Table of contents for Issue 301 in PC Powerplay

The Spy is used to infiltrating hot environments. Earlier this year, for example, during a hot as hell summer in Ghent, Belgium, The Spy broke into Larian Studios to complete the first solo, one-person-in-party run of Baldur's Gate III. And, what's more, The Spy did so while dressed in Larian Studios’ founder Swen Vincke's suit of knight's armour. Following Larian's critical success triumph with Baldur's Gate III, though, infiltrating the now multiple award winning studio's inner sanctum has become a lot tougher, and information about its future direction regarding the now much-wanted Baldur's Gate III expansion more difficult for The Spy to purloin. The Spy is a master of the stealthy arts, though, and no dexterity check is too high for The Spy to roll. As such, The Spy went…

DOOM/DOOM II The original Doom Guy is a ripped fellow wearing a green suit and a grey helmet. But players will be far more familiar with his many facial expressions, the alternating side glances, and the evil grin when he picks up a weapon. DOOM 3 For Doom 3, id Software strove to humanise the Doom Guy, making his musculature less exaggerated, and occasionally allowing him to display glimpses of fear, such as when he encounters that game's towering CyberDemon. DOOM (2016) The 2016 reboot shifted its emphasis. Renaming him the Doom Slayer, it avoided showing his face and doubled-down on his aggressiveness, hinting that there might be something more than human about him. DOOM ETERNAL Where the reboot avoids giving the Slayer much backstory, Eternal emphasises it, characterising him…

GAME OF THE YEAR 2023 BEST EXPANSION 2023 Fraser Brown: CDPR will probably never be able to escape the stink of Cyberpunk 2077‘s botched launch, but what a way to end things. Phantom Liberty‘s new district, Dogtown, and its cast of CIA analogues, militants and ne'er-do-wells allowed the game to go out on a high note, with a gripping yarn balanced between a slow-burning thriller and a balls-to-the-wall action movie. You get to meet the NUSA president, and much more importantly: Idris Elba. The devs smartly weave this expansion into the base game rather than sticking it on at the end or making it a standalone romp, allowing it to elevate the rest of Cyberpunk 2077, a game that is lightyears ahead of the launch version thanks to the accompanying (and…

GAME OF THE YEAR 2023 BEST STORY 2023 Jacob Ridley: A blend of entertaining horror and surreal scenes, Alan Wake 2 manages to keep you along for the ride through every twist and turn. You might find yourself trapped in the Dark Place and a never-ending talk show, but you can always rely on quality case work and a fine attention to detail to figure out what the heck is happening in the woods in Washington. Fraser Brown: I'd be happy to play an entire game as Saga, Alan's new FBI buddy. I don't like playing as a cop, and the FBI are the worst kind, but I'm a sucker for a game that properly lets you get stuck into the investigative side of police work. Connecting clues with string and…

BEST SHOOTER 2023 Harvey Randall: Remnant 2 came at a difficult time, landing in die middle of some absolutely smashing games – though it's still one of my favourites from this year. It crushes its predecessor Remnant: From the Ashes in every conceivable way, while still being the most inventive of 2023's Souls-like offerings. One moment you're blasting your way through a plaguestricken techno hellscape, the next you're battling a fairy king in a shining storybook castle. Its levels are procedurally arranged, but they still manage to feel textured, with handcrafted encounters and secrets to discover. One unlockable archetype even spawned a whole ARG-style hunt and a Discord server of dataminers hellbent on uncovering it. The RPG side to this multiversal shoot-'em-up is stellar, too. You can combine two of its…

BEST STEALTH 2023 Phil Savage: Since 2016, Mimimi Games has been single handedly keeping the stealth tactics genre alive. Its first game, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, spent years in our Top 100 off the strength of its clever cast of characters – all of them adding fun tactical twists to the job of sneaking silently through a huge, hostile map. Its second, Desperados 3, did justice to one of the major games of the genre's early ‘00s heyday. This year, it released Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, and it's easily the studio's best work. Previous games had some quirky abilities, sure, but this time you're in charge of a band of undead pirates with a full suite of magical powers – every character widening the possibility space of…

