Innehållsförteckning för January 2026 från PC Gamer

I think for many PC gamers the RTS genre is infused into their blood. To game on PC at any time in the 1990s and 2000s was to live through a golden age of RTS games, from Command & Conquer to Age of Empires and onto StarCraft, among many others. But, for all their greatness, you know what those now legendary RTS games didn’t feature? Yeah, medieval knights riding dinosaurs. Thank goodness, then, that Danish developer Northplay is not only delivering us this fever dream awesomeness, but also evolving the RTS genre in some fresh and interesting ways. ROBERT JONES Twitter  @RNicholasJ This month Was hired by Dinolords developer Northplay to adapt its cool new RTS game into a movie. A sneak peek at the screenplay can be found on…

Yoshiro Kimura seems to only be half kidding when he tells me that he “escaped” from Squaresoft in the mid-1990s, where he’d started his career as a game designer on Romancing SaGa 2 for the SNES. Even then he wanted to work with a smaller team, where his own ideas could shine through. “Making games, money aside, it’s fun, and it needs to be fun to make something fun,” he told me over coffee in Tokyo in late September. “With a smaller group of people, you’ve got all the essential elements to make a game, and they’ve all got their own special abilities. One is great at art, another is great at programming. And to share the vision, it’s a lot less work.” With his John Lennon glasses and a…

RELEASE Q4 2026 DEVELOPER Play of Battle SA PUBLISHER Play of Battle SA LINK  s.team/a/3270430 An early look at this grand real-time strategy game of tanks, jets and helicopters reveals depth and complexity as resources flow across the map, exchange rates fluctuate, diplomats negotiate and, when all else fails, bullets and missiles become the last resort. Shaping monetary policy can be as important as your armoured formations, but once war breaks out over 150 units can clash across its 25 hand-crafted maps.…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?The most addictive mod for Microsoft Excel returns with a new match engine EXPECT TO PAY£50 DEVELOPERSSports Interactive PUBLISHERSega REVIEWED ONIntel Core i7-9700K, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080Ti MULTIPLAYERYes LINK footballmanager.com How to improve Football Manager. Is it a matter of making it a more technically impressive affair? Sports Interactive evidently thinks so. The London-based studio took a lot of heat for cancelling Football Manager 25’s release last year in order to switch engines and deliver a more technically substantial update than has been customary. You’ve got to admire a developer that does that. The gamer in me just likes watching the cool goals go in The result? Simply put, matches look more like real football. Now running in Unity, but most importantly with…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A game where you play as someone playing an FPS EXPECT TO PAYFree DEVELOPERMedienzentrale PUBLISHERMedienzentrale REVIEWED ONIntel Core i7-10750H, 16GB RAM, GeForce RTX 2060 LINK medienzentrale.itch.io/a-game-for-you By taking a step back, you can acquire a whole new perspective on things. I Made A Game For You is a solid, cartoony FPS, but it’s also a conversation between a father and daughter. Your dad has made this game, and you’re playing it to keep him happy. If only he wouldn’t keep texting to ask what you think about it, particularly when you’re in the middle of a firefight. You can still move and shoot while chatting with Dad It’s a fine line to walk, presenting two games at once, but I Made A Game manages it…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?Theme Hospital for the morally challenged EXPECT TO PAY£5 DEVELOPERBullfrog Productions PUBLISHERElectronic Arts REVIEWED ONIntel Core i7-7700, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 STEAM DECKPlayable LINK steam.pm/app/2616460 According to one study carried out by a Turkish university, the prevalence of periodontal diseases in mine workers was a shocking 96.2%. Which is a long way of saying that spending extended periods of time deep underground is horrible for your health. And yet, despite this, something about Dungeon Keeper II makes me crave dank, reeking underplaces. Mistresses will torture themselves during downtime The presentation undoubtedly helps. The repetitive ‘shpp shpp shpp’ of your faithful imps digging through the dirt is like ASMR for dark overlords, especially when it’s followed by the angelic, choral noise of paving slabs…

Have you ever stood up from your desktop to go answer the door or grab a drink only to find your headset violently yanked off your head or ripped out of a port on your PC? If you have, this group test is for you. You don’t have to spend all that much on a headset these days. Even with the low-latency 2.4GHz connection that is all but required for competitive PC gaming, you can pick up a budget model and find it perfectly serviceable for modern-day gaming. Though there is a broadening of the market happening today, on both sides. There are more affordable options, just as there are more expensive options. This group test covers the latest models on both ends of the spectrum. There’s the affordable Logitech…

