Innholdsfortegnelse for Xmas 2019 i PC Gamer

HIGHS Fortnite After its child-enraging black hole event, Fortnite returned with an impressive new map. The Sims 4 The latest expansion for the life sim behemoth is Discover University, letting your Sims enroll in education. Resident Evil 2 Modder ZombieAli is working on replacing Mr X with the goose from Untitled Goose Game. Genius. LOWS Vampire – Bloodlines : The Masquerade 2 Hardsuit Lab’s ambitious sequel has been delayed until 2020. Fallout 76 Following the delay of the next major update, Bethesda launched an ill-advised subscription service. Planetside Arena Daybreak Games has laid off more employees including a chunk of the team working on Planetside Arena.…

“My favourite reference is a tiny encounter which actually doesn’t feature Ciri. When arriving in Oxenfurt, the player, controlling Geralt, can come across a conman presenting a ‘basilisk’ in a cage. Geralt recognises that the monster in question is actually a [wyvern]. The creature breaks free a moment later and it’s up to our favourite witcher to clean up the mess. This whole encounter is a nod to a scene from The Time of Contempt, where Ciri goes through a similar event.”…

For the last five years Paradox has been working away in secret building the successor to a grand strategy behemoth. Crusader Kings III is familiar, bringing back many of its predecessor’s features, but this time the studio is approaching roleplaying with a renewed focus, giving extra attention to conniving rulers and their plotting extended families. It’s still a strategy game, but one where the RPG elements are given even more room to thrive. Game director Henrik Fåhraeus emphasises that the studio isn’t trying to retread old ground and its goals are a bit different this time around. “Rather than trying to match the width of Crusader Kings II, which is huge after seven years of expansions and DLC, we went deep instead, and thought about what it means to be…

HOW WE REVIEW We review each game on its own merits, and try to match it to a reviewer who’s a passionate expert in the field. The main aim of 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…

Hell is where everything you order is delivered by UPS. Hell is where you have to read every single subtweet that might be about you. Hell is a queue that never ends. Hell is only two days off work a year. Hell is being kicked out of a bar because you have to fill out paperwork. Hell is where you condemn a terminally ill med student to the ninth circle of hell in order to get into a party. Oh, and there’s also an Arby’s. Welcome to Afterparty. Afterpartyis a branching narrative drinking game set in Hell. Our protagonists are Lola and Milo, two recently deceased college graduates and lifelong best friends. With no memory of how they got there, Lola and Milo seek to escape Hell, but the only…

This latest sequel/reboot has sold itself as a return to the setting that “started it all”. It’s a snappy marketing line and it’s not entirely misleading. The warfare is once again modern and Captain Price is your squad dad. Yet it’s Modern Warfare’s moments of unfamiliarity that impress me – rebuilt weapon handling, new modes, and characters that aren’t the cookie-cutter operatives we’ve seen in the last decade. Unfortunately this evolution is only half-realised in multiplayer. Here the relics of 2007 clash with fresh ideas. Modern Warfare aspires to be grounded and tactical while also giving you the power to pilot your own heavy gunship, and it doesn’t work. The warfare is once again modern and Captain price is your squad dad It’s easy to forget about that complaint in…

750-900 POWER As you journey to the soft cap, every bit of loot you pick up will be higher level than your best gear. Don’t infuse your favourites: just accept looking terrible. 900-950 POWER Progress is slower as you head towards the hard cap. You’ll pick up a mismatched set of world drops, but should also consider infusing some of your guns. 950-960 POWER The last ten levels will only drop through ‘pinnacle’ activities such as the new raid. Time to spend upgrade cores on infusions. Get your look right, Guardian.…

ULANAI Skills: Combat, leadership Likes:Fighting Dislikes: Making peace YATAKAN Skills: Combat, magic Likes:Fire Dislikes: Chariots TARGARUNG Skills: Everything Likes:Horses Dislikes: Doing all the work DOREN Skills: Diplomacy Likes:Long tedious stories Dislikes: Those barbaric Orlanthi AILARA Skills:Magic Likes: Healthcare Dislikes: Men KOSYALOR Skills: Belonging to the right family Likes: Nepotism Dislikes: Meritocracy KIMKA Skills:Talking to ghosts Likes:Ghosts Dislikes: The living…

