Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2018 i PC Gamer

PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Quality Control by Jurassic 5 Twitter @Octaeder This month Forced the team to play Fortnite, ostensibly for research. (I just wanted people to play with.) Control was one of the most exciting games I saw at E3. It wasn’t the most innovative – it’s a third-person action game – but what captured my imagination was what it represents. Playing Quantum Break, it felt like Remedy had been shackled by Microsoft’s desire to make a game that was also a TV show. Now Remedy is free, and once again making weird, captivating worlds. Control may be its strangest yet. I can’t wait. Control isn’t the only game that should be on your radar. Whether it’s Mount & Blade II, Doom Eternal or Transmission, this issue is full…

HIGHS Fallout 76 Bethesda has revealed griefers get a bounty on their head that’s paid out of their own pocket. Divinity: Original Sin II A free update to our 2017 GOTY brings you the Definitive Edition. Ray Tracing Regardless of whether Nvidia’s next-gen RTX graphics cards change gaming, learning about light rendering has been fascinating. LOWS Riot Games Riot apologised after Kotaku’s report on its toxic culture. Its actions will be more important in effecting change. Battlefield V Dice’s military FPS is delayed by five weeks, from October 19 to November 20. The Gamescom poo That Epic even had to deny a tale about a Fortnite fan pooing in a bag to stay in a queue is worrying.…

1 FLOW CHART Chandler starts by giving writer/ designer Dave Gilbert a sketch to test the playability and flow of a scene. “After this I focus on compelling blocks of colour,” he says “At this stage it’s more about atmosphere than detail.” 2 URBAN DECAY “I’d wanted to do a fiery red palette in a sci-fi game for years,” says Chandler of Unavowed’sstrikingcolours.“Butseeing a similar palette in Hellblazer and Batman: The Animated Series convinced me it would work in an urban setting.” 3 WORD CLOUD Gilbert, who is primarily a writer, describes scenes to Chandler with adjectives rather than coming up with visual ideas. “I wanted the city in Unavowed to echo his narrative and reinforce the tone he wanted the game to convey.” 4 OLD SCHOOL Classic ‘90s adventures…

MAINTAIN EXISTENCE IT’S BEEN GOOD TO SAMPLE VASTLY DIFFERENT WORLDS I took a week off this month to indulge in the sort of ‘holiday’ where you don’t go anywhere or do anything, but instead just try to maintain existence with as little movement as possible. As a result, my list has grown significantly. I played Madden NFL 19. I played Dragon Ball FighterZ. I played Warframe. I played Dead Cells. I played Hollow Knight. I played Monster Hunter: World. I even played Fortnite. I’m not sure how many I’ll stick with, but it’s been good to sample vastly different worlds, figuring things out as I go. I also played Unavowed, which stands apart from everything else in that I finished it too. It feels like a nice progression from the…

I’m playing Monster Hunter: World, which is like going to Jurassic Park as a combination of Steve Irwin and the Zodiac killer. Ian Boudreau We advise against poking Anjanath with a big stick. I’m playing Okami for the first time ever, and I regret greatly how long I left this game off my radar. It’s unique, gorgeous, funny, and easily one of my top games of the year. Jordan Lemos A game with a dog that good can’t be bad. Skyrim. It’s pretty good. It’s feeling a bit dated now, though. Hope for a re-release soon, Bethesda. Rose Let’s not give Bethesda an excuse to delay working on the next Elder Scrolls instead. Currently playing the new Forsaken DLC for Destiny 2. It’s amazing how Destiny can be such a…

WHAT I WOULD’VE TIPTOED INTO IN DARK SOULS ISWHAT I SPRINT INTO IN SEKIRO If Dark Souls was designed around the tension that builds over long journeys into uncharted and dangerous territory, Sekiro is designed around something much more focused: the tension that erupts when two swords clash. Enemies crowd the dense combat arenas, and the most rewarding way to rip through them is by planning a swift John Wick manoeuvre using your sword, stealth and a toolbox of deadly prosthetic arm attachments. But I am not John Wick. Death is the necessary rehearsal, softened by generous checkpoints hugging the more challenging arenas in the demo. As I look out onto the courtyard of the war-torn Ashina Castle grounds, I can see…

