BUYER’S GUIDE THE BEST NEW BUILDS REVIEWED ISSUE 373 WELCOME #373 SEPTEMBER 2022 “THE GAME SURPRISED Future Publishing Ltd ME WITH THE NUANCE Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA Tel 01225 442244 | Email [email protected] www.pcgamer.com OF ITS APPROACH” This being our second facebook.com youtube.com /pcgamermagazine /pcgamer Company of Heroes 3 cover, I knew roughly what to expect: our hands-on delves further into the depths of the twitter.com twitch.tv explosive action, slick strategy, /pcgamer /pcgamer and cleverly crafted campaigns. But the game still surprised me, with the nuance of its approach to a brutal war. The North Africa campaign forums.pcgamer.com pcgaming follows the armoured show.com ROBIN VALENTINE companies of the German army – but also the All contents © 2022 Future Publishing Limited or published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or Twitter life of a young Jewish survivor caught in their reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. @robinlvalentine Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England path. It’s a lovely bit of subtlety in a game that and Wales. Registered office: Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All information contained in this publication is for information only and is, as far as This month we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any Discovered how good he could easily have been all bombast, and it responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/ looks in a beret. Who’d services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this have guessed? demonstrates the passion Relic has for real publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates to them. This magazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein. history, not just guns and tanks. NEXT ISSUE ON SALE: August 18, 2022 SUBSCRIBE TO If you submit material to us, you warrant that you own the material and/or have the necessary rights/ permissions to supply the material and you automatically grant Future and its licensees a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in any/all Check out our issues and/or editions of publications, in any format ROBIN VALENTINE published worldwide and on associated websites, social latest offer! media channels and associated products. Any material PRINT EDITOR you submit is sent at your own risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents, [email protected] SEE p50 subcontractors or licensees shall be liable for loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material is for We are committed to only publication unless otherwise stated, and reserve the using magazine paper which right to edit, amend, adapt all submissions. is derived from responsibly managed, certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture. The paper in A member of the this magazine was sourced Audit Bureau of and produced from The PC Gamer team Circulations sustainable managed forests, 12,708 conforming to strict January- environmental and December 2018 socioeconomic standards. FRASER BROWN WES FENLON HARRY SHEPHERD JACOB RIDLEY Twitter Twitter Twitter Twitter @FraserIBrown @wesleyfenlon @HarryyShepherd @RidleyJG This month This month This month This month He’s been living and One Darktide hands-on, Sadly this is Harry’s last Spent the month breathing CoH 3 all and Wes is a Warhammer issue – but, of course, carrying cases around. month. There’s a lot of fan in the making. He he leaves us with one Good for Buyer’s Guide, dust in his lungs. knows what an Ogryn is! last excellent How To. bad for his back. Future plc is a public company quoted Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne PC Gamer (ISSN 1351-3540), September issue 373, is published monthly with an extra issue in April by Future Publishing, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA. UK on the London Stock Exchange Non-executive chairman Richard Huntingford The US annual subscription price is $194.87 Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named World Container Inc, c/o BBT 150-15 183rd St, Jamaica, NY 11413, USA. (symbol: FUTR) Chief financial officer Penny Ladkin-Brand Application to Mail at Periodicals Postage Prices is Pending at Brooklyn NY 11256. www.futureplc.com Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 US POSTMASTER: Send address changes to PC Gamer, World Container Inc, c/o BBT 150-15 183rd St, Jamaica, NY 11413, USA Subscription records are maintained at Future Publishing, c/o Air Business Subscriptions, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, RH16 3DH. UK 5 Contents SUBSCRIBE TO #373 Check out our SEPTEMBER 2022 latest offer! SEE p50 Monitor 08 THE TOP STORY 10 THE SPY 12 SPECIAL REPORT 14 INCOMING Previews 18 Starfield 22 Old Skies 24 The Invincible 26 The Alters 28 Saints Row 30 Street Fighter 6 32 Demonschool 34 Warhammer 40k: Darktide 36 Redfall 38 Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 ROUNDUP 40 Final Fantasy XVI 40 Hollow Knight: Silksong 40 The Last of Us 40 Spider-Man Remastered 41 Minecraft Legends 41 CoD: Modern Warfare 2 42 41 Pentiment 41 Resident Evil 4 Feature 18 42 34 42 Company of Heroes 3 STARFIELD COMPANY OF WH40K: HEROES 3 DARKTIDE We’ve finally gotten a look at ‘Skyrim in space’ in action, checking out everything from German tanks roll over desert Ripping and tearing through a combat, to factions, to discovering dunes as we go hands-on with the Chaos-corrupted hive feels as 28 weird alien monsters. North Africa campaign. good as we hoped. 