Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i PC Gamer

There are multiple ways to become a full-time game programmer, but Lukas Donkers essentially did it by… programming a game. A very successful one, for the Ludum Dare game jam. “We made a physics puzzle game […] we called it String Theory, because your only interaction was moving lines around.” This was something he made with fellow students during his computer science degree. It did very well in the jam, with plenty of positive feedback, so they went on to upload it to free game websites such as Kongregate and Armor Games. Within a few weeks it had been played over 100,000 times, with a huge amount of encouraging comments. “That’s why I always kind of put it at the top of my resume,” says Donkers. “Game companies do love…

Inkulinati forces us to confront one of humanity’s great universal concerns, demanding answers to a question that’s tormented civilisations for millennia: are farts funny? Polish developer Yaza Games certainly thinks so, packing its turn-based strategy roguelite with flatulent units that reveal their posteriors to opponents, then rasp out clouds of noxious gas. If you think that sounds terribly puerile, however, Inkulinati’s fart gags are at least appropriate to its setting. The soldiers you command, you see, are faithful reproductions of medieval ‘marginalia’ – bizarre sketches penned around the edges of fine manuscripts – which often indulged base humour that thumbed its nose at tradition and hierarchy, depicting snails as deadly predators, for instance, and brave knights as anthropomorphised rabbits. With that in mind, a fart in Inkulinati may be a…

On paper, Forspoken is a videoame that should have resonated with me. It’s a Luminous Productions/Square Enix venture, a developer I remain deathly loyal to despite its poor track record in more recent years. You see, Forspoken features some of my favourite things in life: nail art, cats, parkour and badass matriarchal rulers. Yet, Forspoken is let down by its sheer unwillingness to break the mould. In many ways, it’s the exact type of game you’ve seen countless times across the last 15 years. An open world RPG with superpowers, mystical creatures, and a terrifying world-ending threat. It does play into some isekai tropes, with protagonist Frey Holland whisked away from her New York home and plonked into a fantastical world. Along with her talking bracelet companion Cuff, she navigates…

There’s nothing I love more than a game whose world wants to tell me a story. As soon as you present me with an evocative landscape I can’t wait to get stuck in. Season: A Letter to the Future has a vast horizon when it starts. Yet the more you travel through Season, the more its vista shrinks, taken up by the story its narrator wants to tell, leaving no room for the player’s own exploration. The starting promise is a tantalising one. It begins with a character, at some point in the future, opening the journal our narrating protagonist is about to embark on writing. This unnamed protagonist has been raised in an isolated mountain village and wants to journey out into the world to document the world’s current…

One very specific niche I like is games set in operating systems. Games like Digital: A Love Story, which told a visual novel in the Amiga’s Workbench OS. Battle of Windows does something similar, in that it repurposes an old version of Windows. However, the titular windows are given unlikely utility. The windows of Windows have had a bit of a falling out, going to war in an aerial battle on your desktop. Enemy windows fly towards you from the right of the screen – as in a typical horizontal shmup – and, playing as a wizard, you have to fend them off by summoning windows of your own. The cheapest window you can summon contains a clipart of a spaceship, which will automatically fire Minesweeper mines at the enemy.…

We often think the bravest heroes in games are the ones who face down horrors with little more than a quip and a raised eyebrow. But you can only demonstrate bravery if you’re afraid in the first place. At least that’s what I’m telling myself as I hide under a hospital bed, sobbing. Outlast is an interesting proposition in that it takes away almost all of the tools we’re used to as players. As naive press guy Miles Upshur, you’re exposing malpractice at the Mount Massive Asylum, armed with nothing more than journalistic integrity and a camera with night-vision mode. When things go wrong – as they do, very quickly – your only options are to leg it, parkouring your way over gurneys and toppled wheelchairs, or hide in lockers…

There’s an inevitable metamorphosis that takes place inside every PC gamer. We spend the first few years of our RGB-infused passion chasing the new, and then… well, we continue doing that for as long as the likes of Nvidia, AMD and Intel tell us to. But we also start to chase the old, too. We hoard our old gear without a clear plan, and start to fetishise old beige wonders from bygone eras. And we’re absolutely right to: old gaming PCs are incredible. Getting these old rigs operational again isn’t as easy as plugging them in and covering your nose while the exhaust fans disperse 17 years of dead skin across the room. Depending on the Windows version that’s installed on that creaking HDD, the panel and peripherals you’ll be…

