A whopping six years ago, former features producer Andy Kelly and I had a big ol’ fight. It was a respectful one, though, taking place exclusively in our respective articles regarding the news that Baldur’s Gate 3 would feature turn-based battles. Andy thought this sucked, wishing Larian had stuck with real-time-with-pause. I, meanwhile, was over…
Terminally Online (Image credit: Future) This is Terminally Online: PC Gamer’s very own MMO column. Every other week, I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the genre, interviewing fellow MMO-heads like me, taking a deep-dive into mechanics we’ve all taken for granted, and, occasionally, bringing in guest writers to talk about their MMO of choice. Ah,…
Weird Weekend Weird Weekend is our regular weekend feature where we celebrate PC gaming oddities: peculiar games, strange bits of trivia, forgotten history. Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it’s the canon height of Thief’s Garrett or that time someone in the…
More quizzes! (Image credit: Larian Studios, PC Gamer) Want to keep testing your knowledge of gaming trivia? We’ve got loads more PC Gamer quizzes, on everything from healthbars to weird currencies to absurd patch notes. The visual language of games is a fascinating thing. Graphics may have become more and more detailed and elaborate, but…
I’ve just learnt what Gaussian Splatting is, and I fear it may become my entire personality. At the risk of oversimplification, Gaussian Splatting is a rendering technique that gives you ‘photo-real’ graphics at a fraction of the resource cost required by a number of other mainstream game development options. That fact alone is enough to…
Shows Sony how it should be done. When it comes to ‘new’ versions of old consoles, there are a few different options on the market right now. Nintendo, Sony and Sega have opted for software emulation on their micro-console offerings, while SNK has teamed up with Plaion to produce the Neo Geo AES+, a forthcoming…
Paradox Interactive has rolled out its “biggest update yet” for Europa Universalis 5. This is a slightly cheeky way to phrase things, considering this is only the second major update for Paradox’ latest, dizzyingly complex grand strategy. But it’s also accurate. With patch notes that Paradox claims would fill 72 pages of a Google doc,…
Surprise and delist. It’s a sad reality of modern gaming that, despite not needing physical media to play a game, the digital-only version is typically more ephemeral and subject to sudden disappearance than a cart or a disc. It only takes an expired licence or a publisher in financial trouble for games to start disappearing…
Abiotic Factor is already a massive game; you could easily spend 80+ hours exploring its sprawling, Black Mesa-ish research facility. But that hasn’t stopped developer Deep Field Games further extending the tendrils of its labyrinthine, interdimensional science lab. Last December’s “Holiday Cryosphere” update added a giant, living snowglobe that players could frolic festively around, and…
The Legend of Zelda represents, for many gamers, the birth of what is arguably the greatest, and most influential, action-adventure franchise of all time. Released early in the Nintendo Entertainment System’s lifecycle, it arrived during a formative moment when players were just beginning to experience games driven by narrative rather than pure mechanics. Only one…