Home//PC Gamer/March 2023/In This Issue
PC Gamer|March 2023“THIS IS NO SIMPLE REMASTER OF THE SCI-FI HORROR CLASSIC”As a PC gamer since the early 1990s I couldn’t be more thrilled to see the iconic System Shock on the cover of this issue. And, after reading our detailed feature on the new game, I’m sure you’ll be just as excited, too. As this is no simple remaster of the sci-fi horror classic. Nightdive Studios has spent eight years upgrading the systems, gameplay, visuals and audio to modern standards, while also fighting to maintain what made the original game so beloved. It looks like it has succeeded, too, with SHODAN reborn in all its terrible glory. ROBERT JONES Twitter @rnicholasj This month Hired a bunch of dwarves to fortify PC Gamer Towers against raids by console gamers. The PC Gamer team RICK LANE Twitter @Rick_Lane This month Crushed skulls…1 min
PC Gamer|March 2023The SpyAdvertising is just a fact of life in the 21st century. Is it weird that the Spy’s secret HQ is sponsored by Phones 4U™? Sure. Is it annoying that all of The Spy’s missions are named things like ‘Operation: Phantom Blood, in association with Starburst™ Joosters™’? Absolutely – it makes the paperwork a nightmare. But with budget cuts being what they are, sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Even so, after a long day spent in The Little Chef ™ Debriefing Zone, the last thing The Spy wants to see when looking to unwind with Best Espionage Fails 2022 (Try Not To Laugh) on YouTube is a ten-minute sponsored promo for Raid: Shadow Legends. It just starts to get a bit much, you know? Clearly the amount of advertising being…3 min
PC Gamer|March 2023WRITE TURNToday, Graham Goring is a freelance writer working, alongside a few other devs, on a game of his own called Phantom Island (but a series of YA novels using the same name has triggered a search for a new title). He used to work at TT Games, and first entered the industry… “…[by speaking] to a stranger on the internet,” says Goring, “sort of the digital equivalent of getting into a white van”. He first started using the internet while at university in 1994; and John Pickford, of the Pickford brothers, was very active in one of the newsgroups Goring used to frequent. They kept in touch for several years. “Back in about 2000, I was pissed off with my current job, and made a new year’s resolution to…4 min
PC Gamer|March 2023GOURDLETSNEED TO KNOW RELEASE Coming soon DEVELOPER AuntyGames PUBLISHER In-house LINK bit.ly/3WmcBhO A fter the success of the town-building game Townscaper it’s no surprise that the genre is expanding. A city-building sandbox game, Gourdlets lets you design your own town tile by tile, then sit back and watch as it populates itself with adorable little vegetable-people who will explore and interact with your creations. There’s no goal in mind, you just build for the fun of building – a little like the joy of designing the perfect house in The Sims only to never bother with interacting with the Sims themselves. However, unlike Townscaper and The Sims in Gourdlets your creations will get to be used and lived in without any effort on your part. A constant trickle of tiny…3 min
PC Gamer|March 2023ZERO SIEVERTNEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY £17 DEVELOPER CABO Studio PUBLISHER Modern Wolf LINK modernwolf.net T his is it – this is the run. You’ve stocked up on ammo and bandages, medkits and bottles of water. You’ve bought a headlamp and fancy attachments for your favourite gun. Having met Zero Sievert – a top-down STALKER-like – on its own terms, you’ll finally last more than a minute before you… Bang. A single gunshot, issued by a bandit with a sniper rifle. Or, perhaps you stumble into a pack of wolves. It could be ghouls spitting acid, or deadly anomalies guarding expensive relics. Actually, it’s all of them, ending countless runs in Zero Sievert before they’ve even begun. Somehow, it’s taken this long for a game to truly channel the STALKER…7 min
PC Gamer|March 2023REVIEWHOW WE REVIEW We review each game on its own merits, and try to match it to a reviewer who’s a passionate expert in the field. The main aim of reviews is to help you make buying decisions. To this end, we’re selective about what we review, and try to focus on the notable, interesting, exciting or surprising. DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT DLC might be new missions for a game, or it might be a single new item. If we think you want to know about it, we’ll review it. EARLY ACCESS Any released alpha, beta, or otherwise unfinished game that you can currently pay for. For these games, we won’t assign a score, but we will tell you whether they’re worth your time. THEY’RE BACK Whenever there’s a bargain or re-release…2 min
