12. PC Gamer USA - December 2015

BUYER’S GUIDEGet the riGht GaminG

PC for your budGet

CONTROLLERS RATED!

FROM STAR WARS TO EVE ONLINE

HUGE 2016

METAL GEAR SOLID V

2015’S GAME OF THE YEAR?

Reviewed

REVIEWED Star WarS Battlefront / EITR

ANNO 2205 / Dark SoulS III

MIRROR’S EDGE CATALYSTDark SoulS IIIHITMAN + more

20BEST SPACE GAMES

PC gamePaDS revIeWeD

Issue 272december 2015

Changing gearsMetal Gear Solid V is a game with such detailed customization options that even a tranquilizer gun has an entire upgrade path. This stealth sandbox sequel feels like a PC-style game in a lot of ways. It has more in common with the likes of Deus Ex and Hitman than previous entries in the series, offering players choices as to how to approach its 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.

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Currently playingVolume

This monthReviewed the relatively simple but well-made stealth game Volume on page 60.

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Currently playingThe Witcher 3

This monthHad his heart broken 73 hours into The Witcher 3’s story. It’s too late to turn back, Wes.

C H R I s l I V I N G s t o NTwitter@screencuisine

Currently playingMad Max

This monthVentured into the wasteland with Avalanche’s long-awaited Mad Max game.

4 DECEMBER 2015

11 SENDYour letters on PC gaming matters.

Monitor12 THETOPSTORY Guild Wars 2 goes free-to-play.

14 THESPYWhat’s next for the Dark Souls series?

Previews16 Mirror’s Edge Catalyst18 Hitman20Stellaris24Tacoma32 Dark Souls III34The Last Night36Cuphead

Features38TheTop20SpaceGamesFrom TIE Fighter to EVE Online.

44Windows10Get started with your new OS.

Reviews50Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain56Mad Max60Volume62Final Fantasy Type-0 HD66Satellite Reign68Beyond Eyes70Shadowrun Hong Kong72 Pillars of Eternity: The White March—Part I74Act of Aggression

ExtraLife76NOWPLAYINGWhat the PC Gamer team is playing.

80TOP10DOWNLOADSThe best free stuff around the web.

84REINSTALLIs Mafia II worth revisiting?

Hardware88GROuPTESTControllers reviewed this issue.

R E V I E WContents #272 D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 5

20 stEllaRIsThe creators of Crusader Kings II take to the stars in this impressive space-set strategy game. Here’s our detailed first look.

44 WIndoWs 10How to customize and install your brand new operating system, and make sure your information is going where you want it to.

88HaRdWaREControllers are reviewed in this month’s supertest, including the DualShock 4, the Xbox One controller and lots more.

20

88

44

6 december 2015

u s e r r e v i e w s Metal Gear Solid V.

It makes me so sad to see my fave saga go down with open-world crap and stupid repetitive fetch quests... I hate it.CarlosHow is life in backwards world? Are we handsome there?

MGSV: The Phantom Pain. The bee’s knees.JorgenThe bee’s knees aren’t in MGSV. You’re thinking of MGS3.

Blacklight Retribution, best FPS game I’ve played so far and I can say it will be holding the spot for a long time.ZenzoGlad you’re enjoying it! Also, we just remembered that it exists.

Shadow of Mordor, loving it so far! Surprisingly great stress relief.CocoJackoStabbable orcs: the squeezy stress ball of our time.

Life is Strange is one of the best game experiences I recently had. Well written and full of tension.GapbrickIf we could turn back time, NOLF would have a sequel.

Diablo III, the 2.3 patch makes it fun again. Also going through Pillars of Eternity again.MichaelDo you dream from an isometric perspective?

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 up GTAV. It took an age to get going, 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 operating systems. The best we can hope for is ‘not a complete disaster’. PCG

Top 100: the overlooked I fully understand the ocean of PC games you had to wade through to choose only 100. But I must point out a few games I feel that you might have overlooked.

I feel the original Quake played a key role in what we expect after we beat our FPS, bringing forth some

serious game mods changing how the game looked and felt.

EverQuest, aka EverCrack. This game not only met the standard for MMORPGs at the time, it set a new standard. Without it, would WoW be the same game as it is now? This game could suck a year of your life away and you would have thought

only a month had passed. Alone in the Dark. Wow, did this game give me goose bumps when it came out. This game had it all, for 1992, with its supernatural zombie infested haunted house.

Where are the racing games? The original NFS or Demolition Derby games? Why were racing simulators and arcade style games overlooked? Car guys are PC gamers too.

Thank you for considering my suggestions. And if you have a spot on the page, shout out my gamer community, prismGN.enjin.com. We tackle 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 at the 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 I enjoy your magazine very much. One of my favorite parts of the magazine is the hardware buyer’s guide which is very informative in helping buy the best new PC components. However the reason for this email is a gripe. Why, out of all the components, is there no DVD drive listed or recommended? Even in 2015 and in this digital age, most gamers do still use CD/DVD gaming discs, andI would love to see a picture of one recommended 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: the MGSV disc, for example, just has a Steam installer 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, as seen in Close Encounters.

DECEMBER 2015 11

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S E N DA free Steam key for the funniest or most insightful letter every month

G uild Wars 2 is one the best MMOs on PC today. It’s a slick, fun, well-designed game that makes World of Warcraft look stuffy and

lifeless in comparison. And now the core game is free for you to download and play.

“As we start to release expansions,” ArenaNet president Mike O’Brien says, “it raises the question: in a buy-to-play business model, what exactly do we want you to buy in order to play?” With some games, you have to buy the base game and then every expansion to keep playing with your friends.

ArenaNet is trying something simpler. The devs think that if people love the free base game that much, they’ll naturally want to buy into the paid expansion, Heart of Thorns. “The expansion pack is such great

value,” says O’Brien. “There’s so much content, not only in the expansion pack but in all the free updates that will come after.”

The catch is that the core game will no longer receive content updates. You’ll have to buy Heart of Thorns if you want any new things to do, including raids. There will also be some restrictions for free players. Free accounts can only have two active characters at a time, compared to the usual five, and three bag slots. Additionally there

are some restrictions to stop spammers and griefers, including being limited to initiating a whisper conversation once every 30 seconds and not being able to take part in competitive World v World until level 60. But as far as free-to-play MMOs go, this is remarkably generous—especially compared to something like The Old Republic.

As for the impact of these changes on the existing community, “you’re going to have a bunch of new players,” O’Brien says. “But it’s going to be the same friendly community it’s always been. It’s really important to us that we protect the great people we have playing our game, and so we’ve been tweaking constantly. We’ve been working on various iterations of this free-to-play model for about a year now, making sure that we get 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 has always looked good.

Guild Wars 2 has always 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

O P I N I O N T E C H G A M E S

TYou wouldn’T blame metal gear fans for ignoring how ThaT sausage was made

12 DECEMBER 2015

w h o w a t c h e s t h e s p y ?

O P I N I O N I G A M E S I T E C H

THESPY

he Spy doesn’t punch in and out of a building unless it’s some kind of lair or a launch party for a disruptive new San Francisco tech startup. In The Spy’s line of work you get to choose who and what you punch, which hours you work, which slow Tuesdays you assign to founding extrajudicial paramilitary groups and which weekends you spend ignoring crises of all kinds.

Not so for the hardworking and undoubtedly talented people who spent years creating Metal Gear Solid V. In August the Japanese financial paper Nikkei published an article detailing the alleged working conditions at Kojima Productions during the development of the game, rumored to have factored in Hideo Kojima’s decision to leave the series. Konami is alleged to have installed cameras and punch-card clocks to monitor employees, the report goes, and underperforming workers were apparently transferred to assembly lines or jobs in cleaning or security. All to protect their $80m investment in the game. An investment they’ll almost certainly recoup, given

MGSV’s massive success—although you wouldn’t blame Metal Gear fans for ignoring how that particular sausage was actually made.

The franchization of Dark Souls is a sensitive subject to many. The original is not the sort of thing you slap a great big ‘2’ on, in the same way you wouldn’t produce Hamlet 2 or The Seventh Seal 2. Most games are ready sequel-fodder because most games are brash and dumb. Not Souls, the argument used to go. Souls is special.

That specialness took a hit with Dark Souls II, but the game turned out to be great despite the absence of Hidetaka Miyazaki. Now he’s back to invest Dark Souls III with specialness all over again. Fine, you might think. You can make The

Hamlet Saga. It can work. Even the most committed purists would have to concede that Bandai Namco’s investment in Souls has paid dividends so far.

Souls fans might not want to rest quite so easy, however. Among a list of recent trademarks logged by Bandai Namco is ‘Slashy Souls’, a game that nobody knows anything about—but that second word can’t be an accident. What kind of Dark Souls spinoff is called ‘Slashy’?

Figure out which of these you find least horrifying. Dark Souls as a hack ‘n’ slash RPG, Diablo in Lordran where colorful loot springs from the severed heads of giants. Dark Souls for kids, a platform adventure game where you befriend a big dog with a blunted sword in its mouth and are encouraged to praise the sun by friendly Mr Solaire from next door. Or a mobile game, a variant on Flappy Bird or Crossy Road, where you tap to slash your way through Goofy Hollow while sucking up collectible Twin Humanities. Imagine some combination of all three. Imagine earning a trickle of Soul Points to reset your daily energy bar. Imagine.

There’s no guarantee of any of this, of course, but if you want to

really scare a Dark Souls obsessive this is where you should start. And you should entertain the idea of doing that, because it’s a lot of fun.

It’s in the nature of profit-seeking publishers to wring the most out of every success, of course. If they can get you to pay more for a game that

comes in a bigger box with additional junk, they will.

And how. The Spy wasn’t convinced by Fallout 4’s collectible full-sized Pip Boy—really a wrist-mount for a smartphone—when it was announced at E3. Have you ever tried to actually use a wrist-mounted computer? It’s in the one place that guarantees you’ll only ever be able to use it one-handed. What if you’re dangling off a bridge? Handcuffed to a briefcase? Holding down the trigger on a dead man’s switch? Eating an ice cream? You can’t do any of these things while effectively using a Pip Boy.

That doesn’t seem to have stopped anybody, however. They’ve sold out, and Bethesda says no more can be made, although for a moment in late August they did return to retailers, before being snapped up by fans. A lot of people wanted one, it seems. The Spy doesn’t know what to think about this, save ‘a lot of people are going to get mugged, possibly twice.’ Spy out. The Spy

The Spy straps industry intel to Fulton balloons so that you don’t have to.

SIT BETTER. WORK HARDER. GAME LONGER.SIT BETTER. WORK HARDER. GAME LONGER.SIT BETTER. WORK HARDER. GAME LONGER.SIT BETTER. WORK HARDER. GAME LONGER.SIT BETTER. WORK HARDER. GAME LONGER.SIT BETTER. WORK HARDER. GAME LONGER.

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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 E W

Model citizen Faith prepares tostress test the new police helmets.

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 the same 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 on the edge of a dystopian society—the ‘runners’ who deliver secretive documents and the sense of competition between them. You’ll see much more of life as a runner in Catalyst, where Faith will operate as a cat burglar, data courier or spy.

moving on upInfiltrating the building, Faith shows off her new and improved moveset. With enough momentum, she can again chain between wallrunning, sliding and clambering around with ease. Additional skills are part of an upgrade system that lives in Faith’s

glove. 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, the 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 remove some 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 you 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 mission and I’ve lost count of how many times the word ‘fluid’ has been used. The movement? Fluid. The combat? Fluid.

The mission structure? Fluid. The way the engine can seamlessly transition from the outside world into a building’s interior? Also fluid. It’s subtle hints like this that convey DICE’s intent for its game.

It’s shaping up to be the sequel I always wanted

M i r r o r ’ s E d g E C a t a l y s t

In short, It’s MIrror’s EdgE but MorE fluId. It’s Exactly what I was hopIng for

releaseFebruary 2016

DeveloperDICE

publisherEA

linkwww.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 17

Mirror’s Edge Catalyst

P R E V I E W

“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 make guys 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 what Hitman is about.”

This has always been my favorite thing about the Hitman 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 take

out 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 aCtAre 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 for Hitman’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 the interruption. It’s a seemingly small, insignificant moment, but one that gives me hope that the new Hitman could be the best yet.

An intelligent approach to artificial intelligence

H I T m A N

So far, So good, but what happenS when you kill all the waiterS?

releaseDecember

Developer Io Interactive

publisherSquare Enix

linkwww.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 E W

He’s like a young, homicidal Patrick Stewart.

Nothing can possiblygive me away.

I am the best at hideand seek. The best.

DECEMBER 2015 19

Gamenamexxxx

P R E V I E W

20 DECEMBER 2015

“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 the option 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 creating an 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 traits and skills. They’ll determine much of what 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 placing same-type buildings next to each other, and can assign a planet’s ‘population units’ to various jobs based on what you’ve 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 ground 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 scienceAs this is a sci-fi game, science has a much bigger role. Scientists, like planetary 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 direct course 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 option

As of last February, the average playtime of Crusader Kings II was 99 hours. The longest playtime was 10,500 hours. Paradox’s grand strategy games are

large, complex affairs, but I’m not convinced there’s enough variety to keep things fresh over that length of time. Stellaris is Paradox attempting to create a game that justifies their fans’ obsession.

Paradox’s new grand strategy game 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

release2016

Developer Paradox Development Studio

publisherParadox Interactive

linkwww.stellarisgame.com

n e e d t o k n o w

F I R S t L o o k

DECEMBER 2015 21

Stellaris

P R E V I E W

research wormholes, and you could rip open a hole to 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. If a 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 worldsAs 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 punch through 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 endNot 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. You can 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 hole to 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-galaxy threats. 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 E W

Space combat is mostly a hands-off affair.

We’re a long way from medieval Europe.

DECEMBER 2015 23

P R E V I E W

Each planet has its own governor, with their own traits.

Yeah, that’s not going to stay stable.

Sensitive talk in the med bay.

Clive’s days on thestation are numbered.

24 DECEMBER 2015

Gamenamexxxx

P R E V I E W

The control room overlooking Tacoma’s cargo area.

What I took away from playing Tacoma, 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 AR holograms, 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 on Tacoma. As players explore the mystery of the absent crew, Gaynor says he wants them to walk away with 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 played Tacoma’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 an 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 return to 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 that

is 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 betterThe 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 bigger and more imaginative space.

