Innehållsförteckning för Issue 285 från PC Powerplay

There is also, apparently, an endless supply of Games Workshop video games... that’s it; that’s really all the future is. But, thankfully, for every dozen or so shitty mobile games or z-tier PC release, we happen to get a good one. And with a quality title like Vermintide on the menu already, the upcoming Darktide – previewed this issue – has me more than a little bit excited. In other news, that burgeoning Warframe addiction I spoke about last issue? Well, it didn’t last, and the game that took over from it, well, that’s fallen by the wayside too – but that’s only because I’ve gone as far into Subnautica: Below Zero’s story. I mean, I could just hang around building endless sea bases, but hey... Tarkov isn’t going to…

Retrogaming; the fervent and irrational pursuit of a nostalgic experience, especially when your modern operating system won’t play nice (or other, unknown, logistical complications occur). Somehow, games from 2006 are now included in my definition, so you’ll just have to feel old alongside me, even if you’re 25. Yes, I had that periodic, overwhelming urge to play (the ridiculously, but nonetheless accurately, named) CivCity: Rome. I found a copy on Steam, so I was lulled into the false sense that things might actually be OK. They weren’t. It was $3. But first, some backstory. CivCity: Rome’s reviews (at release) were, at best (and as my grandmother would have said in a disapproving tone), ‘middling’; 67 on Metacritic. Most mentioned the incongruous British accents, the fact that every shop looked alike,…

2020 was a decent enough year for MEGHANN O’NEILL in many ways, at least in comparison to how many others experienced it. She did find that (after working remotely and sitting at the computer all day) she did not want to sit (in the same place) and play games during her precious little down time, for perhaps the first time ever. When not explicitly reviewing for PCPP, she took up knitting. Scary! Thankfully, a few weeks break has set her to rights, and she’s back to obsessively exploring the most lengthy, difficult and nostalgic titles to be found. We hope you’ll find something in this collection that will allow you to enjoy a well-deserved rest. LITTLEWOOD DEVELOPER Sean Young PRICE $21.50AVAILABILITY Released WEBSITE https://store.steampowered.com/app/894940/Littlewood/ 2020 was tough for everyone, in…

You’d be forgiven for thinking that, of the many things a game about dinosaurs that go to high school is likely to be, ‘relatable’ isn’t one of them. Yet you would be wrong. Despite the dinos, this is set to be a game that tells a deep, surprisingly human story. Goodbye Volcano High is a narrative adventure game. The player drops in when graduation is on the horizon and the protagonist, Fang, needs to make a decision about where they want their life to go. “What this game is really about,” says Saleem Dabbous, studio director and Goodbye Volcano High co-director, “is asking yourselves, if you knew everything was going to come to an end, what would you do with that time? What are the choices that you would make?…

Leaving time travel, telekinesis, and mind reading to the wayside, Dontnod has stepped away from the supernatural themes of its previous games for Twin Mirror, a psychological-drama of mystery and conspiracy. This genre of game should be well within the studio’s wheelhouse, but unfortunately, Dontnod’s first self-published game is a little underwhelming. It has the set up of a great detective mystery, but its unwillingness to explore difficult topics with depth leaves it feeling shallow and half-baked. Twin Mirror follows Sam Higgs, a former investigative journalist returning to his home town following the death of his best friend and fellow reporter, Nick. It isn’t long before Sam gets caught up in a larger conspiracy involving the mining town’s community, and he decides to follow the case until the end, which…

PRICE From $119 ONLINE www.thrustmaster.com The Thrustmaster TCA Sidestick Airbus Edition is a flight stick made in the image of an Airbus sidestick. It’s an officially licensed tie-in. And as well as the base controller you can get a throttle set and a pack of additional modules that add a real sense of authenticity to sims like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Good news on that front: the Thrustmaster TCA Sidestick Airbus Edition is “plug and play” ready for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. You won’t need to spend an hour or five configuring its button layout. These are plastic flight sticks, made to last but not with the weight and construction quality of a Thrustmaster Warthog. But at a third of the price, what else do you expect? Give yourself a…

One of the easiest ways of giving your system a performance boost is to upgrade your storage. This is particularly true if you’re still rocking a spinning hard drive or two, although SATA SSDs will also see a notable speed boost when you upgrade to the latest drives. Right now, the best storage around uses the PCIe 4.0 interface to produce blistering read and write speeds. At the moment only AMD’s Zen 2 and Zen 3 platforms natively support PCIe 4.0 drives, although Intel’s next generation of CPUs (codenamed Rocket Lake) will also jump aboard this particular super speedy wagon. So even if you don’t have a supporting platform right now, you will do when you next upgrade, which is why we think that moving over to a PCIe 4.0…