PC Gamer|March 2023DIGGING DEEPOver 13 years playing Dwarf Fortress, I’ve seen my share of legends. I’ve witnessed one-armed dwarven generals strangle dragons as old as time. I’ve watched in horror as an artisan emerged from months trapped in the caves below my fortress halls, clinging to life just long enough to craft one last work. Now, I get to see Dwarf Fortress arrive on Steam, the colony sim’s emergent storytelling more approachable than it’s ever been. The ever-evolving life’s work of brother developers Tarn and Zach Adams, Dwarf Fortress is entering a new age, shedding its text-based graphics for proper pixels and the basic modernity of native mouse support. Still inscrutable Dwarf Fortress remains a treasure trove of procedural myth-making for those delving into it. At its most basic level, Dwarf Fortress is…8 min
PC Gamer|March 2023REAPING AND SOWINGThe problem with a game like Kynseed is that it’s nearly impossible to actually finish. That doesn’t mean there’s no end, just that there’s such a long time between when you start and when you could finish doing everything the game has to offer. It is a jam-packed game that combines life sim elements from Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley with Western RPGs like Fable and The Elder Scrolls, and it pulls both off pretty well. Full disclosure: my playthrough was marred by some user-caused technical difficulties which resulted in the deletion of my save file after completing the three-hour prologue. I’ve had to start the game twice, effectively. These issues should not show up in regular play for anyone else. I’m only mentioning them to provide context for…4 min
PC Gamer|March 2023HO HO HORRORFREE GAMES REVIEWS COOL TITLES FOR NO CASH A month of terror awaits you in Madvent Calendar 3: Necrosis. Well, terror and a bit of a comedy, and even heart-warming moments. It’s another bumper anthology by a gaggle of talented indie devs, who have come together to create 30 short, PS1-style games with a seasonal theme. After opening all 30 doors I’m going to talk about the highlights – and there are some truly impressive games buried in this gift heap. In The Drink might be my favourite, a Metroidvania where you pilot a submersible. The physics of the craft feel spot-on, and it’s a joy to explore its underwater sci-fi world, as you swiftly acquire abilities. Even though it’s only a few rooms big, it’s large…3 min
PC Gamer|March 2023CASTRO TURFTHEY’RE BACK OLD GAMES REVISITED There are lots of things about Black Ops that I adore for all the wrong reasons. I’m delighted that it doesn’t trust me to open a door by myself, but it’s happy for me to man a machine-gun turret. And I love that it takes itself so seriously that it’s disappeared entirely up its own bottom and reemerged, inside out, as the greatest comedy game ever made. The subject matter, of course, isn’t funny at all. It’s a buffet of suffering and gulags; a symphony of gruff knuckles running through crossfire while shouting things I’ll never understand. I don’t speak war, game. You may as well be asking me to perform open heart surgery on an emu. And while I’m sure that people at…3 min
PC Gamer|March 2023EXTERNAL CAPTURE CARDSThe best capture card is the secret weapon in every content creator’s arsenal. It lets you easily capture or stream game video from your console, PC, or camera without prying open your PC. The beauty of these devices is that they are all external and plug in via USB 3.0 or USB Type-C. This gives them a lot of versatility. The best part? They are all compatible with popular 3rd party streaming software like xSplit and OBS. I understand the temptation to want a 4K capture card, but we recommend you grab one with 1080p/60fps as your max resolution and frame rate. The reason is that 4K video files are huge, and streaming in 4K brings various bandwidth issues. There’s no point in paying all that money to produce something…7 min