One thing I’m hoping I’ll be more impressed by when Tacoma releases in 2016 is its looks. It didn’t seem any less populated with ephemera than Gone Home but it feels less dense. Maybe that’s 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 caught 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 some of the richest territory in sci-fi. Sure, 2001 plops preternatural monoliths in front 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 The Martian, but along the way he’ll muse about the Three’s Company episode he’s watching.

Explore a deserted space station in the follow-up to Gone Home

T A C O M A

the stuff you’re stumbling on, reading and listening to is endearingly everyday

release2016

DeveloperThe Fullbright Company

publisherIn-house

linkwww.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 25

Tacoma

P R E V I E W

Dealer/VAR, Government and Corporate pricing are available. Please call for details.Sager one Year Limited Warranty Policy: 30-Day money-back Guarantee. If the equipment does not work as promised, or if you are not fully satisfied, we will issue a full refund upon the return of all original equipment. 1-Year Parts and Labor LimitedWarranty. Lifetime toll-Free technical Support. Sager one Year Limited Warranty, two Year Limited Warranty and three Year Limited Warranty Policy applies to end Users in the United States of america only. extended Warranty available: check outthis comprehensive package of service/support. Sager corporate offices 18005 cortney court, city of Industry, california 91748 tel: 626.964.8682, Fax: 626.964.2381 Hours: monday-Friday 7:30a.m. - 6p.m.(PSt) american express, VISa, mastercard& Discover credit cards accepted - no Surcharge. cashiers checks Welcomed. ©2015 by midern computer, Inc. all rights reserved. Ultrabook, celeron, celeron Inside, core Inside, Intel, Intel Logo, Intel atom, Intel atom Inside, Intel core, Intel Inside, IntelInside Logo, Intel vPro, Itanium, Itanium Inside, Pentium, Pentium Inside, vPro Inside, Xeon, Xeon Phi, and Xeon Inside are trademarks of Intel corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. this Pc is preloaded with trial version of microsoft office 365.Purchase an office Product key to activate full version office software. all company and/or product names mentioned herein are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Prices and specifications are subject to changewithout notice. opened software and shipping charges are non-refundable. 30-Day money back guarantee does not include freight or shipping and handling charge. *Free UPS Ground Shipping valid to contiguous US order only.

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nnnnn WindowsWindowsWindowsWindowsWindows®®®®® 10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Editionnnnnn 17.317.317.317.317.3""""" Full IPS Matte Display (1920x1080) withFull IPS Matte Display (1920x1080) withFull IPS Matte Display (1920x1080) withFull IPS Matte Display (1920x1080) withFull IPS Matte Display (1920x1080) with

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SATA InterfaceSATA InterfaceSATA InterfaceSATA InterfaceSATA Interfacennnnn Full sized Keyboard with color LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with color LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with color LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with color LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with color LED backlightnnnnn Killer™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + KillerKiller™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + KillerKiller™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + KillerKiller™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + KillerKiller™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + Killer

Dual Band Wireless-AC 1535) with Smart TeamingDual Band Wireless-AC 1535) with Smart TeamingDual Band Wireless-AC 1535) with Smart TeamingDual Band Wireless-AC 1535) with Smart TeamingDual Band Wireless-AC 1535) with Smart Teaming nnnnn Built-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint Readernnnnn Built-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-woofernnnnn Sound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound Blaster®®®®® X-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound System

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nnnnn WindowsWindowsWindowsWindowsWindows®®®®® 10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Editionnnnnn 17.3” Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)17.3” Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)17.3” Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)17.3” Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)17.3” Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080) nnnnn 30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurancennnnn 3GB DDR5 NVIDIA3GB DDR5 NVIDIA3GB DDR5 NVIDIA3GB DDR5 NVIDIA3GB DDR5 NVIDIA®®®®® GeForce™ GTX 970M GPUGeForce™ GTX 970M GPUGeForce™ GTX 970M GPUGeForce™ GTX 970M GPUGeForce™ GTX 970M GPU

(User switchable between Microsoft Hybrid(User switchable between Microsoft Hybrid(User switchable between Microsoft Hybrid(User switchable between Microsoft Hybrid(User switchable between Microsoft HybridGraphics mode or dGPU mode)Graphics mode or dGPU mode)Graphics mode or dGPU mode)Graphics mode or dGPU mode)Graphics mode or dGPU mode)

nnnnn 16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memory16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memory16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memory16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memory16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memorynnnnn 120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +


Capable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 Functionnnnnn Full sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightnnnnn IntelIntelIntelIntelIntel®®®®® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + Bluetoothnnnnn Built-in Onkyo speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo speakers and a sub-woofernnnnn Sound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound Blaster®®®®® X-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound Systemnnnnn Slim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thinSlim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thinSlim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thinSlim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thinSlim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thin


nnnnn WindowsWindowsWindowsWindowsWindows®®®®® 10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Editionnnnnn 15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)nnnnn 3GB DDR5 NVIDIA3GB DDR5 NVIDIA3GB DDR5 NVIDIA3GB DDR5 NVIDIA3GB DDR5 NVIDIA®®®®® GeForce™ GTX 970M GPUGeForce™ GTX 970M GPUGeForce™ GTX 970M GPUGeForce™ GTX 970M GPUGeForce™ GTX 970M GPU

(User switchable between Microsoft Hybrid(User switchable between Microsoft Hybrid(User switchable between Microsoft Hybrid(User switchable between Microsoft Hybrid(User switchable between Microsoft HybridGraphics mode or dGPU mode)Graphics mode or dGPU mode)Graphics mode or dGPU mode)Graphics mode or dGPU mode)Graphics mode or dGPU mode)

nnnnn 8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memory8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memory8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memory8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memory8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memorynnnnn 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drivennnnn 2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives

Capable with Raid 0,1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0,1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0,1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0,1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0,1 Functionnnnnn Full sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightnnnnn IntelIntelIntelIntelIntel®®®®® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + Bluetoothnnnnn Built-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint Readernnnnn Built-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakers nnnnn Sound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound Blaster®®®®® X-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound Systemnnnnn Slim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thinSlim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thinSlim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thinSlim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thinSlim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thin


nnnnn WindowsWindowsWindowsWindowsWindows®®®®® 10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Editionnnnnn 15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)nnnnn Also available in 17.3” Full HD Matte DisplayAlso available in 17.3” Full HD Matte DisplayAlso available in 17.3” Full HD Matte DisplayAlso available in 17.3” Full HD Matte DisplayAlso available in 17.3” Full HD Matte Display

with model NP7270with model NP7270with model NP7270with model NP7270with model NP7270nnnnn 2GB DDR5 NVIDIA2GB DDR5 NVIDIA2GB DDR5 NVIDIA2GB DDR5 NVIDIA2GB DDR5 NVIDIA®®®®® GeForce™ GTX 960M GPUGeForce™ GTX 960M GPUGeForce™ GTX 960M GPUGeForce™ GTX 960M GPUGeForce™ GTX 960M GPU

with Optimus™ Technologywith Optimus™ Technologywith Optimus™ Technologywith Optimus™ Technologywith Optimus™ Technologynnnnn 8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory nnnnn 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive nnnnn 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drivennnnn 1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive

or M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capablennnnn Full sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightnnnnn IntelIntelIntelIntelIntel®®®®® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + Bluetoothnnnnn Built-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint Readernnnnn Built-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakers


nnnnn WindowsWindowsWindowsWindowsWindows®®®®® 10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Editionnnnnn 15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD Matte Display (1920x1080) nnnnn Also available in 17.3" Full HD Matte DisplayAlso available in 17.3" Full HD Matte DisplayAlso available in 17.3" Full HD Matte DisplayAlso available in 17.3" Full HD Matte DisplayAlso available in 17.3" Full HD Matte Display

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with Optimus™ Technologywith Optimus™ Technologywith Optimus™ Technologywith Optimus™ Technologywith Optimus™ Technologynnnnn 8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory8GB DDR3-1600MHz Memory nnnnn 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drivennnnn 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drive8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super Multi Drivennnnn 1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive1 Hard Drive + 1 M.2 SATA SSD Drive

or M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capablennnnn Full sized isolated KeyboardFull sized isolated KeyboardFull sized isolated KeyboardFull sized isolated KeyboardFull sized isolated Keyboard nnnnn IntelIntelIntelIntelIntel®®®®® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + Bluetoothnnnnn Built-in 2.0M FHD CameraBuilt-in 2.0M FHD CameraBuilt-in 2.0M FHD CameraBuilt-in 2.0M FHD CameraBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera nnnnn Built-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakers



nnnnn WindowsWindowsWindowsWindowsWindows®®®®® 10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Editionnnnnn 15.6" Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)15.6" Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)

with NVIDIAwith NVIDIAwith NVIDIAwith NVIDIAwith NVIDIA®®®®® G-SYNC TechnologyG-SYNC TechnologyG-SYNC TechnologyG-SYNC TechnologyG-SYNC Technologynnnnn 30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurance30 days No Dead Pixel Guaranteed Insurancennnnn 8GB DDR5 NVIDIA8GB DDR5 NVIDIA8GB DDR5 NVIDIA8GB DDR5 NVIDIA8GB DDR5 NVIDIA®®®®® GeForce™ GTX 980M GPUGeForce™ GTX 980M GPUGeForce™ GTX 980M GPUGeForce™ GTX 980M GPUGeForce™ GTX 980M GPUnnnnn 16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memory16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memory16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memory16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memory16GB Dual Channel DDR4-2133MHz Memorynnnnn 120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +120GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SSD +


or 1 M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor 1 M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor 1 M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor 1 M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capableor 1 M.2 PCIe SSD Drive capablennnnn Hardware Raid 0,1 Function capable withHardware Raid 0,1 Function capable withHardware Raid 0,1 Function capable withHardware Raid 0,1 Function capable withHardware Raid 0,1 Function capable with

SATA InterfaceSATA InterfaceSATA InterfaceSATA InterfaceSATA Interfacennnnn Full sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightnnnnn Killer™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + BluetoothKiller™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + BluetoothKiller™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + BluetoothKiller™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + BluetoothKiller™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + Bluetoothnnnnn Built-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint Readernnnnn Built-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakers nnnnn Sound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound Blaster®®®®® X-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound Systemnnnnn Slim design with only 28.8mm /1.13 inch thinSlim design with only 28.8mm /1.13 inch thinSlim design with only 28.8mm /1.13 inch thinSlim design with only 28.8mm /1.13 inch thinSlim design with only 28.8mm /1.13 inch thin


nnnnn 6th Generation Intel6th Generation Intel6th Generation Intel6th Generation Intel6th Generation Intel®®®®® Core™ i7-6700KCore™ i7-6700KCore™ i7-6700KCore™ i7-6700KCore™ i7-6700K Processor (8MB Smart Cache, 4.0GHz)Processor (8MB Smart Cache, 4.0GHz)Processor (8MB Smart Cache, 4.0GHz)Processor (8MB Smart Cache, 4.0GHz)Processor (8MB Smart Cache, 4.0GHz)




or 2 M.2 PCIe SSD Drives capableor 2 M.2 PCIe SSD Drives capableor 2 M.2 PCIe SSD Drives capableor 2 M.2 PCIe SSD Drives capableor 2 M.2 PCIe SSD Drives capablennnnn Hardware Raid 0,1 Function capable withHardware Raid 0,1 Function capable withHardware Raid 0,1 Function capable withHardware Raid 0,1 Function capable withHardware Raid 0,1 Function capable with

SATA InterfaceSATA InterfaceSATA InterfaceSATA InterfaceSATA Interfacennnnn Full sized Keyboard with color LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with color LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with color LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with color LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with color LED backlightnnnnn Killer™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + KillerKiller™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + KillerKiller™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + KillerKiller™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + KillerKiller™ DoubleShot™ Pro (Killer E2400 LAN + Killer

Dual Band Wireless-AC1535) with Smart TeamingDual Band Wireless-AC1535) with Smart TeamingDual Band Wireless-AC1535) with Smart TeamingDual Band Wireless-AC1535) with Smart TeamingDual Band Wireless-AC1535) with Smart Teamingnnnnn Built-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint Readernnnnn Built-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-wooferBuilt-in Onkyo Hi-Fi speakers and a sub-woofernnnnn Sound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound Blaster®®®®® X-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound System


nnnnn WindowsWindowsWindowsWindowsWindows®®®®® 10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Edition10 Home 64-bit Editionnnnnn 17.3” Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)17.3” Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)17.3” Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)17.3” Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)17.3” Full HD IPS Matte Display (1920x1080)

with NVIDIAwith NVIDIAwith NVIDIAwith NVIDIAwith NVIDIA®®®®® G-SYNC TechnologyG-SYNC TechnologyG-SYNC TechnologyG-SYNC TechnologyG-SYNC Technologynnnnn 8GB DDR5 NVIDIA8GB DDR5 NVIDIA8GB DDR5 NVIDIA8GB DDR5 NVIDIA8GB DDR5 NVIDIA®®®®® GeForce™ GTX 980M GPUGeForce™ GTX 980M GPUGeForce™ GTX 980M GPUGeForce™ GTX 980M GPUGeForce™ GTX 980M GPUnnnnn 8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memory8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memory8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memory8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memory8GB DDR4-2133MHz Memorynnnnn 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive1TB 7200RPM Hard Drivennnnn 2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives2 Hard Drives + 2 M.2 SATA SSD Drives

Capable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 Functionnnnnn Full sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightnnnnn IntelIntelIntelIntelIntel®®®®® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + BluetoothDual Band Wireless-AC 3165 + Bluetoothnnnnn Built-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint Readernnnnn Built-in Onkyo speakers and a subwooferBuilt-in Onkyo speakers and a subwooferBuilt-in Onkyo speakers and a subwooferBuilt-in Onkyo speakers and a subwooferBuilt-in Onkyo speakers and a subwoofernnnnn Sound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound Blaster®®®®® X-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound Systemnnnnn Slim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thinSlim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thinSlim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thinSlim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thinSlim design with only 29.9mm /1.18 inch thin





Capable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 FunctionCapable with Raid 0, 1 Functionnnnnn Full sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightFull sized Keyboard with white-LED backlightnnnnn Killer™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + BluetoothKiller™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + BluetoothKiller™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + BluetoothKiller™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + BluetoothKiller™ Dual Band Wireless-AC 1525 + Bluetoothnnnnn Built-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint ReaderBuilt-in 2.0M FHD Camera & Fingerprint Readernnnnn Built-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakersBuilt-in Onkyo speakers nnnnn Sound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound BlasterSound Blaster®®®®® X-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound SystemX-Fi™ MB5 Sound Systemnnnnn Slim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thinSlim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thinSlim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thinSlim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thinSlim design with only 25mm /0.98 inch thin



Customize and Instant Pricing at: SAGERNOTEBOOK.COM

@originpc

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 be the 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, he decided 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 familiarStill, 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 how layered 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 stellar experience. It was running at 30fps (mostly consistently, though one rooftop

area sent that dipping into the teens) and a locked 1080p. The 27-inch monitor two feet from my face didn’t do the game any favors, either.

