Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2022 i PC Gamer

ROBIN VALENTINE Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Was too busy painting orks to play any videogames. Heading into my first meeting with Unknown Worlds about its then-secret new game, I thought I knew what to expect. As the Subnautica studio, I figured the team would have another slick survival game for us. That would’ve been great in its own right – but I couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised by what they showed instead. Moonbreaker brings the best of tabletop wargaming to the digital realm – not just the turn-based strategy, but also the joy of collecting, painting, and making your army your own. As a noted Warhammer nerd, I couldn’t be more excited. The PC Gamer team FRASER BROWN Twitter @FraserIBrown This month Was the only person even more delighted…

Gamescom is the sort of place where, in 2018, somebody claimed that an attendee, while queuing to play Fortnite, did a poo in a bag and left it there, and enough people believed this story that the PR for Epic had to tweet “this did not happen”. Even though it wasn’t true, the fact that so many people thought it was true is, in and of itself, a damning condemnation of the entire thing. It was with some trepidation then that The Spy visited this year’s event. Because even though it was consistently 33°C, and filled with the sort of people that other people think would do a poo in a bag, it’s also filled with the kind of insider knowledge that The Spy craves. The Spy can watch in…

James Chaytor and his teams have worked on Apex Legends, The Elder Scrolls Online, multiple Call of Duty titles, Microsoft Flight Simulator and far more than could ever be listed here. Yet Chaytor’s story begins before Sprung Studios; even before his videogame work. UI and UX are important elsewhere, too. After working his way up to creative director in a web marketing firm in the late 1990s, he began consulting with the mobile company Three, who at the time had just rolled out 3G. Chaytor helped the firm with the challenge of making new kinds of content usable on small devices. It was at this point that he founded Sprung Studios, and expanded its services to more clients. But by 2009, the recession had hit budgets hard and companies were…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE2023 DEVELOPERBlackbird Interactive PUBLISHERGearbox Publishing LINK gearboxpublishing.com PLAYED IT It’s the third mission of the game, and, if this was Homeworld 2, I’d be screwed. Right now, I only have access to recon ships and interceptors – basic fighters that, per Homeworld’s rock, paper, scissors design, are weak against the bigger, meaner frigates. And I’ve been tasked with securing an area protected by two bigger, meaner frigates. But I’m not playing Homeworld 2. I’m playing its successor, a game that Blackbird Interactive describes as being 20 years in the making. A game that takes concepts once considered back then, but dismissed because the technology of the day just wasn’t up to the task. I’m playing Homeworld 3, a space RTS that’s all about terrain. Those frigates are…

PREVIEW ROUNDUP RELEASED TBC | DEV Everstone This gorgeous Chinese open world action game takes cues from Wuxia cinema like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, though I also see shades of Zhang Yimou’s Shadow. That means players will employ martial arts with a hint of supernatural powers, including running gracefully across water or gliding through the air. It’s a genre basically untouched in videogames, so Where Winds Meet feels like it’s been a long time coming. It’s not all action though: the developers say that you’ll be able to learn trades like medicine and practice as a doctor, if you’d prefer to lead a peaceful life.…

PREVIEW ROUNDUP RELEASE 2023 | DEV Petroglyph Games This RTS puts players in command of either the Allied Nations or Central Powers as they battle over Europe during the First World War. Play time is split between turn-based decision-making and real-time fights, with battlefields deteriorating the more they’re fought over and weather playing a major role. It comes from the developer of the well-received Command & Conquer Remastered, and even features music from C&C original composer Frank Klepacki. Though, er, I’d imagine this’ll have a rather more serious tone than that series.…

JODY MCGREGOR Specialist in Saintly devotion Currently playing Saints Row This month Discovered that even throwing yourself into traffic isn’t fun anymore. MOLLIE TAYLOR Specialist in Iron Giant’s hitbox Currently playing MultiVersus This month Learned to fear the power of a teenager swinging a backpack around in circles. SAMANTHA GREER Specialist in Lost souls Currently playing Thymesia This month Had to write yet another review of a bad Souls-like. Sorry. KAILE HULTNER Specialist in Movie magic Currently playing Immortality This month Watched three films to review one videogame. What are developers playing at? IAN EVENDEN Specialist in Cowboy magic Currently playing Hard West 2 This month Discovered the supernatural power of poker (beyond making money disappear).…

