Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2022 i PC Gamer

I love world building in games. There’s something magical about the way writers, artists, and designers come together to create their own new reality – a place you can step into and peel back the layers of its stories and ideas as you play. So naturally the idea of a survival game that crafts a BioWare-like fantasy world while you’re crafting your stone axes appeals to me. Nightingalehas the potential to offer proper fantastical escapism with friends – Valheim, but stuffed with lore. Find out more by travelling to the mystical realm of PC Gamer issue 370… ROBIN VALENTINE Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Punched a tree. I didn’t want wood or anything, I was just angry at nature.…

HIGHS Epic gesture Epic donated two weeks of Fortnite profits to help Ukraine. Elden running Speedrunners have well and truly hit the Lands Between and the record is now 18 minutes to complete it. Colossal comeback Ken and Roberta Williams, Sierra Online founders, are working together again after 20 years on a remake of Colossal Cave Adventure. LOWS Twitch Pro-no! Twitch trialled a feature called Boost Train except it got hijacked, became the Porn Train, and is on hiatus. COD fish COD streamer Kenji was accused of cheating: he disputed it by sharing clips that… showed wallhacks. PSwow! Sony is re-jigging its PlayStation Plus service tiers, which matters to PC gamers because accessing PS Now is going to double in price.…

Larian Studios always goes all-in. After nearly bankrupting itself to make Divinity: Original Sin in 2015, Larian tripled in size to pull off an ambitious sequel, growing to 150 developers. With one of the best RPGs of the decade under its belt, Larian then set out to make Baldur’s Gate III. A year in pre-production let them make a call on how much work this even more ambitious game would take. “We thought we had it all figured out. We even estimated how big we’d have to become,” said Larian founder Swen Vincke. They were wrong. “I never expected us to be 400 people to make Baldur’s Gate III,” Vincke told me. “Nobody expected it. But it’s literally what we needed to do it.” Appropriately for an RPG studio that…

Halfway through Discovery’s first season, I accepted that it wasn’t my kind of Star Trek. The modern series’ grim war felt tonally off for a series that’s always been about exploration and humanity, and when it did spend time on its crew, the melodrama dial was stuck at 11. Good or bad, it wasn’t my Trek. I had the opposite experience when I played a new demo of Star Trek: Resurgence, a story-focused adventure from former Telltale developers at new studio Dramatic Labs. Within five minutes, Resurgence’s captain was lamenting a catastrophic warp core malfunction and dropping technobabble like “10,000 teradynes per second” while he stared out a viewport. Twenty minutes later and the senior officers were sitting across a table from Ambassador Spock, talking about their mission to negotiate…

Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep, the Borderlands 2 expansion that doubled as a loving parody of Dungeons & Dragons, came out in 2013. That was a year before fifth edition revitalised interest in Dungeons & Dragons, two years before Critical Role premiered. At the time, jokes about Dungeons & Dragons seemed pretty niche. It was a surprising move for a shooter expansion, but it sure did pay off, hitting an untapped vein and quickly becoming everyone’s favourite DLC. In 2022, though? D&D is popular as it’s ever been, approaching cultural oversaturation, and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands returns to a well that’s close to running dry. I spent most of my time as a Spore Warden, a kind of fungal ranger While it looks like a bouncy fantasy-comedy, it plays like…

As a lover of sci-fi and a Singaporean, playing Chinatown Detective Agency was a rare experience. Not long after entering this near-future version of my home country, it became clear that this game has two layers, aimed at two audiences: one is a point-and-click adventure for folks who grew up with Broderbund’s Carmen Sandiego series which took them all over the world. The other is a game made especially for Singaporeans. In 2037, the country has gone through the unthinkable process of deregulation, there’s anti-government graffiti on the train, droids are a routine sight, and there’s only one human librarian left in the country. You play as Amira Darma, an ex-cop starting out as a private investigator. As she takes on cases and meets clients, Amira gets to travel the…

When people talk about Norco, they might mention its discerning use of science fiction, its punk roots, or how it resonates as a universal story about place and personhood. It’s full of social commentary on capitalism in the real-life Louisianan town of the same name. But for all these lofty themes, it also nails something petty: the tiny weaknesses and hypocrisies of people looking for a place to belong. Playing Norco is a full-throated commitment to the story Norcois the first game from the collective Geography of Robots, founded by writer/designer Yuts, who was born and raised in the town. The story follows Kay, a young woman who returns home to Norco to find her brother, Blake, in the wake of their mother’s death. As something of a nomad, she’s…