I awake surrounded by gore and decay, my ragged, white smock smeared with the dark crimson of dried blood. Beings died here, badly, and judging by my physical state I was at the centre of the carnage. I stumble forward, disorientated and confused. The last thing I recall was… so long ago? An era of smoke, jazz, and blues… I can faintly still hear the music, I think. I have been sleeping for… how long? And why am I now awake here? Before any answers arrive, mortal men with weapons come hunting for me. I skitter through the ruins of the dilapidated building, embracing the shadows and the gutters reserved for the rats, scrambling through the gaping holes in the floors to ascend and descend beyond my pursuers’ reach. What…

It’s fair to say 2004 was the year first-person shooters reached the zenith of their ambition and cultural significance. It glimpsed the future of the FPS in Far Cry, heralded the return of the genre’s grandaddy in Doom 3, and saw the pinnacle of the form in Half-Life 2. But it also brought us the world’s first retro-shooter in Painkiller, the debut title from Polish studio People Can Fly. At least, that’s how press coverage from the time angled it. In its review, PCG’s now-defunct rival PC Zone described Painkiller as “a no nonsense run-and-gun blaster that takes its inspiration from classics like Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem”. At a time when the FPS was incorporating cinematic set-pieces and narrative storytelling, Painkiller’s straightforward gunplay seemed like a throwback to a…

Streamer Emily-Beth ‘Emiru’ Schunk has released a statement criticising streaming platform Twitch after she was assaulted at a TwitchCon meet and greet on October 17. This incident comes as high profile streamers, mostly women, have dealt with increasingly common incidents of in-person stalking and harassment by viewers. In video on social media, a large man approaches Emiru, pulls her into a forceful hug and tries to kiss her. A bodyguard Emiru personally hired for TwitchCon then rushes in to shove him away. The video ends as the man walks back into the crowd. Twitch released a statement calling the incident “completely unacceptable and deeply upsetting”. The company said that it has banned the offending individual from the convention, Twitch itself, and future in-person events. “HE WAS ALLOWED TO WALK AWAY…

1 month PATHOLOGIC 3 RELEASE January 9, 2026 | DEVELOPER Ice-Pick Lodge The latest instalment in the Russian survival series casts you as a doctor who, with only 12 days to save a town, must make ruthless decisions and precise diagnoses. THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS: ORIGIN RELEASE January 28, 2026 | DEVELOPER Netmarble F&C A new open-world anime RPG where you must step into the shoes of Prince Tristan of Liones and proceed to explore the world of Britannia. CODE VEIN II RELEASE January 29, 2026 | DEVELOPER Bandai Namco Studios Inc. In a dystopian world overtaken by Revenants, play as a Revenant hunter who must travel into the past with a mysterious girl called Lou in order to save the planet. 2 months MENACE RELEASE February 5, 2026 |…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2026 DEVELOPER Auroch Digital PUBLISHER Big Fan Games, Devolver Digital LINK  steam.pm/app/3115160/ A fter a long time languishing in the doldrums of mediocre let-downs, we’re finally starting to see the Warhammer 40,000 world successfully tapped into in games once again. Last year’s Space Marine 2 was a riotous romp through hordes of Tyranids, while WH40K: Darktide has become a pitch-perfect FPS. Even other recent Warhammer 40,000 games like Rogue Trader which, at launch, missed their mark somewhat, seem to have been turned around quickly into genuinely good, unique gaming experiences. And then there’s the promising new WH40K games that are incoming like Mechanicus 2 (see elsewhere this issue) to factor in as well. Yes, I think it’s fair to say that we’re living through a new golden age of…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE TBA DEVELOPER The Curiosity Engine PUBLISHER Wadjet Eye Games LINK  s.team/a/1221950 T he demo for Nighthawks, called Night One, lasts about an hour. It’s time that passes quickly, and it’s well judged so you’re left wanting more at the end. Nighthawks has been around for a while now following a Kickstarter campaign, so it’s good to see the actual game. It might be worth noting that the writer of Nighthawks is Richard Cobbett, who used to write the Crapshoot column for PC Gamer’s website, and did some other stuff too, until he decided he’d suffered enough and went into game development in order to relax. Nighthawks is his first original project, having contributed to Sunless Sea and The Long Journey Home, and is best described as a text adventure…

