Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2019 i PC Gamer

You never know exactly what you’re going to get from one E3 to the next. Some years it’s all about the consoles and their incredibly polished, massively expensive first-party offerings. Other years – 2019 is one of them – we get hit by an avalanche of exciting new PC games. Let’s run down the list. There’s Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red’s impressive new RPG. There’s Baldur’s Gate III, the surprise next game from Divinity: Original Sin 2 developer Larian Studios. And there’s Doom Eternal, id’s clever continuation of everything that made 2016’s Doom reboot one of the best shooters of recent years. It’s a great year to be a PC gamer. TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Email us at letters@ pcgamer.com PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Hackers Twitter @Octaeder…

Hideo Kojima is someone who revels in secrecy just as much as The Spy does. After leaving Konami back in 2015 and founding his own company, Kojima Productions, he sailed down from the rafters to unveil Death Stranding as a PS4 exclusive at E3 2016, before once again disappearing in a cloud of smoke. The perfect heist for the attention of millions. PART OF IT IS THE JAPANESE GAMING INDUSTRY’S REDISCOVERY OF PC GAMING While Kojima went back to work on his game in peace, and people analysed every scrap of information from the trailer’s throat baby to photos of his breakfast on Twitter, the years passed and we learned to appreciate the fluidity of the word ‘exclusive’. Part of it is the Japanese gaming industry’s rediscovery of PC gaming,…

It’s easy to see game layoffs as a tragic but disconnected event. 150 people lost their jobs, but that’s easy to reduce to simple numbers. What does it mean? For many developers, it can be anything from the confusing loss of a dream job, to the sudden absence of treasured friends and colleagues. According to one person who requested anonymity – I’ll call him Jason – it meant a $25 Amazon gift card. “IF COVERAGE OF A GAME WASN’T POSITIVE IT WAS MY FAULT. PERIOD” “In 2013,” Jason begins, “I got a job at one of the three largest third-party game publishers as a PR employee. It was my first real job in the games industry – a dream job to me. I was immediately blinded by how ‘honoured’ I…

In the new CGI trailer for Cyberpunk 2077, unveiled at Microsoft’s Xbox E3 Briefing, main character V is having a bad day. His partner, Jackie Welles, is dead. His fixer, Dexter DeShawn, has betrayed him. When he regains consciousness, he’s lying in a garbage dump. “Wake the fuck up samurai,” says a voice. “We have a city to burn.” The source of that voice? It’s Keanu Reeves. Cue rapturous applause as Reeves appears on stage to talk about his appearance in CD Projekt Red’s next RPG. It was an exciting surprise in an industry event that rarely keeps a secret for long. But who is Reeves’ character, and why is he so interested in V? “Keanu Reeves in our game plays the role of Johnny Silverhand,” says Paweł Sasko, lead…

We review each game on its own merits, and try to match it to a reviewer who’s a passionate expert in the field. The main aim of reviews is to help you make buying decisions. To this end, we’re selective about what we review, and try to focus on the notable, interesting, exciting or surprising. DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT DLC might be new missions for a game, or it might be a single new item. If we think you want to know about it, we’ll review it. EARLY ACCESS Any released alpha, beta, or otherwise unfinished game that you can currently pay for. For these games, we won’t assign a score, but we will tell you whether they’re worth your time. THEY’RE BACK Whenever there’s a bargain or re-release of a significant…

EMMA FISHER Born: March 3, 1992 Birthplace: Cardiff, Wales A resourceful scientist who develops and maintains the Observation’s guidance spheres: camera-equipped drones SAM can use to move around the station. JIM ELIAS Born: October 30, 1971 Birthplace: Glasgow, Scotland The captain of the Observation is a veteran astronaut who served aboard the ISS. Yet, despite his experience, something about this mission is unsettling him. AILSA YANG Born: June 23, 1998 Birthplace: Hangzhou, China In this vision of the near future, climate change is worse than ever. Yang has been assigned to the Observation to study Earth and track changes in the atmosphere. STANISLAV LEONOV Born: December 12, 1970 Birthplace: Vladivostok, Russia The Observation’s technical officer is increasingly concerned about the functionality of the station, and seems to think corners have…