I’ve lived many lives as I’ve travelled around in Weird West. Bounty hunter, werewolf, pigman – that was a memorable one. And in every body I made the West a little better, or a little worse. As much as it’s a game about constant micro decision-making – stealth or direct assault, Molotov cocktail plus oil barrel or revolver plus John Woo slow-mo dive – Weird West is just as concerned with the bigger picture as other immersive sims, including Dishonored and Prey. You can even recruit the protagonists of the previous stories That bigger picture begins in a familiar place: with a bounty hunter coming out of retirement. For the first few hours, I was tangling with outlaws in typical Wild West fashion and wondering where the weirdness was. You…

Some PlayStation-style games are convincing, while others feel like modern games with a couple of filters applied. Happily, House of Necrosis is the former. It’s a traditional, turn-based roguelike mixed with a gory survival horror. As in most traditional roguelikes, positioning is hugely important, as you close the gap between you and your enemies. If you move next to the enemy, you can hit them with your melee weapon, but they’ll get an attack in return. This can really gouge your health bar, although there are ways to mitigate it. Firstly, you can shoot them from afar, using your pistol and its limited ammo. You can also level up in power, by deliberately seeking out enemies. The one thing you don’twant to do is approach a monster from the side…

A moment of honesty: Flower was originally going to be one of the shorter entries in this month’s They’re Back, but the prospect of following Bulletstormwith something so achingly earnest was entirely too tempting to pass up. It’s refreshing – almost like a detox for the fingers. The most violent thing that happens in Floweris some rocks almost falling over. But despite the calm, monkish focus, Flowercan be exhilarating. There’s a lovely sense of speed and fluidity from zooming around close to the ground and watching the beautiful grass part before you. It’s also a zen experience, even if the effect is lessened for me when I decide that each section is the dying dream of a plant. It sometimes stretches what I understand to be the definition of a…

In my opinion there’s no better peripheral for your PC than a racing wheel. I enjoy VR headsets, though they’re pretty great even without a PC at hand; and a flight stick really feels crucial to a fun flight sim experience. But it’s the racing wheel that I find myself using most often – so much so that one is a permanent fixture on my desk nowadays. There are many different racing wheels vying for your cash, however. You’ll find multiple varying underlying technologies powering each wheel available – each with their own positives and negatives, fans and critics. I’ve tested and reviewed six of the best on the market to see which is really going to deliver a true-to-life tyre-screeching experience for avid and casual driver alike. GT DD…

GEFORCE GTX 770 £329 2013 Over £300 for Nvidia’s ‘sweet spot’ card seemed pricy at the time. 2013 was a different world, wasn’t it? GEFORCE GTX 970: £259 2014 Ah, the god card. Significantly cheaper than the previous gen’s equivalent, insanely powerful. GEFORCE GTX 1070: £410 2016 Two years after the 970, a tricky manufacturing process and low die yield pushed up the 1070’s price. GEFORCE RTX 2070: £420 2018 Anyone actually bag a founder’s edition for this price? Unlikely – even pre-COVID, crypto mining drove up demand.…

ROBIN VALENTINE THIS MONTH Fired a lot of magical, electric birds out of my hands. ALSO PLAYED Elden Ring, XCOM 2: War of the Chosen Heading into Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, I expected a pretty throwaway spin-off of a series past its prime. In the wake of Borderlands 3, the formula seemed worn out, both the jokes and the looter-shooting feeling tired and old-fashioned. The surprising thing is not just that Wonderlands is a blast, but how refreshing certain key changes are. The biggest switch is the setting. Wonderlandsmoves the action to the faux-fantasy world of Tina’s D&D campaign – and, despite the inclusion of guns, the game does mostly leave Pandora behind. You meet new characters, fight new enemies, and explore new locations. I had visions of encountering magic Skags…

TREYARCH Treyarch’s 1998 debut, Die by the Sword, has about 14 devs credited. The COD studio now has 550+ employees. TRAVELLER’S TALES Thirteen credited developers worked on 1989’s Leander. Today the Lego studio has around 300 employees. ROCKSTEADY STUDIOS About 30 devs worked on Urban Chaos. 250+ are at the studio now, as it makes Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. AMPLITUDE STUDIOS Amplitude made its first 4X, Endless Space, with about 20 devs. Now owned by Sega, the studio has 150+ employees.…

