Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2016 i PC Gamer

My favourite feature this month is Andy’s profile piece on Hinterland Studio, the makers of The Long Dark (p60). It’s a team made up of veterans who left jobs at big development studios in major cities to make an innovative survival game in a secluded, albeit gorgeous part of Canada. It’s a romantic success story – and it’s the sort of behind-the-scenes piece we love making for you in the magazine. This issue also features lots of great previews looking ahead to the next 12 months, including our selection of the 15 games you must play on PC in 2016. Enjoy! TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Tweet us @PCGamer…

1 PLAY THE LATEST GAMES Total War: Warhammer, Street Fighter V, Dark Souls III and many more new and upcoming games will be playable on the gaming floor at the Weekender. This is a great chance to go hands-on with the latest games and make your informed buying decisions for the coming year. 2 DEVELOPER TALKS We’ll be hosting on-stage presentations with The Creative Assembly, XCOM developer Firaxis, X-Com creator Julian Gollop, Mount& Bladedevelopers Taleworlds, the team behind sci-fi strategy game Stellaris at Paradox and more. Come and see your favourite developers talk through their creative process. 3 HARDWARE We’ve got a whole area of The Old Truman Brewery dedicated to technology. Test-drive the latest and best PC hardware, check out new components and pick up anything you might need…

THIS IS HIGH-CLASS ESPIONAGE, NOT BUMPING OFF PIMPS IN ALLEYWAYS NEED TO KNOW RELEASE March 11 DEVELOPER Io Interactive PUBLISHER Square Enix LINK www.hitman.com I’m dangling from a lighting rig three floors above a packed fashion show, dressed as a sheik. If a model or the mark himself should look up, their last sight will be of Agent 47’s goolies, or whatever it is he keeps down there. Probably another weapon. But they don’t and, modesty preserved, I haul myself onto the rig to start planting explosives. Regrettably, security is more observant – there’s a shout from an opposing window, and a buff, dark-suited guard raises an assault rifle. A sheik, however, isn’t the sort of person you shoot on sight, even if he’s using restricted property as a jungle…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE February 9 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER Campo Santo LINK www.firewatchgame.com Firewatch is a narrative-driven game that has some things in common with the likes of Gone Home , but ends up feeling really different because of its choice of a more open, Wyoming wilderness-based setting. Each day within the story contains key events, but there’s also the freedom to explore, with more environments opening up over time. Written by Sean Vanaman, who worked on Telltale’s brilliant first season of The Walking Dead, the story explores your character, Henry, and his evolving relationship with Delilah, the voice on the other end of his radio. As the title suggests, your role involves being on the lookout for forest fires in this potentially toasty environment.…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 PUBLISHER Paradox Interactive DEVELOPER Paradox Development Studio LINK www.stellarisgame.com Paradox makes big, complex games, and Stellaris could be the studio’s biggest and most complex to date. It takes the real-time pausable grand strategy of previous titles, and applies it to a sprawling space epic about the rise and fall of galactic civilisations. In addition to being big, it’s broad, using procedurally generated galaxies, random events and player-driven research options to add a huge degree of variety to each playthrough. The use of a procedurally generated galaxy means that Stellaris’s early game is all about exploration and expansion. It works much like the many space-based 4X games, but in a more detail-oriented engine. Stellaris isn’t just about gaining ground. Players must also…

“PLAYERS WILL BE ABLE TO CHERRY PICK THE MODS THAT THEY WANT” NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 DEVELOPER TaleWorlds PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.bit.ly/Bannerlord TaleWorlds has a difficult job ahead of it. Mount & Blade: Warband is a cult RPG classic. It’s ugly, but offers unrivalled depth in regards to player freedom. It’s a complex game, but falters through an unwieldy interface and a tutorial that isn’t fit for purpose. For Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord , accessibility is a big deal, and that means balancing the needs of an existing, passionate community with the desire to attract and welcome a greater number of people. “I think our basic solution will be the main storyline,” says TaleWorlds’ founder Armagan Yavuz. “We want to preserve…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Spring PUBLISHER Bethesda DEVELOPER id Software LINK www.doom.com It’s been a long time coming, but I’m excited for what I’ve seen of id Software’s rebooted and reimagined Doom . Singleplayer footage shows slick and gory action featuring new versions of old enemies like cyberdemons and mancubi inhabiting a horrifying and visually impressive Hell. My favourite guns are back as well, including the super shotgun, plasma rifle and BFG, and players will be able to increase their killing power by acquiring weapon mods as they progress through the game. I got hands-on time with Doom multiplayer at QuakeCon 2015. It was a limited look, featuring only a single map and a handful of weapon loadouts, but I enjoyed the speed of the combat and…

