PC Gamer - December 2015 USA
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BUYER’S GUIDGET THE RIGHT GAMIN
PC FOR YOUR BUDGE
CONTROLLERS RATED!
FROM STAR WARSTO EVE ONLINE
HUGE 2016
METAL GEARSOLID V
2015’S GAMEOF THE YEAR?
REVIEWED
REVIEWEDSTAR WARS BATTLEFRONT / EITR
ANNO 2205 / DARK SOULS III
MIRROR’S EDGECATALYST
DARK SOULS IIIHITMAN + MORE
20BEST SPACE
GAMES
PC GAMEPADSREVIEWED
Issue 272
DECEMBER
2015
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Changing gearsMetal Gear Solid V is a game with suchdetailed customization options thateven a tranquilizer gun has an entireupgrade path. This stealth sandboxsequel feels like a PC-style game in a lot
of ways. It has more in common withthe likes of Deus Ex and Hitman thanprevious entries in the series, offeringplayers choices as to how to approachits completely open missions. For me,it’s become a full-on military Pokémon game of extracting soldiers from the battlefield. What a great way to start the busiest time of year for games.
T A L K T OP C G A M E R
Have your say!Tweet us
@PCGamer
E V A N L A H T I
E D I T O R - I N - C H IE Fe v a n . l a h t i @ f u t u r e n e t . c o m
@ e l a h t i
#272 DECEMBER 2015
PC GAMER (ISSN 1080 -4471) is published 13 times a year, monthly plus Holiday issue following December issue by Future US, Inc., 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 4 00, South San Francisco, CA 94080. Phone: (650) 872-1642. Fax (650) 872-2207. Website: www.futureus.com. Periodicals postage paid in San Bruno, CAand at additional mailing ofces. Newsstand distribution is handled by CurtisCirculation Company. Basic subscription rates (12 issues) US: Digital $23.88; Print $19.95; Canada: Digital $23.88; Print $29.95; Intl: Digital $23.88; Print $39.95. Canadian and foreign orders must be prepaid, US funds only. Canadian priceincludes postage and GST #R128220688. PMA #40612608. Subscriptions do not include newsstand only specials. POSTMASTER: Send changes of address to PC Gamer, PO Box 5852, Harlan, IA 51593-1352. Standard Mail Enclosure in the following edition: None. Ride-Along Enclosure in the following editions: None.Returns: Pitney Bowes, PO Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2, Canada. Future US, Inc. also publishes Mac|Life, Maximum PC, and The Ofcial Xbox Magazine. Entire contents copyright 201 5, Future US, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited. Future US, Inc. is not afliated with the companiesor products covered in PC Gamer. Reproduction on the Internet of the articles and pictures in this magazine is illegal without the prior written consent of PC Gamer. Products named in the pages of PC Gamer are trademarks of their respective companies. PRODUCED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. We encourageyou to recycle this magazine, either through your usual household recyclable wastecollection service or at a recycling site.
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11 SENDYour letters on PC gaming matters.
Monitor12 THE TOP STORY
Guild Wars 2 goes free-to-play.
14 THE SPYWhat’s next for the Dark Souls series?
Previews16 Mirror’s Edge Catalyst18 Hitman20 Stellaris24 Tacoma
32 Dark Souls III34 The Last Night36 Cuphead
Features38 The Top 20 Space GamesFromTIE Fighter toEVE Online .
44 Windows 10Get started with your new OS.
Reviews50 Metal Gear Solid V:
The Phantom Pain56 Mad Max60 Volume62 Final Fantasy Type-0 HD66 Satellite Reign68 Beyond Eyes70 Shadowrun Hong Kong72 Pillars of Eternity: The White
March—Part I74 Act of Aggression
Extra Life76 NOW PLAYINGWhat the PC Gamer team is playing.
80 TOP 10 DOWNLOADSThe best free stuff around the web.
84REINSTALLIsMafia II worth revisiting?
Hardware88 GROUP TESTControllers reviewed this issue.
R E V I E WContents #272D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5
20STELLARISThe creators ofCrusaderKings II take to the stars inthis impressive space-setstrategy game. Here’s ourdetailed first look.
44WINDOWS 10How to customize and installyour brand new operatingsystem, and make sure yourinformation is going whereyou want it to.
88HARDWAREControllers are reviewed inthis month’s supertest,including the DualShock 4,the Xbox One controller andlots more.
20
88
44
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U S E R R E V I E W SMetal Gear Solid V
It makes me so sad tsee my fave saga godown with open-worcrap and stupidrepetitive fetch
quests... I hate it.CarlosHow is life inbackwards world?Are we handsomethere?
MGSV: ThePhantom Pain . Thebee’s knees.JorgenThe bee’s kneesaren’t inMGSV .You’re thinking ofMGS3 .
Blacklight
Retribution , best FPgame I’ve played sofar and I can say it wbe holding the spotfor a long time.ZenzoGlad you’re enjoyingit! Also, we justremembered that itexists.
Shadow of Mordoloving it so far!Surprisingly greatstress relief.CocoJackoStabbable orcs: thesqueezy stress ballof our time.
Life is Strange isone of the best gameexperiences Irecently had. Wellwritten and full oftension.GapbrickIf we could turn bactime,NOLF wouldhave a sequel.
Diablo III , the 2.3patch makes it funagain. Also goingthrough Pillars of
Eternity again.MichaelDo you dream froman isometricperspective?
SEND
Windows rageI’ve held back on upgrading
to Windows 10 for a while now but I
finally took the plunge this month.
At first all was promising,
everything seemed to work and it
looked quite nice. It was after a few
hours that the niggles started to
happen, my monitors went into sleep
mode and I was unable to get them
out. Even more infuriating was when I
fired upGTAV . It took an age to getgoing, I started to get graphical
glitches and if I tabbed out then the
screen resolution changed. This was
increasing my PC rage-o-meter, to a
point where I almost reverted back to
8.1. I said ‘almost’ because another
update has alleviated some of the
niggles. All in all I’m glad I updated,
but others need to be aware that
there will be issues.
Regards,Noel Draper
It was ever thus with new operatingsystems. The best we can hope for
is ‘not a complete disaster’. PCG
Top 100: the overlookedI fully understand the ocean of PCgames you had to wade through tochoose only 100. But I must point outa few games I feel that you mighthave overlooked.
I feel the original Quake played akey role in what we expect after we
beat our FPS, bringing forth some
serious game mods changing how thegame looked and felt.
EverQuest , aka EverCrack. Thisgame not only met the standard forMMORPGs at the time, it set a newstandard. Without it, would WoW bethe same game as it is now? Thisgame could suck a year of your lifeaway and you would have thought
only a month had passed. Alone inthe Dark . Wow, did this game giveme goose bumps when it came out.This game had it all, for 1992, with itssupernatural zombie infestedhaunted house.
Where are the racing games? Theoriginal NFS or Demolition Derby games? Why were racing simulatorsand arcade style games overlooked?Car guys are PC gamers too.
Thank you for considering mysuggestions. And if you have a spot onthe page, shout out my gamercommunity, prismGN.enjin.com. Wetackle the headache of hosting Early
Access games. Retired Army Purple Heart Recipient,CPL Marcum, StephenThe PCG Top 100 is a cross-section
of our personal views and interests atthe time we write it, it’s not meant to
be all-encompassing. Trying to make
a list that objectively accounts for
every taste is impossible, so we go
with what we know instead. Good
suggestions, however! PCG
Disc drives?I am a subscriber to PC Gamer and Ienjoy your magazine very much. Oneof my favorite parts of the magazineis the hardware buyer’s guide whichis very informative in helping buy the
best new PC components. Howeverthe reason for this email is a gripe.Why, out of all the components, isthere no DVD drive listed orrecommended? Even in 2015 and inthis digital age, most gamers do stilluse CD/DVD gaming discs, andIwould love to see a picture of onerecommended by you. Kevin
There’s no drive listed because
they’re cheap and there’s rarely much
difference in quality. Discs are also
becoming less relevant: theMGSV
disc, for example, just has a Steaminstaller on it. Thank you for the
feedback, though, Kevin, and we’re
glad you enjoy the magazine. PCG
W I N N E R !
The Windows 10 house, asseen in Close Encounters.
DECEMBER 2015
S H O O TL I K EC L I C K W A T C H F O L L O W S E N D
steamcommunity.com/groups/pcgamer
facebook.com/pcgamermagazine
pcgamer.com @pcgamerPC Gamer, FutureUS, 4000 ShorelineCt. Suite 400, South San Francisco,CA 94080
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G
uild Wars 2 is one the bestMMOs on PC today. It’s aslick, fun, well-designedgame that makes World ofWarcraft look stuffy and
lifeless in comparison. And now the coregame is free for you to download and play.
“As we start to release expansions,”ArenaNet president Mike O’Brien says, “itraises the question: in a buy-to-play businessmodel, what exactly do we want you to buyin order to play?” With some games, youhave to buy the base game and then everyexpansion to keep playing with your friends.
ArenaNet is trying something simpler.The devs think that if people love the freebase game that much, they’ll naturally wantto buy into the paid expansion, Heart of
Thorns. “The expansion pack is such great
value,” says O’Brien. “There’s so muchcontent, not only in the expansion pack butin all the free updates that will come after.”
The catch is that the core game will nolonger receive content updates. You’ll have
to buy Heart of Thorns if you want any newthings to do, including raids. There will also
be some restrictions for free players. Freeaccounts can only have two activecharacters at a time, compared to the usualfive, and three bag slots. Additionally there
are some restrictions to stop spammers andgriefers, including being limited to initiatinga whisper conversation once every 30seconds and not being able to take part incompetitive World v World until level 60.
But as far as free-to-play MMOs go, this isremarkably generous—especially comparedto something like The Old Republic.
As for the impact of these changes on theexisting community, “you’re going to have a
bunch of new players,” O’Brien says. “Butit’s going to be the same friendly communityit’s always been. It’s really important to usthat we protect the great people we haveplaying our game, and so we’ve beentweaking constantly. We’ve been working on
various iterations of this free-to-play modelfor about a year now, making sure that weget it right.”
Andy Kelly
“IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT
TO US THAT WE PROTECT
THE GREAT PEOPLE
PLAYING OUR GAME”
GUILD WARS 2 GOES FREEARENANET tells us why the MMO is embracing the free-to-play model
T H E T O P S T O R Y
Guild Wars 2 hasalways looked good.
Guild Wars 2 hasalways looked good.
12 DECEMBER 2015
T H E P C G A M E R V I E W O F T H E W O R L D
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Glass’s architects arestarting to take the piss.
Supervillain Fashion Weekwas a great success.
16 DECEMBER 2015
Gamenamexxxx
P R E V I EW
Model citizen Faith prepares tostress test the new police helmets.
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I sympathize with the repetition, because
Mirror’s Edge Catalyst isn’t dramatically
different from its predecessor. Yes, there’s
an open world now, but the basic tenets of
what made Mirror’s Edge so good are all
present in the demo. It looks gorgeous, just as Mirror’s Edge did. Its
freerunning seems responsive and
satisfying, just as Mirror’s Edge ’s
was. When Catalyst was announced,
DICE claimed it wasn’t a sequel. Here
it looks like the most typical of sequels,
improving the first game’s best features
and tweaking its worst. In short, it’s
Mirror’s Edge but more fluid. It’s pretty
much exactly as I was hoping for.
Opening the map screen, Faith places
a marker to the mission’s starting point.
This activates Runner Vision, which in
Mirror’s Edge showed players the
optimum route. In Catalyst , it does thesame thing, but is applied on-the-fly based
on where your waypoint is set. As in the
first game, it’s also optional.
Approaching the looming building of
Elysium, Faith passes a ‘Gridleak’—just
one of a number of collectibles that will be
hidden around the city. Generally, I’m not a
fan of hunting down trinkets through a
large open world. But Mirror’s Edge is a
series about the joy of movement. Done
well and the collectibles could be fun
mini-challenges that break up the more
involved missions and sidequests.
Faith reaches the marker, triggering a
cutscene. Yes, there are still cutscenes—
but now they’re in-engine. It introduces a
new character: a swaggering jerk whose
impotent, macho smack-talk
accompanies Faith throughout the
mission. Catalyst is a reboot of Faith’s
origin. Once again, it’s about the figures othe edge of a dystopian society—the
‘runners’ who deliver secretive document
and the sense of competition between
them. You’ll see much more of life as a
runner in Catalyst , where Faith will operat
as a cat burglar, data courier or spy.
MOVING ON UP
Infiltrating the building, Faith shows off he
new and improved moveset. With enough
momentum, she can again chain betwee
wallrunning, sliding and clambering
around with ease. Additional skills are par
of an upgrade system that lives in Faith’sglove. In the demo, she has a Mag
Rope. It’s basically a grappling
hook-style device that lets her swing
between large gaps. For Catalyst , th
combat has also been incorporated
into the flow of movement so that it’s less
stop-and-start. A UI element shows the
location of any surrounding enemies that
might block your way. It’s a matter of
finding the gaps in their positioning and
taking out anybody who gets too close.
In the demo, this is all performed
flawlessly. It will no doubt be more clumsy
in the hands of someone less skilled but
DICE has tweaked the difficulty to removesome of the frustrations of a poor
performance. “I wouldn’t say it’s easier,
because it’s not easy,” says senior
producer Sara Jansson after the demo.
“It’s still a skill-based game. But we’ve
worked on different systems that help yo
if you’re slightly off timing. If you jump a
little bit too early into a wall run or jump
you’ll get help to still make it, depending
on how much momentum you have.” Get
it right, and you’ll keep more of your
momentum. “If you’re a skilled player,
you’ll just be a lot more fluid.”
Phil Savage
I’m at a presentation of a Catalyst missionand I’ve lost count of how many timesthe word ‘fluid’ has been used. Themovement? Fluid. The combat? Fluid.
The mission structure? Fluid. The way the enginecan seamlessly transition from the outside worldinto a building’s interior? Also fluid. It’s subtle hintslike this that convey DICE’s intent for its game.
It’s shaping up to be the sequelI always wanted
M I R R O R ’ S E D G EC A T A L Y S T
IN SHORT, IT’S MIRROR’S EDGE
BUT MORE FLUID. IT’S EXACTLYWHAT I WAS HOPING FOR
RELEASE
February 2016DEVELOPER
DICEPUBLISHER
EALINK
www.mirrorsedge.com
N E E D T O K N O W
N E W
I N F O
Life goal: become the top searchresult for ‘punchable face’.
DECEMBER 2015
Mirror’s Edge Catalys
P R E V I EW
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“Say you drop a weapon somewhere,” Io’s
studio head, Hannes Seifert, says. “A
guard seeing the weapon will go there and
check it out. If it’s a bomb, he will disarm it.
He will bring it to the armory in the
basement. It means that you can makeguys smuggle stuff in for you.”
Similarly, if you drop a weapon in
front of a civilian on his way towards
your target, they’ll instead run to get
a guard—who will then come and
remove the weapon. It’s a way to
manipulate the NPCs in such a fashion
that you’re given a clear path to your
target. “You’ve interrupted two people,”
Seifert says.” One who might have been
on their way to talk to your target, and the
security guard who might have been
guarding the route to get to him.
“When you combine these things—we
see this when players play the early builds—they do the weirdest combinations of
that.” Players can tamper with food or
drink, making NPCs sick. They can
tranquilize NPCs and steal their clothes.
The characters that Agent 47 interacts
with have specific reactions to what
happens around them. “Walk on the
catwalk during the show, and the security
will grab you and bring you down.”
Seifert adds: “that’s the essence of
Hitman , right? We’re trying to create a
procedural world where everything you do
has an impact.” Trigger a fire alarm, and
the building will be evacuated. Firemen will
search the area, and if they don’t find a
body or weapon, they’ll turn off the alarm
and usher people back into the building.
“You might have gained an opportunity to
hide something, to modify something.
This is whatHitman is about.”
This has always been my favorite thingabout theHitman series. They’re violent
games, but they’re not about the violence.
The best levels are intricate puzzle rooms
that encourage you to learn their patterns,
and manipulate NPCs to achieve the
desired result. After a while, I don’t even
see these characters as people, but as
actors to be unknowingly directed based
on my needs. That’s probably how
psychopaths feel all the time.
“We teach the AI what to do,” says
Seifert. “The waiter carries food from A to
B, making sure there’s always enough
food or drinks for the guests. Now takeout this waiter. What will happen is, in
the kitchen, the food will pile up and,
in the bar, the food will run low.
Another waiter will see that and start
taking the food.” So far, so good, but
what happens if you kill all the waiters?
“The supply of food will just slow down. If
you kill all the waiters, eventually, these
structures break down and it modifies the
level again, because then the guests are
hungry and will try to find food
somewhere else.”
CLASS ACT
Are NPCs individuals with specific needs,or are they assigned a type of behavior
that dictates how they act?
“You could call them character classes.
Guards have a different need—to protect
an area, or to protect a person—than the
party guests might have.” NPCs will also
have specific goals, designed to make
them interesting targets forHitman’ s
returning Contracts mode. “Our quality
control is very elaborate. But the most
important thing is that the systems feel
robust, so they can actually work with
each other without breaking.”
Phil Savage
There was a moment, right at the start of Hitman’s Gamescom presentation,where Agent 47 walks in front of a news broadcaster’s camera. She cuts the take,
and mutters something under her breath about theinterruption. It’s a seemingly small, insignificantmoment, but one that gives me hope that the newHitman could be the best yet.
An intelligent approach toartificial intelligence
H I T M A N
SO FAR, SO GOOD, BUT WHATHAPPENS WHEN YOU KILLALL THE WAITERS?
RELEASE
DecemberDEVELOPER
Io InteractivePUBLISHER
Square EnixLINK
www.hitman.com
N E E D T O K N O W
N E W
I N F O
Here’s one Iprepared earlier.
18 DECEMBER 2015
Hitman
P R E V I EW
He’s like a young, homicidalPatrick Stewart.
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“It’s a radical departure,” Henrik Fåhraeus,
director of Paradox Development Studio,
tells me, contrasting the game with the
studio’s previous work, “but in some ways
it’s still the same.” It’s still a pausable
real-time game, for one thing, with theoption to speed up and slow down the
passage of time. It still runs on Paradox’s
tried and true Clausewitz engine—the
underpinning technology behind every
PDS game since Europa Universalis III .
There are a few differences too. For one
thing, Stellaris is set in space.
The setting is more than just a reskin:
it’s a chance for Paradox to break free of
the rigor of historical accuracy and give
players—and their AI opponents—more
scope to define their empire. While the
character creation screen I’m shown
contains roughly 100 portraits for
different alien races, the tools for creatingan empire are virtually limitless. In addition
to your empire’s look, you’ll also be able to
define its traits, technologies, ethics, and
even how FTL will work. The AI will do the
same, ensuring you have no idea who’s
lurking beyond the range of your sensors.
Many of these early choices will affect
the choice of actions available later. Create
a xenophobic empire, Fåhraeus says, and
you’ll be able to capture aliens and use
them as slaves. Found a xenophilic
empire, and you won’t have that option.