There’s something very cathartic about playing Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate – Daemonhunters, a turn-based tactics romp with Space Marines tackling their own equivalent of a pandemic by beating the shit out of it. Bolters, flamethrowers, and heavy boots are very effective remedies, it turns out. Here’s the setup: you’re in command of the Grey Knights, a Space Marine chapter full of Chaos-crushing zealots with a penchant for psychic assaults. They’re called into action because a plague is spreading across the galaxy, the Bloom, courtesy of the Chaos god Nurgle and his grotesque minions. Thus begins a planet-hopping campaign where you’ll determine the fate of entire worlds. For this demo, though, the focus is the missions themselves: three of them, each with different objectives and some premade squads. There’s my Justicar…

OK, so we’re all a little tired of superheroes at this point. With the ever growing Marvel Cinematic Universe and however many Batmans we have now, you probably think you’ve had enough of both great powers and great responsibilities. But I promise you you’ve never seen superheroes quite like the ones in Superfuse. This action-RPG takes place far in the future, a time when the people of Earth have gone on to populate other areas of space led by gods. And by gods, we’re talking billionaires evolved by science to the point they’re undying, domineering dictators of the universe. You play one of their lackeys. Not only have these gods altered themselves, but they’ve also taken on an army of supercharged mercenaries (that’s you) called Enforcers. Which doesn’t exactly make…

In the dead of night, a local busybody comes straight to the door of your flat with gossip. Evidently, there’s no Facebook in Abermore. “The puddle’s back,” he says. This pool of liquid sits on the city’s thoroughfares, apparently, and looks normal enough at a glance. But when carriages pass through, it doesn’t splash. And while reflective, it never shows an image. Residents suspect it’s fathoms deep. Oh, and that anything falling in turns to metal. “Transports itself across the city, coming and going as it pleases,” says the busybody. “It’s a small patch of wrong.” If only there were just one small patch of wrong in Abermore. Somewhere below the surface of this game, there’s a perfectly charming heist simulator that channels Thiefand Skyrim’s Dark Brotherhood quests. But it’s…

I knew I was in for a good time with Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga when I began the Prequel Trilogy portion and saw Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan’s ship get stopped at a traffic gate floating in space. After a quick video conference with the Trade Federation, which saw them hastily try and hide their evil plans labelled “evil plans”, Qui Gon and Obi Wan breeze through the gate, accidentally knocking a hapless battle droid, sending it floating off into space. There’s an enormous amount of content on offer The Skywalker Saga pushes its charm, with practically every cutscene featuring some visual gag or punchline at the film series’ expense. Kylo Ren is pumping iron and flexing as Rey contacts him in that infamous scene from The…

It’s not a reassuring thought that once humans mess up the planet, they’ll do it again in the aftermath, but it’s entirely logical. In Submerged: Hidden Depths, survivors in the ruins of a world lost to the ocean anger a mysterious marine entity known as The Mass, by using its seeds as a power source for their worship of bygone electronics. Its wrath is total, turning everyone into tentacled echoes of their last living moments. Giant, greasy, black vines choke the settlements and surrounding waters. The only way to make things right is for our cursed heroine, Miku, to return the glowing kernels to their host plants. The seeds of destruction are also the literal seeds of rebirth. The lack of combat makes sense, but there’s no peril Or something.…

Since the release of End of Dragons, I’ve spent as much time in Guild Wars 2’s older maps as I have in its new Canthan region. This is an MMO that, in the nine years since its release, has never raised its level cap. The gear and weapons you earned before remain just as relevant today. In that context, End of Dragons doesn’t just need to be good in isolation, but has to weave itself into the larger tapestry of the endgame. Even now, a month after launch, it’s hard to predict what its enduring legacy will be. But one thing is for certain: End of Dragons makes a great first impression. The campaign is the strongest Guild Wars 2 has delivered yet The campaign is the strongest Guild Wars…

1 BFF Characters helped out in sidequests can become Friends for Life, meaning they’ll appear randomly in battle. It’s a lovely gesture, and you feel bad when they die. 2 POWER CURVE Abilities are a mix of gun powers and character-specific supernatural powers, all of which are bought using Nimp Relics, found through exploration. 3 FOLLOWING THE LEADER You can hire mercenaries in saloons, or recruit the former protagonists, who will bring their inventories across with them.…