STEVEN MESSNER Specialist in MMOs, parrots Currently playing World of Warcraft This month Is still playing WoW. The review is done! Can you hear us? EVAN LAHTI Specialist in Spies, conspiracies Currently playing Phantom Doctrine This month Investigated whether PCG harbours sleeper agents by shouting nouns in the chatroom. PHIL IWANIUK Specialist in Racing, F1 jokes Currently playing F1 2018 This month Asked us to show due reverence over suspension refresh rates. Was let down. FRASER BROWN Specialist in Hospitals, queuing Currently playing Two Point Hospital This month Claimed total ignorance of the Hippocratic Oath and behaved accordingly. PHILIPPA WARR Specialist in Donuts, daytime Currently playing Donut County This month Decided a donut delivery service would be worth complete urban devastation. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Forklift driving Currently playing Shenmue…

ALLIANCE DARK IRON DWARF These bad-tempered dwarves have eyes that glow with fiery fury. Years ago they tried to stage a coup in Ironforge. LIGHTFORGED DRAENEI These ethereal draenei underwent a ritual that infused their body with holy light to help them battle the Burning Legion. VOID ELF Most people who try and harness the corruptive magic of the Void end up driven to madness, but these shadowy elves managed it. HORDE MAG’HAR ORC This shamanistic tribe of orcs has long been isolated from the Horde and personal honour is an important part of its culture. HIGHMOUNTAIN TAUREN These tauren are descended from an ancient war hero called Tuln and have an affinity for the spirits of earth, river and sky. NIGHTBORNE The nightborne live in the ancient elven city…

BRAINWASHING Erase any potential allegiances, but at the risk of forgetting skills too. MASON GAMBIT Agent automatically fights for your side when combat triggers. INTERROGATION Less exciting than it sounds: grants some free intel or gear blueprints. SABOTEUR Bomb implant. The next secret hideout this agent visits is destroyed. LOCATOR BEACON Reveals the position of this agent on the world map. CONVERSION Can’t beat them? Force them to join your cause instead. CONTROL PHRASE Convert an enemy agent mid-mission. EXECUTION Captured agents accrue ‘danger’, so you’ll want to get rid of them.…

To survive, you’ll need to turn your enemy’s traps against them. Look out for slices, booms, stabs and burns. Each is set off by a red button because they were built millennia ago with game design in mind. SPINNING BLADES A wheel of giant knives. Very popular with disgraced interior decorators. EXPLOSIVE BARRELS Egyptians were famous for leaving this stuff all over the place. SPIKE TRAPS A pile of defective spears spring-loaded and aimed squarely at your feet for when you step over them. FLAME JETS The wealthiest merchant of the ancient world sold flame jets and flame jet accessories.…

PATROLLING BOTS You’ll need to sneak past these grumps. If you alert them, hide in cover until their antennae go back to green. PATROLLING ORBS You can’t alert these in the same way as the bots. The downside is that if you cross their beams you’ll die. LASERS Some laser fire is there purely for atmosphere – it’ll just sail past you for the most part, or destroy an object to open up a route. FLIES These are more of a beetle-y looking version of the patrolling bots. Just hide amongst the glowing eggs to lose them. ROBOT Often, the bigger foes you encounter are part of a solution to a puzzle. Be warned: they can still definitely kill you, though.…

ARCADE Visit the seedy You Arcade in Dobuita and you can play a selection of SEGA classics including Hang On and Space Harrier. GACHAPON These machines spit out little capsules containing toys, some of which are very rare. Try and complete the collection. DARTS You can play electronic darts in the arcade and harbour lounge. Earn more than 300 points and you’ll win a rare capsule toy. SHOPPING You can spend your yen at the Tomato Convenience Store. Be sure to grab some fish for Megumi’s orphaned kitten.…

