorably in the air. Despite these obvious successes, as well as a more general sense of wonder, Philippa relays a disappointing lack of depth in her review. Vampyr also just misses the mark. Alas, this is not the Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines successor that we’ve been waiting for. It’s an incredibly interesting but flawed experience that might still be worth checking out. So what about this month’s top-scoring games? Well, you’ve got the gothic card game and the pinball adventure. See pages 80 and 82…

VVVVVV Tipping its hat to 8-bit computer games, Terry Cavanagh’s gravity-flipping platformer is a tough nut to crack. SHOVEL KNIGHT Yacht Club’s adventure stretches the definition of 8-bit, but its contemporary flourishes make this more than a wide-eyed tribute. MIGHTY GUNVOLT The Inti Creates game with ‘Mighty’ in the title you should buy, this Mega Man homage is a short but instantly gratifying treat. DOWNWELL Ojiro Fumoto’s striking, monochromatic debut is a blisteringly intense and irresistibly moreish arcade roguelike. With gunboots.…

This is the issue with numbers that go on forever. Games about numbers sit on the knife edge between hobby, work and compulsion that seems to be a unique danger of this medium. In being so degenerate, they’re basically pure games. Realm Grinder sounds a bit like a dating app for LARPers but it’s actually a city-building clicker game. It’s better than Clicker Heroes but not by much. I like its magic system, which deems ‘tax collection’ to be a magical spell. It allows you to opt between a ‘good’ path, which involves more clicking, and an ‘evil’ path, which involves more passive resource gain. I do not agree with this interpretation of a morality system.…

MOTHERBOARD B360M-DS3H Gigabyte £65 It lacks overclocking options, but the new B360 chipset is far cheaper than the Z370 and is perfect for this budget build. PROCESSOR Core i3-8100 Intel £102 A great processor for out-of-the-box gaming performance. Opt for the AMD Ryzen 1300X if you’d like to overclock. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce GTX 1060 3GB Inno3D £185 The rumours were true and graphics card prices are starting to fall. Our pick for this build is bit cheaper than last time. COOLER Hyper 212 Evo CoolerMaster £25 We’ve dropped the controller from this build and added in a better CPU cooler, for a quieter, cooler system. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) @2400MHz Corsair £76 DDR4 prices are still high, however this Corsair pair is a good value option. POWER SUPPLY 500BQ…

INSPIRATION 1 There’s a lot of great interactive fiction out there, and it’s worth spending time on sites such as the Interactive Fiction Database (www.ifdb.tads.org) or Itch.io’s Twine page (www.itch.io/games/tag-twine)before starting your own project. GET TWINE 2 You can use Twine online at www.twinery.org, but your project will be stored in your browser’s cache. Download the Windows client if you can and you’ll have more control over your files and where they’re stored. GET STARTED 3 At the bottom-right of your screen you’ll see a green ‘+Passage’ button. Pressing this creates a box on your workspace that will be the starting point for your interactive story. Use this to set the scene for the player. LINK A PASSAGE 4 Say you want to give the player the option to walk…

It’s the art style which carried me through to the end of the game Ken Levine’s slightly overlong adventure about killing a man who wants to live the libertarian geneticist dream of playing office minigolf at the bottom of the ocean (or something like that) holds up surprisingly well to a contemporary visit. I mean, the whole thing falls into the bin by the time you fight an Ayn Rand book cover and then sit through a Hallmark commercial or a vague nuclear threat, but still. This is a reinstall, but only in the most technical sense. I have indeed previously installed the game, but it led with an injection scene. That meant I quit instantly while trying not to throw up. Several years later and I’m marginally better at…