There’s a realm between spooky and cosy that Frog Familiar has carved a comfy little nook in. In this top-down adventure game, you play as a witch’s amphibian familiar, who has to hop around a compact forest in search of ingredients. Imagine The Legend of Zelda, but un-imagine the combat and dungeons, and you’ll know what you’re in store for: a game of exploration and running errands for the charming forest folk. Your main quest, and it’s a fairly low-stakes one, is to gather various bits from around the low-res environment. We’re talking mushrooms, herbs, bones, and a magic crystal, if you can find one. These items are dotted around the couple-dozen screens that comprise the game, leading you subtly to the many denizens that call it home, be they…

Sometimes, trying to find the fun in a game is like looking for a lost contact lens. You scrabble around on the bathroom floor, with your knees pock-marked from the filth-encrusted mat and having ancient pubes sticking to your sweating, desperate paws. Then you look at the mirror and realise that the contact lens was stuck to your forehead the entire time. Somehow, the balance of art and raw enjoyment is almost perfect There’s probably a way of describing Bulletstormthat gives a less-revealing picture about the cleanliness of my lavatory, but hopefully you get the point. Some games hide the enjoyment under the blanket of story. Bulletstormdoesn’t. It’s obvious to the point of obscenity, but playing it again now feels like a rebirth. It’s a game that understands what’s brilliant…

This month’s theme, apparently, is ‘games that are weatheradjacent’. So Sunset Overdrive is a slight cop-out. But in my defence, you can’t have a sunset without the sun. It’s also an excuse to talk about a game that’s fascinating just because it’s so close to being God-awful. At times it feels like it was grown in a lab using memes and Mountain Dew. But despite being so self-referential it’s thrice disappeared up its own backside, Sunset Overdrive is adorably, inexplicably great. It’s like an uninvited stranger turning up to your house party with a guitar, then learning they know all your favourite songs and they’re not trying to bed your partner.…

Remakes are great. Not only do they get modern developers off the hook from having to think of genuinely new things for us to do in virtual worlds, they also make it far more convenient for us to indulge in our more nostalgic passions. There it is, look, effortlessly running on Steam in 4K: your childhood obsession. The gateway to a lifetime of subsequent PC game exploration. All you have to do is click ‘new game’ and you’re back in that cosy, familiar world again, and now in widescreen. A CAN OF COMPRESSED AIR DOES WONDERS AT THIS STAGE But you don’t do it. It just… doesn’t feel right. Remasters are generally about conjuring treasured memories, and to a certain, broken subsection of us, any minor deviation from that memory…

Elden Ring is huge, and I’m not just talking about the size of its map. The open world action RPG is a massive hit, not only selling millions of copies but launching to near universal critical acclaim. We love it, and pretty much everyone else does, too. It’s a fantastic and challenging game set in a mysterious open world. But just because a game is a widely beloved masterpiece doesn’t mean there isn’t room to tinker with it a bit. Immediately after its release in February, mods for Elden Ring started popping up – at first it was mostly reshades, post-processing injectors to subtly change the visual tone of the game, but it wasn’t long before bigger and more complicated mods started arriving to adjust the difficulty (in both directions),…

CD Projekt has announced that a new Witcher game is in development “kicking off a new saga for the franchise”. While the details are scarce at this stage, the most immediately noticeable part of the announcement is that – after basically building the studio on it – CD Projekt is leaving behind its latest iteration of REDengine, the tech behind Cyberpunk 2077, and moving to Unreal Engine 5. Ever since the Witcher 3’s final DLC, players have been ravenous to find out what’s next: but Cyberpunk 2077 put that on the back-burner for many years, and that game’s story looms large here. The simple version is that, while this was always coming at some point, CDPR’s reputation took a battering over Cyberpunk’s release while the Witcher TV series brought the series…

“ON AN IDEAL DAY, I CAN LISTEN TO SOME RAP FERREIRA AND THEN GO TO A MEETING” Since Baldur’s Gate III’s announcement in 2019, Larian has made an art of the disaster demo. It usually happens like this: during an onstage presentation, creative director Swen Vincke deviates from the ‘golden path’ – a pre-approved route through the game, tested and made bug-free for demonstration purposes. He clicks on something he shouldn’t, and that thing breaks, in front of a large crowd. “If our developers are in the audience, they’re losing their minds,” says Larian’s director of publishing, Michael Douse. “But everyone on my team and the audience are laughing their asses off. Even our first showing of the game at PAX was an absolute shitshow. It’s so antithetical to what…