EDIFIER R1280DB www.edifier.com £120 The R1280DB is large but, if you’ve got the space, this is a fantastic set of speakers. Great sound quality is joined by analogue, digital and Bluetooth connectivity, a convenient remote and bass and treble controls. It looks great, too, with black or natural wood finishes, and is available for a bargain price. 95 % RAZER HUNTSMAN ELITE www.razer.com £200 Optomechanical switches make the Huntsman the fastest-reacting keyboard around. Add in an illuminated, padded wrist rest and you have the pricey Huntsman Elite. It certainly looks great, and I do love the wrist rest. The keyswitches also work well, but I can’t say I really noticed the performance difference. 80 % LOGITECH G PRO HEADSET www.logitech.com £73 This is Logitech’s attempt at a stripped-down, pure gaming accessory. There are…

MOTHERBOARD Z370 Tomahawk MSI £130 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 £180 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 £400 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 £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 £145 16GB is the minimum amount of RAM we’d recommend for a system of this…

There’s a wonderfully calming rhythm to starting a new farm in Stardew Valley , from deciding where to put those first parsnips to planning out future upgrades as your ambitions start to grow. But all of that goes out of the window when you start playing with others. Where once you were the sole arbiter of taste and path-style choices, now it’s done by committee. Which is great if you’ve all got similar tastes and can work towards common goals, but it’s disastrous if you do what I did and invite a partner who’s never so much as held a virtual watering can. Setting up a multiplayer game of Stardew Valley is easy. There’s an added co-op button in the main menu where you can either host…

FRIENDS, FAMILY AND COLLEAGUES 1 A great starting point is people who know your individual tastes well. If you have a group you play games with, you can ask them for recommendations or see what friends with similar interests are playing. STEAM 2 Steam’s interface is getting better at helping you find what you’re looking for. The recommended games service is hit and miss, so try browsing the tags of games you like, reading wishlists or following curators whose tastes align with yours. ITCH.IO 3 Itch is a fantastic site for indie games. The front page shows some noteworthy titles, but sort by ‘recently added’ for new additions or check tags you like the sound of. Games tend to be free or cheap so you can try new things easily.…

I find myself really wanting Spore to be good Back in 2008, Spore was a source of daft community character creation joy, incredibly uneven ambition and a massive row about the digital rights management software EA insisted on using at launch. In many ways, Spore was No Man’s Sky before No Man’s Sky . There are two Spore experiences I remember clearly from 2008. One was waddling around on land for the first time after graduating from the Cell stage to the Creature stage, and the other was the row about DRM. But the experience of actually playing any of it has faded and been replaced by the sense that it…

ANIMAL ARMOUR To play upon Baba Yaga’s portrayal as a witch, Serafima dresses in bones, with a deer skull over her face. POLLEN Serafima discovers a way to weaponise the Vale’s hallucinogenic pollen, and uses it to poison the Soviet soldiers with fear. CHICKEN HUT Lara sees Baba Yaga’s hut in the Vale, which carries the witch around on huge chicken legs. It turns out to be a simple contraption. WICKED VALE Serafima lurks in the ominous Wicked Vale. To get there, Lara must first overcome a landscape of ice walls and steep cliffs.…

ANDY KELLY Specialist in She’s Lost Control by Joy Division Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Nearly lost control after spending an hour in the presence of Sam Lake. PHILIPPA WARR Specialist in Standing in the Way of Control by Gossip This month Experienced the extreme highs of The International finals, and the extreme lows of trying to find enjoyment in Spore. CHRIS LIVINGSTON Specialist in Out of Control by Hoobastank Twitter @screencuisine This month Braved the fires of Hell to see Doom Eternal. Wait, not Hell… Texas. TOM SENIOR Specialist in Y Control by Yeah Yeah Yeahs Twitter @PCGLudo This month Somersaulted through Gamescom in order to play My Friend Pedro.…

THIS SEEMS LIKE THE LIKELY ENDPOINT FOR THE MICROSOFT STORE IDEA If the Spy was a fish, the Spy would be one of those little opportunistic smaller fish that follows a whale shark around waiting for bits of food to fall out of its mouth. These are the smartest fish, clearly, because they are capable of identifying that a bigger gob means bigger leftovers. The Spy is very smart. Increasingly, however, the games industry’s various whales and sharks are getting better at keeping their mouths shut. It’s almost like they know there are rumour-mongers lurking in their wake, waiting for a scrap of release date or a morsel of industrial discontent to break free. This isn’t the Spy’s fault, clearly. The Spy is entirely discrete most of the time. It’s…