The early-game stage is comparable to
a 4X. You’ll be exploring, discovering and
expanding your empire. Each planet in
your empire is governed by an individual
character, with their own personality trait
and skills. They’ll determine much of wha
happens on each planet, sometimes
without your direct intervention. In a way,
this emphasis on individual characters
makes empire management akin to
Crusader Kings II —despite the fact that
diplomacy between empires will be more
comparable to Europa Universalis IV .
Each colonizable planet has an
abstract map upon which you construct
buildings. You’re rewarded for placingsame-type buildings next to each other,
and can assign a planet’s ‘population
units’ to various jobs based on what you’v
built. There’ll also be special tiles, and
according to Fåhraeus, some of the
procedures for clearing them will be
“rather involved.” The example given is a
Giant Sinkhole. It’s a big hole in the groun
that not only prevents buildings from
being placed, but—at some point in the
game—could let subterranean creatures
pour out onto the surface.
FOR SCIENCE
As this is a sci-fi game, science has a
much bigger role. Scientists, like planetar
governors, are individual characters with
their own traits, specialities and lifespan.
They’ll be able to head up science ships,
sent out to explore and survey other
systems in search of anomalies. In the
presentation I’m shown, a science ship
comes across a hollowed-out asteroid
that triggers a choose-your-own event
chain. If you succeed, there’s a chance to
earn new technologies. If you fail, a
number of things can happen. Best case:
nothing. Worst case: the asteroid is
knocked out of orbit and onto a directcourse with your homeworld.
Fåhraeus explains that different things
can happen based on the scientist’s
personality. If a religious character had
discovered the asteroid—actually a
hollowed-out temple to a human
god—they could potentially have an optio
As of last February, the average playtimeof Crusader Kings II was 99 hours. Thelongest playtime was 10,500 hours.Paradox’s grand strategy games are
large, complex affairs, but I’m not convinced there’senough variety to keep things fresh over thatlength of time. Stellaris is Paradox attempting tocreate a game that justifies their fans’ obsession.
Paradox’s new grand strategygame wants to be endless in space
S T E L L A R I S
XENOPHOBIC EMPIRES CAN
CAPTURE ALIENS AND USE
THEM AS SLAVES
RELEASE
2016DEVELOPER
Paradox Development StudioPUBLISHER
Paradox InteractiveLINK
www.stellarisgame.com
N E E D T O K N O W
F I R S T
L O O K
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RESEARCH WORMHOLES, ANDYOU COULD RIP OPEN A HOLETO A DEMONIC DIMENSION
to destroy the heretical monument. These
unique conditions are designed to create
unexpected outcomes for events the
player has already encountered in
previous campaigns.
Technology is part of Paradox’s plan to
enhance the variety found in each
playthrough. Scientists can be assigned
between three research departments:
physics, society and engineering. There
won’t be a tech tree—Fåhraeus calls that
too predictable. Instead, it works like a
deck of cards. The selection of
technologies you can choose is
determined by chance, and by your
research scientist and empire’s traits. But
while there’s a random element, you’ll be
able to reassign scientists to maximize the
likelihood of being offered specific tech. Ifa scientist exploring the galaxy develops
an interest in laser technology, you’ll be
able to allocate him to the relevant
research department in the hope of
earning new laser-based discoveries.
WAR OF THE WORLDS
As you encounter more alien factions,
Stellaris will become more like Europa
Universalis in its diplomacy and warfare.
You can wage war with another empire, no
problem, but occupying one of their
planets doesn’t mean you’ll own it.
Instead, you need to defeat their enemy,and sign a peace treaty that decides how
much of their territory you’ll take.
When you do fight, the battles play out
in real-time. Paradox isn’t using a
turn-based tactical battle system,
because—as with other Clausewitz
games—Stellaris is also designed for
multiplayer, where it can fit in as many
players as can realistically divide up a
galaxy. As in most PDS games, control
over the actual battlefield will be relatively
slim. Your role is to outfit your units with
the best weapons and shield technology,
and decide the high-level strategy that will
give your ships the best chance to punchthrough an opposing faction’s military.
It’s not all about war, either. Players can
sign non-aggression pacts, alliances and
even set up a federation—inviting other
races into a grand coalition of planets.
“The cool thing about that is that at
regular intervals there is an election for the
new federation president,” Fåhraeus says.
“You basically rotate between the
member states over who has leadership.”
The title comes with some perks, too: the
federation has access to an elite force of
military ships, outfitted from all the best
technology of its member states.
CHILDHOOD’S END
Not all empires will have the same goals.
Fåhraeus shows me a ‘fallen empire’—an
ancient race that has stopped expanding.
They’re old, powerful and regard the
younger empires as idiot children. They
also have unique technologies that can be
reverse engineered, but they’ll prove a
fearsome enemy should you attempt to
attack them for those. Fåhraeus also
shows me a pre-space-age planet. Youcan conquer these planet-bound peoples,
make them part of your empire, or
‘aggressively’ observe them through
abductions and probing.
For the late-game, Paradox hopes to
avoid letting the player reach a point
where they know that they’ve won. Their
solution is a galactic catastrophe. You can
have between zero and two of these in
each campaign, and they’ll be triggered
either at random or by your research or
that of your opponents. Research the
more advanced wormhole technologies,
for example, and you could rip open a holeto a demonic dimension. Research AI, and
you may face a familiar problem. AI robots
are “happy all the time and don’t cause
any problems,” says Fåhraeus, “but then
suddenly they do.”
The emerging crisis will shake up the
final stages of a campaign, forcing players
to form new alliances and work together
to save the galaxy from destruction. Of
course, Stellaris isn’t a tale of galactic
empires coming together in the face of
adversity: these crises will also provide
plenty of opportunity for intrigue, plotting
and just generally screwing over your
enemies. Nor will it all be end-of-galaxythreats. Players also need to worry about
their leaders and population units.
Stellaris seems absurdly ambitious,
but, when its components are separated
out, it’s built mostly on what the studio
has done before. There are elements of
Crusader Kings II , of Europa Universalis IV ,
and of Victoria II—all with a sci-fi twist of
exploration and discovery. I think Paradox
can pull it off. Stellaris could be the grand
strategy game that deserves the
hundreds, even thousands, of hours its
fans will undoubtedly pour into it.
Phil Savage
22 DECEMBER 2015
Stellaris
P R E V I EW
Space combat is mostlya hands-off affair.
We’re a long way frommedieval Europe.
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P R E V I EW
Each planet has its owngovernor, with their own traits.
Yeah, that’s notgoing to stay stable.
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Sensitive talkin the med bay.
Clive’s days on thestation are numbered.
24 DECEMBER 2015
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The control room overlookingTacoma’s cargo area.
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What I took away from playingTacoma ,
the new first-person exploration game
from Fullbright, is that it will be a sci-fi
story you can relate to. Yes, it’s set on a
space station, in a universe where people’s
conversations can be played back as ARholograms, and sure, there’s an
omniscient AI plugged into your ears
that may or may not have killed your
colleagues. But along the way, the
stuff you’re stumbling on, reading,
and listening to in this seemingly
abandoned space station is endearingly
everyday: love notes, lunch appointments,
doctor’s visits, or your crewmate’s
embarrassing search engine history.
“We want to be able to tell stories that
are just about people,” says Steve Gaynor,
designer and writer onTacoma . As players
explore the mystery of the absent crew,
Gaynor says he wants them to walk awaywith the feeling they “got to know this
group of people and understand what
they went through, and feel for them, and
have some empathy for their situation”.
I only playedTacoma ’s intro—about an
hour—but it was enough to give me a
sense of the types of interpersonal stories
it’s going to touch on. Through Tacoma’s
entry corridor, up the orbital lounge and
toward the cargo area, I find an empty
medical bay, a two-room office. There’s a
AR indicator floating in the air, a flat piece
of UI hovering in 3D space. I tap it and
single-colored, life-sized mannequins
spring to life, stand-ins for the
crewmembers who had been there
before. As the AR recording plays back, I
learn that ODIN, the AI system, has
detected an issue with one of the crew.
Clive, the operations specialist that your
character is sent to replace, has to returnto Earth as soon as possible. I hear him
share this discovery with Evelyn Victoria
(E.V.), the station administrator that he’s
romantically involved with. They’re both
worried about how they’ll carry on,
expressing the kind of separation anxiety
anyone can experience when considering
to pursue a long-distance relationship.
“We encounter a lot of sci-fi that’s
more about plot and more about the, you
know... the plot that the progenitor race
has to destroy humanity or whatever,”
says Gaynor. “The stuff I connect with the
most when I’m playing any game like thatis when you’re totally outside of that
‘fate of the universe’ scale of conflict
and you can just think, ‘Oh, this is a
person that I could know in my
everyday life.’”
COULD LOOK BETTER
The demo left me with a lot of questions
about what lies ahead (it ends with your
character, with concern in her voice,
asking ODIN, “What am I going to find
behind this door?”).Tacoma is an
evolution of Fullbright’s work on Gone
Home —patient storytelling through
artifacts and notes, but in a much biggerand more imaginative space.
One thing I’m hoping I’ll be more
impressed by whenTacoma releases in
2016 is its looks. It didn’t seem any less
populated with ephemera thanGone
Homebut it feels less dense. Maybe that’
a result of the setting being a functional,
highly engineered, more spacious thing.
But compared to say,Adrift , which is
admittedly more linear, I didn’t feel caugh
up in the elegance of the station, in the
contour of its bulkheads or the way
lighting cuts through exterior windows.
Evan Lahti
Mundane, everyday stuff makes for someof the richest territory in sci-fi. Sure,2001 plops preternatural monoliths infront of us, but we also see the crew of
the Discovery One eating lunch and phoning home.Mark Watney solves life-or-death problems in TheMartian, but along the way he’ll muse about theThree’s Company episode he’s watching.
Explore a deserted space stationin the follow-up to Gone Home
T A C OM A
THE STUFF YOU’RE STUMBLINGON, READING AND LISTENINGTO IS ENDEARINGLY EVERYDAY
RELEASE
2016DEVELOPER
The Fullbright CompanyPUBLISHER
In-houseLINK
www.tacoma-game.com
N E E D T O K N O W
P L A Y E D
I T
Can E.V.’s love for Clivesurvive their separation?
DECEMBER 2015 2
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P R E V I EW
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The early 2016 release is still months
away, however, and the plan is to make the
game as good, if not better, than Dark
Souls II on PC. I’m excited to see the PC
become an increasingly important
platform for these games, but at the same
time, I came away feeling that this may bethe installment that triggers series
fatigue. Every time someone asked
me about the demo, my first thought
was simply “it’s Dark Souls .”
At E3, co-director Hidetaka
Miyazaki said the game moves a little
faster than DSII , with more responsive
controls inspired by Bloodborne . It felt like
Dark Souls to me. The combat was still
deliberate. Animations took their time to
play out. Movement on the warrior I
played actually felt slower than a
light-as-possible Dark Souls I/II character.
I’d have to play the game side-by-side with
its predecessors to differentiate it.New are the special attacks unique to
each weapon type, now called Battle Arts.
In the build I played they were mapped to
the left trigger. My warrior had an axe as
his default weapon, and the axe’s Battle
Art was a damage buff, which I was told
also serves as a small AoE stun.
The other Battle Arts are more direct.
The greatsword’s is a lumbering step
forward followed by a massive upward
strike that sends enemies soaring into the
air. With the dual katanas, it’s a spinning
whirlwind attack. I discovered that I could
follow up that whirlwind with a heavy
attack, which is a slightly less potent spin,
for a nice combo.
Another thing that’s new, at least to my
recollection: enemies that change
stances. When I faced off against a knight,
he stalked towards me with sword and
shield in hand. When I backed away, hedecided to switch gears from ‘let’s dance’
to ‘get fucked,’ tossed his shield to his
back, gripped his sword with both hands,
and charged right at me. It was terrifying.
OLD FAMILIAR
Still, while some enemies were vicious and
moved quickly, I didn’t feel like my session
was quite as frenetic as the trailers make
DSIII seem. Or as pretty as these perfectly
framed, perfectly lit screenshots courtesy
of Namco Bandai. The style may be there
in the real game, but the image quality
certainly wasn’t (at least not at 1080p).Dark Souls III remains challenging
in exactly the same ways as its
predecessors, though I think part of
my lukewarm response to the hour I
played came from the limitations of
the demo session. The menu was
disabled, so I couldn’t see my stats, play
with equipment, or level up. That means
souls didn’t matter, which meant dying
didn’t matter. Being human or undead to
summon other players wasn’t a concern.
And the demo was obviously locked to a
single area, meaning the wonder of
exploration just wasn’t there.
That said, I was pleased at just howlayered the area I explored turned out to
be. There were multiple paths through
buildings, across ramparts and rooftops,
at least two shortcuts to be unlocked and
chests and secrets in out-of-the-way
locations. If this area is representative,
Dark Souls III is going to be as dense and
interconnected as the original.
I hope that’s true. I can’t say that Dark
Souls III felt new and exciting, but I can
imagine some small tweaks to the formula
pulling me into this one for another
hundred hours next year.
Wes Fenlon
T he hour I spent with Dark Souls III recently wasn’t quite a stellarexperience. It was running at 30fps(mostly consistently, though one rooftop
area sent that dipping into the teens) and a locked1080p. The 27-inch monitor two feet from my facedidn’t do the game any favors, either.
Getting to grips with the final partof the rock-hard trilogy
D A R K S O U L S I I I
IF THIS IS REPRESENTATIVE,DARK SOULS III IS GOING TO BEAS DENSE AS THE ORIGINAL
RELEASE
2016
DEVELOPER
From Software
PUBLISHER
Namco Bandai
LINK
www.darksouls3.com
N E E D T O K N O W
P L A Y E D
I T
Now 20%More Gothic.
32 DECEMBER 2015
Dark Souls III
P R E V I EW
World design isstill a highlight.
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Combat is not noticeablyslicker than Dark Souls II.
“Got you,indeterminate thing!”
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The two brothers developing The LastNight say their game is an homage to“cinematic platformers” such as Flashback and Another World. Like those
games, they’re promising lavish, atmosphericenvironments and elements of exploration, butwith modern additions including a branching story.It began life as an entry in a cyberpunk game jam,which you can play now on the Odd Tales website.But after an overwhelmingly positive response, andwinning the jam, the duo decided to turn it into afull game. The Last Night is still very early indevelopment, but it already looks remarkable. I justhope the game itself lives up to the promise of thisstunning pixel art. Andy Kelly
RELEASE
2016
PUBLISHER
In-house
DEVELOPER
Odd Tales
LINK
www.oddtales.net
N E E D T O K N O W
A future-noir platformerset in a bleak, beautiful city
F I R S T
L O O K T H E L A S TN I G H T
S T O R Y M O D EYou’ll always be in control
of your character in The LastNight , says Odd Tales. The story
will be told as you play and developthrough your actions. The brotherssay it will reflect the “melancholy
of modern life” and that yourdecisions will have a direct
impact on the course ofthe narrative.
G U NC O N T R O L
You play a bounty hunter,and finding your targets will beas important as hunting them
down. To give an example of theinteractivity, you’ll be able to pull
your gun at any time during aconversation to
scare characters intorevealing important
information.
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N I G H T L I F EThe game takes place
across a series of nights,starting and ending in the hero’sapartment. Actions you take in,say, the third night could affect
something in the seventh. Choiceand consequence will be a bigpart of it and your decisions
could haunt you furtherdown the line.
U R B A ND E C A Y
Odd Tales wants its BladeRunner-inspired city to feelalive. You’ll be able to travel
between districts using taxis,ferries and monorails. Policedrones with roving spotlights
patrol the streets, and evadingthem—either through
stealth or hacking—willbe a challenge.
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Cuphead , much like the recent Titan
Souls , is a boss attack game. Rather than
a linear series of battles, each level is
accessed via a deceptively peaceful
overworld map. Levels can be attempted
in any order and each consists of a single
screen containing a single boss. There’sno preamble or filler here. Cuphead is
entirely focused around fighting these
huge set-piece baddies.
Every boss is a unique encounter that
forces you to learn and master new tactics
and systems. I got the chance to fight
against a selection of them, and died
every time. Cuphead has its roots in
games like Contra and Mega Man . It’s
absurdly difficult. In stripping out the
padding, Cuphead distils the challenge
into these small spaces. You’re forced not
just to respond to the on-screen threats,
but also to anticipate future danger.
It’s a game about memorization andperfection—of banging up against
impossible-looking attack patterns and
working out how to survive and eventually
triumph. That’s not something I had time
for in the demo session and so here’s a
rundown of everything that killed me.
Phil Savage
The thing that everybody says aboutCuphead is that it looks gorgeous.They’re right, of course: it’s like a 1930scartoon, only without the racism.
Suitably intrigued, I tracked it down at Gamescomto find out how it plays. The answer, it turns out, islike an incredibly difficult run-and-gun platformer.
A sumptuous run-and-gunplatformer in which to die
C U P H E A D
CUPHEAD HAS ITS ROOTS IN
CONTRA AND MEGA MAN . IT’S
ABSURDLY DIFFICULT
RELEASE
2016DEVELOPER
Studio MDHRPUBLISHER
In-houseLINK
www.cupheadgame.com
N E E D T O K N O W
P L A Y E D
I T
1Cuphead can both run
and gun across each
level’s single screen. He also
has a dash maneuver and a
powerful super attack. The
latter is charged by air-
slapping pink projectiles—a
dangerous mid-air move that
requires precise timing.
More often than not, it
serves only to get me killed.
3Each boss has multiple
stages. After firing out
flaming boxing gloves, these
frogs move to opposing ends
of the screen. One whirls his
arms to summon gusts of
wind that push me into the
projectiles of the other.
Later, they morph into agiant fruit machine.
5Autoscrolling levels
ramp up the difficulty
further. As well as avoiding
the spikes of exploding
worker bees, I have to keepclimbing to avoid the rising
honey. There’s a lot to
process and the margin for
error is virtually zero. Take
three hits and you’re kicked
back to the overworld.
2Each level’s surreal look defines how it
plays. On the haunted train, I can shootdown floating pumpkins. If the pink brick
they drop hits the valves on either side of my
handcar, it moves a small distance in the
corresponding direction.
4Occasionally, levels will completely
change your moveset. Cuphead and
Mugman take to the air to fight this bird,
appropriating classic shoot-’em-up controls
for full 360-degree movement. The added
freedom doesn’t make me any less
susceptible to a fatal egg shot.
6A victory! Not for me, but for my co-op
partner Matt Elliott. I die soon after we
tag-team the dirt-spitting potato. As he
finishes off the psychic carrot, I get to
appreciate the sumptuous background
animations.Cuphead is full of small details
that go unnoticed in the thick of battle.
2
3
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Leave boring old Earth behind andtravel to the farthest reaches of the
universe—and beyond—in these, thePC’s greatest space games.
By Andy Kelly
THE
38 DECEMBER 2015
The 20 best space games
F E A TUR E
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THE DIG YEAR 1995 |
DEVELOPER LucasArts
T he LucasArts point-and-click
adventure that everyone forgets
about. A mission to divert an
asteroid heading for Earth goes awry,
sending a group of astronauts to a
distant, seemingly abandoned, world.
