Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2022 i PC Gamer

Honestly, there’s probably no phrase more likely to get the PC Gamer office all a-flutter than “The creators of XCOM: Enemy Unknown are working on…”. We’ve been champing at the bit to do a proper deep dive on the team’s upcoming Marvel game, Midnight Suns, since it was first announced. Now, finally, we have that feature for you. Our hands-on reveals a very surprising beast – a game with the strategy smarts of XCOM, but equally influenced by BioWare RPGs, Slay the Spire and… billiards, sort of? It’s bold, it’s experimental, and it’s quite unlike anything Firaxis have made before. ROBIN VALENTINE Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Put a bunch of Biros between his knuckles and said “Snikt!” to anyone who would listen.…

HIGHS PCStation Marvel’s Spider-Man will be out on PC by the end of 2022. Onecraft Minecraft developer Mojang has now made it so anyone with the game has the Java and Bedrock editions. PvP god Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida apologised for PvP balance changes that made black mage – his main class – overpowered. LOWS Mon dieu! The French ministry of culture has issued long French replacements for English words like ‘streamer’. Abandoned abandoned? A game by Blue Box Studios that some speculated was a new Silent Hill appears to be in disarray. Admin error Han Bing, a database administrator for Lianjia, wiped the company’s servers in anger they’d ignored his security warnings.…

Nobody asked for the ability to wear the faces of xQc, HasanAbi, and Nicolas Cage as VTuber models, but now you can, thanks to streamer and VTuber creator Fofamit. Each model stretches and deforms along with your facial movements like your face is made out of Play-Doh. All you need is a camera or an iPhone and a facial capture app to replicate the horror. Fofamit has made several cursed models, but the most popular of them is her haunted xQc mask. She made it in response to his and other streamer’s controversial misuse of the VTuber Twitch tag recently. Snuffy, one of Twitch’s most popular VTubers, put on her best xQc impression and Fofamit’s nightmarish version of his face and streamed with it. For an entire hour, Snuffy, as…

Having grown up in the era of Disney’s film renaissance, I am well versed in all things mouse. I know the songs by heart, have watched every animated movie, and have visited Disneyworld more times than an adult probably should. But what’s never really jelled with me is Disney games – the last one I enjoyed was Toy Story 2 for the PlayStation. Until now. Disney Dreamlight Valley feels like a Disney game created just for me. It combines all the things I love most in games: life-sim, character customisation, narrative-driven stories, and very cute critters. There’s faithful voice acting and music throughout, and many easter eggs for Disneyphiles to find. It’s a Disney game made with millennials in mind, featuring beloved characters from the ’90s films alongside modern favourites…

What Ferrari wouldn’t do for a pause button this season. Each race, Leclerc and Sainz start from the front of the grid and demonstrate a pace advantage over everyone else for about 20 laps… and then suffer a new variety of disaster. The only throughline between these upsets is that the people in pit lane wish they’d done the last five minutes differently. That’s what F1 Manager 22 offers – the experience of being a team principal in motorsport’s most prestigious category, with all the pressure and poring over technical minutiae that comes with it –and a pause button. Going hands on with F1 Manager 22, what’s striking is not just how advantageous the pause button is, but how real-world time melts away while you deliberate over tyre compounds. I…

According to creative director Jake Solomon, Marvel’s Midnight Suns is “the complete opposite” of XCOM 2, which is a preposterous claim. How can one turn-based tactics game be the opposite of another? And yet after hearing Solomon’s explanation and playing a few hours of Midnight Suns during a visit to 2K’s headquarters, I have a hard time disagreeing. Midnight Suns kind of is the opposite of XCOM. At the very least, it’s the version of XCOMwhere you declared that it’s Opposite Day and started rewriting its rules, which is something I can imagine Solomon actually doing. It’s also a surprising game from a studio best known for 20 years of Civilizationsequels and the stories that emerge from XCOM’s dice rolls and permadeath. Firaxis toyed with more authored storytelling in XCOM…

Five games deep, Sniper Elite delivers what I consider to be its best instalment since the original thanks to the influence of games like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and the Hitman reboots. Yet a total lack of confidence in its core sniping conceit, as well as a truly dire story, drag down what should be a more enjoyable stealth game. The Second World War through the eyes of a teenage boy It’s probably not what a lot of people coming to Sniper Elite 5 care about, but someone at Rebellion was intent on cramming numerous cutscenes into this thing, and they are all, without exception, duller than the dead eyes of the Nazis left in the wake of protagonist Karl Fairburne. This macho American commando and sniper…