RIOT MOCKS VALORANT HACKERS, SAYS IT WILL BAN ANYONE WHO ‘RIDES THE CHEAT BUS ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL’ The salt is oh-so-real. Riot’s latest blogpost about Valorant reveals some of the lengths the developer is going to in order to combat cheaters. Even before the game was released, catching cheaters has been one of Riot’s major priorities – not unreasonably, given how widespread cheating can be in competitive shooters. Most remarkably, for the online First Strike tournament, Riot reviewed every single player account because “we needed to know who every player was [...] We had to make the precedents and rules almost as we went, deciding what exactly constitutes a disqualification, and how we’d handle those.” Matt ‘K30’ Paoletti is Riot’s senior anti-cheat analyst, and reckons “we hit a…

The Minecraft community continues to blow minds with its incredible builds, but even in that lofty company Minecraft Middle-earth stands out. This block-by-block recreation of JRR Tolkein’s world has to be seen to be believed. All of Middle-earth’s top hot-spots – and everything else – has been recreated in the blocky sandbox. You can take a quiet stroll through Hobbiton, delve into the depths of Moria, and so much more. Ever wanted to swan dive off the apex of Minas Tirith? I’ve done it – it’s awesome. Minecraft Middle-earth celebrated its ten-year anniversary last month, so I spoke with the server’s founder Nicky Vermeersch, also known as q220, about its humble beginnings and why anyone in their right mind would take on such an ambitious build. Vermeersch was first introduced…

After more than five years surrounded by Vermintide’s skittering, shrieking Skaven, Fatshark has jumped into the grimdark future of Warhammer 40,000. Darktide pits another four brave souls against unrelenting waves of monstrous enemies in a city being corrupted by the power of Chaos. It’s a meat grinder, but you get to be the teeth, chewing through hordes, leaving nothing but dismembered body parts in your bloody wake. And this time, there are chainswords. There was a teaser trailer in July last year, but since then Fatshark hasn’t given much away about its next co-op outing. Chatting to the team, it’s clear they’re being careful about what exactly they reveal at what is still a fairly early stage. They want to keep some surprises, but there’s also much that’s still up…

POXWALKERS Poxwalkers are the cannon fodder of Nurgle’s cursed armies – shambling, plague-ridden husks that serve as the living weapons of the traitor guard. They attack with teeth and claws and whatever simple weapons they can find, and they keep mutating even following death. Like regular zombies, poxwalkers gather in hordes and can quickly swarm you. TRAITOR GUARD The traitor guard are former members of the Astra Militarum who have pledged themselves to Chaos. This regiment is the Moebian Sixth, deployed to help out the Moebian government, but are now attempting to seize power. These treacherous guardsmen fight with anything from simple melee weapons and chain axes to lasguns and combat shotguns.…

Tactical RPG King Arthur: Knight’s Tale begins with an ending. The legendary monarch’s adventures, love triangles, and battles are behind him – we’ve heard them all before – and the future’s looking grim. Because he’s dead. His killer, Mordred, is right behind him. A two-for-one deal. But thanks to magic, the rivalry is far from over. Magic has stopped Arthur from passing on, instead turning him into a source of corruption threatening the misty and mystical isle of Avalon. The Lady of the Lake, not one for original ideas, decides to bring back Mordred, too, tasking him with re-killing his corpse-king, but only after an appropriate series of trials, tribulations, and turn-based scraps. “King Arthur is an iconic character, familiar to most people, and his whole mythology is a trove…

I’m on an aimless walking tour of Night City. Somehow I’ve ended up in the Japantown neighbourhood’s Arasaka-financed streets, where animated billboards for ‘Sweet Clean Speed’ and pornographic braindances climb the flanks of utilitarian skyscrapers, blotting out the stars with a rainbow of neon. I pass a ramen shop, a hot dog stand, and a man selling spice, piles of garbage tucked beneath the offramp behind him. A mob of Christians gather at a nearby intersection, screaming “Blasphemers!” at the cops. A voice makes booming proclamations in Japanese from loudspeakers overhead, flying cars crisscross the invisible roads between buildings. The sky glows with light pollution, but the moon is full and clear. It’s a beautiful night. I just left Judy Alvarez’s place. My friend’s been through a lot lately. Someone…

Since it began back in the ’90s, Sports Interactive’s Football Manager series has walked a fine line between showing you what’s happening and leaving you to fill in the blanks. It’s easy for those outside its gravitational pull to take the piss out of all the spreadsheets and a match engine that still can’t match PS2-era FIFA, but they’re missing the point. FM’s trick is in getting you to believe so deeply in its world that your imagination pours into all the cracks. So when Football Manager 2021 comes along and brings with it a newly detail-rich match engine and sports data analysis figures that quash any ambiguity about your tactics, the seasoned manager is faced with a bit of a culture shock. You’re no longer imagining the exact shimmy…