Some of the puzzles are maddeningly
obtuse, even for a LucasArts game, but
its colorful, strange planet feels
genuinely alien . Great voice acting too,
with X-Files and Terminator star Robert
Patrick playing the lead.
HOMEWORLD
REMASTERED COLLECTION YEAR 2015 |
DEVELOPER Relic/Gearbox Software
One of the best singleplayer RTS
campaigns ever, beautifully remastered by
Gearbox. The sight of thousands of your
ships streaking across the game’s
vividly colorful space-scapes is majestic.
Its battles are tense and tactical, featuring
many types of ship to command, including
some colossal battleships. The
Remastered Collection looks great on
modern PCs and comes with the original
Homeworld and its sequel.
LUNAR FLIGHT
YEAR 2012 | DEVELOPER Shovsoft
This modern take on classic arcade
game Lunar Lander is a unique,challenging low-gravity flight simulator.
It’s not as deep as some sims, but
wrestling with its physics to deliver cargo
and make landings on alien worlds is an
enjoyable process. It’s also one of the bes
games to play with a VR headset, if you’re
lucky enough to have one.
SPACE ENGINEERS
YEAR 2013 | DEVELOPER Keen Software House
Minecraft in space, basically. Harvest
asteroids for building materials then craft
them into floating bases and flyable
spaceships. You can hover around with a
jetpack or build a gravity generator to wal
on the surface of bigger asteroids. One of
the best co-op build-’em-ups on PC, and
new features are being added regularly.
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ELITE: DANGEROUS
YEAR 2014 | DEVELOPER Frontier Developments
An entire galaxy is your playground in
this massive, beautiful space sim. Starting
with a basic ship and a handful of credits,
it’s up to you to shape your own destiny.Do you become a fearsome pirate? A
master trader? An explorer? The beauty
ofElite: Dangerous is being able to play in
a way that suits you. From thrilling
dogfights to gentle exploration, there’s
something for everyone. Its ships are a
dream to fly, from nimble fighters to heavy
cargo haulers, especially with a flight stick.
STAR WARS: TIE FIGHTER
YEAR 1994 | DEVELOPER Totally Games
A rare opportunity to be the bad guy in
George Lucas’s space opera. With a
variety of Empire -themed missions—
dogfights, escorts, attacking capitalships—and a story to follow, it’s one of
LucasArts’s best Star Wars games.
Replace this entry with Star Wars: X-Wing
if you’d prefer to play as the boring old
Rebel Alliance. The best thing about this
entire crop of Star Wars space sims is that
they’ve all resurfaced to buy on GOG.com,
compatible with modern systems.
FTL: FASTER THAN LIGHT
YEAR 2012 | DEVELOPER Subset Games
FTL mixes turn-based and real-time
strategy together to capture the
experience of captaining a Star Trek-style
spacecraft. It’s a strong roguelike, too,
with the backdrop of a familiar yet fun
sci-fi universe that comes with its own
semi-humorous lore and a neat set of
narrative beats that make the journey to
its finale exciting every time. Being able to
name your ship and crew makes it all the
more heartbreaking when they die
together in enemy space.
WING COMMANDER:
PRIVATEER
YEAR 1993 | DEVELOPER Origin Systems
Fans of the series will argue endlessly
about which Wing Commander is the
best, but we love Privateer ’s darker feel.
It’s a rich sandbox in which you can be a
mercenary, a pirate, a merchant, or a mix
of all three. You jump between systems
looking for bounties to hunt and ships to
rob, and the first-person dogfights are a
thrill. There’s a linear story, but the real joy
lies in doing your own thing.
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EVE ONLINE YEAR 2003 |
DEVELOPER CCP Games
L ive another life—in space! There’s nothing else
like EVE Online , the massively multiplayer RPG
where everything is controlled by players. It’s a
living, breathing galaxy in which thousands of
capsuleers fight, trade, mine, and explore together.
Break away from the relative safety of your police-
patrolled starting system and you’ll find a ruthless,
cosmic Wild West, where piracy, espionage and
scamming are rife. Whether you’re fighting in a massive
space war, where thousands of real-world dollars hangin the balance, or just exploring New Eden on your own,
EVE is unforgettable.
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TAKE ON MARS
YEAR 2013 | DEVELOPER Bohemia Interactive
If you like your space games a little
more grounded, try Arma developerBohemia’s Take On Mars . It’s a space
exploration simulator based on real
astro-science. You can build a Curiosity-
style rover and explore the surface of the
red planet or construct your own
moonbase. A game for people who want
the sci without the fi.
SINS OF A SOLAR EMPIRE
YEAR 2008 | DEVELOPER Ironclad Games
Mixing real-time strategy with 4X
elements, Sins is a game of galactic
conquest. Choose a faction, gather
resources and become a mighty
space-lord. Commanding its real-time
wars is a thrill, but combat isn’t always the
answer: you can use diplomacy to
conquer systems too. A refreshingly
slow-paced RTS with some truly massive
space battles.
KERBAL SPACE
PROGRAM YEAR 2015 | DEVELOPER Squad
W
restle with gravity and the laws of
physics as you build your own
spacecraft and attempt to
explore the cosmos. A robust, compelling
sandbox of possibilities that’s as funny as
it is clever. Escaping Kerbin’s atmosphere
and landing on the Mun for the first time
with a ship you’ve built is about as
satisfying as PC gaming gets.
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STARBOUND YEAR 2013 |
DEVELOPER Chucklefish Games
B
asically Terraria in space. Hop
between randomly generated
planets on a starship, hunt alien
creatures for food, build colonies andunderground bases, and try not to die.
A brilliant sci-fi sandbox with a charming
art style. Playable races include robots,
beings made of solar energy, ape-like
creatures, and wingless birds.
UNIVERSE SANDBOX
YEAR 2011 | DEVELOPER Giant Army
This space simulator lets you play god
and manipulate replicas of real galaxies
and solar systems, and witness the (often
catastrophic) results of your cosmic
meddling. Increase the mass of Jupiter
and you’ll see the rest of our solar system
being sucked into it, or delete the Sun and
watch Earth and the other planets drift
away confused. A sequel, Universe
Sandbox 2 , recently arrived on Steam
Early Access.
ARTEMIS: SPACESHIP
BRIDGE SIMULATOR
YEAR 2013 | DEVELOPER Thom Robertson
You’ll need a group of three to six
friends to get the most out of this one.
Each player controls a different station of
a starship—engineering, weapons, helm
and so on—and must work together to
destroy enemies, with a captain giving
orders. It’s basically like staging a
Kobayashi Maru test in your living room,
and it’s amazing.
FLOTILLA YEAR 2010 |
DEVELOPER Blendo Games
This turn-based strategy game by
prolific indie studio Blendo (Thirty Flights
of Loving , Gravity Bone ) plays out in
30-second bursts. Queue up your orders,
then watch the action unfold until one side
is completely obliterated. With a relaxing
classical score, including Chopin’s
Raindrop Prelude, and a stylish, curiously
colorful art style, it’s one of the more
offbeat games on our list. Flotilla also
features psychic advisor dogs—there’s astrong sense of humor at work here.
GALACTICCIVILIZATIONS II
YEAR 2006 | DEVELOPER Stardock
Conquer space with an army of
customizable ships. Thanks to its smart,
creative AI, a full-size game can take many
exciting weeks to complete. You have to
balance economic, technological,
diplomatic, cultural and military power to
forge alliances, engage in battles, and
dominate the galaxy. Similar to the
Civilization series, certainly, but on a muchgrander scale.
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SPACEENGINE
YEAR 2010 | DEVELOPER Vladimir Romanyuk
Do you like feeling small and
insignificant? Do you enjoy havingexistential crises? Then play SpaceEngine ,
which features the entire universe . Or at
least the bit we know about. Focus on
Earth, then pull back at top speed, and
you realize you’re on a tiny speck of dust
hurtling through an endless void. The tech
is remarkable, enabling you to travel
effortlessly between galaxies and land on
planets, even if there’s not a lot else to do.
FREESPACE 2
YEAR 1999 | DEVELOPER Volition, Inc.
While most space simulators use
aircraft-like physics, FreeSpace attempts
something more realistic, resulting in
responsive, weightless controls. Battles
play out like zero-gravity World War II
dogfights, and it’s one of the best space
combat games on PC. You’ll never forget
your first combat encounter inside a
colorful nebula.
MASS EFFECT 2 YEAR 2010 |
DEVELOPER BioWare
I f you’ve ever fantasized about being Captain
Kirk, in command of your own starship,
exploring the galaxy, meeting weird aliens,
being confronted with cosmic dilemmas, Mass Effect 2
is that in game form. It’s part Star Wars space opera,
part brilliant Star Trek episode, and one of the best sci-
games on PC. It doesn’t have the freedom of Elite and i
largely a linear experience, but it takes you on an
unforgettable journey around the galaxy, visiting bizarr
planets and getting involved in the lives of the people
who live on them. We love the whole series, but Mass
Effect 2 is our favorite.
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INSTALL AND CUSTOMIZE
Upgrade to WINDOWS 10 without fear using our simpleguide—then configure it just the way you like it. By Wes Fenlon
here are few things more satisfying than a brand new,completely clean and lightning fast Windows install. Whenthat install is a just-released version of Windows, however,it’s a bit like getting a present from a secret admirer. Youdon’t know what’s in the box: it could be a great OS that you use for years (Windows 7) or an OS that actively makes your day-to-day computer use more frustrating (Vista,
Windows 8). Occasionally, you open the box and there’s actually a severed headinside (Windows ME).
T
WINDOWS 10
Thankfully, Windows 10 fixes many ofWindows 8’s UI bumbles and keeps allof its great under-the-hood
improvements. It also brings with it animportant advance for gaming: DirectX12. That said, Windows 10 isn’tperfect—there are some buried privacy
settings you’ll want to configure if you’re not keen on sending Microsoftall your data. This guide will walk you
through some of the important steps inthe Windows 10 install process, thenshow you how to tweak and configurethe OS for a great gaming experience.
H O W T O
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It’s time to upgrade your PC. Here we’ll take you through the basics of
installing Windows 10 and altering privacy settings.
INSTALLING
STEP ONE
GET READY TO
INSTALL
You have a few choices, but the
most common is the Win7-8
update utility that shows up
as a little Windows logo in
your taskbar. Through that, you canupgrade without losing any of your
computer’s files. Still, I’d recommend
backing everything up to be safe.
If you don’t have the Windows logo in
your taskbar, there’s another easy way to
grab Windows 10. Download the Windows
Installation Tool frommicrosoft.com/
en-us/software-download/windows10.
This tool will download Windows 10 and let
you install it immediately, or copy it to a
USB flash drive for installation on another
machine. Go ahead and download on the
system you plan to upgrade and start the
installation process (remember, backupyour most important data first!).
STEP TWO
RUN THE
INSTALLER
Honestly, it’s hard to screw this
up. Once you start the
installer, Microsoft will hold
your hand through the setup.
The most important choice you can makeduring installation is to click ‘Customize
settings’ when you’re on the screen that
says ‘Get going fast’. Do NOT use Express
settings, as this sends data to Microsoft
that you may prefer to keep private.
The hallmark of a modern OS (or, just the free upgrade offer for Windows 10)
is that it really, really likes collecting your data. It’s OK if you want to give
Microsoft that data—you should just know that you’re doing it. Click on the
Start menu (yes, it’s back!) and click on Settings, then Privacy. From here,
navigate every tab and check the settings. The most important ones are in General.
If you signed into a Microsoft account during installation, open a browser and go to
choice.microsoft.com/en-uk/opt-out . Turn off ‘personalized ads wherever I use my
Microsoft account’.
STEP FOUR
DOWNLOADAND UPDATE
DRIVERS
Anew OS means new drivers to
ensure compatibility, and
you’ll want to update those—
especially your graphics card
drivers—before jumping into gaming.
Start with the basics first: your
motherboard drivers. Do a Google search
for your motherboard model and find the
relevant downloads page linked to it.
After clicking ‘Customize settings’, you
can choose to turn off Personalization
settings, which send your speech and
typing data to Microsoft, let apps use your
advertising ID, and request your location.
Turn them off. Click Next.
I recommend disabling sending your
browsing history to Microsoft and
automatically connecting to other Wi-Fi
networks. Click Next. Now you can choose
to login with a Microsoft account. If you
have a Microsoft account and want to usethat profile so you can access your data
on other machines, etc, login or create an
account. If not, click ‘Skip this step.’ Then
simply create a username, and voila:
you’re now running Windows 10.
STEP THREE
INVESTIGATE EVEN MORE
PRIVACY SETTINGSTheinstallationmenuscouldn’t besimpler, butthere are stillkey things tolook out for.
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STEP ONE
CUSTOMIZE THE
START MENU
The Windows 10 Start menu mashes together
Windows 8’s tiles with the old school menu
design. It’s an elegant solution, but by default
it’s probably filled with tiles you don’t much
care about. Right click on any tile to change its size, unpin
it, turn live updating on/off, or uninstall it altogether. Who
needs a constantly updating health and fitness tile,
anyway? You can also drag the edges of the Start menu
to change its height and width, and name groups of apps
if you’re big on categorizing your software.
Another tip: open up the ‘all apps’ list from the Start
menu and right click on any apps you’ll be using
frequently. You can pin those to the Start menu where
they’ll appear as tiles.
Your computer’s running Windows 10. Nice job! We’re very proud of you. Now you get to do the
fun stuff: tweaking settings and customizing your new OS to your heart’s content.
CUSTOMIZING
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STEP THREE
CUSTOMIZE
THE TASKBAR
Nothing much has changed
from the days of ye olde
Windows here. Right-click on
the taskbar to call up the
context menu, then click ‘properties’ to
customize which side of the screen the
taskbar appears on, to enable auto-hide,
and to make a few other tweaks of
similarly world-shattering importance.
STEP FOUR
SET UP YOUR
STORAGELOCATIONS
In Windows past, your My
Documents, My Music, etc.
folders saved files to the C:
drive. Windows 10 offers a
convenient way to change this location.
Under System Settings, open the Storage
tab and choose which drive you want to
save those files to by default. You can still
create your own folder setup, of course,
but if you like letting Windows handle that
work, this is an easy option.
STEP TWO
CUSTOMIZE
CORTANA
Microsoft’s personal
assistant Cortana is built
right into Windows 10,
which is pretty nifty. That
bar that says ‘Search the web and
Windows’ next to the Start icon is
where Cortana lives. Type in the name
of something on your system, like
‘settings’ or ‘disk’ or ‘witcher’ and
Cortana will bring up the most relevant
applications for you, even drilling down
into a few layers of menus. That’s great,
but there are some other Cortanasettings you may want to disable.
If you don’t plan on using Cortana’s
personal assistant features, click in the
search box, then click the gear menu to
open Cortana’s settings. Disable
‘suggestions, ideas, reminders, alerts
and more.’ You can also disable ‘Search
online and include web results’ if you’d
prefer to keep your searches local, just
for installed applications.
If you do plan to use Cortana and
have a microphone handy, you may
want to turn on the ‘Hey Cortana’
option that allows Cortana to listen foryour commands. Then you can set
alarms, notifications and start
searches with a voice command.
Cortana has changeda bit since she helpedus detonate the Pillarof Autumn to blow upthe Halo ring.
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If you’re an Nvidia user, make sure
GeForce Experience is installed and
up-to-date. Remember that you can
update your graphics driver through GFE,
but can also use it for recording games
with ShadowPlay.
Upgrading from Windows 7 or 8 creates
a Windows.old folder on your C: drive. It’s
housing some of your old system and
personal files, which is great if you
accidentally forgot to back something upand lost it in the upgrade. Dig through that
folder and make sure there’s nothing you
need there. Once you’ve done so, it’s just
wasted space. Type ‘Free Up Disk Space’
into Cortana, select C:, then click ‘Clean
Up System Files.’ Choose C: again and
check the boxes next to Previous Windows
installations and Temporary Windows
installation files. Press OK and confirm
you want to delete the files.
Right-click your taskbar and open the
Task Manager, then switch to the Startup
tab. Here you can see everything thatboots up with your PC. Disable programs
you don’t want or need to boot with your
PC, like the omnipresent Adobe Updater.
Do you really need to check for a new
version of Adobe Reader every day?
Play some videogames. You’ve
definitely earned it.
There’s plenty more customization of Windows 10 you can do on your own. Here are a few more
tips for life (and gaming) with Windows 10.
READY FOR ACTION
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“THIS IS HIDEO KOJIMA’S MOST
PROVOCATIVE STATEMENT YET”
50 DECEMBER 2015
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
R E V I EW
“METAL GEAR SOLID V CELEBRATES
YOUR CHOICES AND INGENUITY”
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SOLID GOLDMETAL GEAR SOLID V: THE PHANTOM PAIN
is a landmark-makingstealth sandbox masterpiece. By Samuel Roberts
Nighttimebattlefields fill with smoke,
flares andexplosions
How can my target escape if I makesure there’s no helicopter to beginwith? The getaway chopper I’m
looking for doesn’t just spawn out ofnowhere—like everything in The
Phantom Pain, it’s part of theenvironment, circling a hill, waitingfor its passenger. I track thehelicopter down based on its flightpath from my threepreviously failedattempts and hose itwith my grenadelauncher until it’s inflames. I just got rid ofthe problem.
Within five minutes,
I’ve killed both mytarget and theinformant by accident, firing rocketsrandomly at anything that moves.Master Miller, who guides methrough the mission, isn’t pleased Ikilled the informant withoutinterrogating him first, but the gamedoesn’t mind. Mission complete.
Metal Gear Solid V celebrates yourchoices and ingenuity more than anysandbox game I’ve played in years.This mission, and so many others,allows players to figure out thestrategy that works for them and run
with it. This is a reinvented, systemic Metal Gear Solid with an almost FarCry-like open-world structure,elevated significantly by the choicesand subsequent one-off moments
you’d encounter in a Hitman or Deus Ex. Crucially, too, The Phantom Pain retains the oddness, detail and someof the character of the MGS series.
A few of my stealth playthroughsthat suddenly went wrong becamemy favorite moments in MGSV . Iforfeited a perfect kill-free stealth runof one mission because I couldn’t get
a good enough sniper angle on my
I’ve failed this assassination mission three times now. Eachattempt, while searching for an enemy informant who can tell mewhere my target is, I’m almost immediately spotted by an enemyguard tower in a nearby camp. Spooked by the sudden gunfire, mypotential victim makes a prompt getaway by helicopter. The
chopper moves too fast for me to hit it, and it’s gone. Mission failed. Buthow about this: screw the informant.
target before he took off in a chopper.Sprinting up flights of stairs to thehelipad, my victim spotted me just in
time for me to throw every grenadein my inventory under the chopper,destroying it, vanquishing him andknocking me over, before I made aludicrously frantic escape onhorseback. It was amazing, and I’m
not sure it would’ve been vastly improvedhad I silently shot theguy and snuck out.
The punishment fora stealth mission goingwrong is anexhilarating set-piece
in a constantlysurprising open world.I’ve had weird and wild gunfights ofunending nightmare across giant
bases, battling hordes of soldiers,mechs and even a chopper, as an
ill-equipped one-man-and-a-dogarmy. Nighttime battlefields fill withsmoke, flares and explosions. I’ve hato hide from swarming troops andmortar fire behind buildings, pattingmy dog for reassurance while I call inmore ammo drops, preparing for mysecond wind as the night graduallyturns into morning.