Citizen Sleeper is like Blade Runner, but you’re the replicant on the run. A synthetic being who has escaped from the corporation that built you, you hide on a space station that’s become a rogue state – home to revolutionaries, refugees, and a pirate gang. While you’re worrying about whether you’ll be hunted down and dramatically shot in the back, you’re also worried about day-to-day survival. The game is great at encouraging you to live a routine. Where in Cyberpunk 2077I only went to bed if I was trying to trigger a sidequest, here I lived a day-to-day cycle that included sleeping, eating, working, and feeding a stray cat. Some of it was mechanically necessary, some was pure roleplay. I hit the credits three times finding multiple endings Every morning…

Salt and Sacrifice is the game that broke the camel’s back. I am tired of Souls-likes. To borrow a Dark Souls phrase (as shamelessly as these games rifle through the FromSoftware’s pockets for lint), I’ve gone hollow. My interest in seeing variations on these themes is spent. No more do I wish to repeat the same criticisms, to make the same comparisons. These imitators invariably make the same mistakes. Lifting the mechanics wholesale but with none of the underlying fundamentals to make them sing. Stamina and status effects and all the usual Souls malarkey It doesn’t start without intrigue. You’re an inquisitor, banished to the edge of the world to hunt down mages causing destruction wherever they go. The character creator is pretty standard but does let you choose the…

You’re not really dungeon crawling unless you’re doing it at fixed, 45-degree angles, turning sharply in boxy mazes filled with enemies, traps and puzzles. Created for the Dungeon Crawler Jam, Out of the Blue’s grid-based movement evokes games like Dungeon Master, but with decidedly one-sided combat. It’s one-sided because the enemies will just stand there until you shoot them, find another route, or suffer damage by shoving your way straight through. They’re obstacles, really, just like everything else in this jungle maze, which you’ll slowly best as you spiral outwards from your camp. Out of the Blue’s most prominent feature is its energy system, which counts down with every step you take. You start each run with just 32 energy, and when that runs out you wake up back at…

I planned on continuing the leafy theme with The Forest, but being a massive coward, decided it was probably too stressful. “Instead,” I foolishly thought, “I’ll play that nice game about the sad man with the fat hands.” It turns out that trying to survive the night in a forest is less gruelling than Firewatch’s emotional cheesegrater. Apparently, a game that has fully-fleshed out characters experiencing relatable things is harder on the soul than avoiding mutants. It’s at its best when you’re experiencing the small moments, and the underpinning friendship between Henry and Delilah is as beautiful as the stirring scenery. The sort of game that makes you miss walkie-talkies. 87…

HIGH REFRESH RATES 120Hz is the standard for TVs using the tech, and Alienware’s wrung 175Hz from its panels. It’s a big upgrade over 60Hz. TRUE BLACKS When a diode displays black on an OLED screen, it’s in an ‘off’ state. True inky black – perfect for horror games. INCREDIBLE COLOUR As you may have noticed, Elden Ring doesn’t look like Good Morning Britain. It deserves OLED more. SUPER-THIN PANELS All the more room to clutter up your desk with RGB light pads and mixers. And coffee mugs……

KEY Budget build PC gaming is for everyone. Pick the parts you want to build a new, well-rounded PC for a good price. Mid-range build You want to run every new game at 1080p 60fps. This recommended build will see you through. Advanced build You’re looking for the best PC on the market and superior components. But you still want to spend smart. BUDGET BUILD Enjoy 1080p gaming without breaking the bank MOTHERBOARD B660M Pro RS ASRock £115 This is as cheap as we want to go while still offering room for expansion and upgrades down the line. PROCESSOR Core i5 12400F Intel £170 There’s no iGPU on this chip but it’s a little cheaper as a result, and will work great for this particular build. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX…

Alex Austin, known professionally as Cryptic Sea, makes delightfully weird and surprising physics games. Some of them, like Sub Rosa, are on Steam, but my favourite Cryptic Sea games aren’t so easily found. They come to me like dead drops that were meant for someone else: a download link in a reply to someone on Twitter, a YouTube video about a hockey league no one’s ever heard of, an itch.io page linked in Discord. The last drop I intercepted drafted me into a flying, flailing duel with a stranger: our bodies were robots and our weapons were dunks. I had discovered Cryptic Sea’s Basketball Game, which you can download at crypticsea.itch.io. It comes in a file called basketballtest2. zip and Windows assumes that the executable is a virus. It isn’t…

