Home//PC Gamer/December 2020/In This Issue
PC Gamer|December 2020“WE POKE AND PROD AT THE GAME’S TECHNICAL FOUNDATIONS”The moment of truth is almost here for Cyberpunk 2077. Since its original announcement over eight years ago(!), it’s built momentum like nothing else – and just one more month from now, it’ll finally be time for it to show us all whether it can live up to nearly a decade of historic hype. But, of course, we can’t wait that long. Games journalists have no patience. So we’ve headed behind the scenes to poke and prod at the game’s technical foundations, discovering the groundbreaking innovations powering CD Projekt Red’s unrestrained ambition. Turns out it’s not just the robot arms that are hi-tech in Night City. ROBIN VALENTINE Specialist in Hi-tech solutions to low tech problems Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Pretended to understand how ray tracing works.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020JAGGED NIGHTMARESPeople have been wondering when indie games would move on from 2D pixel art for as long as people who hate pixel art have had access to comments sections on websites. The thing is, 3D art on an indie budget often looks incredibly rough and somewhat uncanny, where pixel art evokes naive, child-like wholesomeness. A 3D game made on a shoestring budget can look like it came out in 1996. In the 1990s games with wobbling, low-res textures and characters restricted to jerky movements and freakish faces still seemed freaky to us – which made them well suited to survival horror. It was the era of Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill, games that were a perfect fit for their graphical limitations. Earlier this year, the Haunted…5 min
PC Gamer|December 2020EVIL GENIUS 2: WORLD DOMINATIONhis is a direct sequel to the cult classic 2004 lair builder of over-the-top spy-fi comedy and action. Evil Genius is strategy management unlike any other, and the team at Rebellion knows that. It’s more lavishly made, with a more ’60s retro flair than the first, but it retains and updates the best parts. I watched a live gameplay demo and spoke with two members of the EG2 team: producer Ash Tregay and lead designer Rich Edwards. Edwards is an EG superfan, so this is his dream design. He’s so enthusiastic that when interviewed for the then-secret project he puzzled out what Rebellion was doing and asked pointblank, mid interview, if it was Evil Genius 2. In Evil Genius 2 you dig into the nitty-gritty details in the life of…7 min
PC Gamer|December 2020GRAVENGraven is a spiritual successor to the Hexen games, but it promises a much deeper experience than its predecessors. “Graven is Hexen 3 – kind of,” 3D Realms chief Frederik Schreiber tells me during a recent preview session. It’s the game that Raven Software would’ve made in 1998, if 1998 was now. Schreiber describes Graven as an “action-adventure puzzler, with a few RPG elements here and there”, including quests, spells, and upgrades. It certainly looks like an RPG at the outset: as a priest of the Orthogonal Order, you’re convicted of a crime you didn’t commit and cast into the midst of a heretical conspiracy when your death sentence is interrupted by a divine being who’s not supposed to exist. You wake up on a boat sliding through a thick,…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020CUTTING EDGEFive years on and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt remains, in quiet defiance, at the top of our Steam libraries and perpetually ready to play – a testament to the ambition and sticktoitiveness of the studio that built it. But if you thought that meant CD Projekt Red stopped innovating for even a second, think again. The developer has been continuously adapting and building a new set of tools for what’s to come. When it launches this November, Cyberpunk 2077 is promising to deliver something even bigger, the culmination of years of work on an ever-evolving engine by a team that simply refuses to sit still. “MAINTAINING, DEVELOPING, AND OPTIMISING A GAME ENGINE REQUIRES HUGE EFFORT” “The engine is like a living organism, almost like a cellular automata,” Krzysztof Krzyscin,…13 min
PC Gamer|December 2020BACK FROM THE GRAVEIf you’re going to just play one Horror Soft game, go for Waxworks, which is the most polished of the lot, followed by Elvira 2 which similarly throws you into several themed worlds. The original Elvira is more of a fantasy dungeon crawler, while Personal Nightmare is much more dated. TIPS 1 Save often (and don’t be afraid to die – the death scenes are great!). 2 Click everything – secret key compartments hide behind indistinct metal rings on walls, vital herbs are often barely visible. This is truly 1990s adventure gaming. 3 Elvira and Elvira 2 have weight limits, so drop items in central locations where you can pick them up later. Waxworks doesn’t have weight limits. 4 Check your spell book for the ingredients required for spells. 5…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020HOW WE REVIEWWe 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 of a significant…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020GAME-AS-SERVICEABLEAs I continue chip away at Marvel’s Avengers after its campaign ends, and its hearty story recedes in the rearview mirror to be replaced by the stark plains of samey missions, it reminds me of the duality of so many superheroes. It straps on its tightest, glossiest spandex for the campaign and dazzles with its moves, but once that adventure ends and it returns to the daily grind of a multiplayer-oriented endgame, it blurs into the crowd. Inoffensive, yet indistinguishable but for IP it’s adorned with. The frustrating thing about Marvel’s Avengersis that for the first few hours, you see hints of what it could have been – a visually spectacular and narratively wholesome adventure that does service to the IP – before its functional but unoriginal gameplay loop really…8 min
PC Gamer|December 2020SPRAY ‘N’ PRAYWhile Serious Sam 4 feels like an old game, it isn’t a retro throwback. It’s just full of jank: battle music that ends the moment the last enemy is killed, cutscenes that start the instant a boss dies, clothing, dirt, and rock textures that pop in and out, and level events that occasionally fail to trigger, or won’t happen until you hunt down that one last enemy who got stuck running into a wall. At least the jank is endearing (mostly), and Serious Sam 4 is fun – like the other Serious Sam games it’s still about murdering overwhelming hordes of aliens with enormous guns while moving backwards at the speed of a figure skater. You’re always on the verge of being overtaken, gripping the edge of control as you…4 min