It’s no secret that Sam Lake is a Twin Peaks fan. The influence of Mark Frost and David Lynch’s cult series is felt in every game he writes, from the Pacific Northwestern folk horror of Alan Wake to Max Payne 2 ’s Address Unknown. This fictional TV series concerns a man being haunted by strange spirits including a backwards-talking pink flamingo. “Mirrors are more fun than television,” the bird says in a distorted, otherworldly voice. “She has dyed her hair red.” Address Unknown is the inspiration for A Linear Sequence of Scares, a brief but memorable level from the first act of Max Payne 2. Max visits contract killer Mona Sax, who’s hiding out in an apartment above an abandoned funhouse based on…

SAMUEL ROBERTS ‘EPIC FAIL!’ screams the YouTube homepage thumbnail, as an influencer who only speaks in extremes demands my attention. Oh, gentle YouTube algorithm, I have merely arrived at your shores to listen to the DeusEx soundtrack. STAR WARS EPISODE I: RACER  www.gog.com/game/star_wars_episode_i_racer I’m always looking for ways to get excited about Star Wars, and GOG’s re-release of Episode I: Racer took me back to a time where my dad had a pirated copy of the game (maybe that’s why some of the audio was missing). It’s still a fun and fast sci-fi racing game, and one of the better games based on the prequel trilogy. ASSASSIN’S CREED ORIGINS  www.assassinscreed.com I thought my days of Assassin’s Creed were over, but thanks to a work assignment – that is, previewing Odyssey–…

IT’S BEEN THREE YEARS SINCE ARKHAM KNIGHT: WHERE WERE ROCKSTEADY? E3’s a bit of a mixed blessing when you’re The Spy. On the one hand, it’s an opportunity to be proven absolutely correct: a rush of confirmations as longstanding rumours morph into flashy 15-second trailers that show absolutely nothing at all (here’s looking at you, Starfield)! The Spy was correct: Bethesda’s space RPG definitely exists. The Spy was incorrect, however, to assume that we’d learn anything at all about it in LA. There’s the flipside for you. E3’s scattershot blast of confirmations and denials reveals that The Spy sometimes gets things wrong, too. Borderlands 3? We didn’t see it: Gearbox instead spent its time at E3 showing press an under-wraps shooter-turned-card-game (?) called ‘Project 1v1’. That doesn’t mean its not…

ADVENTURE GAMES Adventure game developers across the industry reported that the slow-paced narratives of these titles and the concentration needed to solve puzzles made the games difficult to showcase – especially for more than one player. MANAGEMENT GAMES Teaching players how to navigate the multifaceted, interlocking systems of a management game, with the unique UI and varying controls that accompany them, is tough enough without the distractions of a typical show floor. MUSIC GAMES David Su of video game musical Yi and the Thousand Moons stated that it was difficult to attract potential players when its relaxing narrative was being drowned out by the noise of a busy convention show floor. ANYTHING THAT REQUIRES AN EXPLANATION OR TIME From stealth Metroidvanias to the globe interface of inkle’s 80 Days, whenever…

I just killed a bear on a beach. It took me a few attempts – mostly because I find dodging animals attacks fraught in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey , much like I did in Origins – but I finally shot the thing with enough fire arrows that it went down. While I normally wouldn’t expect a game to justify the logic of a boss battle with a bear, an investigation of a nearby shipwreck, strewn with bodies, reveals the reason it’s there. The bear was being transported by shady smugglers, until the boat crashed. The character who sent me to kill the bear was a smuggler, too – something she didn’t tell me at the start of the quest. Confronting her, I choose to…

PLANETFALL FOLLOWS THE SERIES’ BLUEPRINT OF GROWTH AND EXPANSION Think Fallout , but on a galactic level,” says Triumph Studios CEO Lennart Sas during my hands-off demo of Age of Wonders: Planetfall . That’s an ambitious way to begin a presentation, but I’d argue that ‘ Age of Wonders in a sci-fi setting’ is already an appealing enough elevator pitch. Either way, Planetfall looks lovely. It’s a turn-based 4X strategy game that swaps the series’ familiar medieval trappings for futuristic fixtures – and is also Triumph’s first outing under Paradox’s umbrella. Sas stresses the importance of diplomacy this time round, while continually referencing “casus belli” – an act which justifies war, and a staple feature of Paradox’s grand strategy games. Whether…