“IF YOU WANT TO CREATE A DEEP MYSTERY YOU JUST NEED TO MAKE YOUR CLUES SUBTLE” Detective stories are a staple of fiction, but despite advances in technology and narrative ambition, games have struggled with the genre. That is changing, and it’s partially thanks to philosophies adopted by developers like Ben Wander of pulp mystery game A Case of Distrust . “An interactive mystery should evoke great detectives, making the player feel part of that esteemed club,” says Wander. “If the game allows players to solve the mystery themselves, it resonates with players’ sense of pride and accomplishment.” Players want to feel like a detective and developers are trying interesting new methods to facilitate that. But that is easier said than done. One difficulty developers face is…

DOTA 2 It offers magical brawling with a steep learning curve. But beware the cost of wizard hats. FORTNITE BATTLE ROYALE Arguably the biggest game in the world, you’ll never be short of foes in Epic’s shooter. PATH OF EXILE This Diablo-esque action RPG is one of the most generous free-to-plays out there. WARFRAME For more of a Destiny-type experience you’ll want this zippy space looter-shooter. CARD HUNTER And for something different, try Blue Manchu’s charming tabletop RPG/CCG hybrid. Want to track your progress? Print out our checklist at www.bit.ly/pcgchallenge…

I’ve been gaming for a pretty long time – never on consoles, only PC. I got a job, got married, got a mortgage, had some kids, but this whole time I looked forward to my monthly copy of PC Gamer. I used it to buy hardware and build my own rig. I always read the reviews, (buying bad games is a no-no at our house). This summer my twin sons turned 14. One of them just started playing GTA: San Andreas, and the other downloaded the Half-Life games.The graphics aren’t the best, but a good game is a good game. Thanks to PC Gamer, the PC platform has two more devoted fans. Rick Brown Phil: We’re glad to have them, Rick, although if anyone asks, tell them I warned you…

INSTEAD OF GRAPHICAL FIDELITY, MOUNT & BLADE II PROMISES FREEDOM How do you have so much money?” asks the Mount & Blade II booth manager at Gamescom as I end my session. People trafficking, my good man. I made thousands fighting bandits and selling prisoners. A guy paid me for neutralising the bandit threat as well, and I stole some armour for myself. I’m making money all the way down this chain. It’s refreshing to be dropped into Mount & Blade II’s medieval sandbox with no objectives whatsoever. There are no arch demons to thwart, or evil kings to overthrow. I’m free to quest for riches and better pants instead. You can hire warriors and fight alongside them in third-person battles, and as a mercenary you’re…

When Rodrigo, the Freehold flight master, offers me a sum of gold to get revenge on the pirates that have been bullying him, I can’t refuse. Rodrigo asks me to fly around on one of his giant parrots and drop bombs on the brigands. I soon realise Rodrigo wasn’t being literal. At the push of a button, a green turd erupts from the parrot’s rear and splats on a pirate. Far below me, I hear a scream, “Argh, my eye!” Welcome to World of Warcraft, a place where I’m shitting on people one minute and an hour later slaughtering civilians who have become infected by Lovecraftian brain slugs. Don’t get me wrong, though, I love that WoW flashes between serious and goofy. Battle for Azeroth embraces that tonal duality with…

PRINCESS TALANJI Daughter of the god-king Rastakhan, Princess Talanji is a powerful troll mystic who calls upon Zandalari nature spirits (called Loa) to assist her during times of trouble. Believing her father to be ignorant to his kingdom’s troubles, she sets out on her own to thwart the blood trolls that have been invading from the swamps of Nazmir. JAINA PROUDMOORE Once an advocate for peace, this powerful sorceress and heir to the Kul Tiran throne is haunted by the death of her father and destruction of her city at the hands of the Horde. She returns to her homeland of Kul Tiras in hopes of repairing its damaged relationship with the Alliance but is confronted by a mother who sentences her to death.…