OLBERIC Role: Warrior Choose him if: You’re relatively new to JRPGs. The former knight’s physical power makes him a strong starter. H’AANIT Role: Hunter Choose her if: Thou canst toleraten olde worlde dialogue, and fancy summoning creatures to battle for you. CYRUS Role: Scholar Choose him if: You’re more about spells than swords. Cyrus’ powerful elemental magic belies his genteel nature. TRESSA Role: Merchant Choose her if: You like happy-go-lucky heroes and bargains: Tressa gets store discounts and earns more from battles.…

After years away you have returned home to your village in response to an urgent letter from your father. Three men try to kill you the moment you step off the train. The town instantly knows about this and blames you for some other recent murders. To top it all off you’re also quickly dying of hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and blood loss. That’s just day one in this strange, gruelling survival game. As a surgeon, you can extract organs from any corpse and then sell them Pathologic 2 is “supposed to be almost unbearable” according to devs Ice Pick Lodge, who created the obtuse, near-unplayable original Pathologic, and purgatorial horror game The Void. Pathologic 2 challenges you to survive 12 in-game days in a town that’s going completely to shit.…

Lute, Wooden Mallet Alt-F4 will probably save you some time. Dagger, Short Sword, Cleaver, Quarterstaff, Bows I hope you’re good at this game. Like, really good. Training Sword, Arming Sword, Axe, Warhammer, Blacksmith’s Hammer, Throwing Knife, Falchion, Mace, Crossbow You might actually make it out of this alive. Short Spear Rapier, Bastard Sword, War Axe, Battle Axe, Longsword, Maul, Throwing Axe Take a breath. You got lucky, but you need to stay sharp. Billhook, Estoc, Greatsword, Poleaxe, Executioner Sword, Bardiche, Eveningstar, Spear The gods have smiled upon you. Don’t mess this up. Zweihander, Halberd You’re all clear, kid! Now let’s blow this thing and go home!…

CLUSTERFLACK Fires out a near-unreasonable amount of cluster bombs. Throw it, run away. STAPLER The version of the shotgun in Void Bastards fires staples, and it’s a treat to use. GERMSPIKER Poisons an enemy, which slowly depletes their health, and can be used in stealth. RIFTER Manually teleport your enemies. They can’t shoot while you’re deciding where to put them. UNSTABLE KITTY Enemies will shoot at this, and when it’s destroyed, it leaves a nice big explosion.…

How have I not played this until now? Crypt of the Necrodancer is constructed from my two teenage passions of 1) anything with swords in it and 2) drumming. Unfortunately, it’s also a jabbing reminder that I was never very good at the latter. This means that I’m bad at Crypt of the Necrodancer. As you might have gleaned from the fact I picked Dwarfs in TW: Warhammer II, I like caution. Planning is my kink. So a game like this, that makes me move constantly while acting thoughtfully, is often beyond my meagre skills. I manage well enough with the early levels to feel moderately good about myself, but it’s undermined by the creeping realisation that I’ll be shit at Necrodancer when it gets tough. At one point, I…

MOTHERBOARD Prime Z370 A II Aus £153 Great shielding, full of features, and featuring that – ahem – all important RGB lighting, this is a fine Asus board. PROCESSOR Core i5-8600K Intel £242 Six cores, six threads, good out-of-the-box clock speeds – and it’s overclockable. No performance bottlenecks with this installed. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2060 Twin Fan Zotac £312 Serious power from the ‘just about affordable’ end of Nvidia’s new GPU fleet, and it’s ray tracing-ready too. COOLER Hydro Series H55 Quiet Edition Corsair £55 Tidy and quiet, the H55 will unlock our CPU’s overclocking potential and look good through your case window while it does so. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) @2666 Corsair £80 16GB is the minimum amount of RAM we’d recommend for a system of this…