BUS Not sexy, but reliable city transport. Unfortunately still prone to traffic jams and accidents. TRAM Fast and convenient, though laying out all that track in the city can be tricky when you first get to it. TRAIN Perfect for letting your citizens take longer rides and even to visit places off the map. HEARSE No stops, no charge, just quick and reliable delivery straight to the graveyard.…

I am opening this review with a warning: I am going to spend a lot of time here talking about a different game. This isn't something I usually do, but as you may have guessed from the screenshots Infinite is very much built on the chassis of Stellaris, with some appropriately Star Trek twists. Consider it the Napoleon: Total War to Stellaris’ Empire: Total War – a more focused, narrative spin off from a larger and more sprawling game. The game is set firmly in the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine era and portrays the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians as four superpowers locked in constant competition. It's not unlike joining a Stellaris game a third of the way in. For the most part this works surprisingly well, but there are…

NOW PLAYING THE GAMES WE LOVE RIGHT NOW The leader of the Torch Heads gang, who I can only describe as a reject from an ‘80s action movie casting call for ‘Punk Number 1’, has me this close to quitting RoboCop: Rogue City before I've even reached the end of the staidly written, slow and clichéd opening cutscene. The gang leader and his fellow identikit goons have taken over a network TV station and are blathering on about how they've got all die drugs and want to sell all the drugs and nobody is going to stop them bwali ha ha. Apparendy they needed to broadcast this message to a new mysterious new player arriving in Rogue City, hence the whole assault on the station. To show the Torch Heads…

I have returned to the land of Eorzea, bleary-eyed and exhausted from having missed the last two Final Fantasy XIV patches. Perhaps the sleep deprivation has finally caused me to go mad, because I don't remember this game ever being populated by tiny pink bean people and a gaudy platforming battle royale that makes me deeply angry despite its cutesy exterior attempting to placate me. What's that? It's because there's a Fall Guys collaboration that's been added in Patch 6.51? I would question it, but in a world where we've also received crossovers with Monster Hunter, Yokai Watch and even freakin’ Fender guitars, it'd be wise of me to be a little more open-minded. I suppose with Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion, Endwalker, nearing two years of age and drawing…

MONITOR NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMET Foxhole is a sandbox style war MMO that has been available in Early Access since 2017. The schtick is one persistent and gigantic war game where thousands of players battle for one of two factions, but with the twist that the logistics, resource and supply side of the armies is just as important as firing guns and piloting vehicles. Like many of the best social games great stories happen as a matter of course, and a recent example was a 48-hour long battle between an isolated island called Silver, cut-off from all logistics support and supplies, facing down an endless invasion force. Foxhole‘s two factions are the Colonials and the Wardens, and in this case the Colonials held Silver island, part of a larger…

BEST ONGOING GAME 2023 Robert Jones: Even knowing Fatshark's heritage in needing to seriously keep developing its games after release, I was still absolutely mad as hell when Warhammer 40,000: Darktide launched. The game was not only so janky and broken that, one time, it took me seven crashes with restarts to finish a single run, but it also shipped with key chunks of the game missing. It wasn't just me who was spitting with rage, either, with thousands of reviews on Steam at launch leading to the game getting a ‘Mostly Negative’ badge of shame. Despite this, though, I could see the potential for the game and noted that at the time. When it worked I had a blast. A year later and Darktide, while still recognisably the same…

BEST ADVENTURE 2023 Robert Jones: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was bigger and better than Fallen Order in every way, but it was how it seemed to honour the Star Wars PC game greats of old like Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Knights of the Old Republic that got me well and truly hooked. I can take or leave the Souls-lite combat mechanics, but the dynamic movement options, rewarding exploration, as well as cinematic presentation and storytelling just delivers what I want from a Star Wars adventure. The fact I finished this game in one sitting speaks volumes to just how well it clicked for me. Now if we can just have dark force powers unlocked in the inevitable third game, Kyle Katam can retire for good. Sean Martin: The funny…