HAPPY ACCIDENT
Some hardcore players will neverwant to find themselves in thatposition. But when the controls arethis good, when your tactical optionsare so extensive, it’s in no way a badthing to be part of these escalating,huge-scale battles, which offer thesort of moment-to-moment thrillsmost action games would struggle toscript. Embrace it when things gowrong in MGSV . Nothing boring evehappens when it does.
The goal that guides every level isto sneak through environments
without being caught by theenemy—if they spot Snake (aka BigBoss), an alert phase ensues until youcan lose his attackers. The Phantom
Pain’s story missions take Snake toone of two enormous military
N E E D T O K N O W
WHAT IS IT?An open-world stealth
sim rooted in the series’complex history.
EXPECT TO PAY$60
DEVELOPERKojima Productions
PUBLISHER
Konami
REVIEWED ONIntel I5 44 [email protected],
8GB RAM, NvidiaGeForce GTX 780
MULTIPLAYERComing soon
LINKwww.konami.jp/mgs5
S N A K E ’ S B U D D I E SWhat do a dog, a horse, a mech and a woman in underwear have in common?
D - H O R S EThe easiestway to getaroundAfghanistanwithoutstealingan enemyvehicle.
D - D O GWild dogpuppy whoSnake rescuesearly on,which latergrows into abig scarybastard.
D - W A L K E RAn armoredmech walkerwith customweapon andgadget kits. Ahi-techmarriage ofdog and horse.
Q U I E TEnemysniper-turned-ally who wearsa ludicrousbikini/underwearcombo tobattle.
STRENGTHS
Fast and well-armed if you prefer a loud,explosive approach.
WEAKNESSES
Snake sticks his ass outand looks a bit daftdriving it.
STRENGTHS
Picks off enemies at adistance, gets deadlierwith time.
WEAKNESSES
Isn’t always thattrigger-savvy in the heatof battle.
STRENGTHS
Offers a quick way out ofhairy situations. You can
shoot from horseback.
WEAKNESSES
A bit awkward to steer,has no function incombat by himself.
STRENGTHS
Senses enemies around you, and can attack or
distract soldiers.
WEAKNESSES
None, he is a dog.
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It’s exciting tohave somethinggame-changing
happen mid-mission
sandboxes: the cliffs and plains of aSoviet-populated Afghanistan, andlater, the swampy Angola-Zaire
border. Out in these environments,MGSV throws together smart AI,uncontrollable weather situationsand varied types of locations in waysthat frequently generate new stories.The mission objectives tend to be abit basic on the surface—extract thisguy, assassinate this informant, stopthis convoy—but what happens alongthe way is often unexpected andalmost always exciting.
Heading into a mission, you pickSnake a limited loadout of twoprimary weapons, one sidearm, and
explosives. Importantly though, youcan also have anything from yourarmory sent to the battlefield at anytime via Snake’s iDroiddevice. Crossing theten-hour mark, thisrange of instantlyaccessible optionsexpands into AIcompanions of varyingskillsets, airstrikes thatlet Snake summon firefrom the skies, helicopters that canprovide supporting fire and lots more.As someone who’s enjoyed the entire
series, I see this as a naturalprogression from Metal Gear’s ministealth sandboxes into something thatrealizes the potential that was thereall along, without any compromises.
As a result, the balance betweengame and story has now shiftedsignificantly in favor of the former.It’s so different to previous numberedMetal Gears in its lack of cutscenesthat it takes some getting used to.Such narrative as there is, you’ll findpretty sober and convincingly seriousfor a series known for elderly snipers,
vampires and men who can fire killer
bees. In The Phantom Pain, it’s 1984and Snake is attempting to rebuild hismilitary offshore haven Mother Base
following its destruction at the end ofGround Zeroes. Having been in acoma for nine years, he’s seekingrevenge on those responsible. After adeliberately confusing scripted introset in a hospital, in which Snakeescapes a horrific military attack,story is limited to a few briefcutscenes and a lot of optional,occasionally interesting audio tapes.
The lack of an intrusive story andthe focus on unscripted sandboxaction makes The Phantom Pain feel
very contemporary and easy to
recommend to new players. Thatmodern approach extends to basicthings that MGS has always struggled
with, such as the waySnake moves.
The Phantom Pain shares Ground Zeroes’intuitive third-personcontrol scheme, whichmeans it’s as much funto play MGSV like ashooter as a stealth
game. It’s important that they got thisright, because there’s a lot to considerat once here: marking enemies in
nearby settlements using the binoculars, switching to first-personaim with a gun and sneaking up
behind soldiers to interrogate themall feel really easy to pull off. While
you can remap the keyboard controls,I recommend using a controller for
MGSV because the menus were builtwith that in mind.
SANS FRONTIERES
It took me a decent chunk of my50-odd hours with MGSV to learnthe way everything works. In the
field, visibility is affected by the
day-and-night cycle, and when you’redeep into an enemy base and the suncomes up, it can be the difference
between a perfect stealth playthroughor the final set-piece from an ‘80saction movie. I love this as anunpredictable factor in a stealthgame, as well as the changingweather, such as sandstorms and rain.It’s dramatic and exciting to havesomething game-changing happenmid-mission that you can’t control.
The list of stuff to do in The
Phantom Pain is divided into mainstory missions and Side Ops, andwhile the latter is mostly composedof optional missions, there are some
key shards of story within them, too.It’s almost like an RPG queststructure, with both strands earning
you GMP, MGSV ’s currency.Rebuilding Mother Base is the
foundation of the story, but it’s alsothe metagame that ties everythingtogether. This is where you’ll spendGMP, and use resources found allover the open world, such as fuel orplants. It’s both an offshore platformthat’s Snake’s explorable home
between missions and a slightly dullmanagement sim that takes place inmenus on the iDroid, but the rewards
are definitely worth it.There’s another side to this, too.
In the field, you can kidnap stunnedor sleeping (not dead) soldiers usingthe Fulton Recovery System, whichattaches tiny balloons to them andsends them back to Mother Base to
join your army. You can then assignthem to the various divisions (see‘how I built your mother’) based onwhat their skills are best suited to.The Fulton system can also airliftanimals from the field, leading tofunny images of goats looking
confused in mid-air, and later it can
H O W I B U I L T Y O U R M O T H E RThe different divisions of Mother Base and what they do
S U P P O R TResponsible fordropping your
equipment into the field. Thebetter they are, the faster yourshotgun ammo arrives.
I N T E L Will scout out roughenemy locations on the
map, and get faster and moreaccurate readings as you levelthem up.
M E D I C A L These guys treat theMother Base staff, who I
pay no attention to as I roam theopen world on horseback with agrenade launcher.
R & D P L A T F O R MThese guys developweapons and other
upgrades, and they need to be of acertain level for you to unlock themore powerful firearms.
C O M B A T U N I TP L A T F O R MSend your best soldiers
on mercenary missions to bringback monetary and resourcerewards for no work.
B A S ED E V E L O P M E N TBase development guys
go off and find building or fuelresources for you, so Snake hasto do less farming.
52 DECEMBER 2015
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
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The face of a man who’skilled a lot of robots.
A grenade launcher in astealth game? Outrageous!
It’s a sparse butgorgeous world.
Look how silly Snakelooks riding this thing.
Mission zones canget pretty hairy.
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Snake on a horse is,well, pretty sexy.
How not to do stealth.
There are very fewdestructible environments.
Snake can unlock newcostume choices, too.
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Why not go fullKilgore andhave it playRide of theValkyries?
be used to bring home whole vehiclesand shipping containers.
Mother Base is not a particularly
fun space to be in, to be honest, asidefrom when you’re beating up yourloyal troops for no reason. Whatmakes it worth the time is thatleveling up your divisions is the keyto unlocking new weapons,equipment or any othersort of upgrades. Eachweapon type has a techtree: a tranquilizer dartgun can become a morepowerful one with a
better clip and damage,and so on. New
weapon blueprints arefound all over the twoenvironments, and the thrill ofresearching a new grenade launcherand having it instantly dropped intothe battlefield is similar to the joy youget from an RPG crafting system.
Some of the upgrades are frivolous but awesome: you don’t need speakers on your attack helicopter toplay music, but why not go fullKilgore and have it play Ride of the
Valkyries to scare the shit out of theRussians? Music pops up all over theworld on collectable tapes, such as
A-ha’s Take On Me or Kids In America by Kim Wilde, and you can both listen to them on Snake’sWalkman and have them blare out of
your helicopter’s speakers. Custommusic works, too.
Upgrades also play a key role withSnake’s four AI ‘buddy’ support unitsin the game (see ‘Snake’s buddies’).Like your weapons, you can call in anew buddy and swap out the old oneat any time with the iDroid, anotherrefreshing layer of flexibility, and theyprogress in interesting ways. You can
order your sniper, Quiet, to provide
G E A R S O F W H A ? A brief history ofMetal Gear’s oddest moments
Credible
Batshit
MGS MGS2 MGS3 MGS4 MGS Peace
Walker
Solid Snake, a clone,kills his clone brother.
Ocelot’s mindcontrolled bydead clone’s
evil arm.
Rogue AI
created bydead illuminatirules world.
Features charactercalled Hot Coldman.Soulful warrior
kills formermentor.
Weird
covering fire, tell your dog to attackenemies or order your horse to do ashit. Which makes enemy jeeps skid
out of control, if you were wondering.
PEACE WALKTHROUGH
You can use all of these options ornone of them—that’s the point. Anddon’t worry if this array of stuff to do
sounds overwhelming:Kojima Productionssensibly drip-feeds youthese elements overthe first ten hours so
you know how to usethem all. I found the
journey to figuring out
my optimal loadouts to be tremendous fun.I’ve seen all of The Phantom Pain’s
elements feature separately in othergames, but not brought together inquite this way. I love that theend-of-mission scoring systemrewards a multitude of differentplaystyles, and not just the stealth-only approach. While there are heavy
bonuses for ghosting and penaltiesfor being caught by the enemy, you’realso strongly rewarded for headshotsor speed. This encourages players to
be more experimental, and not to feel
like it’s the end of the world if they’respotted. This is a game where it feelsgreat to fire a gun, and you’ll havedozens in your inventory. You shoulddefinitely use them.
I recommend The Phantom Pain without question to someoneunfamiliar with the series. In fact, Ithink existing Metal Gear fans will
be the hardest for The Phantom
Pain to win over: the structure is just so different. But once Ireached the eight-hour mark, Irealized how in love with it I was,
and how much fun I was having just
doing daft stuff like trying to blow upa bear with C4, lobbing a sleepingguard off a cliff to his death orFulton-ing a tank into the air with adude inside just because I was toolazy to blow it up. They’ve built aworld that lets these momentshappen constantly, and it never stops
being impressive.The environmental design feeds
into this madness perfectly, and somof the backdrops to missions aregigantic, with many points of entry.While as open worlds they feel alittle quiet and spread out, the morepopulated areas of refineries,abandoned towns or palaces are allplaygrounds that encourage repeatruns of missions. I’d happily swap thold Metal Gear hub environments fothese any day. In retrospect, they feelike prototypes for what the team at
Kojima Productions have alwayswanted to build.
There are some parts of old Meta
Gear that would’ve made a welcometransition, though: other than acouple of great sniper duels and onelarger fight I can’t talk about withoutspoiling, I thought the selection of
boss fights was pretty dull,particularly an annoying recurringscrap with some cheap zombiesoldier men that are little more than
bullet sponges.Bad boss fights occupy less than
one hour of MGSV
total, though, andthat’s a tiny fraction of my playtimeso far. This is a massive experience,with an extensive and challengingendgame, too. Even the most basicplaythrough will clock-in at 25 hoursand those that really get deep intoexperimenting with the game willeasily reach 50 hours or more.
Those tens of hours have sailed by. I’m truly obsessed with The
Phantom Pain, and I think it’s adazzling example of how excitingopen-world game design can be. Not
just being set in a big or beautiful
world, but having the building blockin place to let players have momentsthat feel like they belong to them.
Metal Gear Solid V is a standard-setting sandbox game that makesperfect sense on PC, and is likelyto be the most influential Metal
Gear Solid game since the first.
93A generous stealthsandbox masterpiecethat will delight both newand existing fans of the
long-running series.
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THUNDER ROAMThe vehicular combat shines, but MAD MAX falters when you get out
of the car. By Chris Livingston
You can rip adriver right outof his seat then
catapult himthrough the air
To acquire all the parts and upgradesneeded to turn his new car into anengine of vengeance, Max reluctantly
makes deals with the leaders ofseveral desert outposts and sets aboutclearing their turf of threats,conquering enemy camps, scavengingfor scrap metal, and engaging in tonsof car-to-car combat and meleebrawls with goons.
The vehicularcombat is great fun,mainly due to one ofthe most enjoyableweapons I’ve ever usedin a game: Max’scar-mounted harpoon.
As you explore thewasteland you’llrandomly come across lone vehiclesor sizable war parties. Target a car’sdoor with your harpoon and you cantear it off. Target a rear bumper andyou can slingshot your car into it forextra ramming damage. Yank off
Just as Fury Road arrives on Blu-ray to be obsessively watchedand rewatched, Max comes to PC in an open-world action game by the developers of the Just Cause series. Here Max findshimself left for dead in the desert—and worse, his iconicInterceptor stolen—after a run-in with hulking warlord
Scabrous Scrotus. Max joins forces with the fawning, Quasimodo-likemechanic Chumbucket, who agrees to help him build a new car.
armor, piece by piece, to expose a gastank and you can detonate it with ashotgun blast. As you upgrade the
harpoon you’ll gain the ability to tearoff a car’s wheel, completelyneutralizing it. Best of all, you can arip a driver right out of his seat,either through an unarmoredwindshield or a door you’ve removed,
and then catapult himthrough the air. It’s a
blast. You’re not alwaysthe hunted, either:sometimes enemydrivers will realizethey’ve bitten off morethan they can chew
and beat a hastyretreat, meaning you get to become the pursuer.
The harpoon isn’t just usefulagainst other cars. Across thewasteland enemy factions have builtintimidating metal ‘scarecrow’ towersthat can be harpooned and pulled
down. Sniper nests also dot thelandscape, and you can rip themdown or simply impale the sniperand yank him right out of his roost.Tear down the gates of enemy campsand you’ll be able to target any creepsfoolish enough to come running,pulling them one-by-one out into thedust. Eventually you’ll acquire theThunderpoon, which adds explosive-tipped bolts, effectively giving you a
rocket launcher attack useful againstheavily armored vehicles.
The apex of car combat isencountering a convoy: a lead vehiclewith a handful of cars protecting it.This is where the game does a great
job of capturing the long, chaotic, and violent chase scenes from the films. As you chase down the convoy andstart picking off the escort vehicles,
you’ll be rammed and sideswiped aseager War Boys leap onto your car,stabbing and kicking you through
your windows until you shake them
off. You’ll be engaging vehicles infront, behind, and on both sides of you, tearing into them with yourharpoon, detonating their gas tanks,and ejecting their drivers, all thewhile trying to catch the lead vehicleand keep your own car on the road.
Random wasteland events onlyadd to the high-speed chaos. In themidst of one extended convoy attack,a massive storm rolled in, turning dayinto night and filling the air withcrackling lightning bolts andhazardous flying debris. Duringanother convoy chase, a different war
party of three vehicles camerocketing along the same highway...headed in the opposite direction. Theutter devastation was hilarious. Theserandom events can completely ruin
your assault, which I’m sure somewill find frustrating, but I personallynever minded doing a convoy missionmultiple times. They’re easily the
best part of the game, and I’m happyto say there’s a massive one towardthe end of the story missions.
You need to get out of your carquite often, which is where some of
the high-octane fun of Mad Max can
N E E D T O K N O W
WHAT IS IT?
Open-world vehicle andmelee combat in the
world of the films.
EXPECT TO PAY
$60
DEVELOPER
Avalanche Studios
PUBLISHER
Warner Bros.Interactive
Entertainment
REVIEWED ON
Intel i7 x980 3.33GHz,9GB RAM, NvidiaGeForce GTX 960
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
www.madmaxgame.com
C A N O N F I R E Each of the four films is represented in some way
M A X M A X 1 9 7 9Max is shot in theknee in the originalfilm. In the game, Maxwill clutch that injuredknee and limp for afew moments aftertaking a fall.
R O A D W A R R I O R1 9 8 1Max had a faithfuldog, imaginativelynamed ‘Dog’, and he’sgot one in the game,who helps him sniffout landmines.
B E Y O N DT H U N D E R D O M E1 9 8 5In the game, there’s abrawl in a metal domeas the crowd chants“Two men enter, oneman leaves.”
F U R Y R O A D 2 0 1 5Like the film, thegame features WarBoys and Buzzards,deadly electricalstorms, and someoneis even used as a‘blood bag’.
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Mad Max
R E V I EW
Ram ‘em head-on.Only way to be sure.
Turn your car into atrue war machine.
Swipe a faction’s car to passsafely through their territory.
You meet plenty of eccentriccharacters, but few memorable ones.
Enemies don’t get harder,there are just more of them.
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Mad Max
R E V I EW
Parrying is key to winningfights. Sort of the only key.
Flame throwers useup tons of guzzoline.
Upgrade your ram, and you’ll start tearingthrough unarmored cars like paper.
Couldn’t get the TomHardy license, then.
Underground locations: well-designed, but not well-used.
War Boys won’t hesitate tothrow themselves on your car.
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Very little ofthe dark humor
of the filmsmakes it into
the game
start to fizzle. Invading enemy campsis always done on foot, and meleecombat works similarly to whatwe’ve seen in the Arkham games—parry blows with one key, deliver
your own by mashing another, chainattacks together for damage bonuses,execute special moves whenprompted. But it’s not as fluid orflexible. The camera can be awfulduring fights, sometimes completelyobscuring Max and his enemies.Learning special attacks and parrieslets you deal with goons morequickly, but in response the gamesimply increases the size of the mobs.It’s still wonderfully kinetic: breakinga goon’s arm or piledriving him intothe ground feels good and crunchy,and blasting away with yoursawed-off, using spiked meleeweapons, or throwing explosive
spears gives fights a bit of kick.Ultimately, though, there are simplyso many of these fights, all essentiallythe same, that they eventually beginto feel like a numbing chore. I haveplenty of fun stories about carcombat, but none about the dozensand dozens of fistfights I had.
OUTLANDER
Besides car and melee combat, thereare other things to do in thewasteland. I’ve played for 60 hoursand my map is still cluttered with
icons, though there’s honestly not awhole lot of variety. You can searchlocations for scrap (often engaging inmore melee), gather parts to upgradefriendly strongholds,capture outposts whosehot air balloons serveas vantage points, teardown scarecrows andsniper nests, or listen toa friendly wastelander’s(usually boring) tale ofwoe before getting a tipor sharing their loot. There are also acouple of interesting and creepy
underground locations that felt likethey might be leading to somethingdifferent, but unfortunately they endup the same way every other interiorlocation does: with a roomful of guysfor Max to punch to death.