Minecraft’s Village & Pillage update is the biggest the game has ever had. It overhauls how villages work, adds a host of new blocks, and brings a new raid system that acts as a high-level combat encounter. But first, let’s talk about grass. Bamboo is one of the big new features. Bamboo is a useful addition that can be found in jungles and in two new biomes: bamboo jungle and bamboo jungle hills. You can chop it down instantly by hitting it with a sword and it can be combined with string to make scaffolding – a quick, easily destructible building aid you can use to clamber around your mighty constructions. Bamboo without pandas would be heresy. These stout, pointless bears have different personality types: lazy, worried, playful, aggressive, and…

1 VISCERA CLEANUP DETAIL Ever wondered who cleans up all the mess after you’ve rampaged through a level in a first-person shooter? This game lets you step into their rubber boots, cleaning up the blood, gibs, and chaos left behind. 2 GARBAGE TRUCK SIMULATOR What I love about PC gaming is how stuff like this can exist. I mean, it isn’t a great simulator, but what other platform lets you step into the world of a garbage collector? Escapism can take many forms. 3 HOUSE FLIPPER Buy houses, renovate them, sell them for a profit. That’s the core loop of this weird, fun sim, but there’s a twist: you have to do it all yourself. Repairs, interior design, cleaning up… you have to handle it all alone.…

ERIKA Poor mummy Connors doesn’t live to see any version of Mirror’s Edge. Her death is what splits her daughters. FAITH Protagonist Faith is headstrong and impulsive, shaped by early family tragedy and a runner father figure. ABRAHAM/MARTIN Faith’s dad is a campaigner who either died with Erika or survived her to become an alcoholic. KATE Kate believes in improving The City. Even after her reinvention for Catalyst, she represents Faith’s philosophical opposite.…

DUNE II 1992 SABOTEUR Unarmed and unplayable. Runs into buildings and blows them up. C&C 1993 COMMANDO Uses C4 to destroy buildings but is also armed with a deadly anti-infantry gun. DUNE 2000 1998 SABOTEUR Blows up buildings but is now invisible. Basically an unarmed Tanya. DEVASTATOR The original Mammoth – but with a built in self-destruct. MAMMOTH TANK The twin-cannon behemoth with anti-infantry rockets. DEVASTATOR Identical to the Dune II version but fires plasma energy instead of shells. THE DEATHHAND A devastating warhead available with the Harkonnen palace. NUCLEAR MISSILE C&C’s original villain superweapon was a Dunesuperweapon first. THE DEATHHAND Similar to the Dune II Deathhand but more like a Tiberian Sun cluster missile.…

Most people scoff a bit when I tell them that one of my favourite things about Mass Effect 2 is scanning planets. I get it – the whole act of clicking on a planet, watching a transition screen, turning said planet around its axis for a while until you’ve found a mineral deposit and then listening to the same lines over and over again as your probe launches isn’t exactly a rousing experience. It doesn’t have to be. The Mass Effect universe is an accomplished piece of world building. The moment I step into Shephard’s boots, I have a personal history that ties me to the achievements of the human race in outer space. Humans made first contact with new species, became represented in an interplanetary council and can basically…

SOLVE A CRIME SHERLOCK HOLMES: CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS  frogwares.com Become legendary sleuth Sherlock Holmes and investigate an anthology of intriguing mysteries. This is one of the best detective games on PC because it’s entirely possible to draw the wrong conclusions from the evidence and accuse an innocent person. EXPLORE SPACE ELITE DANGEROUS  elitedangerous.com Finding your way in Elite’s enormous replica of the Milky Way can be intimidating at first, but it’s great when you discover your niche – whether it’s trading, bounty hunting, or exploring the cosmos. And with a flight stick and thruster, the tactile, nuanced handling of the ships is taken to the next level. PLAY A ROLE BALDUR’S GATE: ENHANCED EDITION  baldursgate.com With the exciting news that Larian, creator of the Divinity series, is making a third…