PC Gamer|December 2020NECROTICLife is tough in the Underhive. To survive your gang needs to stick together to defend territory from cultists, gangsters, and the law in brutal short-range skirmishes set amid the metal walkways of an endless undercity. Then after all that, you still have to source enough hair gel to keep your two-foot tall punk mohawk from collapsing into a sorry mess. Necromundais a turn-based tactics game based on the venerable Warhammer tabletop skirmish game. In story mode you take charge of House Escher, who wield pipes, chainswords, flamers, and heavy machine-guns to seize territory and protect their matriarchal society. There are two other clans playable in skirmish and online: the scrappy House Orlock and the hench Goliath faction – they never skip leg day. Once you’ve sampled the story you…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020INTO THE MULTIVERSEYou know that way of describing a game, or a film, or a sandwich, or whatever, where you condense it down to the simple formula of ‘x meets y’? There’s a temptation to do that with Star Renegades… but I suspect if I tried, my nose would start bleeding. A lot of games are magpies, lifting shiny ideas to decorate their own nests – but this is more like two people’s Steam libraries got into a tragic accident involving a pair of matter transporters. So, in the interests of keeping my philtrum unbloodied, I’ll pick a single comparison point: roguelikes. Specifically, the post-FTLmodel, where you make your way along a branching path of nodes, each representing a combat encounter – in this case, between a battalion of extradimensional invaders and…4 min
PC Gamer|December 2020HEAVY METALThe Iron Harvest approach to fun is an avalanche of awe. No sooner have you got over the crack sniper lady with a pet bear, than it’s throwing machine-gun toting spider bots and walking artillery platforms at you. It buries your cynicism in a scrapheap of powerful toys that’ll have you grinning like a Cheshire cat. It’s very hard to dislike, even with a story that’s clumsily written and an underlying strategy engine that needs more oil in its gears. The spectacle of any given Iron Harvest match is phenomenal Iron Harvest graduates from the Relic school of real-time strategy circa 2006. The basic formula sticks close to that established by Relic in Company of Heroes, but there is one crucial difference: the setting. Iron Harvest takes place in an…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020MEET THE SUSPECTSHENRY DIVISION A prime suspect. Most people on the island think that Henry did the crime – but maybe he’s a little tooobvious? DOCTOR DOOM JAZZ A flirt. Don’t fall for his charm, you have a mission to do! He’s the island’s doctor; his medical education is key. YURI NIGHT Yuri can be insufferable to speak to, but keep trying. He’ll eventually warm up and stop calling you a freak. CRIMSON ACID Crimson is the island’s idol and all of the humans worshipped her. She also has some great dirt on everybody on the island. CARMELINA SILENCE After the murders she became the highest authority on the island. Has a cute dog. GRAND MARSHAL AKIKO 14 Leader of the island’s army. Akiko does not have time for jokes, but does…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020SILENT HELLHorror is a delicate artform. One area where people frequently mess up is to escalate the action too quickly, to curtail the steady build-up of tension that is essential to give the climax any real meaning. The Devil understands this (as does its namesake, presumably), devoting the majority of its playtime to the setup – to the violent crackle you can feel in the atmosphere, like static before a storm. It’s a wonderfully bleak, oppressive setting An enigmatic survival horror game, The Devil is set in a big tower that’s all brutalist concrete and askew camera angles, and where nobody ever thought to install a lift. You play as a nameless shlub who is sent to investigate a disappearance: someone has gone overboard into the primordial swamp at the bottom…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020TAKE ME LORD!Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is that it feels like listening to two BBC Radio 4 shows at once. The first, something cosily bleak about people in knitwear shuffling through the End Times. The second, a standard episode of The Archers. Cattle markets. Family arguments. Cider. That might sound like faint praise, but there’s something exciting about playing a game that feels so gently familiar. It’s still apocalyptic, of course, but in a way that encourages quiet exploration rather than chaos. It’s lovely to play a game where the fall of civilization is characterised not by ghouls and ragged melee weapons, but by encroaching dandelions and empty pubs. Doom has only just arrived here; the super-mutants may yet reach Yaughton, but right now…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020INTO THE BREACHYou know that drawer of old phone chargers, foreign coins, and proprietary cables you have near your PC? Into the Breach is like the best game ever made about removing the wire you want. You can gently tug at that USB-C, see what it’s wrapped around – but eventually you’ll give up and send Krona and half-spent batteries cascading across your floor as you yank out every cable except the one you want. Here every action presents deeply intertwined outcomes. Sometimes you scrape victory from the most hopeless situations; others, you accidentally send a wasp the size of IKEA flying into the train you were meant to protect. Excruciating, rewarding, brilliant. 92…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020LINK TO THE STARSEver since Tech Report started running in these hallowed pages, I’ve been itching for the chance to write about space lasers. And now that glorious time has come. Oh, happy day! Space lasers! These particular space lasers belong to Elon Musk, the South Africa-born entrepreneur who has a reputation for being, shall we say… a touch eccentric. When not sending cars into space he’s been busy recently, not just becoming a father but setting up his Shanghai ‘Gigafactory’ to produce Tesla cars and launching up to 60 satellites at a time on top of SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets to create the Starlink constellation, which when complete will wreath the Earth in thousands of satellites, providing broadband internet access and communicating with lasers. In space. Space lasers. Yeaaaah! OK, so it’s…5 min