At first, it looks like this is going to be a remarkably short game. Things start with you, as a cowering little lamb, being led to your death as a sacrifice. Within ten minutes however, you’ve already exacted violent revenge on your would-be murderers and pledged your adorable allegiance to the mysterious being that returned you to the land of the living. You start a cult of your own; a cult where all the members are super-cute creatures. This is Animal Crossing if Tom Nook craved power instead of money. The first half of the game involves growing, caring for, and – of course – indoctrinating your cult. You’ll need to take care of the basics before getting too ambitious, though. Your adorable little cultists need food to eat, places…

THEY’RE BACK If games were established and self-referential enough to have their own version of SNL, Virginia might feel like a parody. It’s handcrafted from all the things that make Steam reviewers testy: it’s short, story heavy and contains more than one woman. But even if the lack of dialogue occasionally makes Virginia feel like a two-hour cold open, there’s enough atmosphere here to make it worth investigating, especially if your idea of a good time is sitting in a diner contemplating life’s unspoken complexities. 64…

Iwas vibrating with excitement when I fired up the Immortal Empires beta. Despite its diminishing returns, I really dug Total War: Warhammer III’s Realm of Chaos campaign, but it felt like a starter designed to whet the appetite before the mega campaign’s appearance. This is what I was waiting for. And, thank Sigmar, Creative Assembly has delivered. 278 factions and 86 playable legendary lords. That’s how many groups are vying for control of Warhammer’s war-torn world. And what a world. Tiny, one-settlement islands, archipelagos surrounded by shipwrecks, massive continents full of deserts, forests and mountains shaped like skulls – it’s a big place. This collision of three games is, naturally, quite a bit larger than the already mind-bogglingly massive Mortal Empires, but adding all these extra races, factions and landmasses…

Some people grow up watching wrestling and dream of one day being WWE champion. Of winning the ultimate prize at Wrestlemania, the grandest stage of them all, while tens of thousands scream their name and millions more watch at home. Of carrying out feats of athleticism so grandiose they echo through eternity, then, now, forever… The wrestler in this month’s diary is not one of those people. Yes, he’s on the hunt for championship gold. But he has no intention of entertaining you along the way. Your enjoyment is poison to him, your hatred ambrosia. He intends to clamber up the rankings ladder and win a championship belt – probably one of the ones you forgot existed – without ever winning a match fairly. Say hello to the most unworthy…

2K recently turned matchmaking back on for the game Evolve came along too soon. It was definitely the victim of its own misguided marketing campaign, a push from its publisher 2K to front-load a season pass for DLC before the game had even been released. In our current climate of games saturated with passes of all kinds and microtransactions, Evolve almost seems quaint. It’s more than business practices that came before their time, Evolve was ahead of the curve on a handful of design trends and while it might have died out, its DNA lived on. 2K recently, inexplicably, turned matchmaking back on for the game after years in limbo. It’s in a bit of a sorry state, trapped in a transformation to free-to-play that never completed but once you’re…

New characters coming to MULTIVERSUS, exclusively on PC! CRUSADER KING MONARCH SPECIAL MOVE:Summon Pope DESCRIPTION:Start plotting your opponent’s defeat, and ten years later they’ll die in a hunting accident. SPACE CADET PINBALL WIZARD SPECIAL MOVE:Full Tilt DESCRIPTION:He… well, he kind of just shoots pinballs. Listen, sometimes the obvious answer is the correct one. HARRY DETECTIVE SPECIAL MOVE:Amnesiac Assault DESCRIPTION:Choose your loadout carefully, or you could lose half your health just loading into the arena. ANATOLY CHERDENKO PREMIER SPECIAL MOVE:Stalin for Time DESCRIPTION:Charge up your launcher to send your opponent flying up to the one place that hasn’t been corrupted by capitalism. GABE NEWELL COMPANY PRESIDENT SPECIAL MOVE:Knife Collection DESCRIPTION:He’s got some incredibly powerful attacks, but don’t spam them – he can only do each one twice. ROBIN VALENTINE EDITOR SPECIAL…