POON LIM 133 DAYS After his ship was sunk, this Chinese sailor famously survived for 133 days on a tiny wooden raft. JOSE IVAN 486 DAYS Eating seabirds, fish, and turtles helped this unfortunate castaway survive for 16 months in the North Pacific. ADA BLACKJACK 730 DAYS An Inuit woman who survived on Siberia’s rugged Wrangel Island for two years with no human contact. ALEXANDER SELKIRK 1606 DAYS A Scottish sailor stranded on Más a Tierra island for over four years. The inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.…

You’ a guy a Vault Boy tattoo on his leg would’ve played the original game. I’m not a fan of turn-based isometric games – especially ones with dated graphics – but I love Fallout’s lore, so I gave it a go. I’m standing in a cave. There’s no tutorial and I’m clicking my mouse button to kill rats with a knife. A couple of hours and over 30 reloads later, I really can’t see myself bothering to continue playing. But after 26 hours, I’d completed the game. Wow, what a ride: action, suspense, tactics, survival. While I enjoyed Fallout 4 and the 150 hours I invested in it, I never felt any of those emotions playing it. It goes to show that you should never judge a game by its…

It adds a personal layer to choices that affect the lives of hundreds NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A six-episode Telltale adventure that takes place in the Game of Thrones universe. EXPECT TO PAY £23 for the six-episode season DEVELOPER Telltale Games PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Windows 10, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 780 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.telltalegames.com/gameofthrones Far into this first season, one of the characters looks up to find the constellation he’s been searching for right where it needs to be. There’s no waiting for a particular moon cycle or time of night; it’s as though it never moves. Much of the season is wrapped up in the same sense of inevitability. Time and time again, I tried to alter its soul-crushing scenarios in my favour, but my…

The terrain is procedurally generated, based on real science NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? The first of a series of expansions for Elite Dangerous. EXPECT TO PAY £40 DEVELOPER Frontier Developments PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON GeForce GTX 970, Intel Core i7-950, 16GB RAM MULTIPLAYER Massively LINK www.elitedangerous.com Horizons is what Frontier is calling a ‘season’ of expansions, the first of which is the ability to land on airless planets and moons. For the first time since the game launched you can now leave the cosy orange glow of your ship’s cockpit. A new vehicle, the SRV, can be driven on the surfaces of these vast alien worlds, and a variety of land-based missions have been introduced to take advantage of it. First you have to fit your…

Another game that didn’t get the sales it deserved. What is it with people, not understanding the hilarious camp appeal of the hypermasculine? This game, this fully-clothed Tom of Finland cartoon, this profane explosion with sexualised nicknames for murder. This game, where you kick away and whip back your enemies like yo-yos. This script, with some of gaming’s most creative swearing. Maybe if everyone whinges for a decade for a sequel like we did with Psychonauts, eh?…

IT’S LIKE HAMMERING HOME A POINT YOU’VE BEEN DEVELOPING FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF MINUTES CHRIS THURSTEN THIS MONTH Danced all the way to the capture point. Which is considered bad manners. ALSO PLAYED Fallout 4 Blizzard recently added definitive skill stats to the Overwatchbeta. Previously, you only knew how many kills you had participated in – a truncation of kills and assists that helped players focus on how much they’d contributed, rather than how many of ‘their’ kills had been ‘stolen’. I was worried at first that the change would alter the tone of the game, but it hasn’t. The number of killing blows you land is actually the stat that’s easiest to ignore, because it’s the one with the fuzziest relationship with the only end-of-game result that matters:…

YOU USE YOUR MAGICAL COLOUR-SEEING POWERS TO SOLVE PUZZLES NEED TO KNOW RELEASE June DEVELOPER Fiddlesticks PUBLISHER Curve Digital LINK www.huethegame.com The world of Hue is in a state of perpetual monochrome until a researcher, your mother, creates a mysterious ring that gives the wearer the ability to see colour. But then she mysteriously disappears and it’s up to you, the titular Hue, to use her magical colour-seeing powers to solve puzzles, avoid deadly traps, help people and discover her fate. This indie platformer is being developed by a new studio called Fiddlesticks, made up of former QUBEdevs, and mixes clever puzzles with a bold, vivid art style. It’s not out until summer, but I spent some time with an early preview build, and it’s already showing a lot of…