BEST OPEN WORLD 2023 Chris Livingston: I love open world games, but such a familiar formula has been established that so many of them wind up feeling predictable. Collection quests, treasure hunts, minigames, gliders for getting around… these diings aren't bad, but they've grown a bit stale. Tchia has these elements too, but puts such a fresh spin on them they feel brand new. Soul-jumping is the highlight of tlie traversal system, and means that in addition to the gliding every other game has you can also leap into a nearby bird to go from drifting to actual soaring. Tchia can fling her soul into everything from fish to deer to rocks, making each trip across the island an exercise in kinetic improv. Its minigames are wonderfully inventive and original,…

GAME OF THE YEAR 2023 BEST FIGHTING GAME 2023 Tyler Wilde: Thanks to the deeper-than-usual tutorials and practice modes, I finally understand Street Fighter basics that have eluded me for decades – I seriously never knew what people meant by ‘cross-up’ before this game. (I have not historically been very good at Street Fighter.) That alone has made Street Fighter 6 exciting for me, but I also like the goofy story mode. I made a character based on me – with slightly larger biceps, sure, and yeah, inhuman quads, but basically me – and watching my new Street Fighter self meet Chun-Li felt weirdly like actually meeting a celebrity. Better, really, since Chun-Li taught me how to fight, but the one time I met Jack White he didn't teach me how…

Lords of the Fallen‘s 2023 reboot – which I'll call Lords of the Fallen from now on for brevity's sake – is a big, heartfelt attempt to reinvent a franchise which came under heavy fire in 2014 for being one of the first Souls-like derivatives. Truth be told, Hexworks has done a damn fine job. But although it's with a heavy heart that I have to admit it, I haven't (Lords of the) fallen in love. I like Lords of the Fallen. Quite a bit, actually. It might be one of the best non-FromSoftware Souls games we've gotten so far. It oozes creativity, its bosses are inventive and cool to look at, it has a huge host of weapons and spells to muck around with, and the Umbral Lamp –…

MAX PAYNE 2001 Though Remedy can't pull Max in directly, Alex Casey is a stand-in and his story works a lot better if you're familiar with Payne as a character. ALAN WAKE 2010 Obviously the most important touchstone – AW2 follows on from the events of the first game and many key characters return. Play the DLCs too. ALAN WAKE'S AMERICAN NIGHTMARE 2012 This spin-off sets up Alan's quest to escape the Dark Place. CONTROL 2019 Make sure to play this and its Alan Wake-themed DLC – it's all set in the same universe as AW2 and there are lots of very direct connections.…

NOW PLAYING THE GAMES WE LOVE RIGHT NOW Occasionally, when you're walking around the cities of Eorzea in FFXIV you'll spot someone wearing something cool, or see posts online of the insane things people do with housing and wonder where they got it from. Unfortunately the answer is usually they crafted it. A lot of the game's coolest looking gear and items can only be made if you engage with the crafting side of the game and usually requires getting all eight crafting jobs to level 90 as a lot of the items you make feed into recipes on other jobs. It's an absolutely huge undertaking, but if you want the best stuff you've got to put the work in… or do you? I'm lazy. I want cool tilings and…

PREVIEW Nightingale NEED TO KNOW RELEASE Feb 22,2024 (Early Access) DEVELOPER Inflexion Games PUBLISHER In-house LINK playnightingale.com The bones of the survival genre are well defined. You cut a tree to get sticks. You hit a rock to get flint and stone. You open a crafting menu and turn these things into tools and weapons and a campfire. Is that a critter in the distance? Harvest its meat for food and its skin for leather. Whether it's Valheim or Ark or even Minecraft, the skeleton remains the same – instantly recognisable, like a T-rex in a museum. The question, then, is what else is going on? What meat is clinging to those bones? What skin is holding it together? Valheim has vikings, Ark has dinosaurs, and Nightingale has fae. Set…

FEATURE The history of Doom is more than just the tale of how John Romero and John Carmack came together to create a PC gaming phenomenon. The history of Doom is the history of id Software and the history of the FPS itself. From the 1993 original to 2020's Doom Eternal, each new Doom game developed by id Software has both reflected the culture of the studio at the time, and moved the needle of the FPS in some manner. Doom RELEASED 1993 DEVELOPER id Software The development of 1993's Doom is one of the most well-documented projects in the medium's history. After John Carmack discovered a way to mimic the side-scrolling effect of Super Mario Bros 3 on PC, Carmack worked with John Romero, alongside game designer Tom Hall,…