1 “Mists of Pandaria is more than just an expansion pack,” claims our cover feature. “It’s where both Blizzard and the rest of the world will find out if World of Warcraft still has what it takes to dominate the MMO genre.” It did, of course, although post-Pandaria, it’s fair to say Blizzard never quite recaptured the hype of WoW’s heyday. ISSUE 245, November 2012 ON THE COVER World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria IN THE CINEMAS Dredd 2 Rich McCormick has the unenviable task of putting a score on Dota 2. He ultimately settles on giving it 85. “Rewarding like few others, but tough.” 3 The irony of Graham and Rich modelling for our best co-op games feature is that every lunchtime the two would…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE2022 DEVELOPERCloak and Dagger Games PUBLISHERWadjet Eye Games LINK cadgames.weebly.com PLAYED IT Where is Leonard Shoulder? Is that even his real name? Will I run into Roderick Elbow and Kneel Legjoint as well? Whose is the fresh grave in the churchyard? Will I ever be able to buy a cake? And what is this goblin-like creature doing talking about saving my father? I have questions by the time I get to the end of a demo of The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, the game formerly known as Incantamentum from point and click specialist Cloak and Dagger Games. You are Thomasina Bateman, whose parents probably wanted a boy, and you are writing a book about the burial mounds of England. Invited to the Yorkshire village of Bewlay –…

PREVIEW ROUNDUP RELEASED TBC | DEV Brace Yourself Games, Tic Toc Games After the delightful Crypt of the Necrodancer and Cadence of Hyrule, developer Brace Yourself is now back with a new rhythm game. This one takes the action to a modern setting, and while there’s still the promise of it being an RPG battler, it’s presented in more traditional rhythm game form than the dungeon crawling format that defined Crypt, with a Guitar Hero-like scrolling road of notes to hit. It certainly still boasts the easy charm and catchy music of its predecessors, and mini-games including rhythm-based yoga look like they’ll inject plenty of silly fun.…

PREVIEW ROUNDUP RELEASE 2023 | DEV Neowiz Games, Round 8 Studio It’s hard to see past the pitch of ‘gritty Pinnochio by way of Bloodborne’, especially when the influence of From Software’s game is so obvious in motion. Yet, to its credit, there’s certainly some imagination on display in its steampunk machine enemies, heavy metal puppets who spray thick oil in place of red gore. The boy himself isn’t made of wood, he just has a mechanical arm, but a talking lantern appears to be a hint of Jiminy Cricket, who in spite of the grim setting is as chirpy as ever. Lies of P is a bizarre mix, but I can’t deny it looks super slick in action.…

EARLY ACCESS PREVIEW NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY£13.50 DEVELOPERJaspel PUBLISHERJaspel, IndieArk LINK bit.ly/3CDfhkf PLAYED IT Such is the need for a unique selling point in games, that even the most onerous housekeeping can become a key mechanic. Backpack Hero is an inventory management roguelike, a genre-blend that risks giving me flashbacks to panicked shuffling of vodka and the wrong ammo in STALKER. Backpack Hero sees you take on one of three charming animal characters with a magical rucksack, a wooden sword, plated salad, and makeshift shield, ready for a scrolling 2D adventure. The look and feel recall an ill-defined bygone era of DOS boot-drives, and the retro atmosphere is total, down to the music and audio. This will either delight you, annoy you, or give you an eerie feeling…

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…

Saints Row is a knockabout driving/shooting/flying ragdoll-’em-up in which you lead a misnamed gang of sociopaths. The Saints are loveable sociopaths to be fair, who alternate between organised crime and high-spirited hijinx like throwing themselves into traffic for insurance money, and also some light drug trafficking on the side. That’s probably the only description I can come up with vague enough to describe every game in the series, including this new reboot, without just saying it’s GTA except the jokes are funny. Until now, every Saints Row sequel was more over the top than the one before, eventually finding new tops and then somehow over-ing them. Saints Row 2 had a villain with voodoo powers and your sidekick could take on an entire police force solo. Saints Row: The Third…