On the edge of the solar system an old scientist runs through the corridors of an abandoned colony ship. He pauses before a cryostasis control panel and, of all the thousands of scientists and engineers he could thawed out, for some reason he chooses me: a janitor called Pippin with a twirly moustache and a wonky moral compass. This is the beginning of a quirky romp across a solar system ruled by brutal corporations. The Outer Worlds is a light-hearted RPG that aims to emulate the Firefly fantasy. You fly from planet to planet, gather a crew of misfits, pick your way through a series of moral quandaries, and shoot people with laser guns. The story winds between pockets of people trying their best The game’s aesthetics and dark sense…

If Gone Home is all about reconnecting with bygone youth, Crossing Souls is about never growing up. It’s a celebration of walkie-talkieing, BMX-riding ’80s adventures, with obvious influences from the likes of The Goonies, Stand By Me, and ET. It’s honest, unadorned, nostalgic fast food that refries old tropes in a loving if wholly predictable way. The group has all the archetypes of the era – leader, nerd, big guy, girl, etc – and the mystical MacGuffin that unites them is suitably perilous. It’s nothing new or groundbreaking, then, but that’s probably the point: it’s a loving, if slightly clumsy ode to the Hollywood American childhood.…

Choosing the best RAM for gaming can feel like grasping at straws. It can be tempting to just find the largest DIMMs your motherboard can handle, but picking the right RAM has just as much to do with frequencies and timings as it does with speed and size. RAM prices have thankfully remained relatively stable for the past six months giving us a reprieve from the prices we were seeing about a year ago, making it a good time to buy. However knowing what to look for can be another matter entirely. Our guide is here to give you the breakdown on the stats that really matter. Dominator Platinum RGB CORSAIR £300 Some of the best RAM for gaming 1 Corsair has outdone itself with the Dominator Platinum RGB sticks. The…

THE MODEM/ROUTER Routers move data in and out using antennas on the top and Ethernet sockets on the back. WIRES EVERYWHERE A wired Ethernet connection is still your best bet to get data quickly and safely over long distances or through walls. MESH TOGETHER Some cell towers operate a bit like a mesh network already, wirelessly passing data between one another. PLUG AND PLAY Homeplug can be combined with Wi-Fi to create a mesh network that engulfs your whole home in a cloud of internets.…

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 3800X AMD £380 AMD continues to tear it up at the top-end of the CPU market, and this 8-core, 16-thread monster laughs at the word ‘bottleneck’. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2080Ti Black Edition EVGA £1,131 EVGA’s custom design is considerably cheaper than Nvidia’s reference card, and with great cooling. COOLER Kraken X62 NZXT £141 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 £172 G.Skill is always a safe bet for lightning fast RAM, and if you can do without the RGB frills this 2x16GB…

Spellcasters are back in newest game pack for The Sims 4, Realm of Magic, but instead of rehashing the simple witch skills and traits from The Sims 3 Supernatural this game pack brings the magic of Hogwarts into The Sims: wands, curses, and all. A few familiar spells return with a new twist, but Realm of Magic lets you specialise in the school of magic of your choice, and of course gives you the option to either use your newfound powers for good or evil. There are 24 spells and 15 potions to learn in Realm of Magic. Alchemy recycles some previous spells from The Sims 3 Supernatural, but it also has a few fun new ones: you can make another sim sick to their stomach with the potion of…

SIGHT Lets you see in the dark for a while Side-effect: Dims your vision after using it, because you’ve abused your cyber-eyes. BERSERK Raises your melee damage Side-effect: Reverses all the colours in the scene to make everything look awful. GENIUS Shows next puzzle step when you’re within three steps of a solution Side-effect: Reverses left and right, because you’re a drug-addled boffin. DETOX Removes build-ups of radiation and biocontamination Side-effect: Also removes all patch effects, because it’s a straight-edge killjoy.…

FRASER BROWN Specialist in Strategy scoops Twitter @FraserIBrown This month Headed over to PDXCON 19 for an absolute barrage of new Paradox announcements. RACHEL WATTS Specialist in Employability Twitter @rachel_wattts This month Became PC Gamer’s new staff writer, spilling out words across both the magazine and the site. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Lengthy RPG reviews Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Dropped all his hot takes in our lap and then disappeared off on holiday to Japan. Typical. CHRIS LIVINGSTON Specialist in Wasteland tinkering Twitter @screencuisine This month Found a way to make Fallout 4 even longer. At this rate he’ll be playing until the apocalypse.…