PC Gamer|March 2023BUDGET BUILDMOTHERBOARD B660M Pro RS ASRock £115 This is as cheap as we want to go while still offering room for expansion and upgrades down the line. PROCESSOR Core i5 12400F Intel £170 There’s no iGPU on this chip but it’s a little cheaper as a result, and will work great for this particular build. GRAPHICS CARD Radeon RX 6600 AMD £256 AMD’s RX 6600 has become a budget champ for its affordable price and great 1080p performance. COOLER Laminar RM1 (included with CPU) Intel £0 There’s room for an upgrade here, but on a budget the included CPU will work just fine. MEMORY Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Corsair £39 You could bump this to 16GB, but to save as much as possible we’ll stick to 8GB. POWER SUPPLY…1 min
PC Gamer|March 2023“I literally cannot make you a bottle of explosion potion, sir”CONTINUED ADVENTURES IN GAMING After playing its demo the first time, I said that Potion Craft cured my crafting woes and that’s still my sentiment now that it’s fully launched. Because carefully smashing up a Lifeleaf just the right amount so I can create a level three Potion of Wild Growth instead of a minor one is a lot more enjoyable than clicking a button that says “craft” after I’ve got the right number of herbs sitting in my inventory. Potion Craft turns crafting into a tricky art form instead of the ingredient gathering and refining checklists that I’ve gotten so weary of. Truthfully, Potion Craft isn’t a crafting game at all. Not in the way everyone’s gotten used to thinking about them, anyhow. It’s actually a strategic exploration game.…3 min
PC Gamer|March 2023“Trying to explain what ‘terminal damage’ means to a four year old”NOW PLAYINGTHE GAMES WE LOVE RIGHT NOW I t turns out that Dirt Rally 2 operates a 50% extra free childcare offer for every race you do. Spend ten minutes racing with your child on your knee, cross the finish line and then they can merrily watch the replay for a further ten minutes. In that time you can make tea, read the weather forecast, or even lock yourself in the bathroom for a quick pep talk in the mirror. Fatherhood doesn’t come naturally, but my gaming career did naturally evaporate once I had kids. With my eldest now four years old (and obsessed with anything with four wheels) I figured it was time to try to return to gaming, in a way that wouldn’t involve shooting, swearing, or a…2 min
PC Gamer|March 2023RUSSIAN TO CATCH UPNEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT The war in Ukraine has made Russia an international pariah, and begun a period of isolation that to many looks like Cold War 2.0. It’s fair to speculate that this is not the outcome Russia was expecting and, with no end to the war in sight, it is looking to shore-up those domestic areas that have been badly affected, one of which is tech, videogames, and “digital sovereignty”. There have been various initiatives, most of which have suffered sudden encounters with the real world. Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising plan was for a state-funded Russian ‘national game engine’ to compete with the likes of Unreal Engine. This was announced with typical bravado, backing from major Russian tech companies like Rostelecom, and Pravda-like promises that domestic developers…2 min
PC Gamer|March 2023Incoming3 months HOGWARTS LEGACY DEVELOPER February 10, 2023 | PUBLISHER Avalanche Software Live as a student at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in this expansive RPG set a hundred years before the events of the Harry Potter series. COMPANY OF HEROES 3 DEVELOPER February 23, 2023 | PUBLISHER Relic Entertainment This WWII RTS looks epic and, after a series of delays, is finally launching. Gamers will take up command in the Italian and North African theatres of war. SONS OF THE FOREST DEVELOPER February 23, 2023 | PUBLISHER Endnight Games Ldt The new game from the maker of cult survival horror classic The Forest, Sons of the Forest sees you fight to survive in a cannibal-infested hellscape. 6 months STAR WARS JEDI: SURVIVOR DEVELOPER March 17, 2023 |…2 min
PC Gamer|March 2023PARK BEYONDNEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2023 DEVELOPER Limbic Entertainment PUBLISHER Bandai Namco LINK bit.ly/3ZbrWnd F rom Theme Park, through Rollercoaster Tycoon, and on to Planet Coaster, PC gaming has always been the true home of theme park management games. And 2023 is going to see that lineage continue, with Limbic Entertainment’s Park Beyond looking to take theme park management simulators to a new level, both in terms of fun and craziness. PARK MANAGERS EARN ACCESS TO THE BIG MARQUEE FEATURE OF ‘IMPOSSIFICATION’ As a firm fan of theme park management games, I sat down with Park Beyond’s creative director, Johannes Reithmann, to learn how the developer was attempting to push the boundaries of the genre and get a closer look at how the game is shaping up. Take one look at…6 min
