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The North Africa campaign
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ROBIN VALENTINE companies of the German army – but also the
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FRASER BROWN WES FENLON HARRY SHEPHERD JACOB RIDLEY
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This month This month This month This month
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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.
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5
Contents
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#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