THEY’RE BACK Art of Murder is one of those lesser-known point-and-click franchises that’s lost enough momentum over time to eventually become a hidden object game. It’s mostly busywork, diminished by messy puzzles, vague clues, and dialogue that makes most text-to-speech programs sound like Gary Oldman in an Oscar-winning turn. Protagonist Nicole Bonnet isn’t inspiring, either: more like a sentient pantsuit trying to fool people into thinking it’s alive. The lowest point comes when a kidnapped Nicole has to scoot a chair around a noisy room without being heard; a puzzle so atrocious I decide it’s best to leave her there forever. 64…

HIGHS Rightly proud After a mod removed all Pride flag’s from Spider-Man, the two largest mod sites in the world banned it. Stadia’s USP Destiny streamer Luckstruck9 used 11 Stadia accounts to keep checkpoints open for other players. Hell freezes MacroBioBoi finally completed the world’s first ever solo Hell pacifist run in Diablo 2: Resurrected. Overbotch Overwatch pro Myunbong was surprised to find out he’d been fired from New York Excelsior via Twitter. Maddening Madden 23 on PC doesn’t come with the new ‘FieldSense’ system present on consoles. Stop this nonsense. Dead and buried Netflix has already cancelled its Resident Evil TV show after just one season, following poor reviews. LOWS…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASETBC DEVELOPERDambuster PUBLISHERDeep Silver LINK deadisland.deepsilver.com PLAYED IT It’s all too easy to compare the continued existence of Dead Island 2 to the zombies it features. Lurching on for years, long after it seemed dead, passed from one studio to another. In spite of the name though, Dead Island 2 is practically a new game. According to David Stenton, when development was taken over by Dambuster in 2018 it was “built from scratch”. The only thing they kept was zombies and its LA setting. “That serves the ‘paradise gone to hell’ pillar.” Though the genre in which it sits feel like it never dies, with zombie games still releasing on the regular. What does something like Dead Island 2 bring to the table? What even is the…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASETBC DEVELOPERHaemimont Games PUBLISHERTHQ Nordic LINK jaggedalliance.com NEW INFO It’s hard to overstate just how important Firaxis’ XCOM reboot was. In the years since its release, the turn-based strategy genre has experienced a renaissance that owe a huge debt to Firaxis’ clever mix of old and new. But what if you’re trying to make the successor to a different turn-based classic? Then, it seems, XCOM’s legacy can be a hindrance. “We found that, no matter what we did, everyone played just like they played all the other games like XCOM,” says Brad Logston, senior producer for Jagged Alliance 3. “They weren’t playing it like Jagged Alliance. We didn’t even know how to fix it. We were doing things like tweaking AI, tweaking weapon damage ranges, all these…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASEOctober 26 DEVELOPERParadox PUBLISHERIn-house LINK paradoxinteractive.com PLAYED IT The year is 1881 and I’ve turned the islands of Hawaii into an anarchist paradise that long ago disposed of the king. Our industries are modest, but they are all owned by the workers, giving us one of the highest standards of living in the world. For the most part, we did this without firing a shot. Victoria 3 is, even more than its 2011 predecessor, a grand strategy game about shaping a society. Covering the years from 1836 to 1936 on a detailed world map, it models every single individual person alive at the time. That might sound absurd, but it’s not an exaggeration. They’re organised by culture, religion, and profession into groups called ‘pops’ that all get…

PREVIEW ROUNDUP RELEASE Summer 2023 | DEV Telltale Games, Deck Nine Our favourite badass pansexual polyamarous space pirate is coming to videogame land thanks to this Telltale prequel series, which will explores Camina Drummer’s life before the events of sci-fi TV series The Expanse. Getting actress Cara Gee involved is exciting since her performance is so much of what people love about the character, but also casting you as a desperate scavenger, poking around spooky derelicts, sounds great on its own. Deck Nine has done well in recent years with Life Is Strange: Before The Storm and True Colours, here’s hoping this is another winner.…