KITCHEN Ine-san, the Hazuki family’s loyal housekeeper, can usually be found working in the kitchen. She’s like a mother to Ryo. BEDROOM This is the bedroom of Fuku-san, a young student at Iwao Hazuki’s dojo. He seems to be a fan of the Virtua Fighter series. DOJO The pristine Hazuki family dojo, which hides an intriguing family secret, is a quiet place for Ryo to practice his martial arts. LOUNGE The household contains a SEGA Saturn, despite the fact the game is set in 1986 and that console was released in Japan in 1994.…

Here’s to Zach Barth, the man who laid the groundwork for Minecraft with Infiniminer, decided that endless gathering and crafting treadmills weren’t very interesting, and has spent the past seven years making increasingly refined and rewarding puzzle games – Exapunks, Opus Magnum, Shenzhen I/O, Infinifactory, and so on. The first of these was SpaceChem, a game about laying little train tracks to program a machine that does chemistry. Its star has been dimmed by the polish of its successors, but if you’ve run out of Opus Magnum then there’s no reason not to play this – it’s still one of the toughest and most gratifying puzzlers on PC.…

MOTHERBOARD Strix X470-F Gaming Asus £185 Get the most from the new AMD Ryzen 2700X with this matching X470 motherboard that’s packed with features. PROCESSOR Ryzen 7 2700X AMD £300 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 £600 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 £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 £407 Ryzen is the one processor that does benefit hugely from higher-frequency memory. This kit is…

1 Look, we would never suggest that the PC Gamer team of 2008 phoned it in, but consider that issue 193 contains absolutely zero features.Instead,the cover isawarded to Far Cry 2, which receives a glowing 94% score from Tim Edwards. Tim praises the open world shooter’s freedom, saying he’s now “unable to go back to straight and simple first-person shooters”. 2 There’s a fun spread in Extra Life, in which science and maths are used to work out Azeroth’s laws of physics. Extra Life was weird before the issue 201 redesign. 3 Previews this issue include Empire: Total War, which didn’t live up to its potential,and Borderlands, a game that massively exceeded expectations. While Gearbox’s shooter, as described by Ross Atherton, sounds a lot like the Borderlands we ended up…

ISOLATING EVIDENCE Upcoming grid-based detective game P.i. visualises the deductive process as a blue void. Players can project every clue or object in the game into this void and literally draw conclusions between them. DRAWING CONCLUSIONS Advancing the story of Detective Grimoire requires players to assemble conclusions by constructing sentences using information they find – verdicts Grimoire voice actor Edwyn Tiong will repeat, no matter how silly they sound. DETECTIVE PERSPECTIVE Scenes in Jenny LeClue - Detectivu are rooted in the perspective of your plucky detective, allowing players to examine suspects in the middle of conversations or spot a rotting pipe while traversing their way through a sewer. IN-WORLD HINTS Thimbleweed Park’s hint system uses in-game phone booths and dialogue choices to allow you to ask a series of escalating…

What to do I don’t even know what to do with the Top 100. Usually your team is pretty on point. This year, am I to believe that over 50 of the best games of all time came from 2015 and later? You name Deus Ex and Doom II, but every other game mentioned goes with some sort of enhanced edition update or recent sequel. Overcooked is placed at 42. It’s fun, but an all time great? It will be forgotten in a few years. Hopefully you figure out a consistent criteria for rating – historical impact being one of them. David Run Phil: The Top 100 is a list of what we’d recommend right now. In fact, I disagree that historical impact should be a factor at all. The…

“EXPLORATION AND ADVENTURE ARE VERY STRONG THEMES IN THE SERIES” The Anno series has been around for 20 years, with settings ranging from the 16th century colonisation of the New World to a distant, advanced future. But in the newest game, developer Blue Byte is focusing on the Industrial Revolution. In Anno 1800 you’ll grow a farming community into a bustling, cultured city by harnessing the power of steam and steel. The Anno series has a dedicated, passionate fanbase, but what if you’ve never played one before? I ask Dirk Riegert, creative director, what he thinks sets the series apart from other city-building strategy games. “In some respects Anno is like other city builders,” he says. “But the difference is, while those…

