Innehållsförteckning för Issue 289 från PC Powerplay

Meghann O’Neill spent a good 30 minutes trying to figure out how to spell “ideoligion”, then another 30 wondering whether the word “ideologically” should be “ideoligious.” As we have discussed, I have a great love of buying “more stuff” for my favourite games. Case in point? My Sims 4 collection. I can’t even remember the name of the latest expansion. I bought it. You can decorate client’s houses with poop, and they’ll love it, as Carl (of Carl’s Guide) demonstrated in his review. I played it once, got a very hard crash and now have a fan constantly wedged between my boobs. So, you’ve been saved from another column about “more stuff” in The Sims. Today, I am writing about RimWorld Ideology. It makes my laptop less hot. The problem…

In keeping with the decision to find their own corner of the Marvel universe, the team were keen to find a distinct visual take on all of Midnight Suns’ characters. The more recognisable the character, we’re told, the harder this became. “Everybody knows what Iron Man looks like,” Solomon says. “So it has to look like Iron Man. But it better not look like any other version of Iron Man, because then it gets confusing.” Part of the answer was drawing from the era that inspired Midnight Suns, in and out of comics. Wolverine is dressed in the tan variant of his suit that was an ’80s staple, while Iron Man’s armour is based on the vents and angles of the 1987 Ferrari F40.…

PATHFINDER While rooted in D&D’s third edition rules, Pathfinder’s fantasy world had identity enough to spawn a popular RPG, Kingmaker – which has in turn spawned a brand-new sequel. CYBERPUNK Mike Pondsmith’s legendary sci-fi setting went decades without any representation on PC. But CD Projekt Red made up for it by pouring all its Witcher III cash into a lavish, if flawed, blockbuster. WORLD OF DARKNESS Is vampirism a curse? A cancelled World of Darkness MMO from the makers of Eve Online, not to mention the development hell of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, would suggest so.…

1 HATE-FILLED EYES You may not remember the sins of your past, but every boar in Medieval Dynasty does, and they want you to suffer. 2 HOMING PAIN TUSKS These things will hit you so hard your entire dynasty will suffer for it. 3 REAR END It smells bad, and in about 12 hours time it’s going to poop out your digested remains. 4 CUTE, FLUFFY BACK It’s easy to get distracted by the fact that these furry pigs are, well, furry pigs, but touch this and you will know only pain.…

The phrase ‘best cheap microphone’ is no longer an oxymoron. One of last year’s most surprising hardware trends was the rise of budget streaming microphones, with brands like Rode and HyperX getting in on the action with stripped-down mics that focus purely on sounding great at low cost. The catch is that some of these cheap microphones will be lacking some common features you might find for more cash, like volume control. Hell, a lot of these budget mics don’t even have a mute button. The idea is that you can do all that with third-party software like OBS or Xsplit instead. Yet while some might be turned off by a lack of extra features, the sound quality and low price more than make up for it in our eyes.…

Kung fu brawler Sifu is about “mastery through practice”, and after watching a gameplay demonstration, I can confirm that beating up an entire apartment building like Iko Uwais is going to take more than button mashing. But make too many mistakes on this singleplayer revenge journey, and you’ll age into dust before gaining satisfaction. Sifu looks and sounds similar to Absolver, developer Sloclap’s previous game – those thwap thwap thwap hit effects are still super satisfying – but its fighting system isn’t a copy. Absolver’s combat involved a cool moveset customisation menu where players could mix-and-match combat styles and build combos that flowed between stances, and Sifu doesn’t have an equivalent. All of Sifu’s moves are inspired by Pak Mei Kung Fu, which its creative director personally practices. Sifu does…

While Midnight Suns’ battles default to a close-up camera, it is possible to zoom out into ‘tactics mode’, which provides a topdown overview of the battlefield with all pertinent information. “That’s useful in some cases,” Solomon says – but he’s adamant that the entire game is playable without ever using it. “Because if you can’t, we’re probably violating some other thing, philosophically, that we wanted to do.” He’s referring to the game’s essential design pillars: conveying how powerful the characters are, something that’s harder to do from a distance, and keeping battles fast and flowing. “We don’t want the player to sit there constantly rethinking this or that decision.” This was more important than making something that looks closer to the shiny blockbuster Marvel is known for, we’re told –…

While Marvel has established its dominance in cinema and, more recently, television, it’s yet to replicate the feat for videogames. When we share this observation, Solomon initially pushes back: “The indie darling Spider-Man, I guess you’re referring to?” But it’s hard to deny that Midnight Suns exists in the shadow of Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers. Accepting that it’s yet to have the interactive equivalent of Endgame, Solomon says: “I think it’s just a matter of time. Because these stories and these characters are archetypes, they’re like the modern mythology.” Marvel’s game division is taking the same approach as its film studio, he says, partnering with creatives whose work they like and letting them do their own thing. Surely it will eventually produce the equivalent of Black Panther or Thor: Ragnarok?…