Getting to grips with the final part of 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 be as Dense as the orIgInal

release2016

DeveloperFrom Software

publisherNamco Bandai

linkwww.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 E W

World design is still a highlight.

Combat is not noticeably slicker than Dark Souls II.

“Got you, indeterminate thing!”

December 2015 33

Gamenamexxxx

P R E V I E W

The two brothers developing The Last Night say their game is an homage to “cinematic platformers” such as Flashback and Another World. Like those

games, they’re promising lavish, atmospheric environments and elements of exploration, but with 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, and winning the jam, the duo decided to turn it into a full game. The Last Night is still very early in development, but it already looks remarkable. I just hope the game itself lives up to the promise of this stunning pixel art.Andy Kelly

release2016

Publisher In-house

DeveloPerOdd Tales

linkwww.oddtales.net

n e e d t o k n o w

A future-noir platformer set in a bleak, beautiful city

F I R S t L o o kT H E L A S T

N I G H T

S t o R Y M o d eYou’ll always be in control

of your character in The Last Night, says Odd Tales. The story

will be told as you play and develop through your actions. The brothers say it will reflect the “melancholy

of modern life” and that your decisions will have a direct

impact on the course of the narrative.

g u n c o n t R o L

You play a bounty hunter, and finding your targets will be as important as hunting them

down. To give an example of the interactivity, you’ll be able to pull

your gun at any time during a conversation to

scare characters into revealing important

information.

34 DECEMBER 2015

The Last Night

P R E V I E W

n I g H t L I F eThe game takes place

across a series of nights, starting and ending in the hero’s apartment. Actions you take in, say, the third night could affect

something in the seventh. Choice and consequence will be a big part of it and your decisions

could haunt you further down the line.

u R B A n d e c A Y

Odd Tales wants its Blade Runner-inspired city to feel alive. You’ll be able to travel

between districts using taxis, ferries and monorails. Police drones with roving spotlights

patrol the streets, and evading them—either through

stealth or hacking—will be a challenge.

DECEMBER 2015 35

The Last Night

P R E V I E W

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’s no 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 and perfection—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 about Cuphead is that it looks gorgeous. They’re right, of course: it’s like a 1930s cartoon, only without the racism.

Suitably intrigued, I tracked it down at Gamescom to find out how it plays. The answer, it turns out, is like an incredibly difficult run-and-gun platformer.

A sumptuous run-and-gun platformer in which to die

C u p h e a d

Cuphead has its roots in Contra and Mega Man. it’s absurdly diffiCult

release2016

DeveloperStudio MDHR

publisherIn-house

linkwww.cupheadgame.com

n e e d t o k n o w

p l a y e d i t

1 Cuphead 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.

3 Each 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 a giant fruit machine.

5 Autoscrolling levels ramp up the difficulty

further. As well as avoiding the spikes of exploding worker bees, I have to keep climbing 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.

2 Each level’s surreal look defines how it plays. On the haunted train, I can shoot

down 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.

4 Occasionally, 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.

6 A 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

36 DECEMBER 2015

Cuphead

P R E V I E W 1

54

6

DECEMBER 2015 37

Gamenamexxxx

P R E V I E W

Leave boring old Earth behind and travel to the farthest reaches of the

universe—and beyond—in these, the PC’s greatest space games.

By Andy Kelly

The

38 December 2015

The 20 best space games

F E A T U R E

The DigYear 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 ColleCTionYear 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 FlighTYear 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 best games to play with a VR headset, if you’re lucky enough to have one.

spaCe engineersYear 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 walk on the surface of bigger asteroids. One of the best co-op build-’em-ups on PC, and new features are being added regularly.

December 2015 39


F E A T U R E

eliTe: DangerousYear 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 of Elite: 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 FighTerYear 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 capital ships—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 lighTYear 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: privaTeerYear 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.

40 December 2015


F E A T U R E

eve onlineYear 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 hang in the balance, or just exploring New Eden on your own, EVE is unforgettable.

Take on marsYear 2013 | Developer Bohemia Interactive

If you like your space games a little more grounded, try Arma developer Bohemia’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 empireYear 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 programYear 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.

December 2015 41


F E A T U R E

sTarbounDYear 2013 | Developer Chucklefish Games

B asically Terraria in space. Hop between randomly generated planets on a starship, hunt alien

creatures for food, build colonies and underground 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 sanDboxYear 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 simulaTorYear 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.

FloTillaYear 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 a strong sense of humor at work here.

galaCTiC CivilizaTions iiYear 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 much grander scale.

42 December 2015


F E A T U R E

spaCeengineYear 2010 | Developer Vladimir Romanyuk

Do you like feeling small and insignificant? Do you enjoy having existential 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 2Year 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 2Year 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-fi games on PC. It doesn’t have the freedom of Elite and is largely a linear experience, but it takes you on an unforgettable journey around the galaxy, visiting bizarre 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.

December 2015 43


F E A T U R E

install and customize

Upgrade to WindoWs 10 without fear using our simple guide—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. When that install is a just-released version of Windows, however, it’s a bit like getting a present from a secret admirer. You don’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 head inside (Windows ME).

T

WindoWs 10

thankfully, Windows 10 fixes many of Windows 8’s ui bumbles and keeps all of its great under-the-hood improvements. it also brings with it an important advance for gaming: directX 12. that said, Windows 10 isn’t perfect—there are some buried privacy

settings you’ll want to configure if you’re not keen on sending microsoft all your data. this guide will walk you through some of the important steps in the Windows 10 install process, then show you how to tweak and configure the os for a great gaming experience.

H O W T O

44 DECEMBER 2015

Customize Windows 10

H O W T O

DECEMBER 2015 45


H O W T O

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 can upgrade 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 from microsoft.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, backup your 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 make during 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 doWnload and 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 use that 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 settinGs

The installation menus couldn’t be simpler, but there are still key things to look out for.

46 DECEMBER 2015


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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

DECEMBER 2015 47


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48 DECEMBER 2015


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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 storaGe locations

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 Cortana settings 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 for your commands. Then you can set alarms, notifications and start searches with a voice command.

Cortana has changed a bit since she helped us detonate the Pillar of Autumn to blow up the Halo ring.

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 up and 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 that boots 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

DECEMBER 2015 49


H O W T O

“This is hideo Kojima’s mosT provocaTive sTaTemenT yeT”

50 DECEMBER 2015

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

R E V I E W

“meTal Gear solid v celebraTes your choices and inGenuiTy”

solid GoldMetal Gear Solid V: the PhantoM Pain is a landmark-making

stealth sandbox masterpiece. By Samuel Roberts

nighttime battlefields fill

with smoke, flares and explosions

How can my target escape if I make sure there’s no helicopter to begin with? The getaway chopper I’m looking for doesn’t just spawn out of nowhere—like everything in The Phantom Pain, it’s part of the environment, circling a hill, waiting for its passenger. I track the helicopter down based on its flight path from my three previously failed attempts and hose it with my grenade launcher until it’s in flames. I just got rid of the problem.

Within five minutes, I’ve killed both my target and the informant by accident, firing rockets randomly at anything that moves. Master Miller, who guides me through the mission, isn’t pleased I killed the informant without interrogating him first, but the game doesn’t mind. Mission complete.

Metal Gear Solid V celebrates your choices and ingenuity more than any sandbox game I’ve played in years. This mission, and so many others, allows players to figure out the strategy that works for them and run with it. This is a reinvented, systemic Metal Gear Solid with an almost Far Cry-like open-world structure, elevated significantly by the choices and subsequent one-off moments you’d encounter in a Hitman or Deus Ex. Crucially, too, The Phantom Pain retains the oddness, detail and some of the character of the MGS series.

A few of my stealth playthroughs that suddenly went wrong became my favorite moments in MGSV. I forfeited a perfect kill-free stealth run of one mission because I couldn’t get a good enough sniper angle on my

I’ve failed this assassination mission three times now. Each attempt, while searching for an enemy informant who can tell me where my target is, I’m almost immediately spotted by an enemy guard tower in a nearby camp. Spooked by the sudden gunfire, my potential victim makes a prompt getaway by helicopter. The

chopper moves too fast for me to hit it, and it’s gone. Mission failed. But how about this: screw the informant.

target before he took off in a chopper. Sprinting up flights of stairs to the helipad, my victim spotted me just in time for me to throw every grenade in my inventory under the chopper, destroying it, vanquishing him and knocking me over, before I made a ludicrously frantic escape on horseback. It was amazing, and I’m

not sure it would’ve been vastly improved had I silently shot the guy and snuck out.

The punishment for a stealth mission going wrong is an exhilarating set-piece in a constantly surprising open world.

I’ve had weird and wild gunfights of unending nightmare across giant bases, battling hordes of soldiers, mechs and even a chopper, as an

ill-equipped one-man-and-a-dog army. Nighttime battlefields fill with smoke, flares and explosions. I’ve had to hide from swarming troops and mortar fire behind buildings, patting my dog for reassurance while I call in more ammo drops, preparing for my second wind as the night gradually turns into morning.

Happy accidentSome hardcore players will never want to find themselves in that position. But when the controls are this good, when your tactical options are so extensive, it’s in no way a bad thing to be part of these escalating, huge-scale battles, which offer the sort of moment-to-moment thrills most action games would struggle to script. Embrace it when things go wrong in MGSV. Nothing boring ever happens when it does.

The goal that guides every level is to sneak through environments without being caught by the enemy—if they spot Snake (aka Big Boss), an alert phase ensues until you can lose his attackers. The Phantom Pain’s story missions take Snake to one of two enormous military

n e e d t o K n o wWhat Is It?

An open-world stealth sim rooted in the series’

complex history.

EXPECt tO PaY$60

DEVElOPERKojima Productions

PublIshERKonami

REVIEWED OnIntel I5 [email protected],

8GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 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 easiest way to get around Afghanistan without stealing an enemy vehicle.

d - d o GWild dog puppy who Snake rescues early on, which later grows into a big scary bastard.

d - w a l K e rAn armored mech walker with custom weapon and gadget kits. A hi-tech marriage of dog and horse.

Q u i e tEnemy sniper-turned-ally who wears a ludicrous bikini/underwear combo to battle.

STRENGTHSFast and well-armed if you prefer a loud, explosive approach.

WEAKNESSESSnake sticks his ass out and looks a bit daft driving it.

STRENGTHSPicks off enemies at a distance, gets deadlier with time.

WEAKNESSESIsn’t always that trigger-savvy in the heat of battle.

STRENGTHSOffers a quick way out of hairy situations. You can shoot from horseback.

WEAKNESSESA bit awkward to steer, has no function in combat by himself.

STRENGTHSSenses enemies around you, and can attack or distract soldiers.

WEAKNESSESNone, he is a dog.

DECEMBER 2015 51

R E V I E W

it’s exciting to have something game-changing

happen mid-mission

sandboxes: the cliffs and plains of a Soviet-populated Afghanistan, and later, the swampy Angola-Zaire border. Out in these environments, MGSV throws together smart AI, uncontrollable weather situations and varied types of locations in ways that frequently generate new stories. The mission objectives tend to be a bit basic on the surface—extract this guy, assassinate this informant, stop this convoy—but what happens along the way is often unexpected and almost always exciting.

Heading into a mission, you pick Snake a limited loadout of two primary weapons, one sidearm, and explosives. Importantly though, you can also have anything from your armory sent to the battlefield at any time via Snake’s iDroid device. Crossing the ten-hour mark, this range of instantly accessible options expands into AI companions of varying skillsets, airstrikes that let Snake summon fire from the skies, helicopters that can provide supporting fire and lots more. As someone who’s enjoyed the entire series, I see this as a natural progression from Metal Gear’s mini stealth sandboxes into something that realizes the potential that was there all along, without any compromises.

As a result, the balance between game and story has now shifted significantly in favor of the former. It’s so different to previous numbered Metal Gears in its lack of cutscenes that it takes some getting used to. Such narrative as there is, you’ll find pretty sober and convincingly serious for a series known for elderly snipers, vampires and men who can fire killer

bees. In The Phantom Pain, it’s 1984 and Snake is attempting to rebuild his military offshore haven Mother Base following its destruction at the end of Ground Zeroes. Having been in a coma for nine years, he’s seeking revenge on those responsible. After a deliberately confusing scripted intro set in a hospital, in which Snake escapes a horrific military attack, story is limited to a few brief cutscenes and a lot of optional, occasionally interesting audio tapes.

The lack of an intrusive story and the focus on unscripted sandbox action makes The Phantom Pain feel very contemporary and easy to recommend to new players. That modern approach extends to basic things that MGS has always struggled

with, such as the way Snake moves.

The Phantom Pain shares Ground Zeroes’ intuitive third-person control scheme, which means it’s as much fun to play MGSV like a shooter as a stealth

game. It’s important that they got this right, because there’s a lot to consider at once here: marking enemies in nearby settlements using the binoculars, switching to first-person aim with a gun and sneaking up behind soldiers to interrogate them all feel really easy to pull off. While you can remap the keyboard controls, I recommend using a controller for MGSV because the menus were built with that in mind.

SanS FROntieReSIt took me a decent chunk of my 50-odd hours with MGSV to learn the way everything works. In the field, visibility is affected by the

day-and-night cycle, and when you’re deep into an enemy base and the sun comes up, it can be the difference between a perfect stealth playthrough or the final set-piece from an ‘80s action movie. I love this as an unpredictable factor in a stealth game, as well as the changing weather, such as sandstorms and rain. It’s dramatic and exciting to have something game-changing happen mid-mission that you can’t control.