Y our scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” Wise words there, from Jeff Goldblum’s Dr Ian Malcolm in the original Jurassic Park. Words that he would have done well to heed when he signed on to star in Dominion, and words also ignored by Danish studio, Northplay. Because it hasn’t ‘just’ made an RTS with dinosaurs. It’s also attempting to mash-up two genres, pinching some of the best ideas from action-RPGs and tearing down RTS fundamentals that many deem sacrosanct in the process. Good lord, Northplay. You sure you wouldn’t rather open a theme park with real dinosaurs instead? Sounds like a less risky endeavour… Thankfully, this developer hasn’t overreached and ended up with a Jurassic Park: Trespasser.…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A charming little adventure game with a dash of platforming and puzzle-solving EXPECT TO PAY£25 DEVELOPERDouble Fine Productions PUBLISHERXbox Game Studios REVIEWED ONIntel Core i9-12900K, 32GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 STEAM DECKNo LINK steam.pm/app/3043580 K eeper can’t be accused of chasing trends. It doesn’t have hyper-realistic graphics; it doesn’t have crafting; it doesn’t have a battle pass; it doesn’t even have humans. It’s a game about a lighthouse and a bird going up a mountain that ends in around six hours. Stuffed full of surprises despite its relatively short length But all six hours of it are gorgeous. Leave it to Double Fine, the developer that made a level out of psychedelic album art in Psychonauts 2, to create an entire experience that…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAYFree DEVELOPERAnstabo LINK anstabo.itch.io Summer is nearly over, and you have stones on your mind. Big stones, little stones, precious gems, even gold: all are waiting to be uncovered in your little plot of land. Summerfall gives you this plot to explore, to dig and to fish, as the final sunset descends on your summer holiday. All with the aim of gathering those stones, which grant you tangible benefits. If slotted in your backpack, they might increase your jump height, or improve your chances at catching something juicy from the lake. However, the stones slow you down, so you’ll regularly need to dump them back at your cabin, although this comes with benefits as well. Sequestered stones grant different, usually better boons, so as…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY£12 DEVELOPERIron Galaxy Studios PUBLISHERCapcom Side-scrolling games, in most cases, are as dim as a binbag in a coal shed. You just walk right and brutalise people. In the rare cases where there is a story, it’s usually ‘rescue the women’, ‘avenge your master’, or, in sequels, ‘avenge the people who died avenging you’. Chronicles of Mystara displays spiralling levels of depth. The heart of the game is still ‘kill all the creatures that enter your zone of terror’ – a conceit so direct even Golden Axe could understand it – but there’s more going on here. There are varying paths, random loot drops, character builds, and even alternate endings. It makes the games it inspired, such as the pendulous cleaving-heavage-’em up-Dragon’s Crown, feel simplistic…

What separates us from the other gamers, aside from a historic proclivity for the colour beige and an innate ability to discern one shadow quality setting from another, is that PC gamers build their own PCs. There’s nothing inherently wrong with gaming on a pre-assembled machine, of course, but doing it yourself is peak PC gaming. The modularity of our chosen platform means that building a rig up from scratch has been a crucial part of PC culture for as long as there have been games to motivate us to do so. But there’s building a PC, and then there’s building a PC. When we buy individual components and then attach them to a motherboard, we’re essentially indulging in a PCB-heavy version of Lego. There’s a unified design language, a…

KEY Budget build PC gaming is for everyone. Pick these parts if you want to build a new, well-rounded PC for a good price. Mid-range build You want to run every new game at 1080p 60fps. This recommended build will see you through. Advanced build You’re looking for the best PC on the market and superior components. But you still want to spend smart. FIND OUT MORE Scan the code to check out our full list of the best gaming gear that we’ve tested, rated, and recommend. BUDGET BUILD Enjoy 1080p gaming without breaking the bank MOTHERBOARD TUF Gaming B650 Plus WiFiAsus £150 This board doesn’t skimp on features, which means it’s the perfect starting point for an AM5 rig with room to upgrade. PROCESSOR Ryzen 5 7600XAMD £170 It’s…