After nearly two years of tracking and assessing and sometimes even debunking Red Dead Redemption II PC rumours, it’s here. You can play it. You can play Red Dead Redemption II on PC. The Spy’s greatest source of leaks and rumours has died. Rockstar didn’t even have the decency to leave enough time between the final round of rumours and the announcement for The Spy to take one final bite of that delicious, column-sustaining apple. Now the apple lies rotten at The Spy’s feet. Literally. When Rockstar announced Red Dead Redemption II, The Spy donned a black poncho and hid away in The Spy’s favourite air vent in an ill-fated attempt to pretend everything was still OK. It’s been weeks now, and things have gotten pretty funky here. The Spy…

GET SMART New Dynamic Collections are the best way to organise. Pair tags like ‘Co-op’ and ‘FPS’ to round up what to play. PICTURE PERFECT Near the top of a game’s library page, Steam inserts a box of the screenshots you took last session for easy access. MOVE IT Animated box art! Download from reddit.com/r/steamgrid. Right-click a game > Manage > Set custom artwork. PERFORMANCE MODE Disable some graphical niceties and use less bandwidth by enabling Low Bandwidth and Low Performance.…

The lack of a second title in Riot Games’ roster has been a community in-joke for many years. The League of Legends developer has dined out on the success of its smash-hit MOBA for a decade, but for its tenth anniversary, it’s finally adding a new card-shaped arrow to its quiver. Legends of Runeterra is a card game set within the League of Legends universe, drawing on characters found throughout that game’s expansive lore. Long-term fans will already be familiar with the setting; Runeterra is the continent on which LoL and the political machinations that underpin it take place. While League of Legends’ 140-strong roster of characters hail from every corner of its world, Legends of Runeterra’s first card set will feature only 24 of them – four from each…

Finally, a game brave enough to answer the question on all of our lips, “What would happen if there was a gunfight on the International Space Station?” This multiplayer shooter tackles its pleasingly silly premise with a surprising seriousness, kitting out its astronauts with plausible near-future tech and maintaining a clean, NASA-appropriate aesthetic. Crudely speaking, this is Call of Duty in zero-G – two teams of five pick loadouts, jump into a map, and shoot at each other a bunch… in space. But over the course of my hands-on I’m delighted to find that the setting is far more than just a gimmick. A generous jetpack allows for all the freedom of realistic zero-G movement without any of its frustrating limitations. Where the Outer Wilds earlier this year revelled in…

MORE ANIMALS Neither Glitterhoof or Animal Kingdom mode will be reappearing, at least not straight away. Tragic! It won’t be all straight-faced, though, but no talking animals. BETTER RAIDING You’ll be able to start in the Viking Age again, so I’m hoping for more interesting raid mechanics. It was neat in concept, but became bit fiddly and unengaging. BATTLE TACTICS I’d love to be able to have more of an impact on the outcome of a scrap or more to do mid-fight. CKII has the occasional mid-battle event, but I want to be even more involved. TROOP MANAGEMENT While we’re on tactics, more troop management in general would be most welcome. I wouldn’t mind some hands-on ways to deal with logistical and morale problems.…

There’s always room for grand reinvention, no matter how iterative this industry may sometimes feel. You’d think nothing could be more calcified than the isometric RPG, a genre at this point propelled primarily by nostalgia-fueled Kickstarter campaigns. And yet here comes Disco Elysium, stumbling drunkenly into the house and upturning all the furniture. One trip into its ramshackle detective nightmare and you’ll never look at skill checks the same way again. If all it takes for a sea change is for eight blokes from Estonia to write a billion lines of dialogue, then surely nothing is as set in stone as it appears. Perhaps next month a game will make us rethink the very concept of an open world, or discover the abstract philosophy of a loot box? We live…

INTELLECT This stat governs logic, the ability to engage in intellectual discourse, detecting lies, and analysing crime scenes. PSYCHE Understand and empathise with people, rely on your hunches, and talk to items of your own clothing for clues. PHYSIQUE This stat lets you take a punch to the jaw like a champ, physically intimidate people, or endure a drug trip. MOTORICS Composure, perception, and hand/eye coordination, as well as handy skills like lockpicking, are determined by this stat.…

Lina is ready to start a new life. When you meet Neo Cab’s protagonist, she’s en route to Los Ojos, a fictitious city reminiscent of Los Angeles. Her taxi holding the last of her belongings, she sets out to reconnect and move in with her best friend Savvy. When Savvy disappears, Lina is all alone in ‘Automation City’, left to juggle the demands of her job, her mental state, and the mystery surrounding the person she thought she knew best. The best thing about Lina is she can’t keep her opinions to herself After Night Call, Neo Cab is the second taxi driver-detective game this year, but despite this rather astounding coincidence, Chance Agency’s game takes a completely different point of view. Like any other taxi driver, Lina has to…