1 month WH40K: CHAOS GATE – DAEMONHUNTERS RELEASE May 5 | DEVELOPER Complex Games ‘Warhammer meetsXCOM’ is a pitch sure to get mouths watering around our office, and what we’ve seen of the crunchy, tactical action has been very promising. SALT AND SACRIFICE RELEASE May 10 | DEVELOPER Devoured Studios Hunt monstrous mages as someone named the ‘Marked Inquisitor’ in this confident follow-up to the hit 2D Souls-like Salt and Sanctuary. EVIL DEAD: THE GAME RELEASE May 13 | DEVELOPER Saber Interactive Bruce Campbell reprises his iconic role in this game adaptation of the cult film series. Expect Left 4 Dead-esque co-op and PvP gameplay, though you can play solo too. 3 months STEELRISING RELEASE June | DEVELOPER Spiders Scrappy RPG developer Spiders is back with a strange clockpunk tale…

I’m no ghost scientist, but there are a few things I’m confident ghosts do: spin office chairs as a gag, fry electronics at the worst times, and make soda machines eject cans like fizzy ballistic missiles. I was able to do all three in Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed, so at the very least it passes my amateur ghostology test with slimy colours. Ghostbusters is Illfonic’s third licensed, 4v1 multiplayer game after Friday the 13th and Predator: Hunting Grounds. While the first two have come and gone while Dead by Daylight keeps on trucking and Left 4 Dead 2 settles into old age, I don’t think Ghostbusters is really trying to supplant either. This time Illfonic’s really doing its own thing, making an asymmetrical game where one team never gets torn limb…

In the late 1800s, towering metal pylons loom over the Victorian city of Nightingale, crackling with magical energy. In this alt-history timeline, ancient mystical creatures from another realm known as the Fae revealed themselves to the world in the 1500s, changing the course of human history by introducing us to magic. Nightingale essentially became the new centre of the world as people flocked to the city to learn the ways of arcane sorcery and put it to use in science and industry. Magic portals were opened and human explorers, known as Realmwalkers, began stepping through them to explore unknown worlds, returning with new resources, discoveries, and a whole lot of treasure. But in 1889 this bold new age of magic came crashing to an end. A mysterious cataclysm called the…

Beware of Tunic’s cute exterior. On the surface, its lovely art style and charming tone bear a striking resemblance to Nintendo’s Zelda series. But below this cheery surface lies a game intent on testing your resolve. Tunic’s world is teeming with enemies who are all too willing to knock the stuffing out of you. And you’d best be prepared to die – it has as much in common with Dark Souls as it does any of Link’s previous outings. Some games go to painstaking lengths to explain their mechanics, Tunicis not one of those. The most important lesson you learn is that the game actually does offer guidance, and in an unusual way – by having you collect the pages of an instruction manual. What scant plot Tunicdoes have is…

When you breed two dogs together in Wobbledogs, you’re treated to a cutscene where a vast stone automaton of a dog mashes the two parents together in its giant hands while little hearts flow out of them. There are no other cutscenes in the game, and it seems to come out of nowhere. It’s great, and out of proportion to the rest of the game, and feels like it’s there for sheer joy. And honestly that is the spirit of Wobbledogs in a nutshell. The word ‘dog’ takes on a weird and wonderful new meaning At a literal level, it is what it says it is. You raise and care for wobbly dogs through different life stages, until they either pass away or you choose to store them, indefinitely, which…

1 ARMOUR Thanks to a hard outer shell and weathered, leathery face, the Siege Mount has 40,000 health. 2 PASSENGERS A two-seated saddle has room for two players, one to drive and the other to shoot. 3 CANNONS The gunner can fire a volley that annihilate buildings. Hence the ‘siege’ part of Siege Turtle. 4 JUMPJETS Turtles are traditionally slow, but this one is rocket powered. And once it’s gone up… 5 FEET …It comes back down. Heavily, thanks to the slam attack that knocks down targets within range.…

The mere existence of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is, well, strange. When Square Enix announced it was remaking Final Fantasy VII, it made sense. It was, after all, the game that put the world’s most ironically named series on the map. An action spin-off inspired by and serving as sort-of-prequel to the now 35 year old and largely forgotten first game in the franchise, however, is an odd choice. The resulting game is even odder. Enemies turn to crystal before spectacularly shattering Stranger of Paradise offers a new take on the bare-bones narrative of its pixelated predecessor, with developer Team Ninja injecting the series with a more edgy tone. At least that’s what it was going for, but cringe-worthy dialogue from over-the-top characters sees the game sail right…