With the arrival of AMD’s RX 6000-series, we now know exactly how the high-end of graphics cards looks for this GPU generation. At the pinnacle of performance, you’ve got Nvidia’s RTX 3090 sparring off with the RX 6900 XT. That’s a fierce match, but the Nvidia card ends up taking the win. Performance doesn’t come cheap – the RTX 3090 will set you back $3,000, somehow making the £950 RX 6900 XT look cheap. Well, definitely cheaper. As ever it’s the more affordable cards that have the biggest impact on PC gaming as whole. Or they would, if it were possible to find any of them in stock. It’s important to know exactly what you’re after before attempting any risque back alley purchases. And that’s where I come in, PC…

Fallout: The Frontier was in production for seven long years. A mod for Fallout: New Vegas the size of a full AAA release, its feature set was impressive: three huge playable campaigns, new weapons, full voice acting, and driveable, heavily-armed vehicles. Given that it was built on the ancient New Vegas engine, The Frontier was an impressive technical achievement – but it had no other redeeming features. Its overall tone was uneven, thanks in part to the lead writers of the three campaigns communicating very little with each other. The primary NCR questline was a shameless rip-off of Call of Duty, and while the modder responsible was clearly a master of scripting code, scripting dialogue wasn’t exactly his forte. Every single aspect of The Frontier felt incongruous. Tone deaf. There…

RIVENDELL If you’re wondering where the very precious one ring is, you’ll find it here at the Council of Elrond. HELM’S DEEP The server lets you set the time and weather so you can recreate dramatic scenes like the Battle for Helm’s Deep. THE MINES OF MORIA The mines are difficult to navigate but worth it for a special appearance waiting for you at its exit. HOBBITON Aww, Hobbiton, as charming and delightful as in the books and films. Is it time for second breakfast yet?…

1 HABZONES The hive’s billions live in the habzones, where you might even find some survivors holding out against the tide of Nurgle’s abominations. 2 WALKWAYS If you want an idea of the scale of the hive, why not visit one of our gothic, picturesque bridges and walkways. Don’t look down. 3 MARKET Come to the underground water market to admire the uplifting graffiti and cheery atmosphere. It’s probably even nicer now that Nurgle’s moved in. 4 SERVICE TUNNELS Why not explore the guts of the hive? Though the weather isn’t great – we’ll warn you, an umbrella doesn’t protect you from acid rain. 5 PRISON Don’t forget to be on your best behaviour. The Imperium isn’t delicate when it comes to upholding the law. Hence all the blood stains.…

DEATHLOOP RELEASE May 2021 | DEV Arkane Studios | PUB Bethesda | LINK bethesda.net/game/deathloop Deathloop puts you in the role of Colt, an assassin trapped on a giant party island where the main attraction is killing him. Colt, meanwhile, has eight targets who must all be dead by midnight. So far, it’s a typical premise from Dishonored developer Arkane Studios. But there are a couple of twists. When you die, the whole game resets roguelike style. What’s more, another player can invade your game as counter-assassin Julianna Blake, and her job is to prevent you doing yours. Deathloop is an amalgam of everything Arkane has learned in its 20-year history. It’s got the creative play of Dishonored, and the open-ended level design of Prey. But the biggest influence here is…

Shadowlands is one of World of Warcraft’s most ambitious expansions yet. There are times where I feel a little overwhelmed by all of its complex progression systems. When I’m not chipping away at expanding my Covenant’s Sanctum, I’m exploring its dark and dangerous new endgame zone or climbing the endless floors of Torghast. And then there’s the familiar grind of world quests, dungeons, and chasing down hidden treasures like new mounts. It’s a lot to stay on top of and at times a little too familiar, but much of Shadowlands’ endgame is varied and inventive enough to keep things fun. It might not win over jaded players who drifted away over the years, but Shadowlands is the best World of Warcraft has been in a long while. The new expansion…

I’ve got Feds breathing down my neck, a friend I need to betray, employees getting into love triangles and rivals making big plays – no wonder mob bosses end up a bit high-strung. There are times when Empire of Sin’s missions and emergent chaos collide to create a cyclone of compelling mobster drama full of intrigue, booze and bullets. Unfortunately, it mostly just gets in its own way, with systems tripping over each other or bugs dragging them down. My attempts to become the biggest mob boss in 1920s Chicago haven’t been foiled by the cops or my rivals, but by corrupt saves, broken missions and vanishing employees. Two campaigns ended up in the bin because of two entirely separate game-breaking issues. Even with access to the day one patch,…

Would you classify this game’s protagonists as ‘cute’, or ‘a horrific monstrosity’? I think I’ll go with ‘both’. It’s still fashionable to put in a claim of cognitive dissonance, after all. I’m not ashamed to say (perhaps I should be) that, when I first saw this double-headed… thing, the question that immediately sprang to mind was ‘how does it poo?’. This is not, sadly, something the game ever addresses. The phogs have two heads, no legs, the ability to stretch like that toffee you can never seem to find any more, and – most importantly of all – a variety of hats to unlock. Each level has golden bones to find, and these are used as currency in the hat shops. The hats don’t grant any special abilities, however, unless…