There are a lot of ways to upgrade your car: adorning it with spikes,rams, armor, and flamethrowers,improving traction and suspension,and adding bigger and better enginesand nitro boosts. Some of theseupgrades simply require scrap metal,others are the result of story
progression. Some, however, are tied
to milestones. Heading into the finalconfrontation, for example, I wantedto have the maximum armor on mycar, as I’d been finding myself havingto pull over far too often to let Chumrepair it. This final armor upgraderequired not just gathering a bunchof scrap metal, but also eliminatingevery single threat in one area of themap: clearing every enemy camp,taking out every sniper andscarecrow tower, and finding andclearing every single minefield. I have
a problem with this. The great thingabout open-world games is that theydon’t just offer the freedom to tacklechallenges in the order in which you
choose, but also thefreedom to not tacklesome of them if youdon’t want to. Tyingseveral of Max’supgrades specifically tothe completion of all these optional activitiesmakes them, y’know,
not so optional. It’s not that I hateddoing the work—any activity I can do
while driving, like taking downtowers, I enjoyed—it’s just that I felt Ihad no choice in the matter.
At least the wasteland itself is asolid pleasure. I’m sure it was achallenge to make a massive and
barren desert visually interesting, but Avalanche pulled it off nicely, givingdifferent regions distinct themes.
You’ll find sun-bleached white sand,rolling yellow dunes, dark jaggedpeaks and cliffs, vast swamps of oilymuck, and rusty red buttes and
boulders. Then there’s Gas Town,
with its belching smokestacks and
mountains of trash, looking for all thworld like an industrial Mordor. Iwish the story complemented the
visuals, but very little of the darkhumor of the films make it into thegame, and most of the characters,including Max himself, are fairlyforgettable. And so few Australianaccents! Disappointing.
ROAD WARRIOR
I’m quite happy (and a littlesurprised) to say the port is excellent
With everything maxed—so tospeak—I generally averaged around70fps while driving and around 60fpin the game’s interiors. Some of thecontrols aren’t great: interactionrequires a key to be held rather thantapped. For climbing a ladder it’s nota big deal, but for collecting scrapmetal, which you’ll do hundreds oftimes, having to hold the button for afull second before Max picks up hisloot feels pointlessly time consuming
That’s a lot of negatives. And yet, still enjoyed the game because the cacombat goes a long way toward
making up for them. Over the 60hours I played, whenever I became
bored, I’d just race around the dunesand valleys in my car, looking for thetelltale plumes of dust that indicateda rolling war party or convoy. ThenI’d ready the harpoon, blast the nitroand get up to ramming speed.
77Car combat and thebeautiful wastelandmostly make up forrepetitive melee and
lackluster characters.
V E R D I C T
T O T H E M A X Everything is upgradable, but focus on these items first
4 S C R A P C R E WFound in forts, they’ll pickup scrap after car battlesso you don’t have to.
5 K N U C K L E D U S T E R SAdd rebar and wrenches toput more bite into Max’spunches.
6 S P I K E SKeeps those pesky WarBoys from leaping onto your hood.
3 H A R P O O NAn essential upgrade gives you the ability to tearwheels off enemy cars.
2 C H U M ’ SR E P A I R S K I L LAgonizingly slow, until youfind his favorite wrench.
1 N I T R O B O O S TYou’ll need extra speed tochase down convoys ormake quick getaways.
7 F L A M E T H R O W E R SThey use a lot of fuel butdiscourage vehicles fromside-swiping you.
1
4
7
2
3
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STOLID OBJECTVOLUME is a fun, funny stealth puzzle game in a dull dystopian England.
By Tyler Wilde
Andy Serkis isgreat. He is the
great AndySerkis, so that’s
assumed
As 100 stealth levels,Volume is prettyfun. It’s played from an overheadperspective, with WASD to move Rob
through small puzzles, avoidingguards and collecting gems on theway to the exit. And these aredefinitely puzzles as opposed toimprovisational action sequences,unless you count running in circlesaround a pillar to lose a guard as‘improvisation.’ Some bits requireagility, like when I needed to dancearound pressure-plate alarms whilealso avoiding vision cones, but there’salmost always a single clear solution.
Say there’s a guard lookingthrough a doorway, for instance. At
the most basic level, I might crouchbehind a half-wall near him, whistleto get him to move offhis post, and then creeparound the wall as hecomes looking for me.In a more advancedpuzzle, I might have toshoot a noisemakergadget I found earlierin the level, lure oneguard away from agroup of marching guards, and thenlet him rejoin them out of formationto create a gap that I can squeeze
through. It’s about identifying anddisrupting patterns.
The complexity rises every fewlevels, when new, extremely StealthGame ideas are introduced. You canhide in closets. There are forcefieldsblocking paths that need to bedeactivated. Some forcefields arelocked and stay up until you find thekey. Dogs have better peripheralvision. Archers have long, narrowvision triangles, but are slow to fire.There’s a gadget that distracts guardswith a curious object, one that
disguises you as a guard, one that
Volume is a pretty good stealth game. Its title could be PrettyGood Stealth Game, and I would agree with it. As a futuristicRobin Hood tale, it’s not quite so good. It’s often amusing, but its comments on wealth distribution and moralresponsibility are ultimately pretty mundane. Meanwhile,
its protagonist, Rob Locksley, sounds so bored I expected him to give up onsaving the world halfway through to watch YouTube videos.
makes you invisible, and so on. A lotof ideas, introduced at an even pace.
Most of these ideas are fun. I
especially liked the puzzles designedaround jumping over short walls. Asguards can’t do the same, you canforce them to run little mazes while
you take shortcuts, off to the nextsection of the level before they haveany clue what’s happened. It’s fun, ifsometimes too obvious and simple, togame the guards’ AI.
.SIMPLE FORMS
There were two levels that infuriatedme (screw lasers), but for the mostpart,Volume is pretty tame. There are
some bits that require trickymaneuvering—such as avoidingpressure plates thatemit guard-alertingsounds while alsohiding behind pillars soguards don’t spot
you—but I rarely gotstuck on anything forlong. The puzzles aresatisfying to solve, butnot especially hard.
The difficulty is heavily mitigated by checkpoints, which are placedthroughout the levels and not only
act as respawn points, but also saveany gems or items you’ve picked upso far. I appreciate that I’m not askedto redo an entire level because of onemistake, but checkpoints can beabused. I discovered early on that if Igrabbed some gems and was spotted
by a guard, I’d be fine as long as Imade it to a checkpoint before beingkilled. Hell, even if I fell through thecheckpoint while in my ‘I’ve beenshot and am dying’ animation, I stillrespawned there and kept myprogress. It feels like cheating, which
isn’t a good feeling, but I wasn’t going
to forego using a perfectly goodsolution on principle.
It’s funny that mid-deathcheckpointing is even allowed, givenVolume’s premise. The idea is that
you, as Rob Locksley, have hijackedan evil corporation’s old AI and arelivestreaming simulated burglaries ofreal places. You’re showing the publichow to take back the wealth that’s
been hoarded by the elite, and they’re
going out and doing it. Except Ifigure they die whether or not Robmade it to a checkpoint.
The danger of Rob’s suggestions isaddressed, to be fair. The story ismainly told as Rob’s hijacked AI(Alan) talks to him every few levels.
Alan is voiced by Danny Wallace,who is funny, emotional, and deliversthe best AI voice performance in agame since GLaDOS. Thecartoonishly evil corporation owneralso chimes in now and then, and is
voiced by Andy Serkis. Andy Serkis is
great. He is the great Andy Serkis, sothat’s assumed.Rob himself, however, is not
voiced by an actor like Wallace orSerkis—he’s voiced by musician and
YouTube star Charlie McDonnell. Ah.There’s your problem, then.
There’s also a level editor, sharing,and rating system—which bafflinglydoesn’t make good use of themouse—but I think 100 levels wasenough for me. There’s someinteresting stuff to play with near theend ofVolume, including someunique teleporter puzzles, but for the
most part I’ve done it all already. I’vethrown noisemakers, avoided visioncones, and dodged lasers. In this case,I’m doing it in a particularly
beautiful, colorful world with triangleexplosions (a very cool effect), butnone of it is novel enough to warrantrepeat visits.
N E E D T O K N O W
WHAT IS IT?
A real-time stealthpuzzler with 100 levels
and a level editor.
EXPECT TO PAY
$10
DEVELOPER
Bithell Games
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
Core i5-3570, 8GB RAM,GTX Titan
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
www.volumegame.net
72Fun, not-too-hard stealthpuzzles that look great,wrapped up in ahumdrum story with a
boring protagonist.
V E R D I C T
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O N T H E G R O U N D
The floor can hurt or help youS H A D O W STheir placementrarely makes sense,but when in theshadows, you’retotally invisible
S H O C K These floor panelselectrocute you, thebig jerks.
T E L E P O R T E R SBe careful, some ofthese teleport youdirectly into aguard’s vision.
P R E S S U R EP L A T E SStep on one ofthese, and a soundalerts nearbyguards.
DECEMBER 2015 6
Volum
R E V I EW
The dialogue can be a little distractingwhile you’re trying to stealth around.
More of those noise-making white squares.
Cubism is back in a bigway in the future.
You often have to distract patrolling guardswhile waiting for forcefields to shut down.
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Final Fantasy Type-0 HD
R E V I EW
That’s right, say it insteadof thinking it.
This is part of a prettyterrible RTS minigame.
Nice environment, but thisroom has a loading screen.
The uniform you’re obliged towear at anime ninja school.
The size of the handsomecast makes it hard to care.
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V NTUM
V NTUM
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USTOMIZENOW:WWW.DIGIT LSTORM. OMUSTOMIZENOW:WWW.DIGIT LSTORM. OMUSTOMIZENOW:WWW.DIGIT LSTORM. OMUSTOMIZENOW:WWW.DIGIT LSTORM. OMUSTOMIZENOW:WWW.DIGIT LSTORM. OM
Intel the IntelLogo IntelInside IntelCore and CoreInside aretrademarksof IntelCorporationin the U.S.and/or othercounntel the IntelLogo IntelInside IntelCore and CoreInside aretrademarksof IntelCorporationin the U.S.and/or othercounntel the IntelLogo IntelInside IntelCore and CoreInside aretrademarksof IntelCorporationin the U.S.and/or othercounntel the IntelLogo IntelInside IntelCore and CoreInside aretrademarksof IntelCorporationin the U.S.and/or othercounntel the IntelLogo IntelInside IntelCore and CoreInside aretrademarksof IntelCorporationin the U.S.and/or othercounDigital Storm Logo and‘World’sMost AdvancedPCs’ aretrademarks of Digital Storm.Digital Storm Logo and‘World’sMost AdvancedPCs’ aretrademarks of Digital Storm.Digital Storm Logo and‘World’sMost AdvancedPCs’ aretrademarks of Digital Storm.Digital Storm Logo and‘World’sMost AdvancedPCs’ aretrademarks of Digital Storm.Digital Storm Logo and‘World’sMost AdvancedPCs’ aretrademarks of Digital Storm.
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HARD REIGNEnjoy open-ended cyberpunk strategy on the rainy neon streets
of SATELLITE REIGN. By Andy Kelly
You seamlesslymove from theanonymity ofthe streets to
a mission
It’s in this dystopian urban sprawlthat you, owner of a smallcorporation with big ideas, must
make your mark—which is easier saidthan done when the mega-corporations and their military-gradesecurity forces have a monopoly oneverything. Starting in the downtownarea—a bustling, labyrinthine worldof neon—your paththrough this open-world city is the oneyou carve. You can domissions in any order,in any way you please.
The action is viewedfrom above, and you
control your fourcustomizable super-agents with traditional RTS controls.It’s reminiscent of XCOM: EnemyUnknown, but real-time rather thanturn-based. Your guys can dash intocover, and their accuracy in agunfight is determined by range andweapon, enemy position, and by theirabilities—which can, of course, beupgraded. You can flank enemies toget the jump on them, snipe fromafar, or charge in for a melee attack.
The rain never stops falling on Satellite Reign’s isometricfuture-city. It’s derivative of countless cyberpunk cityscapes, but amazingly atmospheric regardless. Video ads cycle onhuge billboards, reflected in puddles on the pavement below.Police drones float past, spotlights scanning for trouble in the
gloom, and futuristic cars buzz along the roads. It’s like Blade Runner ifRidley Scott had filmed it with a tilt-shift lens.
But while games like XCOM and Shadowrun limit you to closed-inlevels, Satellite Reign’s open city lets
you seamlessly move from theanonymity of the streets, where youcan hide in the bustle, to a mission:attacking a rival corporation’s factoryor robbing a bank. These guardedspaces are levels of a sort, but they sit
in the open worldwaiting to be attackedor infiltrated.
It’s daunting at first.The starting area isenormous, and there’sso much intricate detailon those maze-like
streets that you can feellost. It’s when you see athick wall, gun-toting guards, andwarnings to stay away that you know
you’ve encountered somewhere youcan assault or rob, and that’s whenthe game gets really good.
You have four agents, but thatdoesn’t mean you have to use themall. The most satisfying moment forme was deciding to rob a bank withthe security of Area 51, and managingto pull it off with one character: a
hacker. I carefully hacked my waythrough security gates, dodgedcameras and patrolling guards, andmade my way towards the main
building. I slipped inside and hackedtheir systems so that ‘siphons’ I’dattached to ATMs around the citywould generate more money. Then Isnuck out, and the corporation I’dripped off was none the wiser.
That’s just one way, though. I
could have fought my way to themain building with all four agents,their guns blazing, then sent mysoldier in to grab a big pile of moneyfor a more immediate reward. Thereare no interiors in this game: thesemoments happen off-screen, via atext summary of what your agent didinside. But considering the size of thecity, I don’t mind. Combining youragents’ skills, augs and weapons, andchoosing how to approach a mission,is where Satellite Reign is at its best.
REMOTE ACCESS
My biggest complaint is how thegame feels. It has none of the punchy,kinetic weight of XCOM or StarCraft,which top-down games like this needto compensate for your distance fromthe action. Your agents’ movement isslow and heavy, making the battlesfeel sluggish. It’s a hard thing toarticulate in words: it just lacks thatslickness that many of its peers have.
This is an issue that haunts everymoment of the game, but otherwise,
Satellite Reign is one of the mostenjoyable small-squad strategy games
I’ve played in ages. I love how it blends tactical combat with anopen-world structure and Deus
Ex-inspired freedom. Creepingthrough a heavily defended enemy
base unseen is a thrill, and if thingsgo awry, there are plenty of combatoptions to experiment with.
N E E D T O K N O W
WHAT IS IT?
An open-worldcyberpunk strategy
game.
EXPECT TO PAY
$30
DEVELOPER
5 Lives Studios
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
GeForce GTX 970, Inteli5-3570K @ 3.4GHz,
16GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
www.satellitereign.com
80Satisfyingly freeformmissions and rich gamesystems to play with, inone of the prettiest
cyberpunk cities on PC.
V E R D I C T
G A N G O F F O U R What your agents can do
S O L D I E RThe muscle. Gets his pointacross with miniguns,tactical nukes and plasmashotguns.
H A C K E RThe IT Support dude of thefuture. Can hack securitysystems and hijackpeople’s cyber-brains.
S U P P O R TBackup. Supplies extraammo and can extend your line of sight withcamera drones.
I N F I L T R A T O RThe cyber-ninja. Able toturn invisible for a shortperiod, enjoys swords andsniper rifles.
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Satellite Reign
R E V I EW
Hack ATMs to leechmoney from them.
It’s not cyberpunk withoutgaudy neon nightclubs.
Send your soldier into thisbank for a hefty reward.
The detail in thcity is remarkable
Combat lacks the satisfyingweight ofXCOM .
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GOOD LOOKINGBEYOND EYES is a meditative stroll made special by its choice
of lead character. By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
A woodlandpath can be asunnerving as
scouring atomb
Walls take you places. Follow one andyou might come to a corner. Turn thecorner and you might come to a door.
The comfort of such predictability ispalpable in Beyond Eyes’ context-sensitive animations: drift near abuilding and Rae reaches outtentatively, fingertips brushing thesurface for reassurance. It’s one ofmany ways this briefbut stirring adventuretransforms yourappreciation of3D space.
Rae lost her sight inan accident some timebefore the story begins.
Once a giddy extrovert,she has becomesomething of a hermit, her soleremaining contact with the worldbeyond her garden a chubby gingercat named Nani. One day Nanidoesn’t visit as usual, and Rae leavesthe garden to search for him. It seemsa laughably simple framework tobuild a game around—but this is anobservation colored by thecomplacency of the fully sighted. To agirl in Rae’s shoes, a stroll down awoodland path can be every bit asunnerving as scouring a tomb in Dark
Souls, and Beyond Eyes’ greatest featis to express this in a way those withunimpaired vision can grasp.
Where other games aboutblindness have tackled the subject bylimiting themselves to audio, BeyondEyes deals in visual metaphors. Eachenvironment in the game begins as ameasureless expanse of white—abackdrop that, unlike the customarycliché of blindness as eternal night,rouses curiosity rather than dread.Everything Rae can hear, smell ortouch is manifest on this landscape as
a pleasing gush of watercolor. Grass
Some of the most valuable if not enjoyable artworks are thosethat force us to reconsider something we think we know well. Beyond Eyes has changed how I think about walls. In mostgames, they’re things to crouch behind, leap over and blow up.Or smear with instructive graffiti in your dying moments if
you’re an NPC in Alien: Isolation or Dead Space. In this, a game that castsyou as a blind girl searching for her cat, they almost feel like friends.
and flowers seethe into existenceunderfoot as you step forward.Houses erupt from a splash of
brickwork, textures spreading acrossthe hidden structure like time-lapsefootage of a coral reef. Animal ormechanical noises pulse in thedistance, temporarily exposingpatches of road or treetop as Rae
picks up on how soundwaves are affected bycontact with theirsurroundings.
This is stunning towitness, as homely asthe supportingtechnology may be. It’s
also a source ofenduring uncertainty. You may, for instance, ‘see’ what’shappening inside a building orenclosure before you realize that thestructure itself is there. You’ll ‘see’ theriver bubbling beneath a bridge
before you discover you’re able tocross it, stepping out cautiously intowhat at first appears to be empty air.
Moreover, Rae’s perceptions aretinged by her innocence—the slightlysaccharine, storybook aesthetic isn’t
just a presentational gambit, but acommentary on the protagonist—andthe gap between perception andreality can be memorably unpleasant.
An early example is what seems atfirst to be fabric gaily flapping on aclothesline. On closer inspection, theobject reveals itself to be a scarecrow.
Rae’s fear and surprise at suchdiscoveries are touchingly conveyed
via body language, rather than indialogue—she’ll stoop, hugging hersides, when the world refuses to playalong with her expectations.
ONE TO WATCH
This is as much a game aboutlearning to live with life’s occasionalugliness, as it is learning to livewithout sight. The player’s preciserole among all this is engagingly hardto pinpoint. At times you feel like Rae
herself, struggling to make sense ofthe geography; at others you’re moreof a guardian, leading her by thehand. The story’s refusal to broachthe question of her parents is telling,in this regard—it leaves that role openfor the player to assume.