1 Free PCG Cobra Mk III paint job in ELITE DANGEROUS Fly our colours in Frontier’s space sim We’ve teamed up with Frontier to offer you a PC Gamer-coloured paint job for your Cobra Mk III ship in the excellent space sim Elite Dangerous. You can only get this particular skin from us, made especially for PCG readers, and as you can see from the 4K screenshot above, the colour palette is gorgeous. You can use this paint job with both the base game, which is available on Steam or through Frontier directly, as well as with Elite Dangerous: Horizons, a one-purchase series of expansions that kicked off by adding planetary landings. We awarded Elite Dangerous 86% all the way back in December, and it’s changed a lot since then…

IF THAT’S WHAT IT TAKES TO GET MIRROR’S EDGE BACK, SO BE IT NEED TO KNOW RELEASE May 24 PUBLISHER EA DEVELOPER DICE LINK www.mirrorsedge.com I’ve been to three E3s, and 2015 was the best one by far. Not only were Fallout 4 , Shenmue 3 and a Final Fantasy announced, but I played a Mirror’s Edge sequel that kept all the good bits of the original. Catalyst is a surprise to me, because the consensus was that the original sold modestly, and business sense says that’s how sequels don’t get made. This open-world follow-up is somehow the real deal. You jump, you run up walls, you climb, you slide. This…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER Bossa Studios LINK www.worldsadrift.com Whenever I hear about a small indie studio tackling an MMO, it’s tempting to let my head hit the desk. MMOs are ruinously expensive to build – just look at the issues DICE and Ubisoft encounter doing the netcode for shooters. So when Bossa announced a physics-based MMO about sailing the clouds as a sky pirate, I almost dismissed it. But Worlds Adrift is supported by technology that not only makes physical simulation on this scale possible, but could change the way all online games are developed. Tech start-up Improbable has been working to make indivisible computing divisible: in Worlds Adrift, small groups of objects are assigned their own physics engines. When more objects…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Spring PUBLISHER Bethesda DEVELOPER Arkane Studios LINK www.dishonored.com Set 15 years after the first game, Dishonored 2 features both Corvo and Emily Kaldwin as playable characters, and takes us from Dunwall to the more exotic setting of Karnaca. Emily has lost her throne to someone Bethesda describes as a ‘usurper’ – in this city, she’ll find a way to win it back. The reveal teaser for Dishonored 2 features a new supernatural ability not in the 2012 original: enormous tentacles that can be used as a kind of substitute for Blink. Creative director Harvey Smith confirmed that abilities seen in the E3 CGI teaser will indeed make it to the game. We also see Emily clashing with clockwork-style mechanical enemies that may…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE February 3 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER SCS Software LINK www.americantrucksimulator.com Here’s your regular PC Gamer reminder that yes, Euro Truck Simulator 2 is a genuinely great game. It’s sustained me and fellow PCG trucking enthusiast Andy Kelly through countless miles of relaxing, oddly compelling virtual highways. There are few gaming experiences that can rival the uneventfully successful delivery of eight tonnes of cheese to a Glasgow warehouse. And ETS2 developer SCS Software is soon set to do it all again. American Truck Simulator, like ETS2, will deliver a compact recreation of one corner of the continent. Initially, the game will be focused around California and its surrounding regions, but, over time, new parts of the country will be introduced.…

IT’S HEARTENING TO SEE BLIZZARD TRY TO DO RIGHT BY THE GAME NEED TO KNOW RELEASE June PUBLISHER Activision Blizzard DEVELOPER Blizzard LINK www.battle.net I suspect Blizzard can’t do wrong with its new team shooter, Overwatch – with more than seven million people registering interest for the beta, it’s in safe territory. Nonetheless, it’s heartening to see Blizzard try to do right by the game. When the beta returns, it’ll be a lot closer to the launch version, including a new progression system that’ll unlock rewards as you play, but nothing that’ll affect game balance. In other welcome news, Blizzard has confirmed all maps and heroes released post-launch will be free.…

In the Star Wars universe, the relationship between master and apprentice is a notoriously fractious thing. The dark side isn’t known for peaceful promotions, preferring a more murderous rise to power. Given that, I’m not sure what we should read into the fact that our Star Wars: The Old Republic guild has a brand new guildmaster. I’d like you all to welcome Officer Emmgel, and also quietly contemplate what he’s done to our former leader, Bocephus. The Mint Imperials are now four years old, and Emmgel has been with us since launch. But it seems he’d rather focus on the future and the challenges that SW:TOR’s mostly singleplayer expansion may bring. “It’s clear BioWare is moving the game in a new direction, with an increased focus on story as opposed…