SYSTEM SHOCK 3 We haven’t said much about System Shock 3, mostly as it won’t launch until after Underworld Ascendant, but the return of SHODAN in a Shock sequel from Warren Spector should be enough to get any fan excited. WILDFIRE Can an immersive sim be 2D? Some would argue not, but it can at least apply the principles of the genre’s design. Wildfire casts you as a thief/mage type who explores a nonlinear world that is highly responsive to your magic. PROJECT C This is the upcoming game headed by Randy Smith, the creative director of Thief: Deadly Shadows. It isn’t strictly an immersive sim, however it will be heavily influenced by many of the ideas embodied by the genre.…

SNAKE EYES CONDWEN A gambler who swindles visitors out of their ill-earned copper with a pair of loaded dice. SCEYDWIN One of Benweth’s crew of pirates, lashed and tied to a post in the fort as a public punishment for insubordination. NO-NUT NED A black market peddler who sells supplies and other more specialist items, providing you have the coin. MIRKE A fun-loving, rum-swigging pirate serving under Captain Aeldys. Can later be recruited as a companion. SYRI THE SIREN An old flame of Serafen who gives the orlan pirate a hard time for abandoning her for a life at sea. UNGWITH THE CRAGHEARTED The captain of Deadlight’s guards. Despises drunkards, which makes the fort a gruelling place.…

PHILIPPA WARR Specialist in Sims, mishaps Currently playing Jurassic World Evolution This month Took a laissez-faire approach to dinosaur outbreaks. ANDY KELLY Specialist in RPGs, fashion Currently playing Vampyr This month Was distracted by a Victorian man’s incredibly modern haircut. Damn hipsters. TOM HATFIELD Specialist in Action, survival Currently playing State of Decay 2 This month Attempted to survive a zombie apocalypse. Turns out it wasn’t very hard. CHRIS SCHILLING Specialist in Indie, pinball Currently playing Yoku’s Island Express This month Heroically wrote about a pinball game without referencing Tommy. CHRIS LIVINGSTON Specialist in Cards, cults Currently playing Cultist Simulator This month Combined Job and Passion, resulting in Funds and a review. KATE GRAY Specialist in Adventure, nostalgia Currently playing Unforeseen Incidents This month Used mouse and keyboard on a…

COAGULATION With this power Reid can thicken an enemy’s blood until they can’t move, leaving them temporarily defenceless. BLOOD CAULDRON Reid focuses his energy on an enemy until their blood literally boils, dealing additional damage throughout the battle. SHADOW MIST Reid conjures up ghostly spears of shadow around an enemy, which explode and damage anything in the blast radius. BLOODSPEAR Reid uses his own blood to form the shape of a sharp, deadly spear, throwing it at enemies from a relatively safe distance.…

It’s impressive just how much is simulated on a virtual tabletop While I’m earning a living as a portrait painter I’m simultaneously meditating on my goal of obtaining unearthly power, sending followers to retrieve an artefact from a mysterious circus and dispatching a hulking brute to eliminate the dogged Inspector Wakefield. That damn Wakefield is a thorn in my side, investigating and accumulating evidence against me. My paid goon doesn’t straight-up murder the detective, but instead abducts and imprisons him in my cupboard, where he eventually starves to death, leaving me a nice decomposing corpse I’m hopeful I can find a good use for. That’s a pretty average day in Cultist Simulator, a morbid and deeply engrossing singleplayer narrative card game set in the ’20s. The goal is to establish…

KNIFE Good for cutting. Also, stabbing. But that never happens, despite all the people constantly trying to kill you and your friends. SCREWDRIVER It takes a while to figure this out, but the screwdriver can be used to break into places by doing something to doors. SCISSORS Things that knives can’t cut, scissors can. Except knives can cut everything, so there’s really not much point in scissors. PINCERS They’re pliers, but the game calls them pincers. Good for breaking through fences, despite being pliers and not bolt cutters. BOTTLE OPENER Used primarily for bottle opening, obviously. The only use of this tool is actually not crucial to the story at all. FILE If there’s a use for this file, we haven’t found it. Unless there’s a manicure bonus level in…