NOW PLAYING THE GAMES WE LOVE RIGHT NOW I’m hunted by a Nightmare, Prey’s biggest and most deadly foe, and I’m honest enough to admit that I’m shortly going to need a change of trousers. This hulking, tentacled, Lovecraftian shadow monstrosity is a walking bringer of death. It’s equipped with a smorgasbord of deadly attacks and powers, it’s physically massive and, quite naturally, its harrowing scream induces fear into all who hear it. I’m low on ammo, too, and I know from past experience that my usually trusty GLOO cannon, which allows me to immobilise basically all other Typhon foes on the Talos 1 space station, is no good here – it would be like trying to glue-up a Balrog. No, my only chance is to hide, and bloody fast,…

CD Projekt Red recently unleashed The Witcher 3: Next Gen, a big ole 4.0 update with new items, quests, graphical enhancements, a revamped camera, and ray traced lighting that nobody’s GPU can handle. It was, of course, time for a replay, and I’m obsessive and neurotic about these enormous RPGs where choices carry from game to game, so replaying The Witcher 3 means replaying The Witcher saga. I tore through The Witcher making the same choices I always do (what kind of hall monitor sides with the Order of the Flaming Rose anyway?) and arrived at The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. This is the game that put CD Projekt on the map, a graphical powerhouse that laid rigs low with übersampling. It’s a memetic icon of RPG choice with…

NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT There’s dedication, and then there’s dedication. And then sometimes, there’s a little bit too much dedication. An old-school Runescape player with the handle NC State (presumably not an official representative of the Raleigh-based university) finally sought his reward for grinding an infamous minigame, the Brimhaven obstacle course, for eight years. But without banking the rewards. Rough math estimates this grind would have taken upwards of 5,000 hours of game time with near-perfect play, and all in the same dungeon doing the same few things. NC State finally brought his journey home, turning in everything and gaining 178 million XP in Runescape’s suboptimal Agility skill in less than a minute. This was such a rapid influx that the game’s built-in experience per hour tracker couldn’t keep…

1 month STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR RELEASE March 17, 2023 | DEVELOPER Respawn Entertainment Cal Kestis returns after the events of Star Wars Jedi: Outcast equipped with new powers, lightsabers and, excitingly, rideable mounts, as well. SYSTEM SHOCK RELEASE March, 2023 | DEVELOPER Nightdive Studios A full-scale remake of the iconic sci-fi horror classic, with upgraded gameplay mechanics, graphics and audio. SHODAN is as scary as ever! RESIDENT EVIL 4 RELEASE March 24, 2023 | DEVELOPER Capcom A complete ground-up remake of this legendary zombie epic that promises more tension, bigger scares, and plenty of hi-res gore and guts. 3 months STAR TREK: RESURGENCE RELEASE April 2023 | DEVELOPER Dramatic Labs The delayed Star Trek narrative adventure game from former Telltale designers is finally set to finally arrive this April.…

After 20 years and nine Sherlock Holmes games, Ukrainian studio Frogwares has established itself as the champion of making games about one of literature’s stuffiest Englishmen. The course of the series hasn’t always run smooth, but that’s never stopped Frogwares. It may be that nothing can stop them, as it’s making its latest game in an active war zone. After a Kickstarter last summer to shore up funds, the studio has been hard at work on Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, a full remake of a game it first released in 2007. The idea is that it’s a smaller, faster project the team can focus on amongst the chaos of the Russia-Ukraine war – the plot and cases are already mapped out, and mechanically it picks up right where the most…

Twenty-five years ago, Half-Life hit PC, the first PlayStation ruled supreme and a little pirate adventure manga called One Piece began. Now I’m pushing 40, greying and still enjoying the ongoing adventures of rubberised ruffian Luffy and his Straw Hat Pirates. Celebrating a quarter-century at sea, the crew are off on a grand JRPG voyage with One Piece Odyssey: a sprawling, charming adventure that creaks under its own scope. If you’ve no idea what One Piece is, or have only seen a few episodes of the anime, Odyssey probably isn’t for you. It’s set around 750 episodes into the anime, and assumes knowledge of its characters, their abilities, and their histories. On top of that, most of the game is dedicated to (loosely) retelling the events of four major story…

FREE GAMES REVIEWS COOL TITLES FOR NO CASH Though a videogame adaptation of The Wheel of Time exists, we’re unlikely to ever get the epic RPG that the weighty fantasy series has been crying out for. Still, how about a traditional adventure game with a setting highly reminiscent of Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson’s beloved series? And it’s by Powerhoof, which has made some of the best adventure games – free or not – of the last few years. I won’t beat around the bush. Telwynium is at once a faithful love letter to The Wheel of Time, and a masterful subversion of it, recreating familiar story beats and characters, and then having shocking things happen to them. Case in point: the mysterious mage Aldor Dwinn, who…