FRASER BROWN Specialist in Akira Twitter @FraserIBrown This month Learned about the existence of Baldur’s Gate IIIat a barbecue. This isn’t even a joke. CHRIS LIVINGSTON Specialist in Total Recall Twitter @screencuisine This month Stepped onto the battlefield of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with nothing but a notepad. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Blade Runner Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Spent a portion of the issue on holiday in Ireland. Still found time to review a space game. MALINDY HETFELD Specialist in Appleseed Twitter @yourkyotowife This month Launched an investigation into one of the most pervasive E3 staples: videogame trailers.…

ISSUE 203, August 2009 ON THE COVER Star Wars: The Old Republic IN THE CHARTS Bulletproof – La Roux 1 Here’s a secret: we want you to buy our magazine. And sometimes that desire leads to, let’s say, some enthusiastic cover hits. So when we claimed that Star Wars: The Old Republic was “The Warcraft killer”, it was simply an optimistic guess. In our defence, 1) Star Wars: The Old Republic was an incredibly exciting prospect, and 2) holy crap, look at that cover art! 2 Indie games! After the release of Braid, Audiosurf, World of Goo and more in 2008, Alec Meer meets the “maverick heroes” of PC gaming. 3 Tom Francis takes a deep dive into Deus Ex’s first level. This is a classic PC Gamer feature, running…

IRRATIONAL GAMES The poster child for offshoots, this mass-layoff led to the creation of The Deep End Games (Perception), Question Games (The Blackout Club), and Chump Squad (Kine), among many other talented teams. CLOVER STUDIO After the commercial disappointment of Viewtiful Joe, Okami and God Hand, Clover Studios was dissolved. One of the teams formed in its wake was PlatinumGames, now recognised as one of the best action developers around. VISCERAL GAMES The four developers at A Wandering Band met at Visceral Games, and two were directly affected by EA’s closure of the studio. The small team now develops Airborne Kingdom, a high-flying city management game. FUNCOM Funcom has changed sizes several times over its history, with these sometimes wild swings and layoffs leading to the rise of teams including…

Edinburgh Zoo is famous for its penguin parade. At 2.15pm, punters step off the paths to make way for the King, Gentoo and Rockhopper birds, who march on by the exhibits with their wings stretched out at their sides, as if left in the default T-pose by an animator. Except for the times when nothing happens. The parade runs on a voluntary basis, and some days the penguins don’t feel like it. It’s the accepted cost of running a park ethically. The Planet Zoo team has faced similar issues playing their E3 demo. Sometimes, when the camera sweeps over the Serengeti-inspired safari park they’ve built for the occasion, the crocodiles drift languidly across the water in photogenic fashion. But just as often they stay in bed. And occasionally, a reticulated…

Between Wolfenstein: The New Order and its (slightly inferior) sequel The New Colossus, it seemed like MachineGames had a solid template for what a modern Wolfenstein game should be. There was stealth, there was action, there were over-the-top guns (including a shotgun that sounded like the deafening roar of industrial machinery). Wolfenstein: Youngblood has all of those things, and yet also feels like an entirely different prospect. Let’s start with the most obvious change: it’s co-op. In place of war hero B.J. Blazkowicz, Youngblood stars his twin daughters Sophia and Jessica, a pair who, in their own words, were “born to kill Nazis”. An early cutscene shows the two being trained by their parents – being pushed to their limits and beyond. That training is only now being put into…