1 FRESH MEAT Open-world games can often feel similar nowadays, so mix things up to keep yourself interested. Spent yonks in Valhalla? Consider giving Elden Ring a go overFar Cry 6. 2 SEQUEL SYNDROME Stop backlog inflation by not buying the next game in a series before you’ve finished the one you’re on, even if it’s on sale for a very tempting price. 3 GAME OVER It’s near impossible to finish every open-world adventure out there, so perhaps it’s best to admit defeat. Rather than let your overwhelming library get you down, live in the virtual moment.…

NICOLAS CAGE It’s like the meme but so much worse. This Nic Cage model moves way too much, it’s horrifying. HASANABI The popular leftist streamer would probably approve of Fofamit giving his face to the people, but it is terrifying. TUBE MAN If you’ve ever wanted to cosplay as a waving tube man to promote your stream, this is your chance. MINECRAFT ALEX This might look like a normal Minecraft character, but Fofamit’s model reacts to all your facial movements.…

1month MONSTER HUNTER RISE: SUNBREAK RELEASEJune 30 | DEVELOPERCapcom Set sail for new shores that coincidentally are just as plagued with giant monsters in this expansion for the latest entry in Capcom’s unique action-RPG series. CUPHEAD: THE DELICIOUS LAST COURSE RELEASEJune 30 | DEVELOPERStudio MDHR The brutal platformer’s long-awaited DLC finally arrives, promising even more impossible bosses to fight, as well as a new playable character: Ms Chalice. F1 22 RELEASEJuly 1 | DEVELOPERCodemasters The official videogame of the popular sport where the cars go very fast, complete with a full career mode, a revamped system for driver AI, and more. 3 months DIGIMON SURVIVE RELEASEJuly 29 | DEVELOPERHYDE Launching to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original anime, this game combines visual novel-style storytelling with turn-based tactical monster…

My first workplace accident was a doozy. I’d cut my teeth on enough Mackerel-class ships to know ’em like the back of my hand. But confidence breeds overconfidence, and in forgetting to decompress the engine room before removing the thruster, I took a thruster cap to the forehead at 50mph. Shipbreaking’s good, honest work – but remember that in space, nobody can hear workplace safety violations. Two years ago, Blackbird Interactive (developer of Homeworld Remastered Collection and Deserts of Kharak) took a step away from warring empires and operatic battles to focus on a more mundane look at the distant future – a world where those vibrant, Chris Foss-inspired spaceships are just piles of scrap ready to be turned into paycheques. It feels like work, sure, but in the most…

There are few pairings as perfect as the early 3D aesthetic and the found footage conceit, which sees games slathered in aggressive filters that warp and flicker the screen, as with knackered VHS tapes. Not only does it smooth over the jagged edges and grainy textures of primitive 3D models, but it takes you right back to 1999 in a concentrated missile of nostalgia, to the year of The Blair Witch Project and Silent Hill. With its slow, atmospheric horror and found footage packaging, Our Lady of Sorrow is evocative of that momentous year. It’s set in an Irish abbey, rather a big and suspiciously empty one, where a witch met an untimely end centuries ago. It’s not clear why you’re there, or even who you are, but the tape…

I remember playing Far Cry when it first came out. It was the stress test for my first gaming PC: a husky Dell XPS that kept my parents awake at night with its whirring hard drive and glowing tubes. The game was a dense, leafy revelation. At the time, Far Cry was so realistic it was like hiding in an actual thicket. I develop a new appreciation for FarCry and its mercenary goons What I don’t remember, however, is literally anything else about the game. I don’t know how long I played it; how far I got; or whether or not I experienced any enjoyment beyond adoration for its fronds. I certainly forgot about the excruciating animated opening, in which hero Jack Carver – essentially a ballistic dummy in an…

I love Eastshade’s dedication to creativity. If I got shipwrecked on an island full of anthropomorphised animals the last thing I’d think about would be finding fresh canvas. Nope. I’d be smashing up my easel and fashioning it into a rudimentary spear, ready for fire and slaughter. Try me, owl-person. I’ll blind you with weaponised alizarin crimson. This is why I probably don’t deserve a game like Eastshade. It’s brave enough to put all its stock in painting pictures, which feels refreshing like a coastal breeze. The worst that can happen is that you run out of materials, fail at composition, or accidentally shiv a deer with a sharpened paintbrush. I made the last one up. 072…