In its best moments, Life is Feudal recalls a simplicity we’ve lost NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A realism-focused sandbox survival sim set in the Middle Ages. EXPECT TO PAY £25 DEVELOPER Bitbox, Ltd. PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Windows 10, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 780 MULTIPLAYER Up to 64 players per server LINK www.lifeisfeudal.com There’s a warning about Life is Feudal that’s seemingly built into its very title – that little play on the word ‘futile’ that’s a tad too perfect to be an accident. Be grateful for it. You could end up like me, fully confident that months of sampling other survival sims like Rust and ARK: Combat Evolved had prepared you…

Like diving into a pile of leaves from the top of Big Ben NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? An open-world action adventure game set in Victorian London. EXPECT TO PAY £40 DEVELOPER Ubisoft PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON Intel i7 x980 3.33GHz, 9GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 MULTIPLAYER None LINK www.assassins creed.ubi.com Alexander Graham Bell, one of several historical celebrities I’ve met within mere moments of setting foot in Victorian London, has given me a rope launcher. With it I can quickly grapple my way to rooftops, and create ziplines between buildings to zip across. It provides an alternative to freerunning across rooftops, which feels the same as it does in other Assassin’s Creed games: fun and dynamic at first, but ultimately a bit routine,…

We are firmly in ‘game’ rather than ‘sim’ territory NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A stripped back and streamlined entry to the Dirt series. EXPECT TO PAY £30 DEVELOPER Codemasters Racing PUBLISHER Codemasters REVIEWED ON GeForce GTX 970, i5 4690K, 16GB RAM, G27 Wheel, CSR Elite Pedals, Clubsport SQ Shifter MULTIPLAYER Head-to-head LINK www.dirtgame.com The Dirt series skidded off-road after shedding the Colin McRae name, padding its content with ‘cool’ dialogue, x-game events, fireworks and pomp. It was time to reset. With no buildup, no fuss, Codemasters announced and released Dirt Rally into Early Access in May. For full release the content has been added to significantly, but as is so often the case, such a breadth of content comes with…

The graphics card is the hero component of your gaming PC. Above all else this is the part that makes your games look awesome. Or, on the flip side, this the component that needs replacing when you notice stuttering performance in the latest games. While we’d all like to have a graphics card with X-factor, the reality is that most of us will never be able to afford a Titan X or Fury X. Don’t let it get you down: the cards at the mid-range of the market are stupendously powerful these days, as the selection on the next few pages will attest. The question is: which one is the best? Q&A Nvidia or AMD? At the top of the market Nvidia has pretty much got it all its own…

MY PRIMARY MOTIVATION IS BUILDING AN INCREASINGLY EPIC LOOTER’S PARADISE BEN GRIFFIN THIS MONTH Stole never more than 250lb of rubbish. ALSO PLAYED Cook, Serve, Delicious! Seems to be growing well,” I tell the malnourished farmhands before ripping their gourds from the ground and stuffing them down my trousers. Strangely, they’re cool with this, so I try selling the grotty vegetables back to them to see what happens. They buy them. They actually buy back the gourds they saw me steal. Fallout 4’s wasteland is my own personal pick ‘n’ mix. A kidnapped baby isn’t the driving force behind my exploits in this nuclear-ravaged world. No, my primary motivation is building an increasingly epic looter’s paradise loaded with disco balls and pictures of kittens and musical pressure pads that play…

EXPLODE THE SUN AND THE EARTH JUST SORT OF DRIFTS AWAY, SAD AND CONFUSED ANDY KELLY THIS MONTH Found causing destruction on a galactic scale oddly relaxing. ALSO PLAYED Fallout 4, Endless Legend Universe Sandbox 2 is a science-based physics playground that lets you toy with the very fabric of the universe like a mad, evil deity. You can smash galaxies together and watch them intertwine in a beautiful cosmic ballet. You can lower the temperature of the Earth until the continents are lost beneath the ice, then throw it into the sun to warm it up. Or you can duplicate the Moon a hundred times and watch in awe as they all smash into each other and the fires consume the planet. It’s strangely cathartic, especially combined with the…