PREVIEW ROUNDUP RELEASE TBC | DEV Ironbird Creations While it’s stylistically distinct (though equally colourful), favouring pop beats in an otherworldy opera house, this 2D-3D hybrid action game reminds me of the outlandish El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. Switching perspectives, altering the scenery. The game treats its world like a stage to be decorated as befits the scene. You play as Jolene, armed with a sword, hellbent on rescuing her mother from a supernatural theatre. It’s a fun premise but there’s tough competition in the character action genre – here’s hoping this contender can hold its own.…

We live in the Age of IP. Once upon a time, MultiVersus would’ve seemed bizarre – a fighting game featuring such a broad array of Warner-owned characters that you can make Arya Stark fight the Iron Giant. But in a post-Fortnite world, it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Stuffing your game with iconic creations is a hedged bet; the average person is bound to be a fan of at least one of them. It’s undoubtedly cynical and creatively stagnant… and yet weirdly compelling. I love MultiVersus for its solid mechanics – but I have to admit I also find a surreal humour in these mash-ups. There’s almost something subversive about the chaos of them, the way that all context is obliterated and a pacifist robot will happily battle an assassin…

I’m Adventure Time’s Jake the Dog, standing on the edge of a Rick and Morty-themed arena. I’m about to beat Shaggy from Scooby-Doo into a bloody pulp while my teammate Arya Stark is casually stealing Batman’s face. A few years ago this would have given me severe whiplash, but in a world where tennis star Naomi Osaka is throwing hands at Naruto in Fortnite, nothing surprises me any more. Well, except for one thing: MultiVersus is actually pretty damn good. Believe me, I never expected it either. The initial reveal left me disinterested – it looked like another weaksauce attempt to be Smash Bros, and I’m not much of a platform fighter gal anyway. I much prefer my fighting games in a tight, enclosed 3D arena a la Tekken and…

THEY’RE BACK Most of the games this month are on the business end of law enforcement, so it’s nice to mix things up, even if most of your time with Phoenix Wright is spent exonerating innocent people rather than catching guilty ones. There’s a strange compulsion with Ace Attorney games, almost like a romcom with court procedure. Most of the time, you know exactly what’s going to happen and when, but it doesn’t matter. You just live for the moments when the music swells, a man in a magnificent blue suit points dramatically, and everything falls into place in a deeply satisfying way. Nobody needs to know it was all guesswork. 80…

GROWING PAINS 1 Aside from slaughtering your foes, the first priority is to get some growth going to access better garrisons and units. Construct a growth building, use a commandment, a slave diktat, or even a hero skill. If you’ve got a port, that also counts as a growth building. TRADE PLACES 2 Got a spare hero or lord lying around? Send them to find friendly factions who might agree to commerce. Since trade doesn’t require access by land or sea, it’s the best way to build a speedy source of income. Either that or take a chance with that treasure island. KEEP UP 3 Another way to conserve your coins is to prioritise your legendary lord’s blue skill tree. Among other things, this will grant them…

NOW PLAYING I UPDATE I MOD SPOTLIGHT I HOW TO I DIARY I WHY I LOVE I REINSTALL I MUST PLAY For the 12 years that I’ve been playing Minecraft, I’ve only ever been really interested in the ‘mine’ part. Every new world would go about the same: explore around a bit, carve a simple one-bedroom apartment into a mountain, mine a bunch of ore, make the best stuff, then get bored. I like to build things that serve a real purpose, so once I’ve fiddled with pistons a bit, enchanted my sword, and brewed some potions, my Minecraft is basically over. This is why I wasn’t jazzed when my friends started talking about firing up another multiplayer server. I’d gone through the motions as recently as last year, but…

PATHFINDER: WRATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS wrath.owlcat.games If you have 200 hours to spare, this game is for you. Bloated playtime figures often sound like a threat, but WotR continues to surprise and delight all the way through its campaign. It’s generous and I had a hard time putting it down. DREAD DELUSION bit.ly/3dn7jkV On the opposite end of the playtime scale from WotR, I got through Dread Delusion’s Early Access content in eight hours, but I just can’t stop thinking about it. Come for the meticulous world and level design, stay for the arrestingly good science fiction writing. HROT bit.ly/3A7cGxp This lightning fast retro FPS set in communist Czechoslovakia recently got a killer second act. Solo developer Spytihněv coded Hrot’s engine from scratch, and its grim, monochrome look belies some…