Roguelikes have become so ubiquitous they’ve invaded history. Here’s a roguelike made for ye olde original Game Boy – as in, you can download the ROM and play it on the actual hardware. You can also play it in your browser, delving into the dungeon to save an imperilled fantasy kingdom. Traumatariumis a pretty simple game. I was reminded of the board game Escape the Dark Castle, which contains a dungeon made up of 15 shuffled event cards. That’s how the world is constructed here, as a series of rooms presented in a random sequence, with randomised events occurring as you search each room. You’re linearly shunted along, before you face the end game boss. It’s a game of taking, or avoiding, calculated risks. Winning the turn-based battles grants experience,…

For me the mark of a good point-and-click adventure is how much I actually want to listen to the descriptions. It’s fine filling a scene with pointless stuff I can click on, but if the results aren’t mildly amusing, what’s the point? Kathy Rain, against my expectations, is surprisingly great at this, to the point I can’t progress past the opening scene until I’ve examined my Christian roommate’s God things and tried to mess up her bed. The ’90s setting and spiky protagonist make me wish this was on television when I was a teenager – the sort of show you watch before your mum calls you downstairs for turkey escalopes and chips.…

Most Nancy Drew games hinge on some kind of nefarious, far-fetched criminal enterprise. But a villain using weaponised bad weather is perhaps the most gleefully absurd. It’s the 22nd game in the series, and there’s very little here to set it apart: sedate puzzling, pointless chores, bad character models. Even among the Nancy Drew hardcore, Trail of the Twister is rightly reviled one of the weaker entries. But at least there are 21 other titles to help ease the sadness.…

We thought it might never happen. GPU prices have been wildly inflated for as long as Nvidia’s been trying to explain ray tracing. Through a perfect storm of market conditions, it’s been nigh-on impossible to buy an RTX 3-series card since their release in September 2020 and just as exhausting trying to get a high-end 2-series card before that. But at long last, prices are starting to fall. Just in case you’re emerging after several years from a Falloutesque vault, this pickle was created in the first place primarily by the coronavirus pandemic. Cryptocurrencies, particularly Bitcoin, saw a massive increase in value during lockdown, and that encouraged crypto farmers to buy all the available high-powered GPUs on the market. When Nvidia launched its new RTX 3080 TI, it became the…

NAT CLAYTON THIS MONTH Became a mercenary-for-hire in The Lands Between. ALSO PLAYED Apex Legends I ’m an invader. The nuisance who drops into games to wreak havoc on folks just trying to overcome challenges. About halfway through my first playthrough I realised I might like fighting other players more than bosses, and the easiest way to do that is by being a pain in the ass. Except, well, lately my invasions have gotten a bit weird. It all started, as many things do, with fashion. Deep underground in the Ainsel River lies the Eternal City Nokstella – and when I first set eyes on the ten-foot tall swordswomen that reside there, I knew I had to get their fit. But once my cosplay was assembled, I had another thought:…

SAMANTHA GREER THIS MONTH Fell down a mountain, but stylishly. ALSO PLAYED Elden Ring, more Elden Ring I’m often in two minds about the games of Hideo Kojima. He’s great at delivering novel ideas with a pretty frequent hit rate. The sniper battle with the End from Metal Gear Solid 3 or the scene where Psycho Mantis reads your memory card? Great stuff. But hour long cutscenes filled with dreadful dialogue? A habit of objectifying women of his games? The worst. Death Stranding represents the highest peaks and deepest depths in terms of quality. The same overblown story and overlong cutscenes intrude in a game which otherwise excels at communicating such a strong sense of place. Ropey combat and stealth feel like a hangover from Metal Gear Solid V, mechanics…

1 PREPARE TO DIE If Elden Ring is the first ‘Soulsborne’ game you’re trying (named for Dark Souls and Bloodborne), know that you’re in for a difficult, special, and fascinating adventure. To catch you up, we’ve got some general tips that might not be so clear to beginners. 2 LESSON LEARNED Dying isn’t a punishment in Souls games, but an opportunity for you to improve. The harsh world and brutal bosses of Elden Ring are a puzzle to be solved and, with each death, you’ll be closer to a solution. 3 RISK VS REWARD You’ll drop your currency on death, and it’ll disappear forever if you die again before reclaiming it. If you have a lot, use it to level up or buy items. There’s no shame in running past…