PC Gamer|March 2023SHOCK THERAPYN ightdive Studios’ remake of System Shock has been in development for almost eight years. Originally announced in 2015, it’s had a longer development cycle than both existing System Shock games combined, and that includes the gap between them. But Nightdive’s long-incubated cyber-baby is finally preparing for birth, with release currently scheduled for March this year. Yet what kind of remake are we getting after all this time, and how does the final version compare to Nightdive’s original vision? “VERSUS WHAT WE HAVE NOW, IT’S AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT GAME” “The game that we’re going to be launching soon, is the game that I think we were all dreaming of making, but that we didn’t initially set out to make.” Stephen Kick, co-founder of Nightdive Studios and co-director on System Shock.…8 min
PC Gamer|March 2023Making moneyAs highlighted in this issue’s Special Report (see p12), Dwarf Fortress has sold half a million copies since launching as a paid for game on Steam. That’s monumental success for its maker Bay 12 Games. It’s also richly deserved, too, with over 20 years of dedicated game development properly rewarded. This is the sort of indie success story we love to see here at PC Gamer. As our review shows, though, while the upgraded Dwarf Fortress does offer PC gamers the most accessible way yet to jump into its world, it is not perfect, and there’s plenty of room for the developers to improve it even more. But, that’s the great thing, right? It’s clear Dwarf Fortress’ development is far from over, and I for one can’t wait to see…1 min
PC Gamer|March 2023CRISIS COR!In lesser hands the nostalgia unleashed by Crisis Core would be nothing more than another case of Remembering Things: The Game. But Crisis Core doesn’t wallow in the past. The story of Zack Fair and Crisis Core’s many other new characters bring with them fresh perspectives, sometimes clarifying old and muddily written plot threads, sometimes adding further intrigue to events that seemed clear-cut and fully explained the first time around. Zack’s an easy character to like. He begins Crisis Core with an excitable attitude, although this ignorant positivity subtly matures over the course of the game. His zest for life not diminished but reframed as a personal defiance of his increasingly harsh reality. The re-recorded and vastly expanded voice acting is emotive for serious lines about personal legacies and one-off…4 min
PC Gamer|March 2023STATE OF DERELIXIONGenre-hopping from the skirmishes of Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus to the automated production chains, developer Bulwark comes up with a compelling premise: what do you do when your experimental vessel accidentally dislodges a chunk of the moon, ending humanity’s existence on Earth? But the migration from squad-based tactics to colony administration and trauma management comes with a cavalcade of technical hiccups. You would think that, with so much Greek nomenclature going around, someone would have bothered double-checking the brand on whose hands the future of humanity rests. You see, Dolos, the name both of the company that funds your ambitious endeavour into space and the CEO whose philanthropic proclamations sound fishy even before catastrophe strikes, means ‘malice’ in Greek, which, in retrospect, paints the ‘accident’ that nearly wipes out the species…8 min
PC Gamer|March 2023FROG CHORUSFREE GAMES REVIEWS Playing Lighthouse of the Dead, I realise I’ve played a lot of lightgun games – and I miss them. I’m not sure they would gel with today’s photorealistic, serious military shooters, but the industry of about 20 years ago was the perfect environment to point a plastic gun at your TV. Lighthouse of the Dead takes me back to those days: of cheesy B-movie storylines, vivid colour palettes, and polygons the size of tortilla chips. It has all those things, but it also has the feel of the classic lightgun games: the smooth, on-rails camera movement, the satisfying weaponry, and the enemies that bound towards you, getting right up in your grill. Taking its cues from House of the Dead, Lighthouse offers a similar journey through a…1 min