The list of stuff to do in The Phantom Pain is divided into main story missions and Side Ops, and while the latter is mostly composed of optional missions, there are some key shards of story within them, too. It’s almost like an RPG quest structure, with both strands earning you GMP, MGSV’s currency.

Rebuilding Mother Base is the foundation of the story, but it’s also the metagame that ties everything together. This is where you’ll spend GMP, and use resources found all over the open world, such as fuel or plants. It’s both an offshore platform that’s Snake’s explorable home between missions and a slightly dull management sim that takes place in menus on the iDroid, but the rewards are definitely worth it.

There’s another side to this, too. In the field, you can kidnap stunned or sleeping (not dead) soldiers using the Fulton Recovery System, which attaches tiny balloons to them and sends them back to Mother Base to join your army. You can then assign them to the various divisions (see ‘how I built your mother’) based on what their skills are best suited to. The Fulton system can also airlift animals from the field, leading to funny 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 t Responsible for dropping your

equipment into the field. The better they are, the faster your shotgun ammo arrives.

i n t e l Will scout out rough enemy locations on the

map, and get faster and more accurate readings as you level them up.

M e d i c a l These guys treat the Mother Base staff, who I

pay no attention to as I roam the open world on horseback with a grenade launcher.

r & d P l a t f o r M These guys develop weapons and other

upgrades, and they need to be of a certain level for you to unlock the more powerful firearms.

c o M B a t u n i t P l a t f o r M Send your best soldiers

on mercenary missions to bring back monetary and resource rewards for no work.

B a S e d e V e l o P M e n t Base development guys

go off and find building or fuel resources for you, so Snake has to do less farming.

52 DECEMBER 2015


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DECEMBER 2015 53


R E V I E W

The face of a man who’s killed a lot of robots.

A grenade launcher in astealth game? Outrageous!

It’s a sparse but gorgeous world.

Look how silly Snake looks riding this thing.

Mission zones can get pretty hairy.

54 DECEMBER 2015


R E V I E W

Snake on a horse is, well, pretty sexy.

How not to do stealth.

There are very few destructible environments.

Snake can unlock newcostume choices, too.

DECEMBER 2015 55


R E V I E W

Why not go full Kilgore and have it play ride of the valkyries?

be used to bring home whole vehicles and shipping containers.

Mother Base is not a particularly fun space to be in, to be honest, aside from when you’re beating up your loyal troops for no reason. What makes it worth the time is that leveling up your divisions is the key to unlocking new weapons, equipment or any other sort of upgrades. Each weapon type has a tech tree: a tranquilizer dart gun can become a more powerful one with a better clip and damage, and so on. New weapon blueprints are found all over the two environments, and the thrill of researching a new grenade launcher and having it instantly dropped into the battlefield is similar to the joy you get from an RPG crafting system.

Some of the upgrades are frivolous but awesome: you don’t need speakers on your attack helicopter to play music, but why not go full Kilgore and have it play Ride of the Valkyries to scare the shit out of the Russians? Music pops up all over the world 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’s Walkman and have them blare out of your helicopter’s speakers. Custom music works, too.

Upgrades also play a key role with Snake’s four AI ‘buddy’ support units in the game (see ‘Snake’s buddies’). Like your weapons, you can call in a new buddy and swap out the old one at any time with the iDroid, another refreshing layer of flexibility, and they progress in interesting ways. You can order your sniper, Quiet, to provide

G e a r S o f w h a ? A brief history of Metal Gear’s oddest moments

Credible

Batshit

MGS MGS2 MGS3 MGS4 MGS Peace Walker

Solid Snake, a clone, kills his clone brother.

Ocelot’s mind controlled by dead clone’s

evil arm.

Rogue AI created by

dead illuminati rules world.

Features character called Hot Coldman.Soulful warrior

kills former mentor.

Weird

covering fire, tell your dog to attack enemies or order your horse to do a shit. Which makes enemy jeeps skid out of control, if you were wondering.

peace WaLKtHROUGHYou can use all of these options or none of them—that’s the point. And don’t worry if this array of stuff to do

sounds overwhelming: Kojima Productions sensibly drip-feeds you these elements over the first ten hours so you know how to use them 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 other games, but not brought together in quite this way. I love that the end-of-mission scoring system rewards a multitude of different playstyles, and not just the stealth-only approach. While there are heavy bonuses for ghosting and penalties for being caught by the enemy, you’re also strongly rewarded for headshots or speed. This encourages players to be more experimental, and not to feel like it’s the end of the world if they’re spotted. This is a game where it feels great to fire a gun, and you’ll have dozens in your inventory. You should definitely use them.

I recommend The Phantom Pain without question to someone unfamiliar with the series. In fact, I think existing Metal Gear fans will be the hardest for The Phantom Pain to win over: the structure is just so different. But once I reached the eight-hour mark, I realized how in love with it I was, and how much fun I was having just

doing daft stuff like trying to blow up a bear with C4, lobbing a sleeping guard off a cliff to his death or Fulton-ing a tank into the air with a dude inside just because I was too lazy to blow it up. They’ve built a world that lets these moments happen constantly, and it never stops being impressive.

The environmental design feeds into this madness perfectly, and some of the backdrops to missions are gigantic, with many points of entry. While as open worlds they feel a little quiet and spread out, the more populated areas of refineries, abandoned towns or palaces are all playgrounds that encourage repeat runs of missions. I’d happily swap the old Metal Gear hub environments for these any day. In retrospect, they feel like prototypes for what the team at Kojima Productions have always wanted to build.

There are some parts of old Metal Gear that would’ve made a welcome transition, though: other than a couple of great sniper duels and one larger fight I can’t talk about without spoiling, I thought the selection of boss fights was pretty dull, particularly an annoying recurring scrap with some cheap zombie soldier men that are little more than bullet sponges.

Bad boss fights occupy less than one hour of MGSV total, though, and that’s a tiny fraction of my playtime so far. This is a massive experience, with an extensive and challenging endgame, too. Even the most basic playthrough will clock-in at 25 hours, and those that really get deep into experimenting with the game will easily 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 a dazzling example of how exciting open-world game design can be. Not just being set in a big or beautiful world, but having the building blocks in place to let players have moments that feel like they belong to them. Metal Gear Solid V is a standard-

setting sandbox game that makes perfect sense on PC, and is likely to be the most influential Metal

Gear Solid game since the first.

93A generous stealth sandbox masterpiece that will delight both new and existing fans of the long-running series.

V E R D I C t

Thunder roamThe vehicular combat shines, but Mad Max falters when you get out

of the car. By Chris Livingston

You can rip a driver right out of his seat then

catapult him through the air

To acquire all the parts and upgrades needed to turn his new car into an engine of vengeance, Max reluctantly makes deals with the leaders of several desert outposts and sets about clearing their turf of threats, conquering enemy camps, scavenging for scrap metal, and engaging in tons of car-to-car combat and melee brawls with goons.

The vehicular combat is great fun, mainly due to one of the most enjoyable weapons I’ve ever used in a game: Max’s car-mounted harpoon. As you explore the wasteland you’ll randomly come across lone vehicles or sizable war parties. Target a car’s door with your harpoon and you can tear it off. Target a rear bumper and you can slingshot your car into it for extra ramming damage. Yank off

Just as Fury Road arrives on Blu-ray to be obsessively watched and rewatched, Max comes to PC in an open-world action game by the developers of the Just Cause series. Here Max finds himself left for dead in the desert—and worse, his iconic Interceptor stolen—after a run-in with hulking warlord

Scabrous Scrotus. Max joins forces with the fawning, Quasimodo-like mechanic Chumbucket, who agrees to help him build a new car.

armor, piece by piece, to expose a gas tank and you can detonate it with a shotgun blast. As you upgrade the harpoon you’ll gain the ability to tear off a car’s wheel, completely neutralizing it. Best of all, you can a rip a driver right out of his seat, either through an unarmored windshield or a door you’ve removed,

and then catapult him through the air. It’s a blast. You’re not always the hunted, either: sometimes enemy drivers will realize they’ve bitten off more than they can chew and beat a hasty retreat, meaning you

get to become the pursuer.The harpoon isn’t just useful

against other cars. Across the wasteland enemy factions have built intimidating metal ‘scarecrow’ towers that can be harpooned and pulled

down. Sniper nests also dot the landscape, and you can rip them down or simply impale the sniper and yank him right out of his roost. Tear down the gates of enemy camps and you’ll be able to target any creeps foolish enough to come running, pulling them one-by-one out into the dust. Eventually you’ll acquire the Thunderpoon, which adds explosive-tipped bolts, effectively giving you a rocket launcher attack useful against heavily armored vehicles.

The apex of car combat is encountering a convoy: a lead vehicle with 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 and start picking off the escort vehicles, you’ll be rammed and sideswiped as eager War Boys leap onto your car, stabbing and kicking you through your windows until you shake them off. You’ll be engaging vehicles in front, behind, and on both sides of you, tearing into them with your harpoon, detonating their gas tanks, and ejecting their drivers, all the while trying to catch the lead vehicle and keep your own car on the road.

Random wasteland events only add to the high-speed chaos. In the midst of one extended convoy attack, a massive storm rolled in, turning day into night and filling the air with crackling lightning bolts and hazardous flying debris. During another convoy chase, a different war party of three vehicles came rocketing along the same highway... headed in the opposite direction. The utter devastation was hilarious. These random events can completely ruin your assault, which I’m sure some will find frustrating, but I personally never minded doing a convoy mission multiple times. They’re easily the best part of the game, and I’m happy to say there’s a massive one toward the end of the story missions.

You need to get out of your car quite often, which is where some of the high-octane fun of Mad Max can

N e e d t o K N o wWhat is it?

Open-world vehicle and melee combat in the

world of the films.

EXPECt tO PaY$60

DEvElOPErAvalanche Studios

PublishErWarner Bros.

Interactive Entertainment

rEviEWED OnIntel i7 x980 3.33GHz,

9GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 960

MultiPlaYErNone

linkwww.madmax

game.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 the knee in the original film. In the game, Max will clutch that injured knee and limp for a few moments after taking a fall.

r o a d w a r r i o r 1 9 8 1Max had a faithful dog, imaginatively named ‘Dog’, and he’s got one in the game, who helps him sniff out landmines.

B e y o N d t h u N d e r d o M e 1 9 8 5In the game, there’s a brawl in a metal dome as the crowd chants “Two men enter, one man leaves.”

F u r y r o a d 2 0 1 5Like the film, the game features War Boys and Buzzards, deadly electrical storms, and someone is even used as a ‘blood bag’.

56 DECEMBER 2015

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DECEMBER 2015 57

Mad Max

r E v i E W

Ram ‘em head-on. Only way to be sure.

Turn your car into a true war machine.

Swipe a faction’s car to pass safely through their territory.

You meet plenty of eccentric characters, but few memorable ones.

Enemies don’t get harder, there are just more of them.

58 DECEMBER 2015

Mad Max

r E v i E W

Parrying is key to winning fights. Sort of the only key.

Flame throwers use up tons of guzzoline.

Upgrade your ram, and you’ll start tearing through unarmored cars like paper.

Couldn’t get the Tom Hardy license, then.

Underground locations: well- designed, but not well-used.

War Boys won’t hesitate to throw themselves on your car.

Very little of the dark humor

of the films makes it into

the game

start to fizzle. Invading enemy camps is always done on foot, and melee combat works similarly to what we’ve seen in the Arkham games—parry blows with one key, deliver your own by mashing another, chain attacks together for damage bonuses, execute special moves when prompted. But it’s not as fluid or flexible. The camera can be awful during fights, sometimes completely obscuring Max and his enemies. Learning special attacks and parries lets you deal with goons more quickly, but in response the game simply increases the size of the mobs. It’s still wonderfully kinetic: breaking a goon’s arm or piledriving him into the ground feels good and crunchy, and blasting away with your sawed-off, using spiked melee weapons, or throwing explosive spears gives fights a bit of kick. Ultimately, though, there are simply so many of these fights, all essentially the same, that they eventually begin to feel like a numbing chore. I have plenty of fun stories about car combat, but none about the dozens and dozens of fistfights I had.

outlanderBesides car and melee combat, there are other things to do in the wasteland. I’ve played for 60 hours and my map is still cluttered with icons, though there’s honestly not a whole lot of variety. You can search locations for scrap (often engaging in more melee), gather parts to upgrade friendly strongholds, capture outposts whose hot air balloons serve as vantage points, tear down scarecrows and sniper nests, or listen to a friendly wastelander’s (usually boring) tale of woe before getting a tip or sharing their loot. There are also a couple of interesting and creepy underground locations that felt like they might be leading to something different, but unfortunately they end up the same way every other interior location does: with a roomful of guys for 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 engines and nitro boosts. Some of these upgrades simply require scrap metal, others are the result of story progression. Some, however, are tied

to milestones. Heading into the final confrontation, for example, I wanted to have the maximum armor on my car, as I’d been finding myself having to pull over far too often to let Chum repair it. This final armor upgrade required not just gathering a bunch of scrap metal, but also eliminating every single threat in one area of the map: clearing every enemy camp, taking out every sniper and scarecrow tower, and finding and clearing every single minefield. I have a problem with this. The great thing about open-world games is that they don’t just offer the freedom to tackle challenges in the order in which you

choose, but also the freedom to not tackle some of them if you don’t want to. Tying several of Max’s upgrades specifically to the completion of all these optional activities makes them, y’know,

not so optional. It’s not that I hated doing the work—any activity I can do while driving, like taking down towers, I enjoyed—it’s just that I felt I had no choice in the matter.