I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT EURO TRUCK SHOULD SPAWN ITS OWN SUBGENRE The relaxing, ambient driving game is one of my favourite genres on PC, but it’s somewhat underserved. There’s Euro Truck Simulator 2 , of course, which turns hauling goods into something oddly hypnotic. Or, if you want to go a little stranger, there’s Jalopy , which sees you driving a crappy old car through a stylised former Eastern Bloc. Both games are the inspiration for Transmission , a driving game set in a dreamlike vision of the ’80s that hopes to capture that feeling of being on a long nighttime drive. The thing that hits you first is the aesthetic. The nostalgic ’80s thing has been overdone, but Transmission is one…

SOMETHING HAS INVADED THE OLDEST HOUSE. AN EVIL FORCE KNOWN ONLY AS THE HISS. AND IT’S UP TO YOU, JESSE FADEN, DIRECTOR OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF CONTROL, TO DEFEAT IT. BUT THAT’S NOT THE ONLY STRANGE THING HAPPENING IN THIS TOP SECRET GOVERNMENT FACILITY... A scientist sits in a glass cell, staring at a fridge. He’s been there for hours, maybe days. But he can’t look away from the fridge. If he does, he says it’ll ‘diverge’, and from the sheer terror in his voice, I can only assume that’s a bad thing. This is one of the many peculiar artefacts stored in the Oldest House, a monolithic, windowless skyscraper in downtown Manhattan that serves as the secret headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control. The FBC investigates paranormal…

It’s that magical time of year, when the people who thought they had broken free of World of Warcraft’s subscription-based orbit start talking about going back to Azeroth for one more job. Luckily for anyone in that position, Battle for Azeroth sounds like a great excuse for a return visit to the fantastical MMO soap opera. I mean, a stabbed planet is now oozing geological blood which can be weaponised. I’d say that was peak videogames, but this month we also had a hospital management sim where lightheadedness replaces heads with lightbulbs, a mobile-game-within-a-PC-game about raccoons running a donut delivery scam, and a digital pet cemetery whose playspace spills out into the game’s file directory. Peak videogames is just videogames, isn’t it? LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK Email us…

1 THREE CONCENTRIC RINGS Each require a higher Heart of Azeroth level to unlock. You can only choose one trait from each ring. 2 BLIGHTBORNE INFUSION Spells and abilities have a chance to draw a Wandering Soul that increases your critical strike for a period of time. 3 GAPING MAW Using Soul Cleave grants you a shield that absorbs a bit of damage, increased by up to 100% based on missing health. 4 UNBOUND CHAOS Your inner demon slams into nearby enemies at the end of your Fel Rush dealing chaos damage. 5 SOULMONGER Consuming a soul fragment shields you for three seconds. 6 AZERITE FORTIFICATION When stunned, immobilised, or knocked back, you heal for a set amount of damage. 7 AZERITE EMPOWERED Increases the level of this item by…

Phantom Doctrine is a stranger XCOM with rougher edges. The combat doesn’t compare well to Firaxis’ cinematic chess game, and it does little to explain core systems that differentiate it, like stealth and detection. As you approach the end of its campaign, each mission begins to feel like the last. It reminds me a lot of Jagged Alliance – occasionally brilliant moments emerge from unpredictable systems and opaque rules, but more often I just felt bored. At the beginning, you decide if your main character is ex-CIA or ex-KGB, and this choice sets up a distinct intro to the bad guys, a conspiracy group called The Beholder Initiative. When you’re not playing the turn-based portion of Phantom Doctrine, you’re engaged…

MOCK STAR Like Theme Hospital’s King Complex, but objectivelybetter. NIGHT FEVER Disco has risen from the grave and needs to be put down again. LIGHTHEADEDNESS A terrible affliction that… wait how is he doing that without a mouth? JEST INFECTION A disease nearly as bad as its pun – patients should be put in a tent. SHOCK HORROR There’s only one cure for spontaneous shocks. More electrocution. PANDEMIC Otherwise known as ‘stupidity’, Two Point’s only real-life ailment.…