PC Gamer|March 2023GRAY OF LIGHTIt’s always tricky when this column includes a game for a laughably flippant reason and it ends up being something genuinely tragic. This month’s tonal misstep is Gris, a game picked because I decided the theme was ‘colours’, which turns out to be a striking examination of grief. Whoops. The good news is that it’s also a game that lets you turn into a big box and smash things, and nobody could be sad about that. The column is saved! It’s perhaps also a reflection of just how beautiful Gris is. Few people would glance at its elegant, pastel landscapes and think, ‘well this is going to be emotionally pummelling!’ Gris is almost disarmingly pretty, especially since it’s dealing with something so grim. It’s like finding out that Journey is…1 min
PC Gamer|March 2023HANDS OFFPC gaming has enjoyed an established control standard for long enough now that it’s actually become ingrained somewhere, deep in the folds of our grey matter. Place your hands on a mouse and keyboard and one will instinctively hover over WASD while the other perches on your mouse, index finger ready to left-click on a hair trigger. But it took a long time for computing to reach an enduring input method – and the effort to usurp the mouse and keyboard has never stopped. Most obviously, the gamepad has managed to muscle its way in, visiting from console land and showing us all a method of interacting with sports, racing and action games that’s very hard to argue with. The dominant controller on PC is usually the one from the…5 min
PC Gamer|March 2023MID-RANGE BUILDMOTHERBOARD B660M Mortar WiFi MSI £180 This MSI board delivers everything we need in a compact package and allows us to use much cheaper DDR4 memory. PROCESSOR Core i5 12400 Intel £170 Intel’s 11th Gen was at its best on a budget, and that’s why this six-core/12-thread processor is a great fit for this build. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Ed. Nvidia £369 The RTX 3060 Ti is a little overkill but we’re willing to make sacrifices elsewhere to make it work. COOLER Laminar RM1 (included with CPU) Intel £30 Intel bundles a redesigned CPU cooler with some 12th Gen processors. This little chip chiller will serve us well for a while. MEMORY Ballistix 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB) Crucial £75 With plenty of capacity at 16GB, this unembellished memory…2 min
PC Gamer|March 2023“Dystopian future uber-violence”NOW PLAYING THE GAMES WE LOVE RIGHT NOW I bought Warhammer 40,000: Darktide on day one and, after perusing the four character classes available, opted for the religiously fanatical Zealot. Unfortunately, I was soon praying for death, and not just for that of the heretical mutant horde I was tasked to eliminate. I didn’t even get through Darktide’s introductory prologue before I experienced the first of what would be so many crashes that I lost count. Darktide crashed in the game lobby where you selected your missions, it crashed in-mission, and it even crashed while missions were loading. Darktide crashed as I bludgeoned Poxwalkers with my Thunder Hammer, it crashed as I unloaded my blessed Bolt Gun into a rampaging Beast of Nurgle, and it crashed as I…2 min
PC Gamer|March 2023FINAL FANTASY XIVF inal Fantasy XIV’s first grand story arc may be over, but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of our Warrior of Light’s journey. Patch 6.3 – Gods Revel, Lands Tremble – continues to set up the next grand narrative adventure with a dash of dungeoneering. Those familiar with the MMO’s expansion cycle will see there aren’t many surprises here for what’s new to do. New story quests mean a new dungeon to explore, and this time it’s off to the distant mountains of snowy Garlemald for Lapis Manalis. It’s very heavy on the lore for reapers, Final Fantasy XIV’s newest DPS class. It’s also home to a giant goth mummy boss, one who captured my heart when the dungeon was first revealed. It’s as if Square Enix knows my…4 min
PC Gamer|March 2023GET STARTED IN THE WITCHER 3 NEXT-GEN UPDATE1 ALL-CHEMICAL Healing is vital, so your first priority should be to craft the Swallow potion. You can also purchase White Raffard’s Decoction from the Herbalist northeast of Oxenfurt later on, which provides instant healing. Be sure to loot Alcohest where possible. 2 ESSENTIAL OILS Blade oils are easy to craft and give you a 10% attack bonus against different types of monster. They also have an unlimited number of uses – simply drag them onto your silver sword to apply. If you’re unsure of what type of oil to use, check the bestiary. 3 BLOWING UP Bombs can be used to explode monster nests, netting you loot, and that alone makes them a vital craft. Once you face werewolves in Velen, you’ll find the Moon Dust…3 min