At least the wasteland itself is a solid pleasure. I’m sure it was a challenge to make a massive and barren desert visually interesting, but Avalanche pulled it off nicely, giving different regions distinct themes. You’ll find sun-bleached white sand, rolling yellow dunes, dark jagged peaks and cliffs, vast swamps of oily muck, and rusty red buttes and boulders. Then there’s Gas Town, with its belching smokestacks and

mountains of trash, looking for all the world like an industrial Mordor. I wish the story complemented the visuals, but very little of the dark humor of the films make it into the game, and most of the characters, including Max himself, are fairly forgettable. And so few Australian accents! Disappointing.

road warriorI’m quite happy (and a little surprised) to say the port is excellent. With everything maxed—so to speak—I generally averaged around 70fps while driving and around 60fps in the game’s interiors. Some of the controls aren’t great: interaction requires a key to be held rather than tapped. For climbing a ladder it’s not a big deal, but for collecting scrap metal, which you’ll do hundreds of times, having to hold the button for a full second before Max picks up his loot feels pointlessly time consuming.

That’s a lot of negatives. And yet, I still enjoyed the game because the car combat goes a long way toward making up for them. Over the 60 hours I played, whenever I became bored, I’d just race around the dunes and valleys in my car, looking for the telltale plumes of dust that indicated a rolling war party or convoy. Then I’d ready the harpoon, blast the nitro, and get up to ramming speed.

77Car combat and the beautiful wasteland mostly make up for repetitive 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 pick up scrap after car battles so you don’t have to.

5 K N u C K l e d u S t e r SAdd rebar and wrenches to put more bite into Max’s punches.

6 S p i K e SKeeps those pesky War Boys from leaping onto your hood.

3 h a r p o o NAn essential upgrade gives you the ability to tear wheels off enemy cars.

2 C h u M ’ S r e p a i r S K i l lAgonizingly slow, until you find his favorite wrench.

1 N i t r o B o o S tYou’ll need extra speed to chase down convoys or make quick getaways.

7 F l a M e t h r o w e r SThey use a lot of fuel but discourage vehicles from side-swiping you.

1

4

7

2

3

56

DECEMBER 2015 59

Mad Max

r E v i E W

stolid object Volume is a fun, funny stealth puzzle game in a dull dystopian England.

By Tyler Wilde

Andy serkis is great. He is the

great Andy serkis, so that’s

assumed

As 100 stealth levels, Volume is pretty fun. It’s played from an overhead perspective, with WASD to move Rob through small puzzles, avoiding guards and collecting gems on the way to the exit. And these are definitely puzzles as opposed to improvisational action sequences, unless you count running in circles around a pillar to lose a guard as ‘improvisation.’ Some bits require agility, like when I needed to dance around pressure-plate alarms while also avoiding vision cones, but there’s almost always a single clear solution.

Say there’s a guard looking through a doorway, for instance. At the most basic level, I might crouch behind a half-wall near him, whistle to get him to move off his post, and then creep around the wall as he comes looking for me. In a more advanced puzzle, I might have to shoot a noisemaker gadget I found earlier in the level, lure one guard away from a group of marching guards, and then let him rejoin them out of formation to create a gap that I can squeeze through. It’s about identifying and disrupting patterns.

The complexity rises every few levels, when new, extremely Stealth Game ideas are introduced. You can hide in closets. There are forcefields blocking paths that need to be deactivated. Some forcefields are locked and stay up until you find the key. Dogs have better peripheral vision. Archers have long, narrow vision triangles, but are slow to fire. There’s a gadget that distracts guards with a curious object, one that disguises you as a guard, one that

V olume is a pretty good stealth game. Its title could be Pretty Good Stealth Game, and I would agree with it. As a futuristic Robin Hood tale, it’s not quite so good. It’s often amusing, but its comments on wealth distribution and moral responsibility are ultimately pretty mundane. Meanwhile,

its protagonist, Rob Locksley, sounds so bored I expected him to give up on saving the world halfway through to watch YouTube videos.

makes you invisible, and so on. A lot of ideas, introduced at an even pace.

Most of these ideas are fun. I especially liked the puzzles designed around jumping over short walls. As guards can’t do the same, you can force them to run little mazes while you take shortcuts, off to the next section of the level before they have any clue what’s happened. It’s fun, if sometimes too obvious and simple, to game the guards’ AI.

.Simple formSThere were two levels that infuriated me (screw lasers), but for the most part, Volume is pretty tame. There are some bits that require tricky maneuvering—such as avoiding

pressure plates that emit guard-alerting sounds while also hiding behind pillars so guards don’t spot you—but I rarely got stuck on anything for long. The puzzles are satisfying to solve, but not especially hard.

The difficulty is heavily mitigated by checkpoints, which are placed throughout the levels and not only act as respawn points, but also save any gems or items you’ve picked up so far. I appreciate that I’m not asked to redo an entire level because of one mistake, but checkpoints can be abused. I discovered early on that if I grabbed some gems and was spotted by a guard, I’d be fine as long as I made it to a checkpoint before being killed. Hell, even if I fell through the checkpoint while in my ‘I’ve been shot and am dying’ animation, I still respawned there and kept my progress. It feels like cheating, which isn’t a good feeling, but I wasn’t going

to forego using a perfectly good solution on principle.

It’s funny that mid-death checkpointing is even allowed, given Volume’s premise. The idea is that you, as Rob Locksley, have hijacked an evil corporation’s old AI and are livestreaming simulated burglaries of real places. You’re showing the public how to take back the wealth that’s been hoarded by the elite, and they’re going out and doing it. Except I figure they die whether or not Rob made it to a checkpoint.

The danger of Rob’s suggestions is addressed, to be fair. The story is mainly told as Rob’s hijacked AI (Alan) talks to him every few levels. Alan is voiced by Danny Wallace, who is funny, emotional, and delivers the best AI voice performance in a game since GLaDOS. The cartoonishly evil corporation owner also chimes in now and then, and is voiced by Andy Serkis. Andy Serkis is great. He is the great Andy Serkis, so that’s assumed.

Rob himself, however, is not voiced by an actor like Wallace or Serkis—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 bafflingly doesn’t make good use of the mouse—but I think 100 levels was enough for me. There’s some interesting stuff to play with near the end of Volume, including some unique teleporter puzzles, but for the most part I’ve done it all already. I’ve thrown noisemakers, avoided vision cones, and dodged lasers. In this case, I’m doing it in a particularly beautiful, colorful world with triangle explosions (a very cool effect), but none of it is novel enough to warrant repeat visits.

N e e d t o K N o wWhat is it?

A real-time stealth puzzler with 100 levels

and a level editor.

EXPECt tO PaY$10

DEvElOPErBithell Games

PublishErIn-house

rEviEWED OnCore i5-3570, 8GB RAM,

GTX Titan

MultiPlaYErNone

linkwww.volumegame.net

72Fun, not-too-hard stealth puzzles that look great, wrapped up in a humdrum story with a boring protagonist.

v E r D i C t

60 DECEMBER 2015

r E v i E W

o N t h e g r o u N d The floor can hurt or help you

S h a d o w STheir placement rarely makes sense, but when in the shadows, you’re totally invisible

S h o c KThese floor panels electrocute you, the big jerks.

t e l e p o r t e r SBe careful, some of these teleport you directly into a guard’s vision.

p r e S S u r e p l a t e SStep on one of these, and a sound alerts nearby guards.

DECEMBER 2015 61

Volume

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The dialogue can be a little distracting while you’re trying to stealth around.

More of those noise-making white squares.

Cubism is back in a big way in the future.

You often have to distract patrolling guards while waiting for forcefields to shut down.

SlogwartS Despite the refined real-time combat, there’s not a lot to love about

Final Fantasy type-0 HD. By Samuel Roberts

this stuff shouldn’t be

your problem in a $30 game

Without the added appeal of that demo, Type-0 on PC is for fans only. There are obvious signs of its handheld origins, such as the bitty quest structure, loading screens between small environments and inconsistently remade visuals. More than that, it just doesn’t represent Final Fantasy at its best outside of the fairly decent combat.

Type-0 is an action-RPG where you control the 14 boys and girls of Class 0, an elite unit of attractive teenagers who grimace handsomely around a military school called Akademeia, which is Hogwarts with shorter skirts and more physical violence. Your party consists of three of these kids at any one time, and all have a slightly different approach to battle, employing guns, knives, heavy weapons or even a deck of magic cards. You can switch to another party member at any time, the idea being that you slowly piece together combinations of fighters that work.

I don’t understand the pattern of Final Fantasy releases on PC. With two bad ports of the divisive Final Fantasy XIII sub-series behind it, here’s an HD version of an old PSP game, which originally arrived on consoles earlier this year. The PlayStation 4 version at least came with a demo of the far more exciting-looking and shiny

Final Fantasy XV. That’s not coming to PC right now, so we’ve just got the less exciting part of that bargain.

Keeping them all leveled up is a pain. Rather than the game lifting absent party members’ levels, you have to grind them all separately, and you can spend ages wandering the world map between missions doing this. Eventually, I just picked the seven I liked and went with those. Even that few became boring after a

while. There’s an option to level up a party member when you’re not playing, and you can even mess with your PC’s system clock to speed it up, but that kind of suggests you’re not enjoying the game too much.

While the structure of Type-0 is a bit repetitive, the moment-to-moment combat doesn’t suffer if you regularly change your heroes. Party members all have their own progression menus, too. If FFXV ever does come to PC, Type-0 at least suggests that Square Enix is getting better at real-time combat.

It’s just almost everything else I don’t like. The story and character

designs remind me of the terrible-looking anime series I scroll past every night on Netflix – and I usually enjoy the melodrama, ludicrous dialogue and twists of a Final Fantasy story. The size of the cast makes it tough to focus on any character you care about, and the game can be goofy and badly acted. The female character designs pander to a presumed audience of teenage boys, too. One lady flashes her pants while she swings a mace that’s twice her size, because of course.

The non-combat RPG stuff is pretty weak, too, and shows the limitations of a ported handheld game: there’s a world map with towns to enter, but the landscape’s dull and the towns are rooms. The school is painfully subdivided by loading screens. This stuff shouldn’t be your problem in a $30 game.

clock blockedYou’re also burdened with a time system that only allows you to have so many lectures or sidequests before the next main mission begins. The idea is presumably to encourage multiple playthroughs where you can catch every character interaction, but it actually turns what could have been a nice stock of sidequests into a boring chore. The problem is, you need to do these just to progress.

There are only two fixed resolution options, 720p and 1080p, and it runs at a locked 30fps, too. It’s been inconsistently remade for HD, and only looks nice in brief moments.

Square Enix is slowly moving its colossal back-catalog onto PC, but Type-0 does not represent Final Fantasy at its best. I think existing fans will enjoy the combat, but I couldn’t recommend this to anyone as a starting point for the series.

n e e D t o K n o wWhat is it?

An action-RPG where a school seems to be at

war with a nation.

EXPECt tO PaY$30

DEvElOPErSquare Enix/HexaDrive

PublishErIn-house

rEviEWED OnAMD FX-6200 CPU,

16GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7870

MultiPlaYErNone

linkwww.finalfantasy

type0.com

58Type-0 gets real-time combat right, but this port of an RPG that began on handheld is otherwise not much fun.

v E r D i C t

a K a D e m e i aThe warrior school for attractive wankers

1 H e a D q u a r t e r sThis is where you start main story

missions, and where most of the adults seem to hang out.

2 a i r s H i p s t a t i o nThe airship station lets you

quick-travel to different parts of the map, for a price.

5

3

1

2

4

4 C H o C o b o r a n C HThere’s a whole part of the school

dedicated to breeding the series’ iconic yellow chickens.

5 l o u n g eMay as well be the common room

from any of the Harry Potter films. Looks comfy.

3 C l a s s r o o mMy favorite bit, because it has a

Tonberry (ominous knife-wielding tiny man) perched on the teacher’s desk.

62 December 2015

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December 2015 63

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD

r E v i E W

That’s right, say it instead of thinking it.

This is part of a pretty terrible RTS minigame.

Nice environment, but this room has a loading screen.

The uniform you’re obliged to wear at anime ninja school.

The size of the handsome cast makes it hard to care.

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HARD REIGNEnjoy open-ended cyberpunk strategy on the rainy neon streets

of Satellite Reign. By Andy Kelly

You seamlessly move from the anonymity of the streets to

a mission

It’s in this dystopian urban sprawl that you, owner of a small corporation with big ideas, must make your mark—which is easier said than done when the mega-corporations and their military-grade security forces have a monopoly on everything. Starting in the downtown area—a bustling, labyrinthine world of neon—your path through this open-world city is the one you carve. You can do missions in any order, in any way you please.

The action is viewed from above, and you control your four customizable super-agents with traditional RTS controls. It’s reminiscent of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but real-time rather than turn-based. Your guys can dash into cover, and their accuracy in a gunfight is determined by range and weapon, enemy position, and by their abilities—which can, of course, be upgraded. You can flank enemies to get the jump on them, snipe from afar, or charge in for a melee attack.

The rain never stops falling on Satellite Reign’s isometric future-city. It’s derivative of countless cyberpunk cityscapes, but amazingly atmospheric regardless. Video ads cycle on huge 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 if Ridley Scott had filmed it with a tilt-shift lens.

But while games like XCOM and Shadowrun limit you to closed-in levels, Satellite Reign’s open city lets you seamlessly move from the anonymity of the streets, where you can hide in the bustle, to a mission: attacking a rival corporation’s factory or robbing a bank. These guarded spaces are levels of a sort, but they sit

in the open world waiting to be attacked or infiltrated.

It’s daunting at first. The starting area is enormous, and there’s so much intricate detail on those maze-like streets that you can feel lost. It’s when you see a

thick wall, gun-toting guards, and warnings to stay away that you know you’ve encountered somewhere you can assault or rob, and that’s when the game gets really good.

You have four agents, but that doesn’t mean you have to use them all. The most satisfying moment for me was deciding to rob a bank with the security of Area 51, and managing to pull it off with one character: a

hacker. I carefully hacked my way through security gates, dodged cameras and patrolling guards, and made my way towards the main building. I slipped inside and hacked their systems so that ‘siphons’ I’d attached to ATMs around the city would generate more money. Then I snuck out, and the corporation I’d ripped off was none the wiser.

That’s just one way, though. I could have fought my way to the main building with all four agents, their guns blazing, then sent my soldier in to grab a big pile of money for a more immediate reward. There are no interiors in this game: these moments happen off-screen, via a text summary of what your agent did inside. But considering the size of the city, I don’t mind. Combining your agents’ skills, augs and weapons, and choosing how to approach a mission, is where Satellite Reign is at its best.

remote accessMy biggest complaint is how the game feels. It has none of the punchy, kinetic weight of XCOM or StarCraft, which top-down games like this need to compensate for your distance from the action. Your agents’ movement is slow and heavy, making the battles feel sluggish. It’s a hard thing to articulate in words: it just lacks that slickness that many of its peers have.