A futuristic chopper passing over the Lingshan Islands by moonlight. Gruff men in nanosuits prepare to drop into the combat zone below. After quoting half of Predator at each other, they jump. You jump with them. You reach the sands after a speedier descent than planned, turn your flashlight on, and press W. Then – then I don’t know. Nobody does. THE SOLUTION WAS OBVIOUS: I NEEDED A BETTER PC At least, nobody did in 2007 when Crysis first came out, because this moment in the opening level was about as far as we could stand to endure at 7fps. The entire rest of Crytek’s innovative sandbox shooter was a complete mystery. We’d been told to expect high system requirements and a rough ride for our GPUs but truthfully, we…

It’s hard to say something about Slay the Spire that hasn’t already been said. It’s widely considered as one of the best single-player card games out there. But playing it after everyone knows its prestige has been a unique pleasure. For anyone unfamiliar, it’s a roguelike deck-building adventure where you battle up a spire that, er, you need to slay. Simple enough. You take the role of one of four heroes, each with their own starting decks, abilities, and cards availlable to them as they progress along their quest to destroy the tower and all the horrible monsters that live in it. You start with some basic cards and set off on your path, through enemies, random events, and bosses, struggling to survive. The original hand you were dealt will…

Over the past month, I’ve spent hundreds of hours feasting on Elden Ring, but now I’m hungry for something a little less… demanding. A game where the only brain cells I need are the ones that know how to point and shoot. An experience that understands the value of allowing you to fire a gun at a man’s groin and have them pull an exaggerated grimace in response. Stranglehold, the living embodiment of the phrase ‘simple pleasures’, is my meal of choice. Years have passed since I last turned to Inspector Tequila’s brand of Max Payne-esque slo-mo shenanigans, but age has yet to dull what makes it such a perfect palette cleanser. Firstly, there’s a welcome sense of frenzy from minute one, where you start by sliding and shooting over…

Counter-Strikehas been around in one form or another for over 20 years. It started as a mod for the original Half-Life and features the sort of ultra-generic setup expected from hobbyist FPS modes back then: terrorists vs counterterrorists. A couple decades later, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the world’s premiere esports, and the premise hasn’t changed much since it first appeared. Its straightforwardness as a shooter is part of its lasting appeal. But nothing about coop_mission_rage, a mod by CTX, could be called straightforward. It’s one of many custom CS:GOmaps you can find on the Steam Workshop, and as its name suggests, it’s a co-operative campaign instead of a PvP shooter experience. In a sense, it’s a mod that turns Counter-Strikeinto something a bit more like Half-Life again: an…

SHOOT A WITCH DESTINY 2  bungie.net Bungie tried an interesting experiment with this year’s Destiny 2 expansion. For The Witch Queen, the developer asked, “What if the campaign was good?” Even if you don’t care about Destiny 2’s ongoing loot-shooting structure it’s definitely worth checking out. END A DRAGON GUILD WARS 2  guildwars2.com My favourite thing about Guild Wars 2 is that everything it does stays relevant, forever. Even now, with the release of the third expansion, I’m still visiting maps from the first. The downside is it means my wishlist of things to earn keeps growing larger with each release. SPIN THE WHEEL FORZA HORIZON 5  forzamotorsport.net It says a lot about how good the Forza Horizon series is that, despite its unbearable attempts to be ‘fresh’ and ‘hip’,…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was a major escalation in a conflict that has been ongoing since 2014. It is the most significant geopolitical event of the year, has created a refugee crisis, and led to unprecedented global sanctions against the Russian state. The war has impacted the game development scene too, with the wider industry taking a clear pro-Ukraine stance. The biggest commitment was made by Epic Games which, shortly after the war began, announced it would donate two weeks’ worth of Fortniteprofits after launching a new season: this raised an astonishing $144 million USD for humanitarian relief organisations. MAKING THE MOVE THE IMPACT HAS BEEN MOST VISIBLE WITH THE HIGH-PROFILE STUDIOS Within Ukraine itself, the impact has been most visible with the high-profile studios. STALKER…