THEY’RE BACK OLD GAMES REVISITED The temptation to start this review with an anecdote is almost overwhelming. Two Point Hospital is so densely packed with in-jokes and emergent, slapstick buffoonery that the next 400 words could just be me regaling you with tales, like the time my hospital got log-jammed with strutting Freddie Mercury lookalikes because my psychiatrist had a sudden bout of the runs. That would be doing the game a disservice, though. It looks delightfully silly – the flabby hands and wide smiles feel very British and very Aardman – and it’s built upon a foundation of knowing, Carry On humour. But Two Point is surprisingly complex and, as the game progresses, often deeply challenging. Thankfully, you have plenty of time to acclimatise to the…

There are a few reasons you might want a compact gaming keyboard. The obvious one being they’re far, far smaller than a full-size keyboard and therefore don’t take up as much space on a smaller desktop. That leaves you with more space to throw your mouse around at a lower CPI. You might also find you simply don’t need a numpad for your day-to-day; lopping it off entirely will save you space and often even money. The main reason for these tenkeyless and smaller keyboards, however, is they’re straight up adorable. There’s no doubt about that. The main issue being that most keyboard manufacturers have a compact keyboard or five that they hope will convince you to part with your money, ranging from miniature macro machines to optical gaming-first options.…

KEY Budget build PC gaming is for everyone. Pick these parts if 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 £115This is as cheap as we want to go while still offering room for expansion and upgrades down the line. PROCESSOR Core i5 13400FIntel £210Intel’s added four more cores to its entry-level Core i5 and it’s become even more fantastic value. GRAPHICS CARD Radeon RX 6600AMD £256AMD’s RX 6600 has become a…

I started Jedi: Fallen Order with Andor on my mind. Disney cursed every future Star Wars thing by releasing a television show as precise and transformative as Andor and Jedi: Fallen Order retroactively has to deal with it too. No other Star Wars media goes as hard as Andor does when it comes to its anti-imperialist roots. Jedi: Fallen Order’s first few hours aren’t as riveting as Andor, but I found its perspective compelling nonetheless. Cal Kestis is a Jedi Padawan disguised as a scrapper, afraid of being caught by the Empire who is still working to eradicate every Force user in the universe. Jedi: Fallen Order takes place in the dark period where the world’s heroes lost, but its intro underlines how the drive to fight the Empire has…

MOD SPOTLIGHT MAJOR MODS, ANALYSED Cyberpunk 2077 has undergone some serious changes and improvements over the past 18 months, with lots of bug fixes and the addition of long-requested features like transmog coming to the first-person RPG. Providing another big boost to the playerbase is the Netflix anime series that’s gotten people back in the mood to either revisit Night City or to try the game for the very first time. And modders have been busy, too. There are now troves of mods to download and install, featuring everything from flying cars to improved motorcycles to overhauls of combat and the police force. Below, you’ll find our picks for the best mods for Cyberpunk 2077 as of early 2023. GANG RELATED Let’s start with your enemies. Are Night City’s gangs…

Special Report PCG INVESTIGATES NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT Dwarf Fortress sold almost half a million copies in under a month when it launched on Steam last December. Bubbly 2D farming/life sim Stardew Valley currently clears 30,000 concurrent users a day even at off-peak times. Carrion, a small Metroidvania where you play as a faceless monster trying to escape a secret facility, has garnered over 17,000 positive reviews. There are indie hits on Steam all the time, yet the classics they’re often inspired by – some of the best, most timeless games ever made – keep arriving on Steam to less fanfare than a new piece of Euro Truck Simulator DLC. The passage of time has made crystal clear just how truly great some of these ’80s…

The problem with most big on-going service games is that they eventually reach a critical mass where the up-front investment is too big for new players. Destiny 2 suffers with this, deleting old expansions and content such that there’s no way for a new player to coherently follow the story without watching lore videos on YouTube. Warframe might just have a solution, by turning the past into the future with its upcoming update, which is functionally a stand alone expansion. IT’S YOUR GOAL AS THE DRIFTER TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST THRAX Warframe fans have been looking forward to The Duviri Paradox for a long time. First announced in 2019, four years ago, the excitement has only grown as each story update between then and now has added complication after complication…

Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are?” a dying woman sings over the elevator speakers as I climb through the decks of the doomed ship Ishimura. I’m not a big fan of that whole nursery rhyme horror cliché, but it fits for Dead Space. This was never a series about exploring the wonders of the universe or of space as a wild frontier where the worst evil we can imagine is corporate greed dominating the stars. No, this is a game about how space is downright scary; an abyss into which we gaze and see our nightmares reflected right back. It’s hard to marvel at the universe with a Necromorph’s blades in your gut. Necromorph is a fancy space word for zombie, by the way, and you’ll…