Walking is like second nature. Or so I thought, until I was forced to basically re-learn everything I knew about the physics of walking in Baby Steps. This simulator is exactly what it says on the tin, playing as Nate an unemployed failson, you spend the entire time just walking around a world covered in fog. It sounds simple. After all, you spend a huge amount of time walking around in videogames anyway. But don’t let its straightforward premise deceive you. The number of times I’ve had one bad step and plummeted down a waterfall or thrown myself off the side of a mountain and had to step away from the game for half an hour is not something I’ll be quick to admit. It’s a truly painful game to…

I’ve always said that my favourite chapter in Half-Life is Office Complex. In a game that’s all about recontextualising the FPS from abstract mazes into a realistic, coherent setting, Office Complex felt like the ultimate expression of that. It’s the most mundane part of Black Mesa’s clandestine research facility, swapping the hellscapes of Doom and the fantasy realms of Heretic for a cold and clinical administration centre. There are no laboratories, rocket silos, or experimental weapons manufacture here, just dimly lit workspaces connected by chequerboard-tiled corridors. Unfortunately, time is a devious little rapscallion, and upon a recent return to Half-Life, I was shocked to discover that Office Complex is, in fact, quite a boring series of levels, with little of the survival-horror-ish tension that I recall. There are hardly any…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE TBA DEVELOPER Chaos Manufacturing PUBLISHER Chaos Manufacturing LINK TBA “W e were trying to figure out what it means to be a space samurai on the moon,” says game director Leszek Szczepański. Sol Shogunate’s feudal Japanese iconography, contrasting futuristic, cyberpunk space setting, and banging J-rock make it seem to me like it’s struck gold. This samurai space opera kicked off the PC Gaming Show Most Wanted, and if you couldn’t tell already Szczepański explains that, “it’s a game about samurai in space with strong musical elements to it”. At its heart, Sol Shogunate is a narrative action-RPG. It’s got cinematic boss fights set to awesome music that synchronises with enemy movement, but it’s not a rhythm game. Attack when you want, but allow the music to flow through you and…

NEED TO KNOW RELEASE 2025 DEVELOPER Treyarch PUBLISHER Activision LINK  callofduty.com/blackops7 A new Call of Duty has come out every year like clockwork since Call of Duty 2 in 2005. By this point, everyone knows roughly what to expect. I mean this in a positive way, but it’s like junk food – you know it’s not going to be oozing creativity, it’s not going to be artistically challenging, but it is fun all the same. I was surprised then that Black Ops 7 is actually an entry that’s got me torn. On the one hand, I’m glad the pace of combat has slowed down somewhat, and its launch multiplayer maps are generally very strong. On the other hand, its campaign is messy, there’s AI artwork and it’s overall very soulless. And with hits…

RELEASE TBA DEVELOPER Reakktor Studios PUBLISHER Senatis LINK  s.team/a/2445980 We haven’t seen a good combat flight sim in a while, and G-Rebels appears to pick up where Psygnosis’ 1997 G-Police left off, with a dystopian open world Deckard would probably feel at home in. This time it’s set on Earth, not the moon Callisto, and a flooded near-future that’s led to floating mega-cities that need to be policed by law enforcement officers in armoured flying machines who have no problem pulling the trigger. What we’ve seen of the game so far reveals pitched battles between skyscraper towers, the stream of missiles and energy weapons lighting up the buildings as much as the neon advertising signs that sell a lifestyle out of reach for ordinary citizens. We’ve had a glimpse of a ravaged Venice,…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT? A breezy first-person RPG in a future that’s part raygun, part deco EXPECT TO PAY £60 DEVELOPER Obsidian Entertainment PUBLISHER Xbox REVIEWED ON Intel Core i5 12600K, 32GB RAM, AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT STEAM DECK Unsupported LINK  outerworlds2.obsidian.net The Outer Worlds 2 was a slow burn at first, and it was the midgame, act two climax that won me over. It includes a pair of classic Obsidian conversation boss fights, and I had a big, dumb smile on my face as I contemplated dialogue options – some available to me, some greyed-out – gated by skills, background traits, quest choices and even an out-of-the-way optional conversation I’d had ten hours previously. Judge Dredd space cop Tristan Rao quickly stole my heart Since I specialised in speech and had gone…

NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS IT?A cleaning sim for avoiding real chores EXPECT TO PAY£20 DEVELOPERSFuturLab PUBLISHERSquare Enix REVIEWED ONAMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 64GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 STEAM DECKPlayable LINK futurlab.co.uk/games/powerwash-simulator-2 Some of us will do just about anything to avoid having a thought, so let’s talk about a particularly good thought-eradicator: PowerWash Simulator. It plays a lot like the name suggests. You get a beefy hose, fancy attachments and hop from client to client blasting grime off of surfaces, and that’s its biggest appeal: just the raw, sensory satisfaction of stripping dirt off of things. It’s the perfect brain treat when I both want and do not want to do something. As you can imagine, there’s not a lot about powerwashing to change or expand on in…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAYFree DEVELOPERSamuel Leigh LINK samgames.itch.io Precision is at the heart of the match-three genre, but what if everything was a bit more wobbly? Rather than the tetrominoes slotting neatly into a grid, what if they just tumbled this way and that – less like a rigorous jigsaw puzzle and more like mixed nuts jostling in a bag. That’s the setup for Face to Face, which gradually drops coloured shapes onto the game board. They don’t automatically disappear, when making lines of the same colour or shape, but rather nestle into each other, waiting for your input. It’s your job to click on a shape, which gives it a cute smiley face, and then to link it to another similar playing piece. If the two…

NEED TO KNOW EXPECT TO PAY£20 DEVELOPERAlmost Human Games PUBLISHERAlmost Human Games It’s quite revealing looking back over the screenshots I’ve taken of Legend of Grimrock II. “The readers of PC Gamer will convulse with excitement when they see the moment I found the Horn of Summoning on a subterranean plinth!” Perhaps, in hindsight, it’s not the visual phantasmagoria suspected at the time. Allow me to provide some context. Grimrock, at first glance, looks slow and ordinary to the point of it being comedic. Your fellowship of four heroes shuffles around a tiled map, fighting monsters and uncovering secrets. I realise that the thought of a cluster of adventurers waltzing shoulder-to-shoulder through a fantasy environment sounds like the setup to a joke: “Two humans, a ratling and a minotaur walk…

It’s a humid afternoon in the PC Format office, circa 2011. Among the writers, who are diligently typing deeply informative articles, their keystrokes in perfect unison, is an array of miscellaneous magazine office set dressing. A blow-up sheep, from a photoshoot nobody can seem to remember precisely and which it’s broadly agreed is best left unacknowledged. A Michael Myers Halloween mask, which people are equally reluctant to talk about or bin. All the world’s SATA and IDE cables, strewn around gaily like tech bunting. More graphics cards, coolers and hand-shredding PC cases (this is 2011, before manufacturers smoothed off the sharp bits) than is sensible to keep in any one place, let alone an office where people regularly eat Burger King at their desks. And most ubiquitously of all, in…

I’m logging back into Final Fantasy XIV again on a regular basis. More than that, I’m actually having fun. I’m having fun playing an MMORPG, it finally happened! Alright, I’m being snippy – which you can’t hold against me because I’m writing this on a Monday – but, it’s not like Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail’s had nothing to do (assuming you like raiding). But the ills of the casual/midcore content drought and an over-reliance on one-and-done activities has made the game suffer for some time. To fix this, director Naoki Yoshida has said that upcoming dungeons and raids, including the now-released Pilgrim’s Traverse, will be designed for everybody – not necessarily easy, rather, they’ll have variable difficulties players can opt into. This should kill two chocobos with one meteor, in…

Watching other people play games is perhaps not as much fun as doing it yourself, but it does have its advantages. I’ve been assisting my daughter as she plays Infinity Nikki, the free-to-play adventure game from Papergames, and being the co-pilot gives the experience a completely different flavour. Infinity Nikki is not, I admit, the sort of game I’d choose for myself, but in its bright colours, cute creatures and delight in dressing up it reveals an enthusiasm for gaming – I honestly love the way Nikki changes costumes with a pop in the middle of a jump just so she can glide for a bit. But to me, a befuddled parent not in charge of the controller, it seems unnecessarily complex. It’s not that I can’t keep up, or…