PC Gamer|March 2023PARRIESWHY I LOVE WHAT MAKES GAMES SPECIAL You’ve been given the impossible task of trying to improve on one of the most iconic and influential games of all time: Resident Evil 4. Sure, you can make it look prettier, but if you’re going to the trouble of a full remake, you need to add something to make one of the greatest games ever better. In a genius move, Capcom made the decision to add the single greatest game mechanic ever conceived to Leon’s arsenal – a parry. Suddenly RE4 has gone from a remake with a hill to climb to a masterpiece in its own right! OK, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but to me a parry represents the cream of the crop of combat mechanics. I…4 min
PC Gamer|March 2023ONIREINSTALL OLD GAMES, NEW PERSPECTIVES Oni is not, in its entirety, a particularly good game. It just so happens to contain one or two great things. Released just ten months before a true landmark game, Halo: Combat Evolved, it paints a picture of astonishing innovation in such a short period of time. Oni feels half rooted in the games of the previous decade, Tomb Raider especially, while Halo would go on to usher a new definition of what mainstream action games could be. On the face of it, Oni is a clear Ghost in the Shell knockoff, an attempt to capture the essence of the 1995 anime classic. It isn’t really successful at all, evoking neither the melancholy tone or its dense, fully realised world, nor transporting the film’s…7 min
PC Gamer|March 2023FORTUNE FOUNDSpecial Report PCG INVESTIGATES Acclaimed indie colony/existence sim Dwarf Fortress launched on Steam on December 6, 2022, and within hours the PC’s most famously complex game had 2,000 positive reviews. Someone on the Steam forums asked if all the people reviewing the game on Steam after launch had been “playing free DF for 25 years and just waiting for an opportunity to pay $30?”. A week later, nearly every post in the 253 page thread was someone answering, “Yes.” Other game developers gushed about Dwarf Fortress and its influence on launch day. Publisher Kitfox Games tweeted that Dwarf Fortress had blown past its predicted two-month sales figure in less than 24 hours. In less than a week Dwarf Fortress sold around 300,000 copies, developer Tarn Adams told PC Gamer.…5 min
PC Gamer|March 2023WARHAMMER 4OK: ROGUE TRADERNEED TO KNOW RELEASE TBC DEVELOPER Owlcat Games PUBLISHER In-house LINK roguetrader.owlcat.games F ootfall Station is an Imperial outpost on the edge of the Koronus Expanse, a wild sector of frontier space that I plan to tame as a newly minted Rogue Trader. Before we arrive at Footfall, however, one of my tech-priests asks a question. Do I want to be greeted with the formality my title deserves? Or do I want to enter the station incognito? Frankly, I’m insulted by the question. I’m a bloody Rogue Trader! I’m a one-man East India Company, given special warrant by the Imperium to explore uncharted space, expand its borders and milk the colonies I establish for everything they’re worth. In the callous meat-grinder of the Imperium, I’m one of the few allowed…7 min
PC Gamer|March 2023THE PLANET CRAFTERNEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY £15 DEVELOPER Miju Games PUBLISHER In-house LINK mijugames.com S ome games send you to alien planets so you can fantasise about being Luke Skywalker, or a terribly lost John Rambo. This one, however, is all about turning a barren and fiercely inhospitable landscape into somewhere you could feasibly sell lawnmowers. Well, not that goal specifically, but you get the idea. It’s a first-person game, but the closest thing to a gun is the device you use to harvest resources, and there’s no combat, or enemies of any kind. There’s a story that’s still in the process of being added – it seems I’ve committed some sort of (presumably) hideous crime – tax evasion, probably – and have chosen to be sent to terraform a…3 min
PC Gamer|March 2023THE COSIEST GAMES ON PCA Short Hike RELEASED July 30, 2019 | DEVELOPER adamgryu | PUBLISHER In-house With freedom to explore and extremely low stakes, this game about a young bird searching for mobile signal atop a mountain is the purest definition of cosy. The Peak Provincial Park where Claire and her aunt May retreat to to escape the city is a gorgeous playground of peaks to climb, winds to ride and secrets to find as you wander to and fro. To reach the top you’ll need to make friends with your fellow holidaymakers so they can give you the tools you need to ascend Hawk Peak. While your aim is to reach the top, there’s no pressure to get there so you can set your own pace. It’s nice to meander down the…9 min