PC Gamer|December 2020MID-RANGE BUILDMOTHERBOARD B450 Tomahawk Max MSI £120 A reliable platform for your build, the Tomahawk Max also comes in black to complement any style. PROCESSOR Ryzen 5 3600X AMD £198 This CPU is one of the greats, and uses the Zen 2 architecture to dominate in gaming and productivity. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 2060 KO GAMING EVGA £320 The RTX 2060 is a taste of the good life, where frame rates are high and real-time ray tracing is possible. COOLER Wraith Spire AMDFree with the CPU We love a freebie, especially one as capable as the cooler included with the 3600X. This’ll keep your machine running smoothly. MEMORY Ballistix 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB) Crucial £75 With plenty of capacity at 16GB, this unembellished memory has everything you need for gaming and more.…2 min
PC Gamer|December 2020“It’s entirely about improvisation”I’m a huge fan of co-op first-person brawler Vermintide 2, but if there’s one thing I’d change about it, it’s Grimoires and Tomes. These hidden items can be grabbed during each level, making progress more difficult but boosting your rewards. The problem is that their inclusion makes any run where you don’t pick them all up feel like a failure. It speaks to a larger issue with the game – one true of most co-op games that see you running the same levels over and over. Namely, that you are always on some level going for a ‘perfect’ run, one where you get the maximum pay-off as efficiently as possible. For some, that’s a pleasing goal – something to work towards through diligent practice. For me it’s too much like…2 min
PC Gamer|December 2020GOLDEN LIGHTOn paper Golden Light is a headache – a singleplayer prop hunt survival horror roguelike FPS. But please massage those temples and come on back, because dipping out on the bloated albeit necessary genre description would mean missing out on one of the weirdest horror games I’ve played in a long time. Golden Light is still in Early Access, but also fairly new and unknown, so before we dig into the latest update, I feel like I need to send out a broader update to the general readership: play Golden Light, because it’s an amazing horror game, but especially because the latest update is so damn good. Golden Light’s primary goal is to get through as many floors of The Gut, an infinitely deep maze of offices and meat and…4 min
PC Gamer|December 2020SNAG THE FALL GUYS CROWN1 DOOR DASH Success in Door Dash is a fine balance: hang back far enough to let others find a viable route, but not so far as to get stuck in an immovable blob of rival players trying to do the same thing, and you’ll soon get through it. 2 SEESAW The trick here is patience. Instead of rushing onto your next teetering platform, wait and see how the inevitable pile on of players around you affects it. Taking a slower, sensible approach should mean you fall to your doom less often. 3 SLIME CLIMB One of the hardest minigames in Fall Guys is best played straight. There are shortcuts, like the triangular trampolines early on, but these route skips are known well enough that many will attempt it, so…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020THE FUTURE OF JOURANALISMBACK PAGE JOKE GENERATOR This thumb-sized brain implant allows for hilarious All Over pages to be produced with ease. May be malfunctioning. THUMB HYDRAULICS Powerful finger implants increase game reviewing efficiency, allowing the subject to be terrible at videogames up to five times faster than the average journalist. DEADLINE MOTIVATION ENGINE Electric shocks directly to the internal organs provide a powerful incentive to complete the magazine on schedule. SECOND STOMACH A powerful digestive implant, dedicated to breaking down the tough fibres found in bad tweets. CUSHIONED BONES Ultra-resilient padded marrow allows for marathon sessions of sitting hunched over a laptop with minimal spinal discomfort. ...UNTIL NOVEMBER 12…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020The SpyThe Spy is sure it’s nothing – just a coincidence – but The Spy spent the last month posing as an intern in Microsoft’s Redmond HQ in order to dig up any internal documents that would shed light on the obtuse naming conventions used for its Xbox consoles. Because there hasto be some guiding principle that would lead a company to go from Xbox to Xbox 360 to Xbox One to Xbox Series X. That can’tjust be a random decision made up on the fly. There mustbe a pattern here. As it turns out, no. The Spy can reveal, exclusively, that the name ‘Xbox Series X’ was decided on the spot by a mid-level executive sitting on a beanbag chair and wearing a Perfect Dark t-shirt under his expensive sports…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020FURTHER NIGHTMARESORANGE COUNTY Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater only set in a darkened suburb where malevolent cars might slam into you at any second. ERASURE Work the night shift fixing glitched-out dream worlds of ‘sim-pod’ users in a repurposed hospital. ODE TO A MOON Styled like a VHS recording, Ode to a Moon uses liberal scanlines and fast-forward jump cuts to disorient. EFFIGY A retro FPS like Amid Evil, but borrowing more heavily from Quake, even down to its distinctive jump grunt.