CLUSTER STRIKE FIVE KILLS A cluster of missiles that target an area. It’s not too difficult to avoid, but its low kill cost means it happens way too often. PERSONAL RADAR THREE KILLS A radar drone that pings enemies on the map. It’s so easy to earn that I’m always spotted by something. PRECISION AIRSTRIKE FIVE KILLS This one lets you designate a straight line to be peppered with bombs and machine-gun fire. It tips matches. CHOPPER GUNNER TEN KILLS Fly around the map shooting a minigun and missiles at anyone unlucky enough to be outside. UAV THREE KILLS Secretly the most destructive tool in the game. If you’re ever wondering if the enemy has a UAV in the air, just assume they do.…

ERIANA’S VOW What is it? Exotic hand cannon Poses the question: what if a cannon was a sniper rifle? Answers it by being good. DEATHBRINGER What is it? An exotic rocket launcher Angry metal and Hive magic. Drops big, dirty void orbs that carpet bomb the area. PLUPERFECT What is it? A legendary assault rifle Pretty standard, but it just makes an incredibly satisfying noise when you fire it. OPTATIVE What is it? A legendary hand cannon Sure, it’s just another hand cannon. But look how cool all the new Vex weapons look! THE RECLUSE What is it? The best gun in the game OK, so it’s not a new gun. But Shadowkeep hasn’t stopped it being the best gun in the game.…

BLOOD FOR, WELL, ME Vindictive Vampire gives a point of life when one of your creatures dies, Bloodthirsty Aerialist gains +1/+1 whenever you gain life. Sacrifice minions to heal while bolstering these vamp acrobats. HEAL TURN Ajani’s Pridemate gains +1/+1 whenever you heal, Bishop of Wings gives life when you play an angel. Stack a deck with enough winged warriors and you’ll finish matches with more life than you started them with.…

There are a few reasons I picked Outdrive. The Steam reviews are good, and it’s dirt cheap. The premise, too, is the most ’80s thing conceivable: the only way you can keep your dying girlfriend’s heart beating is by driving fast down an endless glowing road. It’s nonsense, but the thought of racing to a pulsing soundtrack doesn’t sound so bad. Unfortunately, Outdriveis wretched. The onscreen feedback is practically non-existent, a problem exacerbated by some clumsy translation. Your level of success is measured by ‘Girl Lifetime’, which might be the most depressing metric imaginable. Like Hotline Miami you can press R to restart. You just won’t want to.…

DIMMs Dual In-line Memory Module, a small circuit board with RAM chips on that slots into your motherboard. Frequency Measured in MT/s (often, but incorrectly, written as MHz), this is how many data transfers a DIMM can process in a second. Modern DDR4 transfers data twice per clock cycle, so 3,000MT/s is actually running at 1,500MHz. Higher is better. CAS Latency Column Access Strobe Latency, the delay between the memory controller requesting data from the RAM and the data being available; it’s the first number listed in a kit’s timings string, and lower is better. Timings The measure, represented as a number of clock cycles, that an operation requested by the memory controller will take for the RAM to complete. The most important is the first, CAS Latency. Lower is…

MOTHERBOARD B360M-HDV ASRock £64 ASRock’s B360M board definitely qualifies as ‘no frills’, but it’ll still get the juice out of your CPU without bottlenecks. PROCESSOR Core i3-9100f Intel £80 An incredibly nippy quad-core CPU for the price, Intel’s 9th gen budget chip skips integrated graphics for affordability. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2060 GAMING EVGA £350 Compact, great value, and part of NVIDIA’s latest GPU generation, this EVGA model is the budget gamer’s best friend. COOLER Hyper 212 Evo CoolerMaster £29 Even a budget build can benefit from a good CPU cooler, letting you enjoy a quieter, cooler system. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 16GB Corsair £76 16GB of RAM gives you plenty of breathing room when running multiple programs, and Corsair’s selling this kit cheap. POWER SUPPLY CX-M Series CX550M Corsair £55…

CORSAIR’s range of headsets has been delighting the ears of gamers for years, and has recently expanded into three separate families, each with their own extensive feature sets optimized for use on PC. Faced with such a broad range, it can be tough to know what to choose. There’s an array of impressive tech on offer, from 7.1 surround sound to noise-cancelling microphones to the iCUE software-driven RGB lighting for which CORSAIR products are known. Of course, you’re guaranteed to get great sound quality and comfort, whichever headset you choose. Let’s start out at the top of the range, with the VIRTUOSO RGB Wireless high-fidelity gaming headset, which comes in a standard and SE version. Either of these gorgeous models make a fantastic choice, with impeccable sound with unparalleled clarity.…