For years now, a Dreamcast has sat dutifully under my TV. Because, until now, Sega’s ill-fated console was the only way to play the original Shenmue . Yu Suzuki’s bold, divisive martial arts adventure that was, at one time, the most lavish, expensive videogame ever made. But I no longer have to endure the whirring and grinding of the Dreamcast’s GD-ROM drive, or those achingly slow load times, because now I can play it on PC. It’s 1986 and on a bleak, snowy November day, teenager Ryo Hazuki witnesses his father’s murder at the family dojo. Swearing revenge, he dedicates his life to finding the man responsible – a mission that takes him from the streets of Yokosuka, Japan to the sprawling metropolis of Hong Kong and…

Let’s see how many essential indie games from most of a decade ago I can fit into the bottom of this page. Cart Life blew minds and won loads of awards for a reason: it’s a detailed, idiosyncratic life simulator that plays like a Commodore 64 adventure game. You pick a character – a down-on-his luck immigrant, for example – and attempt to balance the pressures of daily life with running a food and drink cart. The city is full of interactive possibility and each character has a story to uncover, but this must be balanced against the clock and an ever-decreasing bank balance. It can be unforgiving, but affecting, too – because it has something to say.…

1 HDR10 This display supports the HDR10 standard, but it doesn’t have the tech to display true HDR, just a high native contrast. 2 GREY AREA A 3ms grey-to-grey response time sounds impressive, but this isn’t quite as snappy as IPS and TN-based rivals. 3 IMAGE QUALITY A gamma value of 2.14 and colour temperature of 6490K are spot-on, but 125% sRGB colour space coverage is just too high. 4 FULLY ADJUSTABLE It offers height, rotation and tilt adjustment and the display can be pivoted into a portrait orientation. VIEWSONIC XG3240C  www.viewsonic.com £415 MONITOR The XG3240C is a 32-inch monitor that packs in HDR10 support, a 2560x1440 resolution, a 144Hz refresh rate and Freesync, making it a potentially great all-rounder. Thanks to its VA LCD panel it also offers high contrast,…

MOTHERBOARD B360M-DS3H Gigabyte £71 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 £110 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 £190 The rumours were true and graphics card prices are starting to fall. Our pick for this build is bit cheaper than last year. 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 £75 DDR4 prices are still high, however this Corsair pair is a good value option. POWER SUPPLY 500BQ…

SIEGFRIED Faction: Allied Nations Subfaction: European Alliance Basically weaponised Einstein. He shoots unstable time fields. CHITZKOI Faction: Soviet Union Subfaction: Russia This cyborg dog is immune to radiation and poison and can bite tanks to death. Who’s a good boy? LIBRA Faction: Epsilon Army Subfaction: PsiCorps Oh, is a cyberdog not anime enough? How about a floating woman who can levitate tanks? FIN & ALIZE Faction: Foehn Revolt Subfaction: Hailhead Fin kills soldiers, Aliza kills vehicles. They’ll rapidly regenerate their health when kept together, too.…

The tale of Baba Yaga was once told to children as a sinister lullaby. A creature from Slavic folklore, the crone Baba Yaga lives deep in the forest. She resides in a hut said to have chicken legs, and can sometimes be seen flying across the land in a giant mortar. Her visage brings to mind cruel grandmothers who send you to bed without dinner, or playground whispers of frightening old women who feast on the flesh of naughty children. Baba Yaga’s portrayal as a frightening old woman is evident in her name. In traditional Russian, the word ‘baba’ is thought to inform ‘babushka’, an affectionate name for grandmother, and ‘babka’ for a midwife, but ‘baba’ can also have darker implications, sometimes used to denote low class, slovenliness and the…

PHIL SAVAGE “Videogames,” I say into the microphone. “More like video-lames, am I right?” The crowd stares, blankly, and I die a little inside. So this is what it feels like to sell out. “You’ve been a wonderful audience.” MADDEN NFL 19 www.easports.com A dystopian bloodsport about massive, ham-hard men locked in a seemingly eternal struggle to move an object ten yards. While the objective is simple, it’s enhanced by decades of tactical iteration, creating a compelling real-time strategy that plays out over a series of brief, intense bursts of action. ANACHRONOX www.bit.ly/2ovKaAE Go on a ridiculous space adventure with wacky companions – including a washed-up superhero and a miniaturised planet – on a grand mission to stop being a useless deadbeat (and possibly save the universe). It’s old and…