AMD RYZEN 7 2700 www.amd.com £257 The Ryzen 7 2700 has eight cores that can process 16 threads at once making for a mighty powerful processor. It’s also multiplier-unlocked for easy overclocking. However, its relatively slow clock speeds (3.2GHz to 4.1GHz) mean it isn’t the best choice for gamers. 75 % SAMSUNG 970 PRO 512GB www.samsung.com £252 This is essentially the fastest SSD you can buy thanks to its read/write speeds of up to a whopping 3,500MB/s and 2,700MB/s respectively. The 512GB version also boasts a massive 600TB write endurance. However, it’s overkill for most users. Go for the 970 Evo instead. 75 % AMD RYZEN 5 2600 www.amd.com £167 The Ryzen 5 2600 provides massive six-core, 12-thread power for a low price. It’s also easy to overclock and has a good base…

MOTHERBOARD Z370 Tomahawk MSI £110 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 £164 Better default gaming performance and a lower price puts this chip ahead of the AMD Ryzen 2600X. GRAPHICS CARD GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX EVGA £420 Again, we’re making a saving this month on our choice of graphics card. This time you can expect a chunk of savings. COOLER MasterLiquid Lite 240 CoolerMaster £49 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 £154 16GB is the minimum amount of RAM we’d recommend for a system of this…

This wasn’t supposed to happen. The Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica was only ever hypothetical – a right of conquest granted to James II of Aragon by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297. He wouldn’t get around to conquering Sardinia until almost 30 years later, and he never took Corsica. In this game of Crusader Kings II , however, not only has the kingdom unified, it’s expanded. It was created by an Italian duchess, Matilda di Canossa, in 1069, after she conquered enough of it to declare herself queen. In the three decades that followed, Matilda launched into a series of wars, some for new land, others for the Pope and a few seemingly for the hell of it. This all happened because, while Matilda is being controlled…

ELBOW Your chats always take an odd turn and, if you hang out with three like-minded friends, have a tendency to go round in circles. STRAIGHT You’re a fan of lying down or standing up and nothing in between. Sitting down scares you. You also cannot bend to tie your shoelaces. CROSS The good news is that you are incredibly versatile. The bad news is that you are also horribly broken and spill gloop everywhere. ALARM Anxious. If any other member of society makes any demands of you, you start screaming and throwing robots at them.…

ADDRESS UNKNOWN A cancelled supernatural TV series from the ’90s. It follows the story of a man who’s being stalked by a serial killer and a bizarre talking flamingo. LORDS AND LADIES A romantic soap opera set in Victorian England. It’s notable for almost every sentence of dialogue beginning with either ‘my lord’ or ‘my lady’. DICK JUSTICE A ’70s-style cop show whose plot mirrors the events of the first Max Payne. Dick is framed for his wife’s murder and goes on a quest for revenge. CAPTAIN BASEBALL BAT BOY A cartoon based on a baseball bat-wielding superhero fighting a demon and his army of zombies from outer space.…

THE A537 Not only is this officially one of the most dangerous roads in Britain, but it takes you on a whirlwind tour of some of the country’s most exotic locations including Knutsford and Buxton. Dice with death as you follow motorcyclists round blind bends! BATH Home of the PC Gamer offices, this historic spa town is notable for its winding roads, seemingly unchanged in layout since Roman times. The result is a labyrinthine mess where even the slightest hold-up results in a city-wide traffic disaster that lasts for hours. Hope you enjoy hill starts! SHITTERTON This hamlet in Dorset is known for its historic… oh, who are we kidding. It’s called Shitterton! Haha! Fun fact: the name dates back a thousand years and apparently means ‘farmstead on the stream…