It’s exciting to be in a world that’s this coherent and restlessly creative Ican’t remember how far I got through System Shock the first time around. It was 1995, a few months after it came out, and I was attempting to play it on my family’s 486/33 PC. But it was a full 3D game, with lighting and all kinds of amazing stuff going on, and it was far too much for our entry-level PC. I had to give up, but oh my, I wanted to love it. This adventure through the decks of a cyborg-riddled space station was a spiritual follow-up to Ultima Underworld II, which had stunned me the summer before. Like Ultima Underworld, System Shock is also in first-person and lets you jump and look up and…

Before landing my first kickflip, I fell on my ass hundreds of times. I thought the muscle memory would never catch up with my teen dream to do something cool on a wheeled piece of wood, but one evening in the Pizza Hut parking lot, the sun setting, snow falling, it happened. Pop, slide, spin, slam – I landed a kickflip. Practice aligned with confidence and I did the thing as if I’d always done the thing. A frustrating process gave way to pure joy. Suddenly, I was a real skater boy rolling around with something like prestige, my ass now radiating pride with the pain. FLIPPING TRICKY Skateboarding videogames have been great at capturing the fantasy of being a kickflip master, but skip out on how to get there…

TYLER WILDE I hang out in Discord and play games with people. Sometimes I garden. The garden doesn’t play any games with me. Maybe my tomatoes would get more water if they’d play Siege with me, but all they do is provide nourishment. Ridiculous. BUNNY HOP RATZ INSTAGIB 2.0  ratzinstagib.com In the tradition of Unreal Tournament’s instagib mutator, everyone’s got a one-hit-kill gun and is encouraged to hop around like the floor’s lava. Hardly anyone plays Ratzanymore, because most people are uncultured bores. Please come shoot at me so I can stop playing bots. HIT THE BALL ROCKET LEAGUE  rocketleague.com Rocket League is no longer a ‘game’ to me. It’s a ritual, a performance, a part of life. I don’t play it for ‘fun’. What a vulgar thought. I’ve spent…

You can check out p30 and p36 for the new games, but there’s plenty more announcements from Paradox’s annual convention to talk about. Battletech’s Heavy Metal expansion, for example. Eight new mechs! Flashpoint mini-campaign! Plus a free update to the base game, with two new mechs and official mod support. All coming November 21. Stellaris gets an expansion by the name of Federations. Based on negotiating with aliens rather than blowing them up, this DLC will allow you to make alliances and be a space politician. Release is TBC, but the Lithoids Species Pack – with new species portraits and ship models – is out now. Age of Wonders: Planetfall’s first expansion lands November 19. Revelations offers two campaigns, a new faction, and more. With Hearts of Iron 4’s La…

ISSUE 208, Christmas 2009 ON THE COVER APB IN THE CINEMAS Fantastic Mr Fox 1 There’s no shying away from it: we put the words “Meet the PC’sGTAkiller” on our APB cover. In our defence: the early previews of APB looked really promising. How were we supposed to know? In case you haven’t been paying attention for the last decade, APB did not, in fact, prove to be a GTA killer. It was just shonky and bad. 2 Evan Lahti kicked off the reviews with a 92% score for Left 4 Dead 2 – another nail in the coffin of the “PC gaming is dying” refrain of the mid-to-late 2000s. 3 Good PC games aside, not everything was rosy in the world of PC gaming, as Richard Cobbett reveals in…

Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, Queen of Cintra, Princess of Brugge, and Duchess of Sodden had novels of history before players ever met her in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Although we had become well-acquainted with Geralt of Rivia and his supporting cast of men, mistresses, and monsters during the first two games, his adopted sort-of-daughter Ciri had yet to make an appearance, despite her prominence in Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher Saga. “SHE’S UNIMAGINABLY POWERFUL, BUT STRUGGLES WITH SELF-DOUBT” Time is short, even in a 60-plus hour RPG, so the team at CD Projekt Red needed to think carefully about how to introduce Ciri to players elegantly and efficiently. “Ciri has a very rich backstory – a princess, child of Elder Blood, heir to the throne of Nilfgaard, a bandit, a magician,”…