Every child who falls in love with a fantasy novel dreams of its big-screen adaptation. But every adult who has seen that monkey’s paw curl knows the cost. The director’s lens replaces the mind’s eye, becoming the definitive vision of a place that was once malleable and personalised. That beloved world shrinks to become tangible – sacrificing the infinite scale and limitless budget of the imagination. It’s this conundrum that haunts Colossal Cave, a new version of Colossal Cave Adventure, a text adventure from the late 1970s. While not the first attempt at a graphical reimagining of its namesake, it is the first to render the cave in full 3D, with WASD and mouse controls, leaving nothing to the imagination whatsoever. The prose lives on as narration, which is thoughtfully…

Nintendo classics have always been ripe pickings for indie reimaginings. Series like Mario and Zelda have directly inspired greats like Shovel Knight and Tunic, and you can’t walk five-feet without stepping into a new Metroidvania. But I’ve often pondered, where were the Wario Land revivals? Its mix of high-speed platforming, exploration and anarchic, slapstick energy made for some of the Game Boy’s crown jewels. Well, looks like I wasn’t the only one to have that thought – in the last few years, we’ve suddenly had an influx of Wario-likes, from the breakout-inspired Antonball Deluxe and its upcoming sequel Anton Blast, to a Doom mod called Treasure Tech. Pizza Tower was announced right at the start of the trend, in 2018, and now it’s finally here. Turns out it was worth…

FREE GAMES REVIEWS Filling in a map is one of the best things in games. The best and the worst, as you may find your perfectionist tendencies taking over. Surprisingly, that didn’t happen for me in Hue Flowing, probably because it’s only 15 minutes long. The entire level is swaddled in a thick fog of war, and you can only clear it by jumping around. The arc of your jump removes the foggy top layer of the canvas, revealing a world of pretty floating islands below. It is odd, to jump in a platformer and not know if you’re going to land safely on a platform, or tumble into the void. However, for the most part death is no bother, simply taking you back to the last platform you were…

What better place to celebrate the greatness of the human hand than in a game about surgery? Not that the hand here is in any way functional – it’s instead like trying to balance coins on a baby bird using someone else’s elbow – but it’s a reminder of how precious and impressive our bodies are. We should start by saying that Surgeon Simulator is less about surgery and more about rummaging around in a stranger’s chest with hands that refuse to behave. The deliberately difficult, almost esoteric controls mean that the simple act of picking a bone saw up off a table becomes as complex and life-threatening as performing a triple bypass on meth. Even the metrics for success tell you something about how seriouslySurgeon Simulator takes its business.…

In the year of our lord Gaben 2023, Nvidia’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR both offer an AI-driven means of running games at a higher resolution than your graphics card and monitor are actually outputting at. They’re both driven by fearsomely clever mathematics that’s analysed trillions of frames from the games they support, and learned to interpolate what the transition from one frame to the next looks like. They’ve learned every pixel’s most likely next move, even at 8K resolution. They also have this in common, too: they both make your games look like they’ve been dipped in a vat of Vaseline. OK, fair enough – that’s a slightly harsh description. But AI resolution upscaling is generally used as a bit of a last resort at present. It’s something you fall…

CONTINUED ADVENTURES IN GAMING Music is pretty cool. Do you know what’s even cooler? Music where you also jam your fingers into a bunch of keys to the beat. I’ve always loved rhythm games, but my desire to play them over the years has waned. I even bought DJMax Respect V two years ago, played for an hour and wondered if maybe I just wasn’t much of a rhythm gamer anymore. That’s until recently, when I’ve been hitting the arcade a whole bunch with a good pal of mine. He’s one of those incredibly annoying friends who is cracked at everything he tries, yet so humble about it you can’t hate him for it. We’ve been grinding out the likes of StepMania X, and I was itching to take the…

My entire family is addicted to Stardew Valley, and it’s all my fault. The tale begins with a familiar refrain from the lips of my daughter, who’s six, “I’m boooooored.” And what better way to stave off boredom than videogames? Naturally, she wasn’t going near my PC – I sit at it all day and use it for everything from writing to games to photo editing, so a PlayStation 5 was acquired, along with a small selection of suitable games. Most were tried once and discarded, though Peggle 2 made a bit of an impression, but Stardew Valley sank its hooks in deep. It’s not a game that you can play alone when you’re six, however. The daily routine of watering and animal husbandry is easily forgotten when there are…