PC Gamer|March 2023This month’s rogue-like reviewers…PHIL IWANIUK Specialist in TikTok Pixies covers Currently playing Need for Speed Unbound This month Drove around corners at naughty speeds in a pimped out whip. LINCOLN CARPENTER Specialist in Growing dwarf beards Currently playing Dwarf Fortress This month Partook in drinking games with a bunch of equally hairy dwarves. KERRY BRUNSKILL Specialist in Hugging Zack Fair Currently playing Crisis Core This month Busted Shinra-funded abominations with the Buster Sword. KAILE HULTNER Specialist in Dancing with fairies Currently playing Kynseed This month Lived in a shoe with an old woman, chatted with a rabbit-like fairy called Mr Fairweather. MATT ELLIOT Specialist in Colour coded games Currently playing Call of Duty: Black Ops This month Tried to learn how to speak the noble art of war while everything exploded around him.…1 min
PC Gamer|March 2023SHUT UPEdge magazine once famously lamented that we couldn’t talk to the monsters. Well, a paw from a monkey the size of King Kong must have curled a finger somewhere, because High on Life had me begging for the monsters to shut their flapping gobs. The last year was generally one in which videogames talked too much. High on Life takes this trend to its extreme, with a case of verbal diarrhoea so acute it’s at risk of suffering a prolapsed face. If you’re sat there thinking, “Well, duh. It’s a game developed by the studio co-founded by the co-creator of Rick and Morty, of course there’s a lot of talking,” let me stop you right there. Rick and Morty is a 20-minute cartoon where Justin Roiland’s fast-stammering style is (usually)…8 min
PC Gamer|March 2023FAST AND LOOSEThere was a time when Need for Speed was as guaranteed a Christmas number one spot as a Simon Cowell reality show winner. Before there was Forza Horizon, all festivals and physics, there was this. A Fast and Furious analog with spoilers on its spoilers, every year exactly the same super-accessible arcade racer about underground tuner culture and corrupt cops. And we didn’t care that it was as formulaic as the aforementioned contest winner’s carefully selected Leonard Cohen cover. Until one day, finally, we did. Need for Speed grew too big and popular to sustain itself. The sales were too good for EA to start tinkering with the formula, but the yearly releases oversaturated us with beamers in widebody kits and stories of betrayal told exclusively through the medium of…9 min
PC Gamer|March 2023DUST TO DUSTI’ve played plenty of games that use a VHS filter to create a found-footage atmosphere, but Vergilius might be the first to look like a roll of 8mm film. That is, flickery and jumpy and in a square ratio. It creates a very different mood, evoking silent movies. Vergilius does feel like a silent movie – an expressionist horror movie, as you traipse around a vivid dreamscape under a churning sky. These are some of the best clouds in games, convincingly filtering sunlight even as they roil like the beginning of a storm. I spent a lot of time wondering how the effect was done. We’ve wandered into walking sim territory, so all you really do here is explore and absorb a desert environment: the clouds, the horizon, the scattered…1 min
PC Gamer|March 2023KNIGHT LINEThere are two reasons for including Rogue Legacy. The first, which is admittedly a stretch, is that the name is two switched letters away from matching Gris as a French word for a colour. The second is that it’s a reflective examination on the nature of lineage, with monsters. It’s strangely easy to forget the specifics of Rogue Legacy after being away for a while. I remember jaunty medieval music, waving massive swords and a series of disappointing scions. But I’d forgotten how quick and brutal it can be: many early runs end in minutes, but my abiding recollection is of a game I played for hours. But the way it handles progression is magnificent. At times it feels like you’re crawling naked towards your goal through a minefield of…1 min
PC Gamer|March 2023BREAK STUFFThe worst one, you understand, was the Asus graphics card. A review unit. The only one in the country, worth a bomb. The UK PR guy literally drove it from one publishing house to another, because absolutely no way was it to be trusted with a courier. No offence, DPD, but this thing had about nine trillion compute units. I still don’t know why it broke while it was in my possession. We rarely get to the bottom of it, do we? When something starts to smoke or pops or emits a grotesque noise or makes Windows melt, we’re rarely offered any kind of closure. We dredge the forums for a few days, reading through the misadventures of people who had similar but frustratingly not quite the same issue we’re…5 min