OLD GODS Vikings! They’re rowdy, they like loot and they’re lots of fun. The Old Gods expansion packs in a lot of flavour, but also practical things like human sacrifice and big viking invasions. WAY OF LIFE Small, but completely essential – this is the inspiration for one of CKIII’s big systems, letting you pick a focus for your character that confers a stat boost and lots of events. CONCLAVE Give your council some love. Oh no, that’s too much and now they want everything. Conclave gives everyone more agency, but kinda makes them assholes. It’s brilliant. MONKS AND MYSTICS Speak to the devil, join secret societies and make cool new friends. It’s all a bit silly, but Monks and Mystics boasts some of the most entertaining events in the…

ANDY KELLY Specialist in DUIs – detecting under the influence Currently playing Disco Elysium This month Got called a ‘laughable centrist’ by a videogame. Really. MALINDY HETFELD Specialist in The gig economy Currently playing Neo Cab This month Got a taste of life as an Uber driver. At least they get tips. MORGAN PARK Specialist in Covert ops and overt facial hair Currently playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare This month Developed a crippling phobia of UAVs. PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Moon fights Currently playing Destiny 2: Shadowkeep This month Made all those sweet numbers go up a bit higher again. TOM SENIOR Specialist in Space capitalism Currently playing The Outer Worlds This month Powered through a ferocious bout of man-flu to bring you the reviews you crave. TOM SYKES…

THINKER You can choose a preset character if you don’t want to make your own. This guy is educated, insightful, and creative, but physically unimposing. 5 INT 1 PSY 2 FYS 4 MOT SENSITIVE This one has a magnetic personality and a deep understanding of people’s psychology, but also suffers from an unstable mind. 1 INT 5 PSY 4 FYS 2 MOT PHYSICAL This chap is dumber than a sack of rocks, but is extremely physical. He prefers to punch rather than think his way out of tricky situations. 1 INT 2 PSY 5 FYS 4 MOT…

Not often, is it, that the fourth game in a series is considered to be an ideal jumping-in point? That’s the case here, for a few obvious reasons. Firstly, the controls and mechanics are taught with a wonderful understanding of communication and pace. Secondly, the story requires no knowledge of the previous games. Thirdly, things are so similar to the first two entries that it’s best enjoyed by players who are experiencing it all for the first time. It almost feels unfair to highlight the similarities to what has gone before. After all Frozenbyte attempted to address the grumbles around Trine 2’s similarity to its predecessor by moving to 3D environments for Trine 3. The result was identifiably the weakest game in the series however, so it’s back to 2.5D…

ASSAULT Bears are strong. So strong they can bite a gun in half. The gun that you use to shoot enemies as an Assault character. Leaving you with no gun. SHARPSHOOTER I’m down with the eagle, eagle-eyed and all that. But why is it carrying a gun, while also being targeted by a gun? Is the eagle the sharpshooter? FIELD MEDIC What’s the best way to represent healing people? That’s right, snake with a knife. Seems like it goes against the Hippocratic Oath somewhat. PANTHER Why does the panther have a knife in its mouth? It’s basically made of knives. Also it’s covered in lightning for some baffling reason.…

POLE POSITION RACE DRIVER: GRID Still the strongest and most well-rounded entry this is the landmark for all of Codies’ arcade racers. GRID AUTOSPORT Technically a spinoff, its focus on realistic handling and a wide range of race types earns second place. BACK OF THE PACK GRID It may be lightweight on features, but GRID’s finely-tuned driving is worthy of a podium finish. GRID 2 GRID 2’s dynamic tracks couldn’t compensate for its wonky driving model and lack of an in-car view.…

MOTHERBOARD Prime Z370 A II Aus £125 Great shielding, full of features, and featuring that – ahem – all important RGB lighting, this is a fine Asus board. PROCESSOR Core i5-8600K Intel £245 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 £350 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 £76 16GB is the minimum amount of RAM we’d recommend for a system of this…

NEW LIGHT 1 Bungie brought down one of the biggest barriers to entry for Destiny 2’s third year: the price. Now you can access hundreds of hours of interstellar action for precisely nada. Zoom in on your Sparrow and get your feet wet. YEAR ONE 2 But what do you get? Everything from the first year of Destiny 2 is yours for nothing: the base game and first two expansions. You also have Crucible, Gambit, Strikes, the Leviathan Raid, and you can explore every planet. LORE ENFORCEMENT 3 Destiny 2’s wider narrative can be confusing, but don’t let that put you off. All you should know is that your character, a Guardian, uses a mystical power drawn from their robotic companion, their Ghost, to beat back The Darkness. REDWAR 4…