00%-09% Broken or offensively bad; absolutely no value. Example Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude 10%-19% We might be able to find one nice thing to say about it, but still not worth anyone’s time or money. Example Gettysburg: Armored Warfare 20%-29% Completely falls short of its goals. Very few redeeming qualities. ExamplesFamily Guy: Back to the Multiverse 30%-39% An entirely clumsy or derivative effort. There’s little reason to play this game over a similar, better one. ExamplesTrials of the Blood Dragon 40%-49% Flawed and disappointing. ExamplesAliens: Colonial Marines 50%-59% Mediocre. Other games probably do it better, or its unique qualities aren’t executed well. ExamplesPrimordia, Homefront: The Revolution 60%-69% There’s something to like here, but it can only be recommended with major caveats. ExamplesNo Man’s Sky, Ghost Recon: Wildlands 70%-79%…

NETWORK PROBLEMS One of SAM’s earliest jobs is checking the station’s network. The crew ID system is down, making finding the astronauts tricky. STRUCTURAL FAILURE Some of the clamps connecting the station’s modules have been shaken loose. SAM has to leave the station and re-attach them. STATION ALERTS SAM can see everything that’s wrong with the station and will be expected to deal with them before they get out of hand. ASTRONOMY DATA If a crew member needs the coordinates of a specific planet or other celestial body, SAM can reference field images to locate them.…

On a lovely afternoon in autumn, Amicia De Rune is out on a hunt with her father and the family dog, a scene so warm and tranquil you just know things are going to go very wrong very soon. That doesn’t make it any less shocking when Amicia suddenly comes face to face with the Plague, which manifests itself not only as a horrible disease, but as a teeming mass of rats that devours everything in its wake. The amount of violence on display also poses a tonal problem Amicia and her father make their way home, only to find the Inquisition at their doorstep. For reasons unknown they want Amicia’s little brother Hugo and are not above slaughtering their way through to him. Due to an illness, the small…

BRIGAND Medium armour, big-ass sword Recommended for: I trust in my skill with steel, and I don’t want or need any extra protection. KNIGHT Heavy armour, greatsword Recommended for: I want to get better at swordplay, but I’m not taking chances defence-wise. FOOTMAN Medium armour, spear Recommended for: Stopping that guy who keeps sprinting to get a horse so he can trample us. PROTECTOR Heavy armour, shield, mace Recommended for: If I can’t beat them, I at least want to make it as hard as possible to take me out. RAIDER Medium armour, big axe Recommended for: I want to look like a viking. (Author note: I do this every game, so no judgment.) SCOUNDREL Light armour, bear trap Recommended for: I like to get my kills quickly and, preferably,…

Chaosbaneis exactly what you’d expect if you heard the words “mid-budget Warhammer Diabloclone”. You pick one of four heroes, you kill endless hordes of creatures and you loot progressively shinier trousers, stopping occasionally to fight a larger, tougher monster with an annoying area attack. That’s it. I wouldn’t call it a bad game, but it is a mediocre and derivative one, and far too repetitive for its own good. It’s Diablo, but Warhammer. Chaosbane’s big problem is repetition, there’s so little variation The Warhammer licence does help a little, particularly in the enemy design. Each act is framed as a battle against followers of a different chaos god (representing war, magic, disease and sexytimes respectively), and there’s a deep pool of appropriate monsters to draw from for each including a…

I was sort-of obsessed with the original Chaos: Battle of the Wizards when I was a kid – and by ‘sort of’, I mean that the tape is literally still in the deck in the ZX Spectrum, buried in my parents’ loft. So going back to this updated version feels nostalgic like a school reunion with manticores and blobs. It’s a crisp, neat, strangely satisfying update. I love the interface and monster designs. And even though it’s a more cerebral experience than the original, the range of spells feels more familiar than something should after 30 years. There’s a compelling campaign mode, which saves me the trouble of searching out old school friends for a long-overdue grudge match.…