A LOT OF THE GAME’S ORIGINAL DEVS WILL BE GETTING TOGETHER TO MAKE THIS SEQUEL Psychonauts 2 is coming to PC, thanks to a successful campaign on Fig, the not-as- well-named-as-Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. Double Fine was looking for $3 million to make the game, and at the time we went to press was well over 80% of the way there with days to go. So, it might not happen, but it seems very likely that you’re getting a sequel to the oft-talked about 3D adventure. Probably. Psychonauts was a platform adventure starring the psychically-powered Raz, who escaped from his family’s circus to join a psychic summer camp with the eventual goal of becoming one of the titular secret agents. The sequel will be set inside Psychonauts’ HQ, which…

THE PROBLEM IS THAT GAME DEVELOPMENT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT The internet is a sea of opinions, and, as I write, many of them concern Fallout 4 . Hot takes roam the comment threads like Deathclaws prowl the Commonwealth. “ Fallout: New Vegas is a vastly superior game,” argues one, oblivious to all of New Vegas’s many faults and failures. “It’s a really bad FPS with statistics,” reckons another, blind to the fact that it’s a great FPS (with statistics). “A brilliant, massive sandbox of systems,” says me, in my review. It’s opinions all the way down. Most are harmless enough, and some even make a good point. But one repeated refrain bothers me greatly. It’s the idea that Bethesda…

“TO BE GOOD AT THE GAME ISN’T ENOUGH TO WIN A TOURNAMENT, OR EVEN GET TOP THREE” The esports business has been through enough rough patches now to shrug off accusations that it’s all a great big bubble – or at least if it is a bubble, then it’s a bubble that’s burst and reinflated itself enough times to qualify as a fixture of one kind or another. After a year of record-setting prize pools and an incredibly busy events calendar, pro gaming is changing once again. In the aftermath of League of Legends’ 2015 World Championship, players are being thrown into a bidding war for their contracts in a way that has rarely previously been the case in competitive gaming. It’s normal for traditional sportspeople…

THE CARS ARE LARGE, FAST AND SPORT WHEELS BIGGER THAN THEIR CHASSIS NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 DEVELOPER Caged Element PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.gripvideogame.com The Rollcage series felt very much of its era – that weird late-’90s/early-’00s hinterland defined by The Matrix still being cool, the X-Files’ troubled post-Duchovny years, and an inexplicable number of people being really into Blink 182. Psygnosis’s original combat-heavy arcade racer felt less clean and futuristic than its main rival, Wipeout. And while it was never as popular, its dark, industrial aesthetic earned it plenty of fans. Grip is positioning itself as Rollcage’s spiritual successor – two of its team worked on the original games – and, despite being built in Unreal Engine 4, it isn’t doing much to modernise. It’s the same chunky, flippable…

MYSTERY AND A SENSE OF THE UNKNOWN ARE THE HEART OF THE GAME NEED TO KNOW RELEASE January 15 DEVELOPER Night School Studio PUBLISHER In-house LINK www.nightschoolstudio.com When you first arrive on Edwards Island, it doesn’t look like much. You step off the boat into a lifeless, abandoned coastal town, with shuttered shops and an empty car park. You’re here with a group of teenage friends to hang out for the weekend. You sit on the beach, play dumb games, share embarrassing stories, and drink beer. But then you decide to investigate a mysterious cave and things suddenly take a turn for the supernatural. You have a radio and activating it brings up a dial. Stand in just the right place and tune to a certain frequency and you’ll hear…

“YOU END UP BUILDING YOUR JENSEN IN THE WAY THAT YOU WANT” NEED TO KNOW RELEASE August 23 DEVELOPER Eidos Montreal PUBLISHER Square Enix LINK www.deusex.com In Mankind Divided , Eidos Montreal is doubling down on the elements of Deus Ex it brought back to life in Human Revolution . The series’ fourth title has new ways to experiment with AI, super-detailed environments filled with double the amount of non-player characters and, at the centre of it, Adam Jensen, your ever-evolving cybernetic superbeing. It’s layering systems on top of those in the first game, getting closer to the original intent of Deus Ex , while the new team puts its own contemporary spin on the series. “There’s…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER SUPERHOT LINK www.superhotgame.com I’ve noticed a trend among the commentators who’ve seen Superhot’s trailers. They think it looks easy. In fact, that’s the whole point. It looks easy. Superhot plays out in a series of action vignettes – each scene’s script reduced to a single sentence of all-cap words. “IT WAS A SETUP.” “YOU’RE NEW, YOU FIGHT.” There’s little in the way of prelude. Instead, each level exists as a standalone ballet of improvised violence. Do you grab an ashtray, or go for the gun? Do you take cover, or dodge, weave and shoot? It looks easy, but it takes real effort to be quite so effortless. In Superhot, time…