PC Gamer|March 2023ADVANCED BUILDMOTHERBOARD MPG Z790 Carbon WiFi MSI £530 This MSI motherboard brings the latest chipset to bear without going overboard on excessive features. PROCESSOR Core i9 13900K Intel £589 This is the best all-round processor money can buy. It’s a little overkill, but that’s what this build is all about. GRAPHICS CARD GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Ed Nvidia £1,699 The RTX 4090 is immense, in every way. The performance it offers is unmatched by any GPU out there. COOLER Kraken X63 NZXT £123 One of the most stunning AIO coolers rebuilt with an updated pump, LGA 1700 bracket, and RGB lighting for more pizzazz. MEMORY Trident Z5 RGB G.Skill £421 This is a new memory standard for a new era of memory speed. DDR5 is blisteringly and fantastically quick. POWER SUPPLY…2 min
PC Gamer|March 2023“My second murder investigation is even more harrowing”T his is gonna be a Mission Impossible laser tripwire deal when it comes to spoilers, but I think I’m up for it. I’m finally back to finish Obsidian’s detective story/slice of life, Pentiment. It’s been about a week or so in real life, but 20 years have passed in-game. I started Pentiment while on my first vacation in years, and at first I thought these gorgeous Bavarian pastures and accommodating, God-fearing country folk would perfectly complement my chilled out vibe. But its gorgeous illuminated manuscript art belies the most stressful, emotionally taxing game Obsidian has ever made. Seriously, it’s a next generation advancement on the Obsidian house style that produced dingers like Arcade and Veronica’s endings in New Vegas. None of the people you can potentially finger for the…2 min
PC Gamer|March 2023WARDEN OF THE COASTMOD SPOTLIGHT MAJOR MODS, ANALYSED I f you were to imagine what happens when you combine Skyrim with Mass Effect, you probably come up with a bunch of Bethesda characters in space: Starfield, in other words. But Mass Effect offers players something besides sci-fi spaceships blasting through the galaxy: it also gives you a bunch of squadmates you can take with you on your adventures, chat and flirt with in your downtime, and personal quests that let you get to know their personalities and histories more deeply. That’s the part of Mass Effect a Skyrim Special Edition mod called Warden of the Coast is most trying to replicate. It adds a group of nuanced characters you get to know and care about through a shared adventure. The mod…8 min
PC Gamer|March 2023BUILDING EVERY BUILDING IN CITIES: SKYLINESPART IIDIARY PERSONAL ADVENTURES IN GAMES W hen I last left off my attempt to build every building in Cities: Skylines, I had established a modest yet thriving town (despite several forest fires and one devastating earthquake). I had also sorely underestimated just how many buildings there are in Colossal Order’s metropolitan megahit, especially when you add all the official expansions into the mix. Naturally, my first job for this month was to add even more buildings into the game, via the content creator packs. For those unfamiliar with Skylines’ vast library of expansions, alongside the major DLC created by Colossal Order itself (such as After Dark, Green Cities, Sunset Harbour and so forth) is a range of secondary DLC that features user-created content. This includes new structures themed around…9 min
PC Gamer|March 2023MUST PLAYLAUREN AITKEN THE WITCHER 3: COMPLETE EDITION thewitcher.com The Witcher 3 got a recent next-gen update, making the GOAT even better. Cross-progression is now possible for the first time, but by far the greatest feature is being able to toggle between the regular and god-awful ballsack Nilfgaardian armour from the Netflix show. CIVILIZATION 6 civilization.com The latest update adds even more leaders, so why aren’t you playing Civ 6 right now? If Crusader Kings III or Vicky 3 seem too daunting, then consider picking up another turn-based Firaxis banger to get your strategy fix. Or keep playing Civ 5, I’m not your mum. LEGO STAR WARS: THE SKYWALKER SAGA starwars.com Lego Star Wars has voice actors from the Clone Wars TV series in it, which makes it essential viewing. There…2 min