This is an issue that haunts every moment of the game, but otherwise, Satellite Reign is one of the most enjoyable small-squad strategy games I’ve played in ages. I love how it blends tactical combat with an open-world structure and Deus Ex-inspired freedom. Creeping through a heavily defended enemy base unseen is a thrill, and if things go awry, there are plenty of combat options to experiment with.

n e e d t o K n o wWhat is it?

An open-world cyberpunk strategy

game.

EXPECt tO PaY$30

DEvElOPEr5 Lives Studios

PublishErIn-house

rEviEWED OnGeForce GTX 970, Intel

i5-3570K @ 3.4GHz, 16GB RAM

MultiPlaYErNone

linkwww.satellitereign.com

80Satisfyingly freeform missions and rich game systems to play with, in one 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 point across with miniguns, tactical nukes and plasma shotguns.

H a c K e RThe IT Support dude of the future. Can hack security systems and hijack people’s cyber-brains.

S U p p o R tBackup. Supplies extra ammo and can extend your line of sight with camera drones.

i n F i l t R a t o RThe cyber-ninja. Able to turn invisible for a short period, enjoys swords and sniper rifles.

66 DECEMBER 2015

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DECEMBER 2015 67

Satellite Reign

r E v i E W

Hack ATMs to leech money from them.

It’s not cyberpunk without gaudy neon nightclubs.

Send your soldier into this bank for a hefty reward.

The detail in thecity is remarkable.

Combat lacks the satisfying weight of XCOM.

good looking Beyond eyes is a meditative stroll made special by its choice

of lead character. By Edwin Evans-Thirlwell

A woodland path can be as unnerving as

scouring a tomb

Walls take you places. Follow one and you might come to a corner. Turn the corner and you might come to a door. The comfort of such predictability is palpable in Beyond Eyes’ context-sensitive animations: drift near a building and Rae reaches out tentatively, fingertips brushing the surface for reassurance. It’s one of many ways this brief but stirring adventure transforms your appreciation of 3D space.

Rae lost her sight in an accident some time before the story begins. Once a giddy extrovert, she has become something of a hermit, her sole remaining contact with the world beyond her garden a chubby ginger cat named Nani. One day Nani doesn’t visit as usual, and Rae leaves the garden to search for him. It seems a laughably simple framework to build a game around—but this is an observation colored by the complacency of the fully sighted. To a girl in Rae’s shoes, a stroll down a woodland path can be every bit as unnerving as scouring a tomb in Dark Souls, and Beyond Eyes’ greatest feat is to express this in a way those with unimpaired vision can grasp.

Where other games about blindness have tackled the subject by limiting themselves to audio, Beyond Eyes deals in visual metaphors. Each environment in the game begins as a measureless expanse of white—a backdrop that, unlike the customary cliché of blindness as eternal night, rouses curiosity rather than dread. Everything Rae can hear, smell or touch is manifest on this landscape as a pleasing gush of watercolor. Grass

Some of the most valuable if not enjoyable artworks are those that force us to reconsider something we think we know well. Beyond Eyes has changed how I think about walls. In most games, 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 casts you as a blind girl searching for her cat, they almost feel like friends.

and flowers seethe into existence underfoot as you step forward. Houses erupt from a splash of brickwork, textures spreading across the hidden structure like time-lapse footage of a coral reef. Animal or mechanical noises pulse in the distance, temporarily exposing patches of road or treetop as Rae

picks up on how sound waves are affected by contact with their surroundings.

This is stunning to witness, as homely as the supporting technology may be. It’s also a source of enduring uncertainty.

You may, for instance, ‘see’ what’s happening inside a building or enclosure before you realize that the structure itself is there. You’ll ‘see’ the river bubbling beneath a bridge before you discover you’re able to cross it, stepping out cautiously into what at first appears to be empty air.

Moreover, Rae’s perceptions are tinged by her innocence—the slightly saccharine, storybook aesthetic isn’t just a presentational gambit, but a commentary on the protagonist—and the gap between perception and reality can be memorably unpleasant. An early example is what seems at first to be fabric gaily flapping on a clothesline. On closer inspection, the object reveals itself to be a scarecrow. Rae’s fear and surprise at such discoveries are touchingly conveyed via body language, rather than in dialogue—she’ll stoop, hugging her sides, when the world refuses to play along with her expectations.

one to watchThis is as much a game about learning to live with life’s occasional ugliness, as it is learning to live without sight. The player’s precise role among all this is engagingly hard to pinpoint. At times you feel like Rae herself, struggling to make sense of the geography; at others you’re more of a guardian, leading her by the hand. The story’s refusal to broach the question of her parents is telling, in this regard—it leaves that role open for the player to assume.

Beyond Eyes is a game I want you to play but one I struggle to score. While illuminating and restful, it’s rarely ‘fun’ in the same way that, say, a Tomb Raider game is fun. The pace is necessarily ponderous, yet the story can be completed in an evening, and while there are a few traditional puzzles, they’re extremely simple, more there for variety’s sake than to provide a challenge. But then, judging this by the standards of more straightforward games is missing the point a little. Plenty of games set out to be entertaining. This is one of the few that wants to change you.


A third-person exploration game

starring a blind girl.

EXPECt tO PaY$15

DEvElOPErTiger & Squid

PublishErTeam17

rEviEWED On i5, GTX460M, 4GB RAM

MultiPlaYErNone

linkwww.beyond

eyes-game.com

75Over quickly and hardly exhilarating, Beyond Eyes is still illuminating in a way that games rarely bother to be.

v E r D i C t

o u t o f s i g h tGames for the visually impaired

P a P a s a n g r eA game for phones that takes place in the underworld,

where you tap the screen to walk and navigate past monsters in the gloom.

t h r e e M o n K e y sA game that casts you as a hero blind

from birth—and thus, best equipped to save a world plunged into darkness.

r o c K V i B eA music game based on Guitar Hero that swaps

the latter’s scrolling fretboard for vibrations that tell you when to strum.

a u d i o Q u a K eA modified version of Quake that uses continuous audio

cues to tell you where you are and whether you’re currently being shot.

68 DECEMBER 2015

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DECEMBER 2015 69

Beyond Eyes

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There are a few optional interactions to discover.

When Rae feels threatened, the entire ambience changes

You’ll catch hints of otherpeople, but rarely meet them.

The palette hides fairly simple geometry.

Forbidding City The game of downloads and dragons tells its darkest tale yet, in the

harsh neon glare of shadowrun: hong Kong. By Angus Morrison

Static though the settings are, they’re lavish to an

obscene degree

If I lost, I’d enjoy life as a servile pawn; if I won, she might convince her other half to dispose of a valued asset. It’s all tension, melodrama and, as it turns out, farce. Almost as soon as the lead starts flying, she calls a halt and agrees to deal—because she’s not an age-old force of destruction, she’s an accountant. A vampire accountant. Who says corporate jobs are dull?

Splicing magic with a not-so-far future Earth ruled by megacorps is inherently ridiculous, but the business of shadowrunning (dirty, untraceable work for the highest bidder) was a touch dry in Shadowrun Returns and its expandalone, Dragonfall. Hong Kong is blessed by the camp excess of Eastern cinema, not just in the lurid neon that adorns every shopfront, but in the clichéd retorts, triad wars and B-movie heists that it delights in. It’s like the series has relaxed, convinced by a third successful Kickstarter that it’s good at what it does.

A rooftop duel under neon floodlights convinced me that Shadowrun’s writing had at last met the potential in its mash-up of magic and cyberpunk. A charismatic elven street samurai, I’d presumably coasted in samurai school, because I 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 at my late-night stock check of her boyfriend’s flat.

Shadowrun is about intrigue above all, and the central narrative here raises questions aplenty. As a clean-nosed tourist in search of your estranged foster father, it’s all of five minutes before you’re forced into roving firefights with the Hong Kong police. You descend into a life of crime, branded a terrorist and

desperate for triad protection, taking on a multitude of unsavory shadowruns while your new boss (the badly named Kindly Cheng) tracks down your dad. So far, so cyberpunk, but the late game plot-kink cashes out

the Chinese mysticism teased all game for an expertly foreshadowed finale. Hong Kong is a more personal and urgent adventure than Returns—you’re not so much a hero as a well-armed victim—and it surpasses Dragonfall in dark comic grandeur.

There’s the staple murder mystery, Hollywood backstabbing, impromptu feng shui and some casual tomb raiding to keep things

fresh. Of course, this being Shadowrun, these all take place through clicks on static interactive icons, the scene-setting handled by text and décor alone and the reliable turn-based combat all but unchanged. No doubt more-of-the-same seemed safer than experimentation, but in the face of competitors like Pillars of Eternity, Shadowrun needs to adapt or end up looking dated.

art attackStatic though the settings are, they’re lavish to an obscene degree. A battalion of artists must have been drafted to contribute the exquisite oriental set-pieces that appear on just one mission each, good for a screenshot and a gunfight (obviously) before being thrown on the pile. It’s luxurious, hands-off spectacle that exists to support the writing, and occasionally outshines it.

It’s a shame the crowdfunded $1.2m wasn’t enough to resolve the longstanding interface woes. The UI is cleaner, but a certain amount of patience is required to see past input lag and, on one occasion, complete failure that caused my runner to stroll about in sleeping gas instead of taking the lift. I left her behind with vindictive pleasure. And for all the quality of Hong Kong’s dialogue, it’s more an illusion of player choice than meaningful roleplay. Polite, smartass and slow-witted options typically mask the same response.

Regardless, this is a spectacular story of deceit and poisonous evil that will lure you through the most indulgent settings yet seen in the RPG renaissance. For the price, it’s of giddying scale, but Shadowrun is starting to cry out for innovation. If it continues to tread water, it could end up drifting back into the shadows.

n e e d t o K n o wWhat is it?A text-heavy

turn-based RPG.

EXPECt tO PaY$20

DEvElOPErHarebrained Schemes

PublishErIn-house

rEviEWED OnWindows 7, Core i5,

16GB RAM, GTX 780Ti

MultiPlaYErNone

linkwww.harebrained-

schemes.com/shadowrun

76This is the best Shadowrun to date, but for all its vibrant neon scenery, 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 brother and a former cop;

perhaps understandably

less than psyched for shadowrunning.

g o b b e tA rat Shaman

whose hobbies include melting

flesh from bones and hitting damn- all with her SMG.

r a C t e rThe Russian drone

enthusiast who occupies 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 make megacorps regret

their choice of password.

g a i C h uSure, he needs human flesh to

survive, but who wouldn’t want a

bulletproof samurai on-side?

70 DECEMBER 2015

r E v i E W

DECEMBER 2015 71

Shadowrun: Hong Kong

r E v i E W

Tooltips have been streamlined and the UI neatened up.

Squeaky le Pin has talkingand fleeing down to a T.

Proprietor: Maximum Law. Yes, really.

An efficient blend of crime scene and funeral.

Even minor interactions require a dip to black.

FROZEN Pillars of Eternity gets its first expansion, The WhiTe March: ParT i.

By Andy Kelly

It’s really just an excuse to give you two

new dungeons to crawl

The White March is an area in the Dyrwood’s frozen north. To access it you need to have reached the point in the story where the Watcher takes possession of their stronghold, Caed Nua. A letter will arrive and your ghostly steward will tell you about a northern village, Stalwart, that’s in need of your help. If you don’t have any saves from before the point of no return at the end of the main game, then you’ll have to start all over again.

When you arrive in the tiny fishing village of Stalwart, it’s being attacked by giant ogres. Repel the invaders and your reward is a meeting with the mayor. She tells you about an ancient dwarven fortress, Durgan’s Battery, that’s been sealed for aeons. If you can get inside and activate a legendary forge, said to be able to make 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 anything in the main game, and there isn’t much 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 is squarely on combat and dungeon-crawling, so anyone looking to sink 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’s Cragholdt Bluffs, which is designed for skilled players with high-level parties. Don’t even think about going here until you’ve reached at least level 10. Both are thin on story, but big on tough, challenging battles that will test even veteran players.

But you don’t have to go it alone, because The White March features two new companions. Zahua is a strange old monk who specializes in unarmed combat and is covered in self-inflicted scars. They rid him of his

vanity, he says, which is part of his religion—and also the reason you first meet him hiding in a barrel of stinking, rotten fish. He’s an intriguing oddball and really good at punching people.

Then there’s the Devil of Caroc, a creepy robot with black eyes that’s been implanted with the soul of a wise-cracking murderer. She’s a skilled rogue and one of the most unusual companions in the game. It’s

just a shame they blow the whole soul-of-a-murderer thing almost immediately after you meet her. I would have liked to have been surprised by that after adventuring with her for a while.

nice-lookingThere are a few decent sidequests, including a humorous one where you get involved in a feud between a local Stalwart drunk and the owner of the village inn, but mostly they’re unremarkable. The White March is pretty, though. From the bubbling hot-springs and gently falling snow of Stalwart to the rugged, icy mountains near Durgan’s Battery, it’s a nice contrast to the leafy green forests of the rest of the Dyrwood.

The White March: Part I arrives alongside patch 2.0, which you’ll get even if you don’t buy the DLC. This brings some pretty major new features to the game, including the ability to assign AI scripts to party members. No more endless micromanaging—that’s unless you want to, of course. The enemy AI has been improved too and sees foes breaking away to engage ranged characters and casters at the back more frequently.

The White March is fine. It’s no Throne of Bhaal or Tales of the Sword Coast, but it’s a reasonably entertaining chunk of new quests, and a nice change of scenery. You’ll return from the frosty White March with quality loot in your stash, mountains of experience points and two new weirdos to adventure with, but not many great tales to tell around the campfire. I’m not sure what Part II of the DLC will entail, but hopefully it has a more compelling story to accompany its dungeon-crawling.

N e e d T o K N o WWhat is it?

An expansion set in Eír Glanfath’s snowy north.