ANDROMEDA WILL BE AS BIG A LEAP AS INQUISITION WAS FROM DRAGON AGE II NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Late 2016 PUBLISHER EA DEVELOPER BioWare LINK www.masseffect.com The part of Mass Effect: Andromeda I’m most excited about is seeing that universe more fully realised. With the Mako returning, and the move to the Frostbite engine, Andromeda will be as big a leap from ME3 as Inquisition was from Dragon Age II . Here’s everything we know. The combat will be familiar, but will build on what we saw in ME2 and 3. Characters from the old trilogy won’t be returning, because the story is set in an entirely new galaxy. Expect an…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2016 PUBLISHER In-house DEVELOPER Amplitude Studios LINK www.yourvision-theirfuture.com The original Endless Space was Amplitude’s first attempt at making a 4X strategy. It showed. Despite a few clever ideas and a gorgeous UI, it never felt as essential as the bigger, uglier Galactic Civilization series. Endless Legend was a vast improvement – ever more beautiful and packed full of well considered tweaks and changes to an otherwise unadventurous genre. For Endless Space 2 , Amplitude plans to push things further still. To do this, the team is introducing a new internal politics system. Rather than representing your empire purely through numbers and influence, each ideological bloc within your territory will vie for…

Survival games are bigger than ever on PC, but it’s a saturated market. For every DayZ there are dozens of unimaginative, derivative zombie games released to exploit this sudden surge in popularity. Sitting quietly among all this chaos is The Long Dark . It’s a survival game, sure, but one that follows its own path, making no attempt to ape its peers. It’s a philosophy that mirrors that of the studio making it. And the result is one of the most interesting, stylish and understated survival games you can play today. “I wanted creative freedom and to get closer to the craft,” says Raphael van Lierop, founder and creative director of Hinterland, the studio in question. “When you run big projects you feel…

It hasn’t lost any of its charm since the original Gollop version NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A remake of Julian Gollop’s classical wizard duelling game. EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Snapshot Games PUBLISHER In-house REVIEWED ON i7, GTX 970, 8GB RAM MULTIPLAYER 2-4 (deathmatch and co-op) LINK www.chaos-reborn.com Your love for or frustration with Chaos Reborn hinges on one question: do you feel lucky? It’s a game of surprising depth and complexity, where wizards wage war by casting powerful spells and summoning hideous beasts – but it’s also one where, almost guaranteed, your dragon with a 90% chance to clobber the enemy in the next hex will fail miserably five times in a row, only to be casually annihilated by a passing goblin. Summoning…

Wheelman doesn’t need your retail approval NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? Vin Diesel doing fast cars in Barcelona. EXPECT TO PAY £3, if you can find it DEVELOPER Tigon Studios / Midway PUBLISHER Ubisoft MULTIPLAYER None FIRST REVIEWED N/A LINK wheelmangame.uk.ubi.com Who doesn’t like to feel a bad ass? I know I do. And with the recent ad campaign informing me that Just Cause 3 is the ‘best game ever’, a quote that surely damages the source more than it flatters the game, I have been reminded how attractive a bad ass can be. In fact, however bad the ass is, make it a little bit badder and I can guarantee you I will be all over it. It has got to the…

SAMUEL ROBERTS THIS MONTH Killed Kenny nine times while waiting for the credits to roll. ALSO PLAYED Ephemerid: A Musical Adventure, Overwatch I’m crawling up Mr Slave’s ass and screenshotting things I can’t legally put in this magazine. I’m near the end of The Stick of Truth after powering through it from start to finish in one weekend, and I’m currently battering my way through some unspecified white stuff with a flaming katana, while Butters Stotch politely comments on our very pink surroundings. The Stick of Truth is a perfect digital representation of the South Park universe that hits every right note, from the broadest strokes (ManBearPig, Kenny dying) to the most granular details (funny flavour text for every item, Big Gay Al calling the iPhone I just climbed across…

1 TRIBES FREEWARE It’s time to dig out your trusty jetpack Now here’s something special. Hi-Rez Studios has made the entire Tribes series available for free, including a couple of games that don’t even feature the word ‘tribes’ in the title. There are six games that have just had their price tags nixed by Hi-Rez: Earthsiege and its sequel, Starsiege: Tribes and Tribes 2 , plus Vengeance and a rogue PlayStation 2 game named Aerial Assault . There are more tribes here than in a Bruce Parry documentary – and if you got that reference without the aid of Wikipedia, feel free to give yourself a gold star.…