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020IMMORTALS FENYX RISINGGame design is as incestuous as the Greek gods. Ideas are constantly borrowed and remixed, and for its part Immortals Fenyx Rising pulls heavily from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Then it adds in RPG-lite systems, burying Zelda’s inspiration under a mountain of stuff to do. Basically, it’s a Ubisoft game. But it’s a very cute one. For those confused – yes, this is the artist formerly known as Gods and Monsters. It’s a dreadful name change, but the rebrand does also reflect that it’s changed a fair bit since it was first revealed. In a three hour demo, I got to strike out and explore a chunk of the open world with a welcome lack of guidance. I found puzzle dungeons, dead ringers for the shrines…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020NO UMBRELLAS ALLOWEDIn No Umbrellas Allowed you’re put in charge of a seedy second-hand shop located in a rabble of stores in a dystopian tower block. It’s the kind of shady district where people are looking to make a quick buck, and you’ll have plenty of clientele that are desperate to cash in quickly. Did I mention this is a dystopia set decades in the future where humans have started to take emotional suppressants to numb their feelings? To make things weirder, the government has made the use of umbrellas illegal – there’s hushed talk among the city’s residents that it’s because there’s something not exactly natural in the raindrops… But you don’t have to worry about that for now! Running a second-hand shop in 2080 is a great way to make…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020TECH A LOOKLAYERED FASHION A new dynamic clothing system allows you to layer up in every which way you think best without tearing textures – even a bulletproof vest over a fluffy winter coat. Work it. CAR DESTRUCTION Using an approach based on structural analysis simulation, every vehicle type in Cyberpunk 2077 will fall to bits in a unique way. Your idiotic crashes will look incredible. PROXY SYSTEM Delivering scaled-back in-game models for use at a distance from the player camera, this clever system means your PC doesn’t have to sweat the small stuff from miles away.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020FACES OF DEATHSTABBED If the angry mob in Victorian London catches you, this is what happens. People power is overrated. DESICCATED Lose an encounter with your evil twin and he’ll leave you as wrinkly as every Dark Souls player character. RIPPED APART BY ZOMBIES Dying at the hands of a zombie turns your chest into a great big strawberry trifle. Nom. POPPED EYES Seeing a falcon in flight is a sight to behold in Elvira 2, until it dives down and plucks your eyes out. LACK OF SILVER BULLETS This is what happens when you cross paths with a werewolf in a barn. We’re lycan it.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020OUR SCORING SYSTEM EXPLAINED00%-09% Broken or offensively bad; absolutely no value. Example Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude 10%-19% We might be able to find one nice thing to say about it, but still not worth anyone’s time or money. Example Gettysburg: Armored Warfare 20%-29% Completely falls short of its goals. Very few redeeming qualities. ExamplesFamily Guy: Back to the Multiverse 30%-39% An entirely clumsy or derivative effort. There’s little reason to play this game over a similar, better one. ExamplesTrials of the Blood Dragon 40%-49% Flawed and disappointing. ExamplesAliens: Colonial Marines 50%-59% Mediocre. Other games probably do it better, or its unique qualities aren’t executed well. ExamplesPrimordia, Homefront: The Revolution 60%-69% There’s something to like here, but it can only be recommended with major caveats. ExamplesNo Man’s Sky, Ghost Recon: Wildlands 70%-79%…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020COMIC CAPERSAVENGERS (1963) #1 The very first Avengers comic. Note how Hulk’s looking like Frankenstein with food poisoning, and Iron Man seems rather encumbered in his original suit. JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY (1962) #1 Thor made his way into Marvel comics for the first time with this issue, in a series that until then had been associated with horror and sci-fi. MS MARVEL (2015) #25 The game’s hero Kamala Khan made her comic-book debut in 2014, becoming Marvel’s first leading Muslim superhero and a widely acclaimed Marvel icon.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020HELLUNKYRoguelikes usually put story in the back seat – the back seat of one of those cars with a window separating it from the driver. Not so in Hades, where every character is fully voiced and has more to say with every run. You’re Zagreus, son of the lord of the underworld, who believes ruling in hell is overrated. With the help of your distant Olympian family you’re going to fight through every mythic monster between you and escape. Hadespaints its characters in broad archetypal strokes. My favourite is Dionysus, god of wine, hedonism, and everybody just being like really cool, but everyone from long-suffering fury Megaera to layabout Sisyphus is brought to life with a solid vocal portrayal and art like they stepped out of a Mike Mignola comic.…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020LIVING LEGENDI’ve lost count of how many endings I’ve seen in Pendragon, the latest game from 80 Days creator Inkle. Your goal is always the same: gather a party of warriors and reach the battlefield of Camlann to help King Arthur defeat the evil Mordred. But what happens on the road leading to this fateful encounter is different every time. The characters you meet, the places you explore, and the enemies you run into are heavily randomised, which makes for an excitingly dynamic and unpredictable storytelling experience – albeit one that occasionally punishes you with a sudden and unsatisfying finale. Pendragonis essentially a narrative roguelike, based on Arthurian legend. Some knowledge of the mythology will help you navigate the story – I had very little, and felt like the game could…4 min