6 34 Reviews 56 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge 60 Neon White 64 The Cycle: Frontier 68 Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course 70 F1 22 74 Monster Hunter Rise: 18 Sunbreak 76 AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative 80 Card Shark 56 82 DNF Duel 86 The Quarry FREE GAMES 88 Baba is You EXTREME 89 Venus Looks for Jupiter 89 Stack Zoo THEY’RE BACK 90 Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition 91 Little Nightmares 91 Moonlighter 91 Night in the Woods 91 Dreamscapes: The Sandman Hardware 94 GROUP TEST 98 TECH REPORT 100 TECH TALES 102 BUYER’S GUIDE Extra Life 106 NOW PLAYING 110 UPDATE. 94 118 112 MOD SPOTLIGHT 116 HOW TO 56 94 118 118 DIARY 122 WHY I LOVE TMNT: TINY PC CASES WILDERMYTH 124 REINSTALL 128 MUST PLAY SHREDDER’S Ever fancied creating a build that The second part of our Diary packs a lot of power into a small series takes us on a quest to turn REVENGE package? These miniature cases as many members of the party as are here to help your adorably possible into weird monsters, Slick, nostalgic brawler reviewed. small dreams come true. with… mixed results. 7 M O N I T O R NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT mage credit: Artesian. I HARDWARE FAILURE How a botched giveaway brought down a multi-million dollar PC BUILDER U ntil recently Artesian Noah Katz said that Kiapiaa didn’t was made by Katz, accepting Kiapiaa Builds was a PC qualify because she had fewer than was the “rightful winner” and adding, building company TOP: Artesian’s debts 5,000 followers across social media “I take full accountability and and, with 50 included $450,000 to platforms, and withheld the prize. sincerely apologise.” two PC components employees and Kiapiaa and the audience “My email back to them was a distributors, over multi-million dollar revenue, one of vehemently disagreed, and simple two sentence reply,” said $200,000 in credit considerable size. As part of its card debt, and a $1.2 controversy swirled around the Kiapiaa. “No ty. Take me off your business Artesian would livestream million secured family decision. Soon enough sponsor Intel ambassador list.” loan on the books. the building of high-end custom stepped in, and an official apology This was bad publicity, but didn’t PCs, and do giveaways. One of these seem existential. That is until the began a chain of events that, story began gaining traction online, ultimately, would bring the ON MARCH 8 triggering a wave of outrage and company to bankruptcy. requests for refunds from the ARTESIAN FILED FOR company. This exposed that Artesian Early this year Twitch affiliate CHAPTER 11 was not as well-run as it appeared. streamer Kiapiaa entered and won an The collapse was dramatic. On BANKRUPTCY ‘ambassador’ giveaway run by March 8 Artesian filed for Chapter 11 Artesian. However, Artesian CEO bankruptcy in California with over $3 8 NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT ONCE MORE FARMTASTIC CERAMIC KEYCAPS BREACH RETURNS STARDEW AIN’T DEAD ME OLD CHINA Just like Subset’s previous Despite Eric Barone working Cerakey is bringing game FTL, the tactics game hard on Haunted Chocolatier, something we didn’t know we Into the Breach is getting a he’s not forgotten about needed: ceramic keycaps. massive Advanced Edition Stardew Valley just yet. He These thick beasties create a update with new mechs, pilots, enemies, confirmed that a 1.6 update would be thocky typing experience, and even work weapons, an ‘Unfair’ difficulty, and more. happening, but warned that it would be a with RGB. The reception has been The update will be out on July 19, and will smaller one geared towards modders. As immense; the Kickstarter netted the be free for all players. Into the Breach is for whether we’ll see a 1.7 update? company around $51,000 – a bit more also (finally) coming to mobile. AC Barone says, “Who knows.” MT than their $6,000 goal. KW Highs & Lows Im age credit: A rtesian. mage credit: Artesian. HIGHS I Cheater’s worth Bungie won $13.5 million in damages against two Canadian cheat companies. Elden time Elden Ring received probably its biggest improvement yet on PC: you can now quit straight to desktop. Falling upwards Fall Guys has moved to the Epic Games Store and gone free-to-play, as well as launching console ports. Blade bummer million in liabilities on its balance sheet, including an The Enhanced Edition of estimated $1.37 million in unfulfilled orders and assets Westwood’s 1997 Blade Runner ABOVE: The totalling $917,595. All of its employees lost their jobs. adventure game is a real mess. controversy saw a PC Gamer spoke to three ex-employees, who said bump in viewership Katz’s long-term mismanagement had put Artesian in a #SomeChanges for Kiapiaa (who describes herself as precarious position to begin with, and he’d already been The upcoming re-release of Wrath of “just your average 23 looking for new investors before the controversial the Lich King is where Blizz has year old who likes to livestream. Bankruptcy documents show a loss of $1.6 abandoned its #NoChanges slogan game”) alongside an to make some significant tweaks. million in the last financial year. “Hundreds” of PC orders outpouring of community support. will never ship, and there are many creditors owed money. Diablol Diablo Immortal’s success has been THE SELL-OFF marred by heavy player criticism of This June Artesian’s assets were sold at auction, including its microtransactions. 