“GROGNARD” A player who prefers the company of the older editions, thank you very much. Doesn’t need your newfangled ‘short rest’ mechanics. “SKILL MONKEY” A party member who primarily shines off the battlefield – perhaps as a linguist, thief, or survivalist. “TRIPPER” A character who specialises in knocking enemies flat on their backs. “TPK” Total Party Kill. If you’re subject to one of these, your DM may be John Carmack.…

DEATH STRANDING Kojima’s game pushed the Steam Deck to its limits, and it was pumping out some heat to maintain 30 fps. But it was surprisingly playable, making me believe Valve’s claim that the Deck can handle all they’ve thrown at it. GUILTY GEAR STRIVE After a couple crashes I got Guilty Gear to run on the Deck. It was slow to load from the SD card, but once it was running it looked great. Valve also had it running with a Bluetooth controller to highlight the Deck’s versatility. DEATH’S DOOR Continuing the death theme, I played this delightful indie adventure, which felt mighty smooth with the Deck’s analog stick. I expect to play a lot of indie games on the Steam Deck at 60 fps that can only run…

SCORING SYSTEM PCPP scores its games on a 1 to 100 scale. The higher, the better – though 100 is by no means a “perfect” game. We’re not convinced such a thing exists, so consider a 100 a masterpiece of PC gaming, despite its inevitable flaws. A 50 is a decidedly average game; one that doesn’t excel in any particular area, without being an affront to our senses – the ultimate in mediocrity. Below this, you’ll start to find the games our reviewers suffered an aneurysm getting through; above it, the titles truly worth your time and money. And remember: a score is only a vague indication of quality. Always read the full review for the definitive opinion!…

The first boss in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is character creation. It’s as daunting as any multi-limbed demon. There are 25 classes, most subdivided into six archetypes. There are prestige classes you can’t choose until later, which show up here if you want to plan your build around one. You choose a race, heritage, background, religion, skills, feats, maybe an animal companion, which gets its own class, skills and feats. At the end of this process you may well end up with a character who is completely inappropriate for getting what you want out of Wrath of the Righteous and, several hours later, want to restart or respec. Your character, whether a rage-powered bloodrider with a pet smilodon, a halfling knight who charges into battle on a dog, or…

In the days before the ubiquity of the internet, stumped gamers would sometimes phone a tip line for a bit of life-saving advice. Nintendo’s ‘game counsellors’ in particular had a near-mythical status, and a gig that every kid dreamed of having. The reality was less impressive, less glamorous, but the idealised version – encyclopaedic knowledge of games, completed Battletoads blindfolded – lives on in Gamedec, where they serve as fixers in virtual worlds. The childhood fantasies that most RPGs trade in are long established, but Gamedec’s setup is a more modern brand of wish fulfilment. As one of the titular gamedecs, you’re a gamer who is just so good at games that you can hop between virtual worlds fixing problems and solving crimes. It’s silly, but also grounded, creating a…

A polar pattern determines how much and from which direction an audio signal will be picked up by a microphone. For gaming, you’ll mostly want a pattern that picks up sound directly in front of the microphone (you) and not much else from anywhere else (the environment). For that you’ll want to use the most commonly found polar pattern for gaming microphones: cardioid. This records in front of the microphone and minimises sound from elsewhere. A few popular patterns are: Bidirectional – captures audio in front and behind of the mic. Omnidirectional – picks up sound from every direction. Stereo – perfect for ASMR, if you’re into that.…

The first step to improving your video quality is fixing the lighting. Regardless of how spectacular the webcam, a badly lit studio could negate some of that technological advantage. Start off by dimming harsh back-lighting. Think of how environment artists draw your attention to quest items: a bright background will detract from the focal point. Then grab a desk lamp and either point it at a white surface behind your monitor for some soft bounce light, or strap some white paper to it to diffuse the light. Either will reduce shiny spots on your face, but the latter provides more control. Then just reduce your screen brightness, particularly if you wear glasses, and adjust the webcam’s white and colour balance until you look vaguely human.…