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 £279 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 RTX 2080Ti Black Edition EVGA £1,045 EVGA’s custom design is considerably cheaper than Nvidia’s reference card, and with great cooling. COOLER Kraken X62 NZXT £90 The Kraken is the culmination of three of our favourite things: an infinity mirror, a 280mm radiator and slick braided cooling. MEMORY Ripjaws V 32GB @3200 G.Skill £186 G.Skill is always a safe bet for lightning fast RAM, and if you can do without the RGB frills this 2x16GB set will…

BLAST FURNACE Smelts ore twice as fast as an ordinary furnace, and acts as the job block for the armourer job. LECTERN Used to hold books that players can read together. How nice! Also generates librarians. CARTOGRAPHY TABLE Used for cloning, zooming, and expanding the maps. LOOM Used to recreate banner patterns. Villagers become shepherds when they interact with it. COMPOSTER This block rapidly generates bone meal, and turns villagers into farmers. SMITHING TABLE This one doesn’t do anything yet, apart from creating toolsmiths. FLETCHING TABLE One of two blocks with no crafting abilities. Villagers become fletchers. SMOKER Cooks food twice as fast as a furnace, which is nonsense. Also turns villagers into butchers. GRINDSTONE Combines damaged items to increase their durability and turns villagers into weaponsmiths. STONE CUTTER Basically…

There’s a decommissioned nuclear bunker just outside York where the walls are painted in calming tones – designed to help its occupants keep their heads as they carried out essential logistics in the days and weeks after a hypothetical strike. It seems like wishful thinking to hope that a nice shade of paint might make the difference against the weight of the world’s end. Then again, colour associations are strong and laden with meaning. When I think of Mirror’s Edge, I tend to remember the gleaming whites and deep blues – the aspects of its palette I associate with serenity and freedom under an open sky. Now that I’m playing through it again as a killer, I’m noticing a whole other part of the colour wheel – the angry oranges…

NOREE MONEO HOUSE ATREIDES It’s a joy to watch John Rhys-Davies play this red-blooded military role. He comes complete with trademark beard and rolling ‘Rs’. HAYT DE VRIES HOUSE HARKONNEN True to the book, Hayt De Vries brandishes eyebrows that would make David Bellamy blush, and has the red ‘I just ate an ice lolly’ lips. EDRIC O HOUSE ORDOS Complete with bizarre voice synthesiser, Edric of House Ordos gives a robotic performance, with a syringe hovering menacingly over his neck throughout.…

CULTIST SIMULATOR Summon demons and build a cult with just a deck of cards – all your evil deeds are yours to imagine. KENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO You gradually come to accept that Kentucky at night is full of ghosts, but you rarely meet them. STORIES UNTOLD The horror in Stories Untold, a mostly text-based adventure, comes precisely from the things it hints at. WHERE THE WATER TASTES LIKE WINE You meet many different people and collect their stories while moving across the continent.…

Zarwulf, an orc hunter, was the first character I invested any meaningful time with in World of Warcraft. But then I moved onto other characters, and when I eventually returned to my old pal, he was gone, at least the one I knew. Warlords of Draenor had arrived, transforming his appearance, while expansions had overhauled the entire class. Last week, I resurrected Zarwulf when I had the chance to play World of Warcraft Classic at the recent Warcraft Summit. The first thing I had to do, of course, was make the pilgrimage to the Crossroads. The walk from Orgrimmar was uneventful, aside from a spot of zhevra hunting. I had a hungry wolf to feed. It was a saunter, accompanied by Barrens chat refusing to leave the old days behind.…

1989 A sinister organisation made up of high-ranking members of the CIA, NSC, FBI, and DEA secretly runs the United States behind the President’s back. 1994 A nuclear meltdown occurs in Pittsburgh, PA. Almost 300 people die and cancer rates skyrocket. The exclusion zone around the reactor is named The Pitt. 1996 A catastrophic societal collapse begins. Martial law is established in the United States, the President is killed, and street gangs take control of the country. 2002 An event called the Food Crash occurs. Crops around the world are ravaged by a virus, but the United States defeats it by developing a counter-agent. 2004 The first Corporate War begins. Two megacorps, Euro Business Machines and Orbital Air, engage in a campaign of cyber-warfare after a deal falls through. 2017…