PC Gamer|December 2020BIRDMAN FLYINGAfter the disastrous Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, trepidation is understandable. But this starts so teasingly, with the right font, the right music, and the right menu style. And then the final barrier between hoping and believing is literally smashed down as you careen through that first wall and into the iconic warehouse level. It looks great – and damn, it plays so well. It’s still great to hear Rage Against The Machine’s Guerrilla Radio Crucially, the game feels like the series did in its heyday, though not exactly like the two games in question. THPS1has been improved so much here in terms of fluidity, visuals and its trick system, it’s more like an expansion pack for THPS3. Best of all, actual modernity is shunned entirely as you snap onto…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020CLASS WARFARELIGHT INFANTRY Your standard foot-soldier. Cheap to produce but easily killed. Can convert into specialist infantry. SPECIALIST INFANTRY Infantry dedicated to a specific task. Includes machine-gunners, grenadiers, and flamethrowers. HEAVY INFANTRY Exosuit-wearing soldiers designed for breaking infantry lines and taking on the lighter mechs. LIGHT MECH Small mechs designed to pulverise infantry. Keep your guys away from them or they’re doomed. HEAVY MECH Mechs that serve various functions, acting as artillery, transport, or the perfect counter to other mechs. ULTRA-HEAVY MECH The rulers of the battlefield. Powerful and equally durable. Every faction gets one of their own.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020BELTERLet’s skip the preamble, shall we? Factoriois brilliant. If you’re remotely interested in games about management, construction, and above all production chains, then hop aboard the nearest conveyor belt and grab yourself a copy of Factorio this instant. Then pick up another copy for the most important person in your life, because they won’t be seeing you for a while, and at least this way they’ll understand why. Every single item in the game can be automated for production Factoriostarts out as all great works of fiction do, with a huge explosion. That would be your spaceship crashing onto a remote alien planet, and the only way off that far-flung rock is to build yourself a whole new rocket. Luckily, you control the handiest person in the entire universe, able…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020BLADE RUNNERWhen the world of Game of Thrones invents computer games, I reckon FEWAR-DVDwill be among its first wave, as it resembles a fever dream about the Iron Throne and its many pointy swords. In each nightmarish stage, your goal is to grab a key, bust a lock, and reach the exit before being done in by the swarm of Excaliburs waggling menacingly in your direction. Most of these swords are essentially walls, but every so often one will get up and fly headlong towards you, making horrible, er, swordy noises as it lunges through the air. You – an arrow I guess – can vary your speed by pushing the mouse a lot or a little, but you can also dash out of harm’s way (or, more likely, into a…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020AI LOVE YOUIn hindsight, selecting a medieval sailor to join my landlocked team of colonists won’t make it onto Matt’s Big List of Brilliant Ideas. It’s not just the lack of sea that’s an issue – more Kenneth Holt’s refusal to cook. Or build. Or, indeed, perform any kind of skilled labour. He’s as much use on shore as a jellyfish stuffed inside a man-suit. Meanwhile, Zoe Castillo, my proactive, multi-talented ex-civil servant, is busy lugging sandbags, fashioning beds, and preparing meals for her ungrateful cohorts. I also have Seb, a punky coma child whose miserable history results in a boost to his social skills. Thanks, pity! Just as I’m contemplating a hard reset and starting again with a more balanced team, something wonderful happens. Castillo gets maimed fighting bandits (that’s not…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020TITAN SOULSThe last entry this month is apocalypse-adjacent. Titan Souls is a game full of ruined structures, which at least suggests someone somewhere built them before disappearing – or perhaps they were frozen by the inhabitants of said ruins. It’s like playing a puzzle game, with someone else’s severed hands. At first the success comes from just working out what to try before you get squashed. Firing off your lone arrow is an entirely different challenge and a full quiver looks like pure decadence. 82…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020BLAST OFF1 ROCKET The Falcon 9 rocket costs around $62 million. It uses liquid oxygen and rocket-grade kerosene. 2 LAUNCH A Falcon 9 performs another successful launch from the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida. 3 SATELLITES Sixty Starlink satellites ready for deployment from the Falcon 9 rocket above the Earth. 4 BOOSTER Falcon 9’s reusable booster section landing on the drone ship in May this year.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020ADVANCED BUILDMOTHERBOARD MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon WiFi MSI £260 A heady mix of enthusiast motherboard functionality and build quality that stops short of god-tier motherboard pricing. PROCESSOR Core i9 10900K Intel £529 If you want the fastest gaming CPU, look no further than Intel’s flagship Core i9. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition Nvidia £649 The RTX 3080 is the flagship graphics card of an entire new GPU generation. COOLER Kraken X63 NZXT £123 One of the most stunning AIO coolers rebuilt with an updated pump and, of course, RGB lighting for more pizzazz. MEMORY Vengeance RGB Pro 32GB DDR4 (2x16GB) @ 3,200 Corsair £176 If you truly want to show off, even your system memory should be aglow in RGB. POWER SUPPLY SuperNOVA 1000 G5 Gold EVGA £200 This…2 min
PC Gamer|December 2020“To be aware of Blaseball is to be made complicit in its existence”The line between being aware of Blaseball and participating in Blaseball is remarkably thin. In fact, just by reading this, it is possible you are part of Blaseball right now. As a simulated sport, it mimics the same cultural osmosis that typifies most real sports. After all, as anyone who doesn’t really like football much can attest, to simply be aware of football is to be made complicit in its existence. In its most base form, Blaseballis played through its website, where you can bet on the outcome of its simulated league games. You can pick a favourite team, and sit at your computer watching a play-by-play text feed describing each match. It is not unlike baseball: there are strikes and outs and foul balls and home runs. You can…2 min