346 motherboards, 219 RAM kits, 413 cases, 283 coolers, 360 CPUs, 43 partially constructed PCs, and 59 graphics LOWS cards. Sadly the total raised has not been made public, and even worse customers will be at the bottom of the list for reimbursement as ‘unsecured creditors’. Artesian may well have been on its way out, but what’s striking here is how online dynamics exposed the business’s weakness and led to such a dramatic collapse. It was operating hand-to-mouth and, when a controversy erupted and triggered a wave of refunds, simply couldn’t weather. And they say no publicity is bad publicity… Jacob Ridley / Rich Stanton 9 The Spy BUT WHO WATCHES THE SPY? “That was the plan,” said Hawk, “even up until the release date of [Pro Skater 1 and 2], we were going 3 and 4. And then Vicarious got kind of absorbed and they were looking for other developers and then it was over.” According to Hawk, even with Vicarious being no more, Activision still wanted remakes of the sequels. “The truth is they were trying to find someone to do 3 and 4 but they O ccasionally The Spy is just didn’t really trust anyone the way they did Vicarious,” commissioned for a spot of he added. “So they took other pitches from other studios … counter-intelligence – helping They didn’t like anything they heard and that was it.” the PC Gamer team protect its The fact that people are just out there talking is special stockroom filled with alarming enough, but it gets worse. It turns out that you boxes upon boxes of Rowntree’s can’t always trust what they say. GamesBeat reporter Jeff Randoms Juicers. Normally this Grubb, talking on his Giant Bomb news show Grubbsnax, is a pretty easy job. The Spy just claimed that only a skeleton crew was left working on writes, “Don’t make your door Battlefield 2042 following its poor reception from fans. code 0451, you clichéd fools,” on a bit of paper, and “The idea is to move everyone to the next Battlefield as pops an invoice in the post. This time, though, The Spy quick as possible,” Grubb said. “It’s abandon ship time.” made a terrible discovery: it doesn’t even matter if your door code isn’t a tired PC gaming reference, the real THERE’S THE GRUBB risk is anyone knowing it in the first place. EA reached out to Grubb with a statement saying that his claims were “untrue”. “There is a significant team across It turns out that people are just going about their day studios focused on evolving and improving the Battlefield saying anything to anyone. At any moment, a staff writer 2042 experience for our players,” the publisher wrote. could just choose to tell someone that, actually, the Juicers So we have two competing, conflicting statements. Jeff, are just a decoy. The real prize, they could reveal, is the responding to EA’s statement, wrote that, “My position for box of Skittles Chewies tucked in the back corner, because these things is consistent: if you hear two stories about the editor-in-chief physically can’t function without them. what is happening, look for the space where both things Everywhere you look, people are just saying things – are true.” This feels very pointed, but also in itself isn’t an act that, apparently, is referred to as ‘conversation’. For accurate. For example: if The Spy was to tell you that instance, Tony Hawk recently appeared on the Twitch chickens laid eggs, and you were to tell The Spy that a stream of Andy ‘andyTHPS’ Gentile single, quantumly displaced ancestor – a former Neversoft dev who also to chickens had laid all eggs that do, worked on the Tony Hawk’s Pro HAWK MENTIONS have and will ever exist, and THE SPY Skater 1 + 2 remake. Towards the end, teleported them throughout time to THAT REMAKES OF The Spy only talks to Hawk casually mentions that remakes locations that happened to be nearby the hand-knitted of both Pro Skater 3 and 4 were BOTH PRO SKATER 3 regular chickens, the space between plushies of notorious planned, but fell through when those two stories is nonsense. The Spy Soviet double-agents. AND 4 WERE PLANNED remake developer Vicarious Visions is just saying. Spy out. was folded into Blizzard last year. The Spy This month in… 2012 ISSUE 243, September 2012 ON THE COVER World of Warplanes IN THE CINEMAS The Dark Knight Rises “Experimentally, I clang my “Dota 2 is No weapons. No armour. No 1 2 3 knife against a metal pipe. A complicated,” magic except illusions. Never second later, the guard comes opens our preview. directly hurt anyone or anything. running down the corridor, passing If League of These were the rules of Tom through the field, and disintegrates Legends’ popularity Francis’ Skyrim diary, which started into floating, glowing particles of wasn’t sign enough, in this issue and ran for multiple dust. Wow.” Tom Francis gets his Valve’s interest in months. “I create a High Elf, since hands on Dishonored, concluding MOBAs was a clear they’re good with magicks, and give that “I’m going to like this game a sign they were here her a good magician’s name: Sarah lot”. Reader, he did. to stay. the Implausible.” 10