Beyond Eyes is a game I want youto play but one I struggle to score.While illuminating and restful, it’srarely ‘fun’ in the same way that, say,a Tomb Raider game is fun. The paceis necessarily ponderous, yet the storycan be completed in an evening, andwhile there are a few traditional
puzzles, they’re extremely simple,more there for variety’s sake than toprovide a challenge. But then, judgingthis by the standards of morestraightforward games is missing thepoint a little. Plenty of games set outto be entertaining. This is one of thefew that wants to change you.
N E E D T O K N O W
WHAT IS IT?
A third-personexploration game
starring a blind girl.
EXPECT TO PAY
$15
DEVELOPER
Tiger & Squid
PUBLISHER
Team17
REVIEWED ON
i5, GTX460M, 4GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
www.beyondeyes-game.com
75
Over quickly and hardlyexhilarating, Beyond Eyesis still illuminating in away that games rarely
bother to be.
V E R D I C T
O U T O F S I G H T
Games for the visually impairedP A P A S A N G R EA game for phonesthat takes place inthe underworld,
where you tap the screen towalk and navigate pastmonsters in the gloom.
T H R E EM O N K E Y SA game that casts you as a hero blind
from birth—and thus, bestequipped to save a worldplunged into darkness.
R O C K V I B EA music gamebased onGuitarHero that swaps
the latter’s scrolling fretboardfor vibrations that tell you whento strum.
A U D I O Q U A K EA modified versionofQuake that usescontinuous audio
cues to tell you where you areand whether you’re currentlybeing shot.
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Beyond Eye
R E V I EW
There are a few optionalinteractions to discover.
When Rae feels threatened,the entire ambience changes
You’ll catch hints of otherpeople, but rarely meet them.
The palette hides fairlysimple geometry.
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FORBIDDING CITYThe game of downloads and dragons tells its darkest tale yet, in the
harsh neon glare of SHADOWRUN: HONG KONG. By Angus Morrison
Static thoughthe settingsare, they’relavish to an
obscene degree
If I lost, I’d enjoy life as a servilepawn; if I won, she might convinceher other half to dispose of a valued
asset. It’s all tension, melodrama and,as it turns out, farce. Almost as soonas the lead starts flying, she calls ahalt and agrees to deal—because she’snot an age-old force of destruction,she’s an accountant. A vampireaccountant. Who sayscorporate jobs are dull?
Splicing magic witha not-so-far futureEarth ruled bymegacorps isinherently ridiculous,but the business of
shadowrunning (dirty,untraceable work forthe highest bidder) was a touch dryin Shadowrun Returns and itsexpandalone, Dragonfall. Hong Kong is blessed by the camp excess ofEastern cinema, not just in the luridneon that adorns every shopfront, butin the clichéd retorts, triad wars andB-movie heists that it delights in. It’slike the series has relaxed, convincedby a third successful Kickstarter thatit’s good at what it does.
Arooftop duel under neon floodlights convinced me thatShadowrun’s writing had at last met the potential in itsmash-up of magic and cyberpunk. A charismatic elven streetsamurai, I’d presumably coasted in samurai school, becauseI could talk my way through a locked door but couldn’t hit a
troll at two paces. Yet here I was, staring down an angry vampire upset atmy late-night stock check of her boyfriend’s flat.
Shadowrun is about intrigueabove all, and the central narrativehere raises questions aplenty. As a
clean-nosed tourist in search of yourestranged foster father, it’s all of fiveminutes before you’re forced intoroving firefights with the Hong Kongpolice. You descend into a life ofcrime, branded a terrorist and
desperate for triadprotection, taking on amultitude of unsavoryshadowruns while yournew boss (the badlynamed Kindly Cheng)tracks down your dad.So far, so cyberpunk,
but the late gameplot-kink cashes outthe Chinese mysticism teased allgame for an expertly foreshadowedfinale. Hong Kong is a more personaland urgent adventure than Returns—
you’re not so much a hero as awell-armed victim—and it surpasses
Dragonfall in dark comic grandeur. There’s the staple murder
mystery, Hollywood backstabbing,impromptu feng shui and somecasual tomb raiding to keep things
fresh. Of course, this being Shadowrun, these all take placethrough clicks on static interactiveicons, the scene-setting handled bytext and décor alone and the reliableturn-based combat all but unchanged.No doubt more-of-the-same seemedsafer than experimentation, but inthe face of competitors like Pillars ofEternity , Shadowrun needs to adaptor end up looking dated.
ART ATTACK
Static though the settings are, they’relavish to an obscene degree. A
battalion of artists must have beendrafted to contribute the exquisiteoriental set-pieces that appear on justone mission each, good for ascreenshot and a gunfight (obviously)
before being thrown on the pile. It’sluxurious, hands-off spectacle thatexists to support the writing, andoccasionally outshines it.
It’s a shame the crowdfunded
$1.2m wasn’t enough to resolve thelongstanding interface woes. The UIis cleaner, but a certain amount ofpatience is required to see past inputlag and, on one occasion, completefailure that caused my runner tostroll about in sleeping gas instead oftaking the lift. I left her behind with
vindictive pleasure. And for all thequality of Hong Kong ’s dialogue, it’smore an illusion of player choice thanmeaningful roleplay. Polite, smartassand slow-witted options typicallymask the same response.
Regardless, this is a spectacular
story of deceit and poisonous evilthat will lure you through the mostindulgent settings yet seen in theRPG renaissance. For the price, it’s ofgiddying scale, but Shadowrun isstarting to cry out for innovation. If itcontinues to tread water, it could endup drifting back into the shadows.
N E E D T O K N O W
WHAT IS IT?
A text-heavyturn-based RPG.
EXPECT TO PAY
$20
DEVELOPER
Harebrained Schemes
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
Windows 7, Core i5,16GB RAM, GTX 780Ti
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
www.harebrained-schemes.com/
shadowrun
76This is the bestShadowrun to date, butfor all its vibrant neonscenery, the series is
starting to go gray.
V E R D I C T
M O T L E Y C R E W Meet the team united by your misfortune
D U N C A N W UYour foster brotherand a former cop;
perhapsunderstandably
less than psychedfor shadowrunning.
G O B B E TA rat Shaman
whose hobbiesinclude melting
flesh from bonesand hitting damn-all with her SMG.
R A C T E RThe Russian drone
enthusiast whooccupies your
ship’s basement-cum-steel foundry.We’ve all got one.
I S 0 B E LDwarf and decker,whose mission in
life is to makemegacorps regret
their choice ofpassword.
G A I C H USure, he needshuman flesh to
survive, but whowouldn’t want a
bulletproof samuraion-side?
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Shadowrun: Hong Kong
R E V I EW
Tooltips have been streamlinedand the UI neatened up.
Squeaky le Pin has talkingand fleeing down to a T.
Proprietor: Maximum Law.Yes, really.
An efficient blend of crimescene and funeral.
Even minor interactionsrequire a dip to black.
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FROZENPillars of Eternity gets its first expansion, THE WHITE MARCH: PART I.
By Andy Kelly
It’s really justan excuse togive you two
new dungeonsto crawl
The White March is an area in theDyrwood’s frozen north. To access ityou need to have reached the point in
the story where the Watcher takespossession of their stronghold, CaedNua. A letter will arrive and yourghostly steward will tell you about anorthern village, Stalwart, that’s inneed of your help. If you don’t haveany saves from beforethe point of no returnat the end of the maingame, then you’ll haveto start all over again.
When you arrive inthe tiny fishing villageof Stalwart, it’s being
attacked by giant ogres.Repel the invaders andyour reward is a meeting with themayor. She tells you about an ancientdwarven fortress, Durgan’s Battery,that’s been sealed for aeons. If youcan get inside and activate alegendary forge, said to be able tomake the world’s strongest steel,you’ll bring prosperity to the village,which has been in decline for years.
The story isn’t as good as anythingin the main game, and there isn’tmuch of it. It’s really just an excuse to
If Pillars of Eternity is Baldur’s Gate, then The White March is
Icewind Dale—and not just because they both feature chilly,snow-covered settings. The focus in this DLC expansion issquarely on combat and dungeon-crawling, so anyone looking tosink their teeth into a rich story will be disappointed. But if you
can’t get enough of Pillars’s deep turn-based combat, and like a challenge,it may be worth a look.
give you two new dungeons to crawl. As well as Durgan’s Battery there’sCragholdt Bluffs, which is designed
for skilled players with high-levelparties. Don’t even think about goinghere until you’ve reached at leastlevel 10. Both are thin on story, but
big on tough, challenging battles thatwill test even veteran players.
But you don’t haveto go it alone, becauseThe White March features two newcompanions. Zahua is astrange old monk whospecializes in unarmedcombat and is covered
in self-inflicted scars.They rid him of his vanity, he says, which is part of hisreligion—and also the reason you firstmeet him hiding in a barrel ofstinking, rotten fish. He’s anintriguing oddball and really good atpunching people.
Then there’s the Devil of Caroc, acreepy robot with black eyes that’s
been implanted with the soul of awise-cracking murderer. She’s askilled rogue and one of the mostunusual companions in the game. It’s
just a shame they blow the wholesoul-of-a-murderer thing almostimmediately after you meet her. Iwould have liked to have beensurprised by that after adventuringwith her for a while.
NICE-LOOKING
There are a few decent sidequests,including a humorous one where youget involved in a feud between a local
Stalwart drunk and the owner of the village inn, but mostly they’reunremarkable. The White March ispretty, though. From the bubblinghot-springs and gently falling snow ofStalwart to the rugged, icy mountainsnear Durgan’s Battery, it’s a nicecontrast to the leafy green forests ofthe rest of the Dyrwood.
The White March: Part I arrivesalongside patch 2.0, which you’ll geteven if you don’t buy the DLC. This
brings some pretty major newfeatures to the game, including the
ability to assign AI scripts to partymembers. No more endlessmicromanaging—that’s unless youwant to, of course. The enemy AI has
been improved too and sees foes breaking away to engage rangedcharacters and casters at the backmore frequently.
The White March is fine. It’s noThrone of Bhaal or Tales of the SwordCoast, but it’s a reasonablyentertaining chunk of new quests,and a nice change of scenery. You’llreturn from the frosty White Marchwith quality loot in your stash,
mountains of experience points andtwo new weirdos to adventure with,
but not many great tales to tellaround the campfire. I’m not surewhat Part II of the DLC will entail,
but hopefully it has a morecompelling story to accompany itsdungeon-crawling.
N E E D T O K N O W
WHAT IS IT?
An expansion set in EírGlanfath’s snowy north.
EXPECT TO PAY
$15
DEVELOPER
Obsidian Entertainment
PUBLISHER
Paradox Interactive
REVIEWED ON
GeForce GTX 970, Inteli5-3570K @ 3.4GHz,
16GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
None
LINK
eternity.obsidian.net
70More of the same, butwith a greater focus oncombat and dungeons.If that appeals, it may
be worth a visit.
V E R D I C T
P A R T Y H A R D How the new companions stack up
CLASS Rogue
RACE AdvancedConstruct
STATS Might 15/ Con 12Dex 12/ Per 16Int 12/ Res 15
SKILLS Stealth 7/Mechanics 8
D E V I L O F C A R O C
CLASS Monk
RACE SavannahFolk
STATS Might 19/ Con 16Dex 15/ Per 10Int 10/ Res 11
SKILLS Athletics 4/ Survival 9
Z A H U A
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Pillars of Eternity The White March: Part
R E V I EW
Get ready forsome tough battles.
I hope you likeicy caves.
Echoes of Irenicus’sdungeon in Baldur’s Gate II .
If you thought Pillars neededmore robots, you’re in luck.
The imposing gates ofDurgan’s Battery.
Ogres are as smelly asthey are powerful.
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COMMAND PROMPTACT OF AGGRESSION waves the flag for the early-noughties RTS.
By Chris Thursten
The missionsthemselves
follow a well-worn
pattern
Command & Conquer: Generals is theobvious reference point, but Act ofAggression is very much its own
game. Resources are distributedrandomly across expansive maps,adding a speculative scouting phaseto the start of every match thatshapes your overall strategy.
During this phase you constructrefineries and supplylines, each factionoffering a slightlydifferent set ofparameters forhandling conveyance,base expansion, powergeneration, etc. It’s a lot
to take in, but if you’velamented the absenceof this kind of RTS over the past fewyears then it’s a difficulty curve you’llenjoy surmounting.
What follows is the drama of thematch proper. An infantry battlemight break out between garrisonedbuildings for control of a bank thatgenerates resources over time for theside that holds it. You might send aplatoon of soldiers to capture downed
Set during a near-future war, Act of Aggression is, nonetheless, athrowback—to Act of War, the mid-noughties RTS series itsucceeds, and to old-school base-building strategy games ingeneral. Three factions—the UN-sponsored Chimera, the US Army, and a coalition of PMCs called the Cartel—battle over
large maps to secure resources and assert military dominance. If you’vemissed heavy tanks and noodly electric guitar soundtracks, welcome home.
enemy combatants for a bounty, orengage in a daring medivac missionto prevent the same from happening
to your own troops. Tank columnsroll through the countryside,helicopters clash in the air, jets soarin from off-map as each playerapproaches the point where they candeploy match-ending superweapons
like nukes andlong-range artillery.
AoA doesn’t offeranything particularlynew, but there’spleasure in familiarity.
The campaign is alimp introduction to all
this. Two sequences ofmissions—one forChimera, another for Cartel—are setin a homebrew Clancyverse thatoffers nothing you haven’t seen indozens of other modern warfaregames. The missions themselvesfollow a well-worn pattern. You startout ordering a gaggle of troops alonga linear set of waypoints to learn the
basics. The amount of freedom you’regiven increases until you start to
approach full control. The problem isthat, as in many older RTSes, yourmost dangerous foes are the scriptedmoments planned to occur as you hitcheckpoints along the way. If youdon’t have the right forcecomposition at these moments, you’llprobably fail. This creates afrustrating trial-and-error dynamicwhere your first attempt isdisproportionately hard (because you
don’t know what’s coming) and yoursecond is disproportionately easy(because you do.)
AI BUG
For this reason I found skirmishmatches a more entertaining way tolearn AoA than the campaign. Thereare plenty of maps, varied options for
AI difficulty and team composition,and lots of potential value indiscovering all of these over time.I did, however, encounter a singlegamebreaking AI bug that, while
I couldn’t repeat it, means myrecommendation comes with caveats.Playing online prior to the game’s
official release, it’s tough to get asense of how the scene will shakeout—I had matches that came downto cheesy minute-zero buildingrushes (disappointing) and matchesthat played out over a full 40 minuteswith plenty of dramatic moments. Aswith any competitive game, theseinitial impressions represent the
bottom of a long and often-unforgiving climb.
To get the most out of this you
need to be able to put up with thecampaign and the sometimes-severerough edges. This isn’t the completepackage in the way the old WestwoodRTSes were. But moment to moment,in the little things that matter, Act of
Aggression is a worthy successor tothe games that inspired it.
Power-hungry private interest groups act through a covert network of private military companies to destabilizetraditional world powers and advance their agenda. The good guys must unravel the conspiracy piece-by-piece to
uncover the sinister guiding hand behind it. Also there’s probably an EMP or something.
N E E D T O K N O W
WHAT IS IT?
A modern military RTSwith an old-school
sensibility.
EXPECT TO PAY
$45
DEVELOPER
Eugen Systems
PUBLISHER
Focus Home Interactive
REVIEWED ON
Intel i5-2500K, 16GBRAM, GeForce GTX 970
MULTIPLAYER
Online, up to eightplayers
LINK
www.actofaggression-game.com
70AI flaws and a limpcampaign let down anotherwise-accomplishednear-future-military
RTS revival.
V E R D I C T
L O S T T H E P L O T To which military thriller does this premise belong?
A n s w e r : P r e t t y m u c h a l l o f t h e m . A n d a l l t h e r e s t , t o o .
A C T O FA G G R E S S I O N
C A L L O F D U T Y :A D V A N C E D W A R F A R E
S P L I N T E R C E L L :B L A C K L I S T
T O M C L A N C Y ’ SH A W X
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Act of Aggressio
R E V I EW
Bases get impressivelylarge over time.
The Cartel have accessto hi-tech gear.
Take THAT, military industrialcomplex! Oh wait.
We’re all going on holiday.To occupy a bank.
Magical repair tank?Probably nanomachines.
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Stories in Total War
appear without warning,
like aunts on damp
Sunday afternoons.
Attila and Rome II
deliberately construct these stories,
letting you make decisions that nudge
the narrative in whichever direction you
choose, but I prefer the accidental
drama of Medieval II .I’m drawn back to Medieval II:
Kingdoms after reading about the
Crusades: a compelling period of
history, rich in tales of dashing Norman
princes, religious fervor and the taut
diplomacy of the Byzantine Empire.
Specifically, the battle of Manzikert, in
which the once-supreme imperial army
was crushed by the Turks. It makes me
sad, because the Byzantines were
always my favorite faction, for a number
of reasons, although that is a bit like
picking your favorite war criminal.
Compared to the frothing barbarians of
the West, Constantinople had guile andromance. I decide to make myself feel
better by changing history, because
games let me do that.
TURKING POINT
I start a new Crusades campaign, 100
years after Manzikert. My empire is
diminished but capable—although huge
chunks of Anatolia belong to the Turks,
it’s still possible to fight back. Soon,
purple fingers begin stretching across
the map, gradually reclaiming lost lands
which were probably taken from
someone else in the first place. I
“I decide to make myself feel better
by changing history”How one man rose from the ranks to save an empire in MEDIEVAL II: TOTAL WAR
THE DOGE IS CAPTURED, I RANSOMHIM FOR 28,000 GOLD, CAPTURE HIMAGAIN, THEN EXECUTE HIM
atural authority is great, butn enormous horde is better.
M A T T E L L I O T T
THIS MONTH
Fixed history in Medieval II:
Total War .
ALSO PLAYED
Rocket League, Rocket
League, Rocket League
construct mines and grow crops. I send
emissaries into enemy lands to spread
religious dissent. On the faction
rankings graph, my purple line creeps
upwards while Turkish forces diminish.
I reach that moment that comes in
every Total War game, where armies
fight to determine the future of each
faction. It’s an event where the lines on
the graph converge; one faction falls,another ascends. Our forces clash at
Amorium, and it’s butchery. My general
is killed, and the future of my campaign
is left dangling from thin gristle like a
hacked arm. A wave of green threatens
to wash my forces away, leaving the
path to Constantinople unguarded.
76 DECEMBER 2015
E X T R A L I F ECONTINUED ADVENTURES IN GAMING
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P
erhaps in tribute to the
issues that had it
removed from sale, I’ve
been playing Batman:Arkham Knight not as a
man, a symbol, or something more than
both of those, but as a persistent
technical problem .
I’m crouching on an overhead wire
above a rooftop occupied by the
Arkham Knight’s militia. Red searchlight
beams attached to sentry guns sweep
the dark corners. One soldier controls a
buzzing drone that flies in a lazy orbit
just below me. Through detective mode
I can see a handful of other armed
guards, including one with a deadly
shotgun, and a medic with a defibrillator.