PC Gamer|December 2020THE EVIL MANSIONI’ve watched more than one friend play through the original Resident Evil thanks to the wonders of game livestreaming, but I’ve yet to ever touch it or any other game in the series personally. I approach horror games much like I approach a cold pool: one toe at a time, with a horrible grimace on my face, before I scamper away to find a chair in the sun because I’m quite happy out here actually, thank you. Since Tamriel is undoubtedly one of my gaming happy places, it seems only right that I should experience Resident Evil firsthand as a giant Skyrim mod. The Evil Mansion (which has versions for both Skyrim Special Edition and traditional Skyrim) is a recreation of the Spencer Mansion complete with traps, respawning undead enemies,…7 min
PC Gamer|December 2020TEAM SPIRITPOLE POSITION An evenly-spread squad is important in most team games. So try not getting sucked into the melee in games like Fall Ball: your team needs defenders and goalies. GET GRABBY If you’re struggling to impact the round, or manipulate the ball in Rock ‘N’ Roll, it’s time to start playing dirty. Try to identify effective rival players, and get grabbing. GIANT KILLER In stages with three teams, target the winning one if you’re losing. In Egg Scramble or Hoarders, they’ll be spread too thinly to defend every ball or egg.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020HAUNTED HOUSERESIDENT EVIL 7 The Baker’s dilapidated mansion is one of the most well-paced and well-made sequences of any horror game. It’s a dreadful, rancid place filled with twisting passageways. P.T. This infamous demo for the never-to-be-released Silent Hills is a single, looping suburban hallway that packs in more scares than most games in their entirety. LAYERS OF FEAR Like Anatomy, Layers of Fear toys with you as you explore the ever-changing halls of the mansion where it’s set. Unlike Anatomy, Layers of Fear doesn’t go for subtlety.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020BIG GAME HUNTERMicrosoft has snared itself a huge acquisition, and is now the owner of ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks. This means The Elder Scrolls, Doom, Fallout, Dishonored, and Quake are under the Xbox umbrella. The deal set Microsoft back $7.5 billion, making it the second most expensive videogame acquisition in history – just behind Tencent’s purchase of Supercell for $8.6 billion. MICROSOFT HAS SNATCHED UP A PUBLISHER AND 13 STUDIOS “Bethesda’s games have always had a special place on Xbox and in the hearts of millions of gamers around the world,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox. “Our teams have a close and storied history working together, from the amazing first Doom, and its id Tech engine, innovating games on PCs to Bethesda bringing their first console game…2 min
PC Gamer|December 2020This month in… 20101 It’s possible you’re scratching your head, thinking, “Wait, which one was this?” After all, hundreds of Warhammer games are released every day – it can be hard to keep track. So: Dark Millennium was set to be an MMO in the 40K universe, but was still in development when THQ went bankrupt, and so never released. It is a grim, dark future after all. 2 “The failure to move the series on makes it feel a tiny bit stale,” wrote Craig in our 84 percent scoring Fallout: New Vegas review. How dare he criticise RPG perfection? 3 A reminder that at one point Popcap was the darling of the casual gaming sector. Plants vs Zombies and Peggle were both a) triumphs, and b) free from the predatory business practices…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME REMAKEThis remake of 2003 action-platforming classic Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is being built with Assassin’s Creed’s Anvil engine, which is a little ironic, because Assassin’s Creed was originally going to be a sequel to Sands of Time. “It’s the circle of life,” says senior producer Annu Koul. Koul works at Ubisoft Mumbai, which is building The Sands of Time Remake in tandem with Ubisoft Pune, where game director Pierre-Sylvain Gires is based. On top of a general graphical redo, the character animations from the original Sands of Time have been reenacted with mocap. “We decided to leverage motion capture, first of all, to enhance the cinematic parts with facial capture, to bring more emotion to them,” says Gires. RECREATING THE CHARMS OF THE ORIGINAL WITH MODERN TECHNIQUES…2 min
PC Gamer|December 2020CLOUD GARDENSThere’s something poetic about nature taking over urban spaces. The half-vegetation, half-concrete landscapes of games like The Last of Us and Nier: Automata possess an eerie beauty that’s far more appealing than your usual desolate wastelands. It’s like a glimpse into another time, one where the end of the world maybe doesn’t look so bad. Cloud Gardens developed by Noio is very much Team Plant in the post-apocalypse. It’s a calm gardening sim that celebrates how vegetation can reclaim the ruins of humanity. The empty steel and stone shells of forgotten buildings become the perfect playground for greenery to thrive and it’s your job to breathe new life into these gorgeous dioramas. Each vignette tasks you with covering the entire scene with lush vegetation by planting seeds and helping them…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020SHLOCK HORRORWhat’s the oldest horror game that can still make you jump today, or send that acidic tingle of unease up your spine? Dogs bursting through the windows in the original Resident Evil spring to mind, while the PC faithful may point to another glass-breaking moment – the first monster you encounter in the original Alone in the Dark. The last notable horror game before that, Sweet Home on the NES, probably finds itself just on the wrong side of the 1990s to maintain much impact today. But in that overlooked period between 1989 and 1992, a British studio in the quiet town of Sutton Coldfield made some serious horror headway. Adventure Soft, founded by father-son team Mike and Simon Woodroffe, rebranded itself as Horror Soft, and over the course of…7 min