It’s summer, and that means the major publishers have settled into their annual hibernation. It’s fine – we’ll let them sleep – because instead we get to fill our issues with interesting curios and indie delights. We kick things off with Andy’s review of Observation, a tense sci-fi mystery from the creators of the eerie Untold Stories. We’ve also got the absolutely charming Outer Wilds – not to be confused with Obsidian’s upcoming The Outer Worlds. It’s a game about exploring a small, dying solar system that’s packed with more mystery than you can see before the sun blows up. Luckily, you’re trapped in a time loop, meaning you get to try again and again. And if the above sounds too contemplative for you, Mordhau should suit your murderous needs.…

Ever since BioShock Infinite released and Irrational in its previous form went away, I’ve gladly played any games that offer a comparable experience. That is, a first-person shooter where you have more at your disposal than just cool guns. Void Bastards is described as a strategy shooter inspired by System Shock 2 and BioShock, and it features the talents of some former Irrational staff who previously made 2013’s Card Hunter. Sometimes the game does capture the thrilling feeling of being a thief You are a prisoner, travelling across the galaxy to fulfil the whims of an HR computer that might eventually grant you your freedom. You get across the map with an FTL-style interface, and while most locations are enemy spaceships that you can board, loot and escape, there are…

Chaosis a bedroom classic now played online. Crawlis the lo-fi opposite. It’s a multiplayer game about ganging up on your friends. One player controls the hero, the others the monsters. Whoever succeeds takes their place, like a savage, dungeon-delving version of tag. I especially love that despite each game lasting only 30 minutes, there’s a genuine sense of progression. Every player levels up in a different way and it always feels balanced. It’s also a great test of your timing – but not in a Necrodancerway. At the risk of sounding like a motivational poster, picking exactly the right moment to kill your friends is the difference between success and failure.…

Ignore those who seem to think every game is best with a mouse and keyboard. Grid Autosport is not best played with a keyboard. Super Meat Boy is not best played with a keyboard. Ultra Street Fighter IV is ridiculous with a keyboard. True, we play most games with a mouse and keyboard, but for PC gamers with ranging tastes, a good controller is a must. Microsoft and Sony’s own console pads – the Xbox Wireless controller and the DualShock 4 – set the standards by being the default, first-party options for the two most popular consoles, while third-party controllers tend to mimic them. In this case, the standard is the best. I haven’t found a controller better than the DS4 for PC gaming, though the wireless Xbox One controller…

MOTHERBOARD B360M-DS3H Gigabyte £70 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 £108 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 RTX 2060 Twin Fan Zotac £331 The 2060 is marginally pricier but noticeably better than our old 1060, making it the go-to budget GPU of the moment. COOLER Hyper 212 Evo CoolerMaster £26 Even a budget build can benefit from a good CPU cooler, letting you enjoy a quieter, cooler system. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) @2400MHz Corsair £38 DDR4 prices are still high, however this Corsair pair is a good value option. POWER SUPPLY CX-M Series CX550M…

Although a few have appeared on consoles, PC is historically the home of the simulator. As such there’s a huge amount of choice, from driving heavy goods vehicles and subway trains, to collecting garbage and flying spaceships. It’s a crowded but worthwhile genre, with a sim to fit every taste. If you don’t know where to start, I’ve gathered up some of the best sims available today. START HERE EURO TRUCK SIMULATOR 2 Drive a truck and deliver goods around a vast, interconnected replica of Europe. Few simulators are as polished and fun as this, and you’ll be surprised how hypnotic such a seemingly mundane job can be. The map is enormous and each country has its own distinctive look and feel, making long drives feel like a real journey.…