Rather than learning to make bread, my desperate quarantine hobby turned out to be learning voxel art. Using the fantastic MagicaVoxel software, I went from building abstract animals to building illuminated Dance Dance Revolution machines, quaint Japanese storefronts and even the subway tracks outside my apartment. Most importantly, voxel art has given me an appreciation for the amount of work that goes into a game’s visual design, especially when it’s consciously constrained, not necessarily sacrificing style or substance. From trendsetters like Minecraft, to physics experiments like Teardown, to narrative adventures like Cloudpunk, voxel art has changed the way I look at almost everything I play. If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that many game devs shoot for the moon, but also like Jeff Bezos, barely manage to…

Of the 12 heroes on Midnight Suns’ roster, we see nine in action. With Firaxis apparently given free rein to decide which characters it wanted, whittling it down to even that number “may have been the toughest part of the game,” Solomon tells us. Each of the final picks meets one of two criteria: either they’re a big-name character the team thought it would be fun to see in a more supernatural context (Wolverine, Captains Marvel and America) or more niche heroes for whom this is home turf (Magik, Ghost Rider, Blade). As for the three yet to be revealed, we can only speculate – and note the appearance of Bruce Banner in our demo, taking a backstage role as the team’s guy in the chair, and the reference to…

It explains a lot about Warren Spector, the driving force behind Deus Ex, that his first dungeon master was the author Bruce Sterling. Not only was Sterling destined to become one of the fathers of cyberpunk – the science fiction genre that spliced future tech with social commentary, just as Deus Ex would - but he was a generous and accommodating DM. “What was most powerful about that first night, and all the nights that followed for the next ten or so years, wasn’t the story Bruce was telling to us,” Spector says. “It was the story my friends and I were telling with him.” Spector’s head still swims with memories of the Rat Gang, the street crew he ran with as Botara Chitan, a samurai who never smiled. He…

TINY TINA’S ASSAULT ON DRAGON KEEP In this Borderlands 2 DLC, Tina serves as ‘Bunker Master’ in ‘Bunkers & Badasses’. The idea has since spun off into a whole new game called Wonderlands. (ASMR) VIN DIESEL DMING A GAME OF D&D JUST FOR YOU A very real game, playable on itch.io, which simulates a tabletop sesh with Hollywood’s baritone beefcake. Soothing. LIFE IS STRANGE: BEFORE THE STORM A whole scene of Deck Nine’s teen drama prequel is dedicated to roleplaying as an elf barbarian before class.…

COLOURFUL CASING It’s just black at launch, but colour was hotly debated among the development team. Greg Coomer says, “We might do a lot more with that in the future.” DELUXE DISPLAY The Deck uses an off-the-shelf display, which Coomer would like to improve, “The screen would be the centre of our focus in what we do different with a next version.” A LITTLE BIT MORE ZEN Coomer says Valve isn’t designing a Deck 2.0 yet, but they’ve “definitely talked with AMD about what [they’d] like to do next”. Going up to Zen 3 mightn’t be an issue. RE-ARCHITECTED Coomer says that “if the Steam Deck is really a hit, then I think that should drive the architecture of upcoming CPU/GPU/APU devices. And probably not just from … AMD”.…

DAVE JAMES Hardware Lead I’m not sure if it’s a symptom of the patented Gabe Newell Reality Distortion Field, but I’m a whole lot more positive about the Steam Deck now than I was when it was first announced. It’s normally the other way around, getting dragged on by the hype machine before the devil in the details convinces me otherwise. I’m actually loving the chonky look of it, the AMDbased hardware has a lot of potential with its LPDDR5 backup, and SteamOS 3.0 and Proton could genuinely bring Linux gaming to the masses. But there is one potential sticking point that’s going to have to be ironed out for the Deck to be the sort of broad appeal success Valve seems to think it will be. That issue is…

SKULL & SHACKLES Become captain of a pirate ship, win a regatta, build a fleet, claim the throne of the Pirate King. HELL’S REBELS Join an uprising against a tyrant, forge alliances with other free peoples, defeat the inquisition. COUNCIL OF THIEVES Rob a decadent city’s paranoid rulers, survive a deadly feast, and perform an even deadlier play. REIGN OF WINTER Steal Baba Yaga’s hut, travel through time and space in it, arrive on Earth, and fight Rasputin.…

THE RULES 1. My lord must travel from Mount Silverspear to the Fallen Gates. 2. My army can’t be led by a special character. 3. My capital, Karaz-a-Karak, must survive. There is such a thing as a dwarf ranger, but they’re viewed with suspicion. In dwarf society, all that sun and fresh air is considered bad for your health. So the idea of taking an army from the cool, comforting holds of the World’s Edge Mountains all the way to the westernmost part of the Mortal Empires map in Total War: Warhammer II is a fool’s errand. Only a wazzock would contemplate such a thing. I’m proud to say I am that wazzock. First, I need to pick a goal. I choose the Fallen Gate, a savannah settlement on the…