PC Gamer|December 2020What the hellMost months I hardly get chance to play any of the games in this section before we go to print – I’m very much a catcher-upper in the world of PC gaming. But I’ve recently become obsessed with one of this issue’s top scorers: Hades. It’s consumed lunch breaks, weekends, and other blocks of time I should probably be spending with my loved ones. Is it because it’s the best effort yet from one of the industry’s most talented studios? Or is it because its story of desperate, perhaps futile struggle, told through the medium of endless repeating roguelike loops, resonates with my locked down, working-from-home existence? Well, I wouldn’t be so vain as to directly compare the production of this magazine to a grand mythological adventure, so I’ll just…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020This month’s super heroic reviewers…ROBERT ZAK Specialist in Infinity Gem drop rates Currently playing Marvel’s Avengers This month Saved the world, one randomised piece of loot at a time. TYLER WILDE Specialist in Headless screaming Currently playing Serious Sam 4 This month Dual-wielded a minigun and a missile launcher, and boy are his arms tired. JODY MACGREGOR Specialist in Sisyphean tasks Currently playing Hades This month Tried to escape an endlessly repeating hell. And in the game!!! TOM SENIOR Specialist in Threatening hairstyles Currently playing Necromunda: Underhive Wars This month Explored the world of grimdark megacity gang fashion. ANDY KELLY Specialist in Arthurian… stuff Currently playing Pendragon This month Got given a new keyboard by a lady in a lake. It’s even got RGB lighting. TOM SYKES Specialist in The forbidden itch.io pages Currently…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020AVENGERS SHOWDOWNHow does Lego Marvel’s Avengers stack up against Marvel’s Avengers? STORY Both do well here. Lego’s take does a great job retelling the best bits of the movies, but Marvel’s Avengers pushes the boat out to tell an all-new story, and lands it really well. Winner: Marvel’s Avengers CONTENT Lego’s vibrant open-world levels and split-screen co-op currently trump Marvel’s Avengers’ disappointingly bland and repetitive missions, and online-only multiplayer. Winner: Lego COMBAT Like most of its games Lego’s outing lacks some depth, while Marvel’s Avengers gets messy by mixing up its brawler genres. Neither is terrible, neither is great. Winner: Draw…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020AGENTS OF HUBRISAPHRODITE GODDESS OF LOVE Offers various ways to reduce enemy damage, hates wearing clothes. ZEUS KING OF THE OLYMPIANS Gives bolts of lightning to jolt foes; has a stormy temperament. ARTEMIS GODDESS OF THE HUNT Boosts your crits, seems to be pleased when you wield a bow. ATHENA GODDESS OF WISDOM Her boon that makes your dash deflect attacks is a lifesaver. ARES GOD OF WAR Gives gifts that improve your damage output and keeps count of all your kills.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020BULLET DANCERIdon’t know how many times I’ve found myself frozen by indecision, unable to decide whether I quite specifically want to play an FPS, a roguelike, or a rhythm game. OK, I doknow how many times – none – but now, that’s one less thing in life for me to worry about. Here, we have a game that forces these disparate genres into an unholy tryst, and the sweaty aftermath is as attractive as it is unnerving. Please, let me explain. The main hook is that the actions of your weapons, both firing and reloading, are tied into the synthtinged rock soundtrack. You need to act in time to the beat of the music. Try to shoot out of sync, and your gun jams. Attempt to reload outside of the beat,…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020GRINDING TO LEVEL 100BOARD A unicorn farting a rainbow with two more unicorns in front of it. Erm… What do you want us to say? Farting unicorns are tight? Maybe it’s supposed to be ironic or something. TAPE This is the absolute highest accolade when it comes to grip tape. It’s colourful tape that grips! Admire its gentle gradient from red to yellow throughorange. Amazing. HELMET Ladies and gentlemen, this is the fabled Triple 8 Sweatsaver helmet. It may look like a normal helmet but it’s a level 100 unlock. Get off your knees and get grinding. SHIRT This is the ‘I Love You, I’m Sorry Club Shirt’. It seems to say it in several languages. That’s all fine and dandy (and it’s very dandy) but isn’t a hoodie a whole lot more…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020ON THE CASEI’ve never had such a sense of freedom in a detective game as I’ve had in Paradise Killer. I explored its eco-brutalist structures, speculated and accused its hyper-eccentric characters at my own pace and without ever being pushed in a particular direction. During the final hour, I had to play prosecutor at a trial and use all of the evidence I’d gathered to nail the culprit of a brutal killing spree. As I went over my notes, I felt like I’d really accomplished something. That breadth of possibility is both exciting and nerve-wracking The premise takes some adjusting to: Paradise Killer takes place on a tropical island whose inhabitants worship alien gods and sacrifice humans in annual attempts to summon them. They’ve tried 24 times on 24 different islands and…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020TWIN SPEAKSIt’s maybe fitting that a game about twins feels split in two. On the one hand, a dark thriller with supernatural horror. On the other, a warm, coming of age drama about identity and family. Both these games have potential, but slammed together, like two colliding trains, they just leave players picking through wreckage. There are good pieces to recover from the pile, but it can’t help feeling fractured. What’s worth salvaging are bits and pieces, mostly from an engaging middle portion. Twins Tyler and Alyson are reunited for the first time in ten years since the death of their mother, who we’re told Tyler killed in self defence. Now they’re revisiting the family home and painful memories are coming back. Up front it’s also a story about Tyler’s identity…4 min
PC Gamer|December 2020PETTING BOOIt’s magic, the first time you play something that requires you to tinker about with its innards, as you delve into the game folder to affect changes inside the game. It’s a mechanic that’s been employed in plenty of indie, generally horror games – as an entity from inside begins to intrude upon the real world – and I always have time for such digital incursion, if it’s done well. Spooky visual novel A Pet Shop after Dark makes good use of it, though it’s on the more subtle side of things. It’s used for a string of clever puzzles rather than creepy taunting from a digi-spectre. In response to a job notice, you’ve arrived at a strange pet shop to feed the pets and water the plants, while being…2 min