“READING THE MAP IN ITSELF BECOMES PART OF THE GAMEPLAY” Oskar Stålberg joined UsTwo Games for two reasons. Firstly, the pay was better than he could get at Ubisoft. And secondly, like 26 million others with a mobile phone, he’d been wowed by Monument Valley – the mesmeric, Escher-like puzzle game about manipulating miniature dioramas. As it turned out, however, Monument Valley was the business of UsTwo’s London office. Working in Malmö, Stålberg was stuck instead with a Play-Doh project – not the kind of snowglobe worldbuilding he’d hoped for. Since going indie, Stålberg has made up for lost time – making a name for himself as a developer of exquisite, shrunken worlds which delight the players who look in on them. “I’ve always been fascinated by those kinds of…

This WWII adventure game has arrived at a strange time. While the Ukraine-Russia conflict continues, it serves to reinforce that Europe is not immune to tragic and brutal conflict – and, in fact, it wasn’t that long ago that the world suffered through two World Wars. Gerda: A Flame in Winter is the story of an ordinary person trying their best when war surrounds them, how conflict on a global scale affects the people attempting to live their day-to-day lives. You play the eponymous Gerda, a half-German, half-Danish nurse living on the Danish border between the two countries. This area is occupied by the Nazis. Your relationships become complicated as you’re married to a Dane, but your father joins the Nazi party in the hope that supporting its politics leads…

DO… …take inspiration from ‘non-story’ genres. John Thyer notes that fighting game backgrounds especially “paint a picture of this whole massive ecosystem”. DON’T… …feel obliged to include a ‘proper’ story. As Robert Boyd points out, the original Etrian Odyssey on DS got by without one for all of 40 hours. DO… …try to finish something. As Thyer adds, making your first game a blow-by-blow homage to Dragon Age is a recipe for burnout. DON’T… …get too comfortable with the town/dungeon loop. “Try to fit in special scenarios with a twist,” says Robert Boyd. “Final Fantasy VI was great at that.”…

Time travellers should be able to stop a house fire with ease. All you have to do is fix the faulty electrical wiring, or stamp out an errant cigarette butt, right? This is the premise you’re presented with in Eternal Threads, but in this timeline, the blaze’s casualties must be prevented with the power of kindness alone. You are presented with a series of events that take place over the course of a week and imperceptibly add up to the tragic fire. Thankfully, you’re gifted with technology that can slyly edit some of the decisions made between the house residents, ideally brewing up a butterfly effect that will get them out alive. Eternal Threadsis a showcase of second chances, an invitation to reflect on the times in our lives when…

The virtual legacy of Vampire: The Masquerade is patchy to say the least, but the tabletop RPG did inspire one of the best-written videogames of all time. 2004’s Bloodlineswas a sultry, humorous, and delightfully twisted portrayal of Los Angeles’ undead underbelly, filled to bursting with weird and wonderful characters. It may have been buggier than a rotting corpse, but it excelled at making vampires seem sexy, scary, and above all, strange. Vampire: The Masquerade: Swansong does the complete opposite. Its cabal of backstabbing bloodsuckers are painfully boring, frequently stupid, and exhibit all the charisma of a Nosferatu living in a bin. Big Bad Wolf’s narrative RPG has grand ambitions and spots of potential, but it all falls apart in a mess of half-baked ideas and a script sucked dry of…

I’ve wandered into a stranger’s camp in the wilderness when some curious quest text pops up, “Sing a song.” How can I resist? Unexplored 2’s role play systems spring to life, and with them I guide my Wayfarer through a series of minor musical successes until they deliver what I’m told, via flavour text, is a loud rendition of a popular ditty. The applause for my impromptu performance isn’t exactly deafening, but it is enough to secure me a place by the campfire for the night. I never felt like I was defending myself against an enemy out for blood When I’m not singing, my roguelite avatar is busy lugging modifier-laden equipment around a hostile, procedurally generated land in the hopes of destroying a magical object to save the world.…

Trek to Yomi copies the style of Akira Kurosawa’s iconic black and white samurai films: rice fields blowing in the wind, villages burning, a great black swirling vortex in hell. OK, so Trek to Yomi goes to some places Kurosawa’s films didn’t. But the path there is littered with glitches, and I only stuck it out through the finicky, floaty combat to see where my samurai’s descent into madness would lead him. The game’s revenge tale is standard samurai stuff, but the story is well-told. As protagonist Hiroki faces his personal demons (also, literal demons) I got to make decisions that influenced exactly how this samurai tragedy would end. All of the Japanese voice actors give raw performances, and Hiroki’s actor in particular sells his downward spiral into anger and…