Over time, Arkham Asylum’ sself-contained puzzle-stealth has given
way to open-ended scenarios like this
one. The game assumes that you’ll beat
it, one way or another, but what matters
ishow . The reward for success is part
progress, part performance. Acrobatic,
bullet-evading combat takedowns;
tactical stealth; a direct approach. Each
of these plays to a different part of the
Batman fantasy.
I’m not sure what I do next qualifies.
I drop onto the edge of the roof right
behind the drone controller. He’s facing
away from me, but I’m otherwise
perfectly illuminated. I whip out the
Remote Hacking Device—Batman’s
iPhone, basically—and surreptitiously
steal the access codes for the drone.
Then I grapple back up to my overhead
cable and pull out the Disruptor. This is a
rifle that fires electric bolts, which
change the way various bits of enemy
equipment work because Batman.
I fire one at the medic’s defibrillator,then zip over to another rooftop and fire
two charges at the rifle of the guy
furthest from the rest of the group.
Then, back to my zipline. Switching back
to the Remote Hacking Device, I keep an
eye on the drone. There’s a point on its
orbit where it’s in range of three of the
“Then the defibrillator electrocuteshim until he doesn’t get up”Making thugs wish they’d taken out a warranty in BATMAN: ARKHAM KNIGHT
guards, including the guy controlling it. I
wait a moment, then pull the trigger.
The drone goes rogue, electrocuting
three of its allies. Then, the droneexplodes for some reason. There’s a
shout of alarm as the two remaining
guards—including the medic—rush to
investigate. “Hold on while I revive this
guy!” cries the medic, pulling out his
defibrillator. Then, the defibrillator
electrocutes him until he doesn’t get up.
One guy left. I drop off my cable and
stand motionless in the middle of a pile
of unconscious bodies. “It’s the Bat!”
cries the guard. He raises his rifle. His
rifle explodes in his hands.
There’s definitely something ‘of the
Bat’ about a campaign of meticulous
sabotage, but I can’t help seeing it fromthe mercs’ perspective. Batman didn’t
beat them: they were beaten by shitty
equipment . I’m not convinced that the
last guard will come away with a tale of
the shadow that moved impossibly fast,
the terrifying justice stalking in the
night—I think he’ll come way with a
strongly-worded letter to his superiors.
“Cost-cutting measures are taking the
soul out of paramilitary supervillainy,”
he’ll write, remembering Batman only as
a big man in a silly costume who
happened to be hanging around on the
night technical support took a holiday.
“IT’S THE BAT!” CRIES THE GUARD.
HE RAISES HIS RIFLE. HIS RIFLE
EXPLODES IN HIS HANDS
Batman: the bastard technicalsupport operative from hell.
“Have you tried switchingit off and on again?”
C H R I S T H U R S T E N
THIS MONTH
Messed with Two-Face’s WiFi,
hid the Penguin’s Kindle.
ALSO PLAYED
Dota 2, Smite, Dragon Age:
Inquisition
78 DECEMBER 2015
THE GAMES WE LOVE RIGHT NOW
N O W P L A Y I N G
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L ast month I spent a few
days in the Outer
Hebrides, on the
Scottish island of Lewis
and Harris. An unusual
destination for a summer vacation,
sure, but it’s a hell of a place—especially
if you want to escape the bustle of city
life. It was, in part, a trip inspired by Dear
Esther . I found The Chinese Room’s
barren Hebridean landscape soevocative that I had to see the real thing.
Returning to the game after my
break, I immediately recognized the
rugged brush, craggy rocks and
slate-grey skies. It’s an uncanny
recreation of a part of the world that’s
desolate and empty, but also strikingly
beautiful. It’s amazing how good the
game version still looks, despite being
built in an ancient version of the Source
engine. Thanks to the strength of its art
direction, I think it’ll look good forever.
There’s something haunting about
the British countryside, but it’s a settingfew take advantage of. While the story in
Dear Esther has never really move me
that unnamed island is one of my
favorite imaginary places to wander,
helped by Jessica Curry’s gorgeous,
understated score. From the wind-
battered coastline to those colorful
caves, it’s a masterclass in world design.
The ‘Riddle on the Rails’ case in the
brilliant Sherlock Holmes: Crimes andPunishments , with its empty, misty train
stations, is the only other example I can
think of where a game has evoked the
ghostly, parochial feel of rural Britain. I
want more environments like that.
Sadly, most games that attempt a
UK setting look like Wee Britain from
Arrested Development: all red phone
boxes, cockney accents and Beefeaters.
One scene in Call of Duty squeezes so
much stereotypical London imagery
into one street that it’s funny—even
during the story’s terrorist attack.
As I stood among a vast, lifelessexpanse of rock on Harris, silent except
“It was so evocative thatI had to see the real thing”Visiting the inspiration for DEAR ESTHER’s eerie island
for the howl of the wind, I understood
why The Chinese Room set its game
here. It’s an ideal backdrop for the
melancholy, enigmatic story. And
environment artist Robert Briscoe
captured its eerie ambience perfectly.
While developers have yet to realize
the potential of the British countryside,
many great films have used it to tell
stories: The Wicker Man, Straw Dogs,
Withnail & I. The jungles, deserts, andNorth American forests game artists
love so much are fine, but how about
something different?
Some people hate Dear Esther . The
see it as a prime example of the
so-called ‘walking simulator’, but after a
week spent hiking around Scotland’s
Highlands and Western Islands, I can te
you this: walking is awesome. Exploring
a new place and soaking up the
atmosphere is something I love doing in
real life and in videogames.
The Chinese Room’s latest game
continues its curious love affair withrural Britain. Everybody’s Gone to the
Rapture is set in a pastoral Shropshire
village, which is used to tell a darkly
apocalyptic story. It’s a PS4 exclusive
for the time being, but hopefully it will
come our way soon, because we need
more unusual settings on PC—and I be
Shropshire’s lovely at this time of year.
A N D Y K E L L Y
THIS MONTH
Enjoyed a game-inspired
holiday.
ALSO PLAYED
Pillars of Eternity,
Satellite Reign
THANKS TO THE STRENGTH OF ITSART DIRECTION, I THINKDEAR
ESTHER WILL LOOK GOOD FOREVER
Actor Nigel Carrington providesthe game’s narration.
The Chinese Room started asartists, not game designers.
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1 PUNITY
BESIEGE
FREEWARE Exclusively second on PC
MOD Incredible machinesfrom the engineer-’em-up
R emember Silent Hills?Konami would rather you didn’t, but theHideo Kojima/ Guillermo del Toro
collaboration was announced tomuch fanfare during Gamescom
2014 with the release of ‘PT’, a‘playable teaser’ consisting of a fewrooms of horror.
Unfortunately it was only available
on the PlayStation 4. Then double
unfortunately Silent Hills was canceled
and Konami attempted to wipe PT off
the face of the Earth, blocking all
downloads so that only those console-
owners who already had it installed on
their machines could enjoy it. Enter
aspiring game developer Farhan
Qureshi, who spent over a 100 hours
recreating PT in Unity down to the
tiniest detail. While it isn’t the real thing,
Besiege is a medieval
Kerbal Space Program .
Newly added Steam
Workshop support
makes downloading creations even
easier. Here’s a sample of some of
the community’s best work.
it is the closest we’re going to get on the
PC. More importantly it ensures a piece
of gaming history is not forgotten.
PT then, if you’ve been steadfastly
ignoring all non-PC gaming news, is an
Amnesia -like first-person horror
experience. Your only available actions
are to zoom and walk, and the onlylocations are a couple of rooms and a
corridor. Yet it still manages to convey a
sense of strange horror and creeping
dread. To explain much more would be
to ruin the experience, but suffice it to
say the game changes every time you
replay the same ‘loop’, slowly building
itself up into a greater experience.
PT is what The Stanley Parable
would be if instead of deconstructive
comedy it relied on pants-threatening
horror and creeping dread.
DOWNLOAD AT www.bit.ly/PTunity
W A R H A M M E R 4 0 K D R E A D N O U G H TIt’s a fundamental law of physics that everygame gets a 40K mod eventually. I enjoythis one because it actually has the rightweapons for a 40K dreadnought, though itdoes often set itself on fire.
www.bit.ly/besiege3
M A C H I N E G U NThis ingenious contraption inverts thewhole belt-fed-gun principle by feeding abelt full of cannons past a lit torch. Theresult is a fast firing machine gun thatutterly ruins whatever you point it at.
www.bit.ly/besiege2
M A M M O T H M K 5Frankly, I would have included this machinefor the lovely walking motion alone, butthose drill-bit tusks and absurdlyoverpowered main battle cannon are theicing on the elephantine cake.
www.bit.ly/besiege1
2A truly terrifyinghallway, apparently.
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3 GTA V HULKBUSTERARMOR
JulioNIB’sHulkbuster mod is a faithfulrecreation of the armor’s Age of Ultron
appearance. Not only does it lookrad as hell, it also gifts you with theability to fly, lift, carry and throwcars (seriously why was this not inthe game from the start?) and fireoff Tony Stark’s trademark lasers*
from the hand or chest, plus some
missiles and other weapons. Bewarned that this one is a toughinstall, requiring multiplecomponents. Modding GTA V isn’teasy, but you can’t argue withresults like this.
*Yes comic fans I am aware thatrepulsor beams are not technicallylasers. Please do not write in.
DOWNLOAD AT www.bit.ly/hulkb
MONSTROUSMINI MAZES
There are a lot of ambitious
but unfinished Shadowrun
mods out there, especially
as the transition to a newengine caught modders off guard.
Antumbra Saga stands above the crowd
as the most acclaimed user campaign
Shadowrun has ever seen.
Originally a trilogy, it’s been ported
over to the Director’s Cut as one epic
story. What starts as a simple hour-long
nightclub infiltration mission slowly
expands to make the player a major part
of the struggles to control the WestCoast. While that first act is a Dead
Man’s Switch -style solo affair, later
parts expand the characters and flesh
them out, Dragonfall style.
DOWNLOAD AT www.bit.ly/antsaga
ANTUMBRA SAGA
1TURMTurm is a brash, confident
Street Samurai who you canrecruit right from the start of
the game.
2DALMINDalmin is another early
hire, a streetwise Shaman whoholds crucial information
about that first mission.
3KALIWhile the story extends to
other settings, AntumbraNightclub owner Kali remains
an important character.
2
3
MOD Hulk not included
WEBGAME Puzzle gamesachieve Sokobanception
Slidey box puzzle-game
aficionado Alan Hazelden
(creator of Sokobond ,
and A Good Snowman is
Hard to Build ) actually created thisback in 2013 but never got around to
releasing it until now. The gimmick is
that each time you complete a maze
the camera zooms out, displaying a
greater maze around it. The original
maze can then be re-entered and
pushed around like a Sokoban crate
to solve the new maze. Repeat with
increasingly complexity until all levels
are finished, or until you swear a lot
and give up.
DOWNLOAD AT www.bit.ly/MMMazes
5
4
MOD Shadowrun Returns ’ definitive user campaign
Something new for Los Santoscitizens to swear at.
1
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6 SAGITTARIUS
Two archers stand ontiny planets. Theytake it in turns to firearrows at one
another, which curve based onthe gravity of the planets in theirpath. That, in a nutshell, isSagittarius. The exaggeratedgravity physics, though, makes itincredibly hard to predict thepath of each arrow and nearimpossible to actually hit what you’re aiming at. Especially
when you realize that thesensible move is to try to staythe other side of the planet from your opponent and use trickshots. These unpredictable arcsgive the game a layer of tension, because you’re never quite sureif your opponent’s arrow is goingto loop around three times andhit you in the back or just stickinto the first planet it passes.
DOWNLOAD AT www.bit.ly/sagarrow
FREEWARE Spacetime’s arrow
Zzzz-Zzzz-Zzzz takes context
sensitive controls to their
logical conclusion. Other
than using the arrow keys to
move around, the only button you’ll be
using is Z, which does remarkably
different things depending on where
you are in the game, ranging from ‘get
into bed’ to ‘use superpower’. The
reason for this confusion is because you
are asleep (hence the Zzzzs) and
moving through a strange dreamworld,
which, like our own dreams, rarely
functions on a set of coherent rules.
Instead you wander uncertainly from
one screen to the next, creating a
fragmented, confusing experience that
feels authentically dreamlike. It’s a
credit to the designers that, despite the
answer to every puzzle being ‘press Z’,
it’s still challenging. After all, it’s when
and where you press Z that counts.
DOWNLOAD AT www.bit.ly/presszkey
8 ZZZZ-ZZZZ-ZZZZFREEWARE You have to press the Z key
A(S)CENTURY WEBGAME A cyberpunkbecomes a corporate suit
This is a Twine adventure
written by game
journalist Austin Walker,
which might explain why
it’s about a freelance copywriter
taking over the world via the power of
persuasive metaphor. This is
cyberpunk without the punk, casting
the player as a corporate ladder
climber, rather than a rebelliousoutsider with interesting hair.
After coming into possession of a
piece of software that’s best
described as ‘like a spellchecker, but
for rhetorical flourish’, the player
character uses the magic of good
writing to gain more power, more
control and more visibility of the
dystopian world they live in. Because
words are so much more persuasive
than money, apparently.
DOWNLOAD AT www.bit.ly/ascentury
7
Every arrow causes untoldplanetary disaster.
Or maybe you’rea butterfly.
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DARK SOULS LIMBO MOD
DASH FICTIONThe disturbing games ofSonic Dreams Collection
MOD Anor Londo Noir
This Dark Souls mod
switches the game into a
stark black and white look,
making it look like a Frank
Miller comic, only with less prostitutes.
It was actually discovered entirely by
accident when a Redditor started
playing around with a post processing
utility called Reshade. The community
christened it the ‘Limbo mod’ after the
puzzle-platformer of the same name,
and got to work tweaking it and
creating sharing pictures. It’s worth
saying that the flat look makes the
already difficult Dark Souls even harder
to play, as enemy animations can be
harder to read. I wouldn’t want to play
the whole game this way (I can barely
play it normally) but it sure does make
for great screenshots.
DOWNLOAD AT www.bit.ly/soulsnoir
9 SONIC DREAMSFREEWARE Ruin your childhood with new nightmares
The Sonic Dreams
Collection claims to be a series of bizarreprototypes for Sonic
spin-off gamesscoured from a forgottenDreamcast dev kit. Play for a fewminutes, and you’ll realize it’sactually an elaborate prank/ homage/fanfiction created by Arkane Kids and Arjun Prakash.
The four ‘lost’ minigames are as
much about the weird world of Sonic
fandom as they are about the sad
descent of the Sonic series. They’re set
during the Dreamcast era, when so
many 2D platformer mascots were
flirting with 3D as awkwardly as a
thirteen-year-old at a school disco. It’salmost believable that Sega might have
flirted with an apparently non-functional
MMO, but by the time you get to the
strange and somewhat fetishistic Sonic
dating sim you’ll realize you’re playing
something far stranger. Suffice it to say,
this one isn’t suitable for kids.
DOWNLOAD AT www.hedgehog.exposed
3 M Y R O O M M A T E S O N I CSit on a couch watching TV with Sonic whileDr Robotnik, watching, texts yousuggestions on how to flirt with him. Yes,this can be played with an Oculus Rift.
10
1 M A K E M Y S O N I CA character creator that riffs on Sonic fandom’s love of drawing new characters(Google your name + ‘the hedgehog’ andsee what comes up), and then addsprocedurally generated names.
2 S O N I C M O V I E M A K E RFilm six-second video clips of Sonic andfriends. Just ignore that they are frequentlysplayed out under cars, rolling around in avaguely sexual manner or on fire.
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“If you’re expecting GTA with hats, you’re going to be disappointed”
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R eviews for Mafia IIwere mixed. Most ofthe negative onescomplained that,compared to Grand
Theft Auto, its open world wassterile and empty. But they weremissing the point. If you play Mafia
expecting GTA with hats, you’regoing to be disappointed. Play it asa story-led linear shooter and it’sone of the best examples on PC.
The city is there, sure, but it’s really just a backdrop. A detailed film setdesigned to give the story a rich senseof place. Empire Bay is a local cornershop to GTA V ’s giant departmentstore, but it’s still one of the best
virtual cities in videogaming. It’sfictional, based loosely on New YorkCity, but the artists at 2K Czech did a
remarkable job of making it feel like a
real place with its own history,culture and inner life.
Workers mill around the docks,unloading cargo from ships. Cherrytrees in blossom sway in the breezein Chinatown. From the suburbs ofHunters Point you can see theskyscrapers of downtown Empire
Bay looming in the distance. It’s notlittered with side missions and crazy
vehicles to steal, but it’s a fantasticplace just to explore and soak it all in.
It didn’t take me long to fall inlove with Mafia II. The secondmission, in fact. Protagonist VitoScaletta returns from World War II
N E E D T O K N O W
RELEASED
August 2010
PUBLISHER
2K Games
DEVELOPER
2K Czech
LINK
www.bit.ly/1hYwIz7
MAFIA IIA return to 2K’s criminally underrated crime epic. By Andy Kelly
A few pieces of story DLC were releasedfor Mafia II . Joe’s Adventure is the best,revealing what Joe got up to while Vito wasin prison. It has some fun missions, but aclumsy car chase on a frozen lake and aforced stealth section sour theexperience. Jimmy’s Vendetta is verydifferent, scattering 32 missions aroundEmpire Bay concerned with combat anddriving rather than storytelling. Neitherare essential, but Joe’s Adventure is wortha look if you fancy playing as Vito’sloudmouth partner in crime.
A L I T T L E E X T R A
Are the expansionsworth playing?
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Period flavor is whereMafia excels.
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on a cold winter’s evening and findshimself back in the neighborhood
where he grew up. Dean Martin’sChristmas classic ‘Let It Snow’ playsas he walks the old, snowy streets ofLittle Italy, reminiscing with facesfrom his past. Military planes flyoverhead, reminding us that the waris far from over. We see couplesarguing, kids throwing snowballs, anda guy getting a haircut in abarbershop. It’s a wonderful piece of
scene-setting, bringing to life not justa different world but a different time.
Mafia II is a rare example of anopen-world game where we see two versions of the same city. The firstportion of the game takes place inEmpire Bay in the 1940s. The moodis gloomy, snow piling up on cars andsidewalks, people slipping on icypavements, and an almost palpablechill in the air. It’s here that Vito
begins climbing the criminal ladder,
working with his old pal, JoeBarbaro. As in GTA, you start off at
the lowest level, pulling off small-time heists, selling stolen goods, andperforming other odd-jobs. But thensomething goes wrong, and Vito endsup in jail for six years.
These years serve as an interludeof sorts. You’re confined to theprison, which is another example of2K Czech’s amazing world-building.
You get to know other inmates, makefriends with a respected mafia bosswho’s doing his own time, and makea powerful enemy in the form of ahulking Irish brute called BrianO’Neill. It’s like The Shawshank
Redemption meets the prison scenesfrom Goodfellas. This sequence alsomarks the first time a game has evermade me clean a toilet.