PC Gamer|December 2020NUCLEAR THRONEThere’s something wonderful and desperate about the Steam reviews for Nuclear Throne. Endless lists of people who’ve spent thousands of hours chained to a game they love nonetheless. And even after a few minutes, it’s an easy compulsion to understand. It’s one of those games where every stumbling step forward feels like a triumph, where you’re spoonfed enough success to feel capable before you’re splattered by a projectile you should have seen coming. The way Nuclear Throne looks, and, more importantly, sounds, informs every bad decision you make, and before long everything is working in chaotic unison to deliver one of the most enjoyable roguelikes around. 89…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020GAMING LAPTOPSThe days of hulking, plastic-clad gaming laptops are over. Well, nearly over. You may find one or two behemoths undercover as ‘desktop replacements’, such as the Aorus 17X, complete with two power adapters. But beyond these fated few, you might be surprised by how much power comes in a small and sleek package nowadays. With an impossible quantity of models to choose from, shopping around for that perfect compact gaming laptop can often be an overwhelming experience. That’s why we regularly rustle up every major brand’s best and put them to the test, so that we can tell you which one is worth your cash. SINGLE OR DUAL-CHANNEL? You’ll only find out whether your device is equipped with dual or single-channel memory if you dive into the specs. It’s an…8 min
PC Gamer|December 2020BUDGET BUILDMOTHERBOARD B450-A Pro Max MSI £95 A healthy dose of ports and PCIe SSD support has this B450 at the heart of our budget build. PROCESSOR Ryzen 3 3300X AMD £115 AMD has packed its latest Zen 2 architecture into a speedy four-core package, and that’s great for gaming. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce GTX 1650 Super Gigabyte £165 The GTX 1650 Super is much more than a rebrand of the GTX 1650, securing it the budget crown. COOLER Wraith Stealth AMDFree with the CPU Gone are the days when a stock cooler was little more than a bonus paperweight. AMD’s Wraith Stealth delivers. MEMORY Vengeance 8GB DDR4 (2x4GB) Corsair £40 The new norm for gaming is 16GB, but dual-channel 8GB memory is enough to get by for most. POWER SUPPLY CX…2 min
PC Gamer|December 2020“There’s a real sense of space, of exploration, and of blissful isolation”As I reach the crest of the hill, a great swathe of rock-strewn slope falls away in front of me. There is nothing but empty landscape ahead. Silence. Despite the hefty weight laden on my back and shoulders, I exhale serenely. I am Sam Porter Bridges, Amazon courier-cum-internet repair guy, and I am alone. In real life, I genuinely cannot remember the last time I was completely solo for more than the hour or so it takes to make a grocery run or head out for a walk. Just like pretty much everybody else in the world, I’ve spent the past five months under varying degrees of lockdown – and while that’s meant minimal face-to-face time with anybody outside of my household, it’s also led to far more time spent…3 min
PC Gamer|December 2020MANSION MIRAGESMINECRAFT This build by MoltenPanther is a much bigger undertaking than you can tell from the entry hall. It’s a huge build that recreates a majority of the mansion in Minecraft’s chunky style. THE SIMS 4 Veronica55’sSims 4house may not be as spooky as the original, but it’s definitely decorated to suit the original mansion’s layout. Even the plant room makes an appearance. RESIDENT EVIL 4 A fan game project by Mr Curious rebuilds the Spencer Mansion in Resident Evil 4’s engine, complete with a moving camera instead of the fixed angles of the original.…1 min
PC Gamer|December 2020THE SUBTLE DOMESTIC DREAD OF ANATOMYWhen I was a kid there was nothing more terrifying than a dark basem*nt. I vividly remember the dread I’d feel having to go down into the darkness to fetch something, those awful steps between the edge of the upstairs light and the basem*nt light switch that loomed just in the darkness. Each time I’d head upstairs, I’d hit that switch and scramble for the steps – scared that whatever might be lurking in the darkness would grab me if I were too slow. That was all a funny memory to me as an adult, but then, a few years ago, I played Anatomy by indie game developer Kitty Horrorshow. All those fears came flooding back, and it took me weeks before I felt comfortable being alone in my own…4 min
PC Gamer|December 2020WARHAMMER 40K: SPACE MARINEMen are made into Swiss cheese, melted, chopped, and baked Looking back, my life divides cleanly into two distinct halves. Forget puberty, forget wrapping college, teaching high school, and moving across the US for a PC Gamer internship. Forget all those broken bones and all that kissing and crying. It’s just pre-Warhammer 40K James and post-Warhammer 40K James now. There’s old Gears-of-War’s-chainsawexecutions-are-incrediby-nasty James, and James, born again, who considers flinging around the arterial muck found within dissenters of the Space Marines an absolute, genuine art. It’s why a game like Space Marine (Chaos Marine sequel ASAP please), once disregarded as some action figure shooter cash-in, hits so well even all these years later. So many of us skipped right over a classic, but if your journey was like mine, I…6 min
PC Gamer|December 2020MUST PLAYKENTUCKY ROUTE ZERO kentuckyroutezero.com Part point-and-click adventure, part astral projection, Kentucky Route Zero tells the story of a group of wanderers as they travel across the roads of America’s lost highways. A surreal and dream-like journey that you won’t forget. It also got me into ambient whisperwave music, which makes me five percent cooler. CREAKS amanita-design.net Amanita Design has gone a little creepy with its newest miniature adventure. In Creaks, you explore a mansion solving its puzzle rooms and trying to avoid deadly furniture monsters. An eerie experience that still keeps the studio’s whimsical charm – and its will be stuck in your head for weeks. SHERLOCK HOLMES: CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS frogwares.com I love detective games, but for ages I overlooked the Sherlock Holmes series. I need to reevaluate my…2 min