If Looperdoesn’t quite make the most of its clever premise, at least it offers a few screens’ worth of smart monochrome puzzling. In this browser puzzleplatformer you play as a cute little guy with a very handsome hat – and you’ve just learned how to fold space for your benefit. This power takes the form of a big white box that normally follows you around, but that you can freeze in place with a tap of the space bar. This makes the space inside the box loop round on itself, so that if you walk out the left side you’ll pop back in on the right. It’s a pretty impressive spectacle, more so given that you’re in control of the box’s position. It feels rewarding to use the looping power…

Plants are capricious bastards, aren’t they? When they’re not dying because they’ve had too little water, they’re rotting because they’ve had too much. The only upside, apart from pretty flowers, is that I’m glad when it rains now, because it’s one less thankless task to do for my ungrateful leafy children. If only it was more like Grow Home. That way I could palm off the entire wretched process to the likes of BUD. He’s a cheerful, spaghetti-limbed red robot who exists only to help the game’s giant alien plants burst into life. This involves clambering up the giant stalks and riding long, leafy appendages through the skies. You can float down gently by using flowers as parachutes and use bouncy leaves to propel yourself upwards. And I realise, writing…

If landscape-loving British writer Robert Macfarlane made a game it would be Proteus. There’s no death. No enemies. You can’t even jump. All you can do is wander around its landscape and ponder what it all means. It’s the perfect game to play if you’ve ever felt a sense of self-loathing for not fully appreciating the craft of level design. You only get out of Proteuswhat you put in, and it’s largely bereft of any explicit hidden meaning, but it’s still a soothing, peculiar distraction. 68…

Organic light-emitting diodes have been all the rage in your front room for years now. While traditional LED or LCD TV panels struggled to achieve natural blacks and realistic colours, OLED tellies can render true black on one pixel, and vibrant colour on an adjacent one. It’s light years ahead of the older tech, a massive visual step forward akin to the advent of HD. It’s also a perfect screen technology for PC gaming in many ways. Most OLED TV panels refresh at 120Hz, and if you’ve played consecutive rounds of an online shooter at 60Hz and then 120Hz, you know the difference that that can make. The colour reproduction is ideal for games, and the incredibly thin panel size would be a real space saver on your desk. These…

HIGH SAMPLE MOTION BLURRING Motion blur itself’s pretty ubiquitous by now, but what sets Crysis apart from its progeny is how good it looks when you take a screenshot of it. It takes a silly number of samples to smooth out that motion blur. SELF-SHADOWING PARALLAX OCCLUSION MAPPING A highfalutin’ way of saying ‘the bumps on the floor cast shadows from more than one light source’. An extremely resource-hungry way of conveying depth of texture. Rarely used now. ALL THE DESTRUCTIBLE OBJECTS Every scene is filled with large and small objects you can shoot to oblivion, deform, pick up, or blow up. It’s not the mere presence of them, but the volume – modern titles wouldn’t dream of trying to match it. USING ONE CORE FOR AI At the time…

I Recently in my tabletop gaming, I’ve been exploring something called the ‘OSR’, a movement to recapture in modern role-playing the very specific feel of the earliest days of Dungeons & Dragons. What have I learned? Well, one thing at least: Elden Ring is 70s-era D&D. It’s hardly novel to suggest FromSoft has been influenced by the world’s most popular RPG, but I’m not just talking about classes and levels and stats. It isn’t really rules that define D&D’s first incarnations, it’s a distinct philosophy of play - one that Elden Ringseems to directly invoke. THAC0 NIGHT In the world of D&D 1st edition, dungeons aren’t playgrounds for adventurers, they’re scary and hostile. Character deaths are common thanks to unforgiving traps and monsters, and you can’t always expect a fair…

RINSE AND REPEAT 1 As with any form of entertainment, you have to know when to stop. Many open-world games dress up the same tasks differently to keep you playing, but remember you can always put it down if you’re getting bored. Think of the backlog. SLOW AND STEADY 2 At the same time, don’t rush things if you’re having fun. Take as long as you need to fully immerse yourself in an enthralling open world, even if that means just stopping, staring and posing for that perfect photo mode shot. You don’t always have to be pushing for completion. TAKE CONTROL 3 Don’t let the game tell you what you should be interested in, either. Test the boundaries of the world, travel off the obvious path, and take some time away from…