EXPECt tO PaY$15

DEvElOPErObsidian Entertainment

PublishErParadox Interactive

rEviEWED OnGeForce GTX 970, Intel

i5-3570K @ 3.4GHz, 16GB RAM

MultiPlaYErNone

linketernity.obsidian.net

70More of the same, but with a greater focus on combat 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 Advanced Construct

stats Might 15 / Con 12 Dex 12 / Per 16 Int 12 / Res 15

skIlls stealth 7 /Mechanics 8

d e v i l o f c a r o c

Class Monk

RaCe Savannah Folk

stats Might 19 / Con 16 Dex 15 / Per 10 Int 10 / Res 11

skIlls athletics 4 / survival 9

Z a h u a

72 DECEMBER 2015

D l C r E v i E W

DECEMBER 2015 73

Pillars of Eternity The White March: Part I

r E v i E W

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.

COMMAND PROMPT Act of Aggression waves the flag for the early-noughties RTS.

By Chris Thursten

The missions themselves

follow a well-worn

pattern

Command & Conquer: Generals is the obvious reference point, but Act of Aggression is very much its own game. Resources are distributed randomly across expansive maps, adding a speculative scouting phase to the start of every match that shapes your overall strategy.

During this phase you construct refineries and supply lines, each faction offering a slightly different set of parameters for handling conveyance, base expansion, power generation, etc. It’s a lot to take in, but if you’ve lamented the absence of this kind of RTS over the past few years then it’s a difficulty curve you’ll enjoy surmounting.

What follows is the drama of the match proper. An infantry battle might break out between garrisoned buildings for control of a bank that generates resources over time for the side that holds it. You might send a platoon of soldiers to capture downed

Set during a near-future war, Act of Aggression is, nonetheless, a throwback—to Act of War, the mid-noughties RTS series it succeeds, and to old-school base-building strategy games in general. 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’ve missed heavy tanks and noodly electric guitar soundtracks, welcome home.

enemy combatants for a bounty, or engage in a daring medivac mission to prevent the same from happening to your own troops. Tank columns roll through the countryside, helicopters clash in the air, jets soar in from off-map as each player approaches the point where they can deploy match-ending superweapons

like nukes and long-range artillery. AoA doesn’t offer anything particularly new, but there’s pleasure in familiarity.

The campaign is a limp introduction to all this. Two sequences of missions—one for

Chimera, another for Cartel—are set in a homebrew Clancyverse that offers nothing you haven’t seen in dozens of other modern warfare games. The missions themselves follow a well-worn pattern. You start out ordering a gaggle of troops along a linear set of waypoints to learn the basics. The amount of freedom you’re given increases until you start to

approach full control. The problem is that, as in many older RTSes, your most dangerous foes are the scripted moments planned to occur as you hit checkpoints along the way. If you don’t have the right force composition at these moments, you’ll probably fail. This creates a frustrating trial-and-error dynamic where your first attempt is disproportionately hard (because you don’t know what’s coming) and your second is disproportionately easy (because you do.)

Ai bugFor this reason I found skirmish matches a more entertaining way to learn AoA than the campaign. There are plenty of maps, varied options for AI difficulty and team composition, and lots of potential value in discovering all of these over time. I did, however, encounter a single gamebreaking AI bug that, while I couldn’t repeat it, means my recommendation comes with caveats.

Playing online prior to the game’s official release, it’s tough to get a sense of how the scene will shake out—I had matches that came down to cheesy minute-zero building rushes (disappointing) and matches that played out over a full 40 minutes with plenty of dramatic moments. As with any competitive game, these initial 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 the campaign and the sometimes-severe rough edges. This isn’t the complete package in the way the old Westwood RTSes were. But moment to moment, in the little things that matter, Act of Aggression is a worthy successor to the games that inspired it.

Power-hungry private interest groups act through a covert network of private military companies to destabilize traditional 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.


A modern military RTS with an old-school

sensibility.

EXPECt tO PaY$45

DEvElOPErEugen Systems

PublishErFocus Home Interactive

rEviEWED OnIntel i5-2500K, 16GB

RAM, GeForce GTX 970

MultiPlaYErOnline, up to eight

players

linkwww.actofaggression-

game.com

70AI flaws and a limp campaign let down an otherwise-accomplished near-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?

Answer: Pretty much all of them. And all the rest, too.

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

74 December 2015

r E v i E W

December 2015 75

Act of Aggression

r E v i E W

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.

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 and romance. I decide to make myself feel better by changing history, because games let me do that.

turking pointI 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 ransom him for 28,000 golD, capTure him again, Then execuTe him

Natural authority is great, but an enormous horde is better.

M A T T E L L I O T TTHiS 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

Last night I went to bed at 2.30am. I couldn’t go to sleep on a loss. In Rocket League, the ranking system

means you start on zero and work your way up. I reached 400 in my first week of playing and I’ve been languishing in the mid-300s ever since. When this night started I was on 356. I’m now down to 340. It hurts. It hurts so bad.

Your fortunes hinge on the other players you’re paired with caring as much about progressing as you do. There’s nothing more annoying than being in a match where an amateur teammate is climbing on the roof of the goal instead of defending. I was paired with two players so obviously bad that within 30 seconds, after I set up and scored a goal that took us to 1-0, I voted to forfeit the match. I wanted nothing to

do with those idiots. They stayed in the match, hoping to ride on my coattails and we lost 4-1. Where’s the button prompt that asks the developers to fire players into the sun?

This is the sort of horrendous manbeast that Rocket League has summoned within me. I get incredibly angry at players who want to mess about playing in Ranked, just because I’m the tool who’s taking it too seriously.

I have reasons to be cheerful, though. At my best, I’m an incredibly good striker and midfielder: in my strongest match to date I scored four goals and set up two more, scoring an astronomical 1,310 points, almost as much as every other player put together. Then, last night, I had a game where I finished with 0 points after fluffing every single attempt to clear or pass the ball. I can’t nail why I’m so inconsistent at Rocket League. Maybe I need a coach. But I’m genuinely concerned my well-being hinges on me eventually reaching silver ranking status. What a gigantic fool.

My friends say I’m getting too deep. I have no evidence to refute this, and I have no intention of looking back.

“I wanted nothing to do with those idiots”

Unexpectedly, a young Byzantine warrior steps forward. Instead of fleeing, my troops rally to him. He charges the vulnerable flanks of the Turkish army, presumably screaming something really inspirational, and one by one, the enemy forces rout. Being a true hero, he hacks them down as they flee.

Brilliantly, my hero’s name is Modestos Bringas. I reinforce his army and send him after the remnants of the shattered Turkish forces. He pursues them relentlessly, menacing the fringes of the Seljuk empire for years, and I almost forget about him. Back in the West, a Venetian crusader force appears, intent on reclaiming Jerusalem. They’re dangerously close to my capital, but being fellow Christians, they’ll definitely pass by harmlessly.

The Venetians take Constantinople. Only one person is near enough to save the city: Modestos. I march him back to the capital. The Venetian force is led by the Doge. (That’s their leader, not the smug dog.) Modestos pushes forward to Constantinople, marches through the same holes the crusaders made in my city walls, and expels them. The Doge is captured, I ransom him for 28,000 gold, capture him again, then execute him. Modestos Bringas, once nothing more a humble soldier, has saved the greatest city in Christendom. If only he’d been at the battle of Manzikert.

Getting nothing but bronze in rockeT league

Replay mode can make even terrible shots look amazing, like this one.

S A M u E L r O b E r T STHiS MoNTH Got upset inside a rocket-powered car.

alSo PlaYed Grand Theft Auto V, Mirror’s Edge

Bring us another victory, Bringas.

You see?Amazing.

It’s like the FFVII logo but the wrong way around.

DECEMBER 2015 77

The games we love righT now

N o W P l a Y i N g

Perhaps 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’s self-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 is how. 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 electrocutes him 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 drone explodes 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 from the 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 technical support operative from hell.

“Have you tried switching it off and on again?”

C h r I S T h u r S T E nTHiS 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

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 so evocative 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 setting few 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 and Punishments, 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, lifeless expanse of rock on Harris, silent except

“It was so evocative that I 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, and North American forests game artists love so much are fine, but how about something different?

Some people hate Dear Esther. They 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 tell 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 with rural 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 bet Shropshire’s lovely at this time of year.

A n D Y K E L L YTHiS MoNTH Enjoyed a game-inspired holiday.

alSo PlaYed Pillars of Eternity, Satellite Reign

Thanks To The sTrengTh of iTs arT DirecTion, i Think Dear esTher will look gooD forever

Actor Nigel Carrington provides the game’s narration.

The Chinese Room started as artists, not game designers.

DECEMBER 2015 79

e x T r a l i f e

N O W P L A Y I N G I d o W N l o a d S I r e i N S T a l l

1 �PuniTy

Besiege

FREEWARE Exclusively second on PC

MOD Incredible machines from the engineer-’em-up

Remember Silent Hills? Konami would rather you didn’t, but the Hideo Kojima/Guillermo del Toro

collaboration was announced to much fanfare during Gamescom 2014 with the release of ‘PT’, a ‘playable teaser’ consisting of a few rooms 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 only locations 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 every game gets a 40K mod eventually. I enjoy this one because it actually has the right weapons for a 40K dreadnought, though it does often set itself on fire.

www.bit.ly/besiege3

m a c h i n e � g u nThis ingenious contraption inverts the whole belt-fed-gun principle by feeding a belt full of cannons past a lit torch. The result is a fast firing machine gun that utterly 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 machine for the lovely walking motion alone, but those drill-bit tusks and absurdly overpowered main battle cannon are the icing on the elephantine cake.

www.bit.ly/besiege1

2A truly terrifying hallway, apparently.

80 DECEMBER 2015

t O p 1 0 D O W n l O A D sfree gameS Stuff from tHe web by tom Hatfield

3 �gTa�V�hulkBusTer��armor

JulioNIB’s Hulkbuster mod is a faithful recreation of the armor’s Age of Ultron

appearance. Not only does it look rad as hell, it also gifts you with the ability to fly, lift, carry and throw cars (seriously why was this not in the game from the start?) and fire off Tony Stark’s trademark lasers* from the hand or chest, plus some

missiles and other weapons. Be warned that this one is a tough install, requiring multiple components. Modding gta V isn’t easy, but you can’t argue with results like this.

*Yes comic fans I am aware that repulsor beams are not technically lasers. Please do not write in.

DOWNLOAD AT www.bit.ly/hulkb

monsTrous�mini�mazes

There are a lot of ambitious but unfinished Shadowrun mods out there, especially as the transition to a new

engine 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 West Coast. 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

1 TurmTurm is a brash, confident

Street Samurai who you can recruit right from the start of the game.

2 DAlmInDalmin is another early

hire, a streetwise Shaman who holds crucial information about that first mission.

3 KAlIWhile the story extends to

other settings, Antumbra nightclub owner Kali remains an important character.

2

3

MOD Hulk not included

WEBGAME Puzzle games achieve Sokobanception

Slidey box puzzle-game aficionado Alan Hazelden (creator of Sokobond, and A Good Snowman is

Hard to Build) actually created this back 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 Santos citizens to swear at.

1

DECEMBER 2015 81

E X t R A l I F E

n O W p l A Y I n G I D O W N L O A D S I R E I n s t A l l

6 �sagiTTarius

Two archers stand on tiny planets. They take it in turns to fire arrows at one

another, which curve based on the gravity of the planets in their path. That, in a nutshell, is Sagittarius. The exaggerated gravity physics, though, makes it incredibly hard to predict the path of each arrow and near impossible to actually hit what you’re aiming at. Especially

when you realize that the sensible move is to try to stay the other side of the planet from your opponent and use trick shots. These unpredictable arcs give the game a layer of tension, because you’re never quite sure if your opponent’s arrow is going to loop around three times and hit you in the back or just stick into 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)cenTuryWEBGAME A cyberpunk becomes 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 rebellious outsider 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 untold planetary disaster.

Or maybe you’rea butterfly.

82 DECEMBER 2015

t O p 1 0 D O W n l O A D sfree gameS Stuff from tHe web by tom Hatfield

Dark�souls�limBo�moD

Dash FictionThe disturbing games of Sonic 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 bizarre prototypes for Sonic spin-off games

scoured from a forgotten Dreamcast dev kit. Play for a few minutes, and you’ll realize it’s actually 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’s almost 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 while Dr robotnik, watching, texts you suggestions 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’ and see what comes up), and then adds procedurally generated names.

2 � s o n i c � m o V i e � m a k e rFilm six-second video clips of Sonic and friends. Just ignore that they are frequently splayed out under cars, rolling around in a vaguely 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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Reviews for mafia ii were mixed. Most of the negative ones complained that, compared to Grand

Theft Auto, its open world was sterile and empty. But they were missing the point. If you play mafia expecting GTA with hats, you’re going to be disappointed. Play it as a story-led linear shooter and it’s one of the best examples on PC.

The city is there, sure, but it’s really just a backdrop. A detailed film set designed to give the story a rich sense of place. Empire Bay is a local corner shop to GTA V’s giant department store, but it’s still one of the best virtual cities in videogaming. It’s fictional, based loosely on New York City, 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. Cherry trees in blossom sway in the breeze in Chinatown. From the suburbs of Hunters Point you can see the skyscrapers of downtown Empire Bay looming in the distance. It’s not littered with side missions and crazy vehicles to steal, but it’s a fantastic place just to explore and soak it all in.

It didn’t take me long to fall in love with Mafia II. The second mission, in fact. Protagonist Vito Scaletta returns from World War II

n e e d t o k n o wreleaseDAugust 2010

PUBlisHer2K Games

DeVelOPer2K Czech

linKwww.bit.ly/1hYwIz7

MAFIA IIA return to 2K’s criminally underrated crime epic. By Andy Kelly

A few pieces of story DLC were released for Mafia II. Joe’s Adventure is the best, revealing what Joe got up to while Vito was in prison. It has some fun missions, but a clumsy car chase on a frozen lake and a forced stealth section sour the experience. Jimmy’s Vendetta is very different, scattering 32 missions around Empire Bay concerned with combat and driving rather than storytelling. Neither are essential, but Joe’s Adventure is worth a look if you fancy playing as Vito’s loudmouth partner in crime.

A l I t t l e e x t r AAre the expansions worth playing?