SUMMER IN THE CITY
Vito emerges from prison to find a very different Empire Bay. The yearis 1951, and the city is no longer bleakand snowy: it’s bright, colorful, andgreen. Teenagers screech around inhot rods listening to Buddy Holly andgirls wear revealing dresses. “It waslike a whole new world,” muses Vito’s
narration as he takes a cab to Joe’s
Empire Bay’s snowy1940s incarnation.
Vito joins the armyto escape a jail sentence.
M E A N
S T R E E T S Places to visit in Empire Bay
1 K I N G S T O NIrish neighborhood. TheO’Neill gang hangs out here.
2 C U L V E R D A MOffers stunning views overEmpire Bay and the CulverRiver.
3 L I T T L E I T A L Y Italian district controlled bythe Clemente crime family.
4 C H I N A T O W NCherry blossom and greatfood. Shame about thetriads.
5 U P T O W NA shopping district in theshadow of the city’sskyscrapers.
6 H U N T E R S P O I N TAfrican Americanneighborhood. Bombergang territory.
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Despite being a ruthlesskiller, Vito is likeable.
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house. I always miss the wintry ’40ssetting when I get to this point in thegame. The ’50s stuff is undeniablycool, and feels much more lively, butit’s not nearly as atmospheric.
The music and commercials onthe radio also change to reflect eachtime period. From The AndrewsSisters and Bing Crosby in the 1940sto Little Richard and Bill Haley in the
’50s, the game boasts a superbselection of period music. I don’tknow how authentic it really is—Iwas born in the ’80s—but Mafia II
brilliantly captures a sense of thattime in American history: both theglamor and the tragedy. It pullssurprisingly few punches whendealing with racism, poverty andother issues that plagued the period,which is something Mafia III istackling more directly.
But it’s also an unashamedgangster power fantasy. As his bank
balance increases, you can dress Vito
up in fashionable post-war suits,scream around in shiny sports cars,
and fire Tommy guns at people. As herises in the ranks, his safehouses getmore lavish, from scummy, rat-infested apartments to a dream ’50shouse, complete with pastel-coloredfurniture. Mafia II may touch on realhistory, but it’s an exaggerated, pulpy,almost comic book tale of warringgangs and criminal conspiracy. It’s agood one, though, with a plot thatkeeps you interested throughout its12 or so hours.
Vito is not a sympatheticcharacter. He is, after all, a ruthlesscriminal. But you warm to him just
the same. His sidekick Joe can veer alittle too much into comic reliefterritory, but for the most part he’slikeable. The rest of the cast are mostforgettable mafioso stereotypes, witha few exceptions, but this remains asolidly written and well-acted game.
And if you get bored of the story,there are always the genuine ’50sPlayboy centerfolds scattered aroundthe city to find, which feature actualladies’ boobs. Rude!
Another great moment, muchlater in the game, involves another
Dean Martin song. This time it’s
IT ALSO MARKS THE FIRST
TIME A GAME HAS EVER MADEME CLEAN A TOILET
popular romantic ballad ‘Return ToMe’. Vito drives Joe and another
character to bury a body in thecountryside. They’re both drunk, andas you drive, they start singing alongWhen it gets to the Italian verse, theymumble, too embarrassed to admitthey don’t know the words. Mafia IIis a funny game when it wants to be,with a sense of humor similar toScorsese’s gangster flicks. Thesemoments of comedy break up theaction, and stop it from becoming toorepetitive—although later shootoutscan be a seemingly endless slog ofpopping in and out of cover.
PULP FICTIONMafia II is fundamentally a genericshooter, and the car handling istwitchy, making some of its chasesfrustrating. But it makes up for itwith variety, personality, and a rich,well-realized setting. GTA doesalmost everything it does better andon a larger scale, but Mafia’s story isarguably more compelling. Don’tthink of it as an open-world game,
because it really isn’t. Come at it fromthe right angle, as a linear, scripted,
but enjoyable shooter, and you might
find you love it.
Cover-based shootingmakes up the bulk of the game.
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E X T R A L I F
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By Dave James
GROUPTEST
U P G R A D E
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If the consoles have givenus anything, it’s qualitygaming controllers forthe PC. Before the lastgeneration of game boxes
came around a lot of ineffectual,
poorly built and lazily designed
gamepads were released for thePC. That’s why most of us havestuck to the traditional mouse andkeyboard for so long. But withtoday’s plethora of cross-platformgames, controllers are almost a
necessity for a gaming PC.
Q&AWhy would I want to usa gamepad?A mouse and keyboard isthe most effective andaccurate of controls for
an FPS, but there arecertain games andgenres where a gamepadmakes more sense. Thisis especially true forconsole ports wherecontrols may have beenmapped for a pad andmake no ergonomicsense on a keyboard.
The inputs are the samthough, aren’t they?Actually no. The inputs o your keyboard aredigital—a key is pressedor not pressed. A
gamepad’s analog stickhas a range of possiblevalues. In stealth gamesbeing able to gently holdthe stick on a gamepadmeans a character willmove slower than at fulltilt. The WASD keys willalways move you at thesame pace.
Do I want a wireless or wired controller?Latency is less of an issunow that consolemanufacturers havefocused on wirelesscontrollers, so it’s more
down to personalpreference. If you’resitting directly in front o your PC, a wired deviceisn’t inconvenient. But aconsistent wirelessoption is the ideal.
What choice of layoutdo I have?For the most part, thisfalls into two camps—either PlayStation orXbox. The symmetricalapproach of the classicDualShock controllerfrom Sony has its fans,
but arguably theasymmetrical analogsticks of the Xbox designaren’t quite so fatiguing.
DictionaryAnalog—A digital input either on or off, but ananalog input can have arange of values.
Connection—UsuallyUSB, but traditionalwireless and Bluetoothare also available. Thelater may require a
third-party dongle.
Because sometimes WASD just isn’t enough
GAMEPADS
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Group Test
H A R D W A R E
The current Xbox One controller is pretty damn
close to ideal. PC devs have adopted the Xbox
standard as the default setting and display for PC
controller mapping in-game. It’s been that way since
the excellent Xbox 360 controller, and the updated
version for the latest Microsoft console has
improved on the design in every way.
At this price it’s hugely competitive and the buildquality is typically excellent. Top of the bill, and one
of the main reasons for the original Xbox controller’s
success, is that asymmetrical layout. The offset
thumbsticks make complete sense and relieve the
aching thumb-based fatigue that can set in with the
mirror-imaged DualShock sticks. That and the fact
the new trigger buttons are beautifully built: robust,
yet subtle and incredibly accurate.
The only issue is that wireless functionality has
yet to be introduced on the PC side. That will surely
arrive with the upcoming Elite controller,
but for far too long this gamepad has
remained resolutely wired-in on PC.
1 2
MICROSOFT XBOX ONE
CONTROLLERwww.xbox.com$49
You have to install and run a simple program, easily
found on Google, then you’re up and running with a
wired PlayStation controller on your PC. Dig a little
further, pick up a Bluetooth dongle, and you can be
wireless almost as quickly.
I had my doubts as to how well I’d get on with this
device, having used an Xbox 360 and then an Xbox
One pad for all my gaming in the last few years. ButI’ve been very pleasantly surprised. The trigger
buttons aren’t quite as slick as on the One, but
manage to fit the classic DualShock design without
needing too much digital gymnastics.
The thumbsticks are the stars of the show. I
much prefer the Microsoft-wrought asymmetrical
layout, but the action on the Sony sticks is superb.
The DualShock 4’s wireless functionality also makes
it stand out—you just need a cheap Bluetooth
adapter to get going.
The DS4 on PC may lack the support
of the Xbox controller, but it makes up
for it in the feel of the thing.
SONY DUALSHOCK 4
www.sony.com$56
There is no perfect PC controller right now. There are some
excellent ones, but none are quite perfect. That may change,
however, with Microsoft’s determination to bridge the gap
between PC and Xbox One.
Not officially compatible with the PC, Sony’s DualShock 4
controller needs a little light tweakery before it will play nicely
with it. The classic design and great build quality, however,
makes it well worth the effort.
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3 4The differences between the new Xbox Onecontroller and the older 360 version are slight.Evolution, not revolution. The 360 version feels alittle looser, the sticks have some play in them andso do the triggers, but it’s now a great price andsuperbly compatible with practically any game fromthe last five years.
You will however need to spend some more on awireless receiver if you want to go wireless like this.The wired version isn’t much cheaper, so I’d stillrecommend picking this up with the $10 USBreceiver. That will also allow you to run up to threeother controllers from the one PC.
The blessing and curse is the battery pack. It’sbulky and adds a fair amount of weight, but itmostly stays out of the way and the reliance on AAbatteries means you’ll usually have some sparesaround if you run the power down.
I’m still a huge fan of this controllerand it’s only the improved build qualitythat gives the previous two an edge.
MICROSOFT XBOX 360
WIRELESS www.xbox.com$32
To be fair to Nvidia it was never designed for the PCThey added support due to popular demand, notnecessarily because people wanted to buy one fortheir PC, but rather because Shield owners wantedsome extra value out of their pricey peripheral.
It’s an Android controller first, so the volume,home and touchpad functions don’t do anything on
PC. That’s also why the controller follows DualShocstick layouts while still retaining Xbox buttonconventions—Android games are more likely to relyon the D-pad than the analog sticks.
It’s also one ugly, distended beast, althoughsurprisingly comfortable in the hand, veryresponsive and the controls reliable. But it’s soniche only Shield owners would ever plug one intotheir PC over a DualShock 4 or Xbox controller. Italso hates AMD gamers. You need an Nvidia GPU torun this controller as it operates via GeForceExperience, eschewing the traditionalWindows USB controller dialogues.Odd, but probably not surprising.
NVIDIA SHIELD CONTROLLER
www.nvidia.com$60
This simple but elegant device is the controller that started it
all. The Xbox 360 controller was the one that brought modern
gamepad aesthetics to the PC, and it still stands the test of
time. It’s smartly-designed and seriously robust.
Nvidia’s controller for its Shield tablet can be used as a wired
PC gamepad, but it comes with so many caveats as to make it
one of the most niche controllers since that fishing rod you
could get for Sega Bass Fishing.
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SPEEDLINK TORID
www.speedlink.com$31
LOGITECH F710
www.logitech.com$40
65Logitech has stuck with the Sony design and that’s
definitely to its cost. And considering the high price
of the F710 it’s going to cost you too. For that money
I would have expected more impressive build
quality, especially considering the outstanding mice
and steering wheels Logitech makes.
Unfortunately, while the analog sticks feel
smooth and are eminently reliable, the D-pad feelslike a bit of an afterthought. The triggers are also
hugely uncomfortable, requiring you to press their
edges to actuate their limited travel. Not what you
want at all when you’re trying to land headshots in
Metal Gear Solid V .
Then there’s the battery pack. It’s handy that it
runs with AA batteries, but lying horizontally they
get right in the way of your grip. The wireless
functionality is great, and it has a simple plug and
play installation. But ultimately the F710 is just too
expensive for what feels like a cut-price
controller, and can’t compete with the
more complete offerings here.
I had little hope for this device; it almost seemed as
if Speedlink was anticipating my testing experience
through its name. But pick it up, plug it in and you’ve
essentially got a wireless Xbox 360 pad for very little
money. A green one.
Interestingly it won’t actually function on
Microsoft’s console, but it is happy in its PC or
PlayStation homes. I will say that its color has stillnot grown on me even after some, most definitely
not torrid, hours of gaming where I barely noticed
the device in my hand. It didn’t stutter, stall or in any
way hurt my gaming experience, as you might
expect from a cheap pad.
It’s not as well-built as the official pads from
either Sony or Microsoft, mainly where the buttons
and triggers are concerned, but it’s solid, wireless
out of the box and doesn’t have the 360’s bulky
battery compartment. It won’t, however, operate
wired into the PC—if the built-in battery’s
dead the cable will supply charge not
outputs. For the price, that’s fine.
There are reasons third-party game controller manufacturers
have followed the Xbox model over the DualShock design—the
asymmetrical layout is more comfortable for long sessions and
the trigger buttons make far more sense.
Ignore the color scheme for a moment. This is the absolute
worst name for a peripheral I’ve come across since the
Buttkicker. And I’ve tested the Woojer. Yet beneath that
Hulk-green exterior lies an impressive wireless controller.
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MAD CATZ CTRLR
www.madcatz.com$42
STACKED UP
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Sony Dual Shock 4
Microsoft Xbox One
Nvidia Shield Controller
Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless
Logitech F710
Speedlink Torid
Mad Catz CTRLR
42
22
80
PRICE ($) BUTTONS SCORE (%)
7And if we were giving awards away for such
impressive compatibility the CTRLR would get one.
The media controls are useful, as is the mouse
mode switch—controlling the cursor with an analog
stick turns out to be surprisingly handy. But
unfortunately the Mad Catz pad falls a little short
despite its flexibility.
The Bluetooth connection is solid, though itneeds either a USB dongle or existing compatibility
in your machine, like the DS4. It also doesn’t feel
anywhere near as robust as the Xbox or PlayStation
originals, sounding plasticky when the buttons are
pressed. The D-pad is a little stiff too, making it
difficult to hit the precise directions you’re after.
But my biggest issue is that it doesn’t register on
PC with the right button configuration, despite
having PC drivers and software, as well as Xbox
controller labelling. X and Y are switched as are the
A and B buttons. It’s possible to change
layout in some games, but not all, and
that makes it harder to recommend.
Versatility is the name of the game for Mad Catz’s curtly-
titled CTRLR, (vowels, not so much.) As well as being an
Xbox-styled PC gamepad it will also wirelessly connect to your
Android tablet, phone or set-top box.
80%
ESSENTIALS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Wired
Wireless
Wired or wirelessBluetooth
Wired (wireless to follow)
Wireless Bluetooth
Wireless
Wireless
Connection
USB
2x AA batteries
Lithium Ion
USB (2x AA for wireless support)
2x AAA batteries
2x AA batteries
Lithium Ion
Power
Xbox
Xbox
PlayStation
Xbox
Xbox
Playstation (w/Xbox buttons)
Xbox
Layout
40
17
68
31
17
81
16
79
32
17
84
56
19
88
49
17
88
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H A R D W A R
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Budget buildPC gaming is for everyone. Pick the parts you want to
build a new, well-rounded PC for a good price.
Mid-range buildYou want to run every new game at 1080p 60fps. This
recommended build will see you through.
Advanced buildYou’re looking for the best PC on the market and
superior components. But you still want to spend smart.
Build the best PC for your budget
Y O U R N E X T P C
BUYER’S GUIDE
KEY
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T O T A L
$ 9 5 0
BUDGET
BUILDEnjoy 1080p gaming without
breaking the bank
Pentium Anniversary G3258Intel $70
Ludicrously cheap and overclockable, thedual-core G3258 rivals far more expensiveprocessors in gaming performance.
H81M-P33MSI $46
A bargain-priced microATX board that pairsnicely with the Pentium G3258, letting youoverclock into 4GHz+ territory.
Hyper 212 EVOCooler Master
$35
A legendary cooler, still the best for its veryreasonable price. Overclock to your heart’s
content with this.
Crucial Ballistix Sport1600MHz (8GB)Crucial
$51
Cheap, low-profile, and reliable. Does its jobThe best 8GB you’ll find.
EVGA 500W 80PLUS CertifiedATX12V/EPS12VEVGA
$45
A reliable PSU with enough juice to run yourCPU and a reasonably power-hungry GPU.
BX100 250GBCrucial
$85
Thinking about skimping and goingHDD-only? Don’t. The BX100 is much fasterand a fantastic performer for the price.
Carbide 200RCorsair
$70
The 200R gets the job done with toollesstrays and plenty of space. ATX-sized, so youcan upgrade that microATX board later.
VX2263SMHLViewsonic
$130
An affordable 1080p monitor with vibrantIPS image quality and low response times. Areal bargain.
CM Storm QuickFire RapidCoolermaster
$80
A no-frills mechanical keyboard with astandard layout and Cherry switches. Werecommend Browns or Reds for gaming.
HyperX CloudKingston
$80
Our favorite gaming headset, and it happento be as cheap as plenty of inferior cans. Agood buy for any gaming rig.
Deathadder 2013Razer $58
Don’t skimp on your gaming mouse. Get oneof the best. Try the Logitech G502 if you hava giant hand or prefer more weight.
AMD R9 380 2GBSapphire
$200
AMD’s R9 380 is a refreshed R9 285, but itstill packs enough power to handle 1080pgaming at a decent price.
DECEMBER 2015 9
Buyer’s Guid
HARDWAR
M O T H E R B O A R D
P R O C E S S O
R
G R A P H I C S C A R D
C O O L E R
M E M O R Y
P O W E R S U P P L Y
S S D
C A S E
D I S P L A Y
K E Y B O A
R D
M O U S E
H E A D S E T
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MID-RANGE
BUILDOur recommended build for
playing the latest games
T O T A L
$ 1 5 9 9
Hyper 212 EVOCooler Master $35
If it ain’t broke... the Hyper 212 EVO is a greatcooler for the price. Save a bit of money in
your mid-range build.
GTX 970 Gaming 4GMSI $335
Offers the best price/performance ratioright now, and MSI’s model is cheap andoverclockable, with a quiet cooler.
850 EVO 250GBSamsung $98
Samsung retains its top spot on the SSD pilewith the fantastically priced, very speedy850 EVO. Still the best price/performance.
CX600MCorsair$65
80Plus Bronze efficient, with enough powerfor a good gaming PC. Modular design is agreat perk that cuts down on cable tangles.
Deathadder 2013Razer $58
There’s not a huge range of price differenceson the best mice, so stick with the best for your mid-range build too.
HyperX CloudKingston
$80
Even for our medium build, we stillrecommend this decently-priced headset.There’s nothing better for the money.
G257HUAcer $280
A step up from 1080p to 1440p territory,with a vibrant IPS display and good responsetimes at a strong price.
S340NZXT $75
The stylish S340 has some nice touches,such as removable dust filters and space forhuge liquid cooling radiators.
K70 VengeanceCorsair$110
A great, full-size mechanical keyboard withan ergonomic wrist rest. We recommendCherry Brown or Red switches for gaming.
Z170 Pro GamingAsus $160
The latest revision of our favorite gamingmotherboard, with an M.2 PCIe x4 slot, Intelnetwork port, USB 3.1 and SLI support.
i5-6600KIntel $243
Intel’s new Skylake processor is nearly asfast as an i7 for gaming. Comes with someimportant memory/storage speed boosts.
Ballistix Sport (8GB)Crucial $60
8GB of reasonably fast DDR4, and one of thecheapest deals you’ll find. Corsair is reliable,and the RAM’s overclockable to boot.
96 DECEMBER 2015
Buyer’s Guide
HARDWARE
M O T H E R B O A R D
P R O C E S S O
R
G R A P H I C S C A R D
C O O L E R
M E M O R Y
P O W E R S U P P L Y
S S D
C A S E
D I S P L A Y
K E Y B O A
R D
M O U S E
H E A D S E T
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I T ’ S A L L O V E R . . .
. . . U N T I L
NOVEMBER
10
98 DECEMBER 2015
"METAL GEAR SOLID V CELEBRATES
YOUR CHOICES AND INGENUITY MORE
THAN ANY SA NDBOX GAME I'VE
PLAYED IN A DECADE."
93%
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