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Period flavor is where Mafia excels.

on a cold winter’s evening and finds himself back in the neighborhood where he grew up. Dean Martin’s Christmas classic ‘Let It Snow’ plays as he walks the old, snowy streets of Little Italy, reminiscing with faces from his past. Military planes fly overhead, reminding us that the war is far from over. We see couples arguing, kids throwing snowballs, and a guy getting a haircut in a barbershop. It’s a wonderful piece of

scene-setting, bringing to life not just a different world but a different time.

Mafia II is a rare example of an open-world game where we see two versions of the same city. The first portion of the game takes place in Empire Bay in the 1940s. The mood is gloomy, snow piling up on cars and sidewalks, people slipping on icy pavements, and an almost palpable chill in the air. It’s here that Vito begins climbing the criminal ladder,

working with his old pal, Joe Barbaro. As in GTA, you start off at the lowest level, pulling off small-time heists, selling stolen goods, and performing other odd-jobs. But then something goes wrong, and Vito ends up in jail for six years.

These years serve as an interlude of sorts. You’re confined to the prison, which is another example of 2K Czech’s amazing world-building. You get to know other inmates, make friends with a respected mafia boss who’s doing his own time, and make a powerful enemy in the form of a hulking Irish brute called Brian O’Neill. It’s like The Shawshank Redemption meets the prison scenes from Goodfellas. This sequence also marks the first time a game has ever made me clean a toilet.

summer in the cityVito emerges from prison to find a very different Empire Bay. The year is 1951, and the city is no longer bleak and snowy: it’s bright, colorful, and green. Teenagers screech around in hot rods listening to Buddy Holly and girls wear revealing dresses. “It was like a whole new world,” muses Vito’s narration as he takes a cab to Joe’s

Empire Bay’s snowy 1940s incarnation.

Vito joins the army to 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. The O’Neill gang hangs out here.

2 C u l v e r d A MOffers stunning views over Empire Bay and the Culver River.

3 l I t t l e I t A l yItalian district controlled by the Clemente crime family.

4 C h I n A t o w nCherry blossom and great food. Shame about the triads.

5 u p t o w nA shopping district in the shadow of the city’s skyscrapers.

6 h u n t e r S p o I n tAfrican American neighborhood. Bomber gang territory.

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Despite being a ruthlesskiller, Vito is likeable.

house. I always miss the wintry ’40s setting when I get to this point in the game. The ’50s stuff is undeniably cool, and feels much more lively, but it’s not nearly as atmospheric.

The music and commercials on the radio also change to reflect each time period. From The Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby in the 1940s to Little Richard and Bill Haley in the ’50s, the game boasts a superb selection of period music. I don’t know how authentic it really is—I was born in the ’80s—but Mafia II brilliantly captures a sense of that time in American history: both the glamor and the tragedy. It pulls surprisingly few punches when dealing with racism, poverty and other issues that plagued the period, which is something Mafia III is tackling more directly.

But it’s also an unashamed gangster 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 he rises in the ranks, his safehouses get more lavish, from scummy, rat-infested apartments to a dream ’50s house, complete with pastel-colored furniture. Mafia II may touch on real history, but it’s an exaggerated, pulpy, almost comic book tale of warring gangs and criminal conspiracy. It’s a good one, though, with a plot that keeps you interested throughout its 12 or so hours.

Vito is not a sympathetic character. He is, after all, a ruthless criminal. But you warm to him just the same. His sidekick Joe can veer a little too much into comic relief territory, but for the most part he’s likeable. The rest of the cast are most forgettable mafioso stereotypes, with a few exceptions, but this remains a solidly written and well-acted game. And if you get bored of the story, there are always the genuine ’50s Playboy centerfolds scattered around the city to find, which feature actual ladies’ boobs. Rude!

Another great moment, much later in the game, involves another Dean Martin song. This time it’s

It also marks the fIrst tIme a game has ever made me clean a toIlet

popular romantic ballad ‘Return To Me’. Vito drives Joe and another character to bury a body in the countryside. They’re both drunk, and as you drive, they start singing along. When it gets to the Italian verse, they mumble, too embarrassed to admit they don’t know the words. Mafia II is a funny game when it wants to be, with a sense of humor similar to Scorsese’s gangster flicks. These moments of comedy break up the action, and stop it from becoming too repetitive—although later shootouts can be a seemingly endless slog of popping in and out of cover.

pulp fictionMafia II is fundamentally a generic shooter, and the car handling is twitchy, making some of its chases frustrating. But it makes up for it with variety, personality, and a rich, well-realized setting. GTA does almost everything it does better and on a larger scale, but Mafia’s story is arguably more compelling. Don’t think of it as an open-world game, because it really isn’t. Come at it from the right angle, as a linear, scripted, but enjoyable shooter, and you might find you love it.

Cover-based shooting makes up the bulk of the game.

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By Dave James

group test

U P G R A D E

88 DECEMBER 2015

If the consoles have given us anything, it’s quality gaming controllers for the PC. Before the last generation of game boxes

came around a lot of ineffectual, poorly built and lazily designed

gamepads were released for the PC. That’s why most of us have stuck to the traditional mouse and keyboard for so long. But with today’s plethora of cross-platform games, controllers are almost a necessity for a gaming PC.

Q&AWhy would I want to use a gamepad?A mouse and keyboard is the most effective and accurate of controls for an FPS, but there are certain games and genres where a gamepad makes more sense. This is especially true for console ports where controls may have been mapped for a pad and make no ergonomic sense on a keyboard.

The inputs are the same though, aren’t they?Actually no. The inputs on your keyboard are digital—a key is pressed or not pressed. A gamepad’s analog stick has a range of possible values. In stealth games, being able to gently hold the stick on a gamepad means a character will move slower than at full tilt. The WASD keys will always move you at the same pace.

Do I want a wireless or a wired controller?Latency is less of an issue now that console manufacturers have focused on wireless controllers, so it’s more down to personal preference. If you’re sitting directly in front of your PC, a wired device isn’t inconvenient. But a consistent wireless option is the ideal.

What choice of layout do I have?For the most part, this falls into two camps—either PlayStation or Xbox. The symmetrical approach of the classic DualShock controller from Sony has its fans, but arguably the asymmetrical analog sticks of the Xbox designaren’t quite so fatiguing.

Dictionary Analog—A digital input is either on or off, but an analog input can have a range of values.

Connection—Usually USB, but traditional wireless and Bluetooth are also available. The later may require a third-party dongle.

Because sometimes WASD just isn’t enough

Gamepads

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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 build quality 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 contRolleR www.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. But I’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 4www.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 One controller and the older 360 version are slight. Evolution, not revolution. The 360 version feels a little looser, the sticks have some play in them and so do the triggers, but it’s now a great price and superbly compatible with practically any game from the last five years.

You will however need to spend some more on a wireless receiver if you want to go wireless like this. The wired version isn’t much cheaper, so I’d still recommend picking this up with the $10 USB receiver. That will also allow you to run up to three other controllers from the one PC.

The blessing and curse is the battery pack. It’s bulky and adds a fair amount of weight, but it mostly stays out of the way and the reliance on AA batteries means you’ll usually have some spares around if you run the power down.

I’m still a huge fan of this controller and it’s only the improved build quality that 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 PC. They added support due to popular demand, not necessarily because people wanted to buy one for their PC, but rather because Shield owners wanted some 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 DualShock stick layouts while still retaining Xbox button conventions—Android games are more likely to rely on the D-pad than the analog sticks.

It’s also one ugly, distended beast, although surprisingly comfortable in the hand, very responsive and the controls reliable. But it’s so niche only Shield owners would ever plug one into their PC over a DualShock 4 or Xbox controller. It also hates AMD gamers. You need an Nvidia GPU to run this controller as it operates via GeForce Experience, eschewing the traditional Windows USB controller dialogues. Odd, but probably not surprising.

nvidia sHield contRolleRwww.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 toRidwww.speedlink.com $31

loGitecH f710www.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 feels like 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 still not 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 ctRlRwww.madcatz.com $42

stACKeD up

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Sony Dual Shock 4

Microsoft Xbox One

Nvidia Shield Controller

Microsoft Xbox 360 Wireless

Logitech F710

Speedlink Torid

Mad Catz CTRLR

42

22

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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 it needs 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.

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esseNtIALs

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7

Wired

Wireless

Wired or wireless Bluetooth

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

60

16

79

32

17

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B U D G E T

M I D - R A N G E

A D V A N C E D

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

94 december 2015

T O T A L$ 9 5 0

BUDGET BUILD

Enjoy 1080p gaming without breaking the bank

Pentium Anniversary G3258Intel $70Ludicrously cheap and overclockable, the dual-core G3258 rivals far more expensive processors in gaming performance.

H81M-P33MSI $46A bargain-priced microATX board that pairs nicely with the Pentium G3258, letting you overclock into 4GHz+ territory.

Hyper 212 EVOCooler Master $35A legendary cooler, still the best for its very reasonable price. Overclock to your heart’s content with this.

Crucial Ballistix Sport 1600MHz (8GB)Crucial $51Cheap, low-profile, and reliable. Does its job. The best 8GB you’ll find.

EVGA 500W 80PLUS Certified ATX12V/EPS12VEVGA $45A reliable PSU with enough juice to run your CPU and a reasonably power-hungry GPU.

BX100 250GBCrucial $85Thinking about skimping and going HDD-only? Don’t. The BX100 is much faster and a fantastic performer for the price.

Carbide 200RCorsair $70The 200R gets the job done with toolless trays and plenty of space. ATX-sized, so you can upgrade that microATX board later.

VX2263SMHLViewsonic $130An affordable 1080p monitor with vibrant IPS image quality and low response times. A real bargain.

CM Storm QuickFire RapidCoolermaster $80A no-frills mechanical keyboard with a standard layout and Cherry switches. We recommend Browns or Reds for gaming.

HyperX CloudKingston $80Our favorite gaming headset, and it happens to be as cheap as plenty of inferior cans. A good buy for any gaming rig.

Deathadder 2013Razer $58Don’t skimp on your gaming mouse. Get one of the best. Try the Logitech G502 if you have a giant hand or prefer more weight.

AMD R9 380 2GBSapphire $200 AMD’s R9 380 is a refreshed R9 285, but it still packs enough power to handle 1080p gaming at a decent price.

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MID-RANGE BUILD

Our recommended build for playing the latest games

T O T A L$ 1 5 9 9

Hyper 212 EVOCooler Master $35If it ain’t broke... the Hyper 212 EVO is a great cooler for the price. Save a bit of money in your mid-range build.

GTX 970 Gaming 4GMSI $335Offers the best price/performance ratio right now, and MSI’s model is cheap and overclockable, with a quiet cooler.

850 EVO 250GBSamsung $98Samsung retains its top spot on the SSD pile with the fantastically priced, very speedy 850 EVO. Still the best price/performance.

CX600MCorsair $6580Plus Bronze efficient, with enough power for a good gaming PC. Modular design is a great perk that cuts down on cable tangles.

Deathadder 2013Razer $58There’s not a huge range of price differences on the best mice, so stick with the best for your mid-range build too.

HyperX CloudKingston $80Even for our medium build, we still recommend this decently-priced headset.There’s nothing better for the money.

G257HUAcer $280A step up from 1080p to 1440p territory, with a vibrant IPS display and good response times at a strong price.

S340NZXT $75The stylish S340 has some nice touches, such as removable dust filters and space for huge liquid cooling radiators.

K70 VengeanceCorsair $110A great, full-size mechanical keyboard with an ergonomic wrist rest. We recommend Cherry Brown or Red switches for gaming.

Z170 Pro GamingAsus $160The latest revision of our favorite gaming motherboard, with an M.2 PCIe x4 slot, Intel network port, USB 3.1 and SLI support.

i5-6600KIntel $243Intel’s new Skylake processor is nearly as fast as an i7 for gaming. Comes with some important memory/storage speed boosts.

Ballistix Sport (8GB)Crucial $608GB of reasonably fast DDR4, and one of the cheapest deals you’ll find. Corsair is reliable, and the RAM’s overclockable to boot.

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ADVANCED BUILD

Go above and beyond with a PC powerful enough to end worlds

T O T A L$ 2 9 7 1

GTX 980 Gaming 4GMSI $520Right now the GTX 980 is the best value single-GPU card for ultra 1080p and 1440p gaming, bar none.

H90Corsair $88Quiet even under heavy load, the H90 gets the cooling job done with a single 140mm radiator, easily fitting a variety of cases.

H WirelessSteelSeries $273Our favorite wireless gaming headset, with great sound quality and a convenient battery swapping system for long gaming sessions.

Deathadder 2013Razer $58Even if you’ve got money to burn, the Deathadder really is the best mouse you can buy right now.

Predator XB270HAbprz 144Hz G-SyncAcer $800Simply the best: a 27” 1440p 144Hz IPS display, with Nvidia’s variable refresh tech.

K70 VengeanceCorsair $110Even for a more expensive PC, there’s no need to splash out on a pricier keyboard than the K70 Vengeance.

Supernova 850W G2 80 Plus GoldEVGA $145A reliable, quiet, gold-rated EVGA power supply, modular, with enough juice to sustain two overclocked graphics cards and a CPU.

850 EVO 500GBSamsung $162The 850 EVO is so good, there’s not much need to step up to the more expensive 850 Pro for a gaming rig. Just get a bigger drive.

Core i7-6700KIntel $339Intel’s new top-of-the-line Skylake processor. Its new chipset includes important memory/storage speed boosts.

ROG Maximus VIII HeroAsus $240Fantastic overclocking and stability, with a great UEFI BIOS from Asus. M.2, USB 3.1 and on-board power, reset, CMOS, etc, buttons.

Ripjaws V Series DDR4 2666 16GBG.SKILL $12516GB of fast DDR4. RAM speeds make only a small difference, but the 2666 starting speed is stable and widely compatible.

Fractal Design Define R5Fractal $111A beautiful and functional case, the R5 has sound absorption, water-cooling support, dust filters and masses of drive space.

december 2015 97

Buyer’s Guide

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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 ingenuit y more

than any sandbox game i've

played in a decade."

93 %

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The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.

EPICGAMING PCW I T H O U T B R E A K I N G T H E B A N K .EPICGAMING PC

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Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.Intel, the Intel Logo, Intel Inside, Intel Core, and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.The Digital Storm Logo, and ‘World’s Most Advanced PCs’ are trademarks of Digital Storm.

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12. PC Gamer USA - December 2015

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