BEST SETTING 2023 Mollie Taylor: Dredge has the most immaculate vibes of any game I've played this year. By day it's a relaxing and serene fishing game, but once the sun sets it turns into an unsettling realisation of how isolated your tiny boat is on those big dark waters. Dredge plays to that polarity wonderfully, crafting a delightfully spooky world that has my usual horror-averse self desperate to dig deeper into its mysteries. That doesn't just come from the seas you sail, but also from the twisted aberrations of different fish you can find lurking around. I've never been so psyched to fill an encyclopaedia with catches that have a thousand eyes, rotting flesh and bulging boils. Sarah James: This isn't the sort of game I'd have thought would hold…

GAME OF THE YEAR 2023 BEST DESIGN 2023 Fraser Brown: There should be too much going on in Dave the Diver. You've got a restaurant to manage, fish to collect, mysteries to uncover, big ol’ sharks trying to eat you, and some roguelike elements that would normally stress me out – but this scuba adventure is, miraculously, never anything less than effortless and elegant. It has the chill vibes of a summer holiday spent on a boat, all sunny skies and Hawaiian shirts, and despite my long list ot tasks, I never feel burdened or busy. Pure joy. Robin Valentine: Really there's not much Dave the Diver does that hasn't been done before. You've farmed and fished and waited tables in videogames before, and it doesn't really iterate on any of…

GAME OF THE YEAR 2023 BEST ACTION 2023 Ted Litchfield: When I fired up Armored Core VI for the first time, I felt like Milhouse playing Bonestorm in the Simpsons, the protagonist of every ‘90s videogame ad physically blasted back into their chair by what they were playing. This is one of the best 3D action games I've ever seen, better even than FromSoft's previous dinger, Sekiro. Armored Core VI is a generous font of flow state kills piloting a ten-metre-tall mech in between the crumbling tenements of an impoverished world. It's also a surprisingly thoughtful bit of science fiction, casting you as this put-upon cog of an unthinking corporate war machine, the victim of indeterminate, life-altering augmentation surgery who slowly wakes up to their own potential to write the history…

BEST REMAKE 2023 Robert Jones: Nightdive Studios absolutely knocked it out of the park with the System Shock Remake, somehow achieving the near impossible balancing act of remaining incredibly faithful to the groundbreaking original game, which is considered the grandfather of the immersive sim genre, while also totally overhauling many of the original game's now antiquated systems. And it did this despite making the tough decision to reboot this remake totally during development, too. But it is testament to the dedication and skill of Nightdive's devs that it pulled it off and delivered a game that today has ‘Very Positive’ review scores on Steam from literally thousands and thousands of PC gamers. Ted Litchfield: I knew Looking Glass Studios’ 1994 classic by reputation alone when I dove into the System…

DOWNWIND RESIDENCE I built residences directly downwind of polluting industrial plants. Sorry folks! TAXI STAND Look at that massive crowd! One taxi stand isn't enough for the whole city? Lesson learned. SEWAGE Sewage lines don't go across bridges meaning 3,000 people couldn't flush. CAR PARK I relocated a tall parking garage… but all the cars remained floating there. Call it modern art.…

NEW GAME+ AND PHOTO MODE Not out at time of writing, but should be by the time you're reading this if all has gone well. NG+ lets you carry over weapons and upgrades, but also changes elements of the story for a new experience. NIGHT SPRINGS Planned for spring 2024, this expansion will let you play out a series of side stories starring “familiar characters”, each presented as self-contained episodes of Night Springs, the setting's Twilight Zone-esque TV show. THE LAKE HOUSE The release date for the second expansion is still TBC, but what we do know is it will involve exploring a Federal Bureau of Control facility built to study the supernatural events at Cauldron Lake.…

Guys, I had a seriously prophetic brainwave for an epic new game at 2.38am last night after eating that footlong sub radiator. With this FPS our game studio is going to go down in history! Setting Nondescript alien world is a must, guys. Like something an AI art generator has spat out when you've typed in ‘alien world, five suns, dust storm’. What's key is it should look weirdly smeary at all times. Weapons Right, what I'm about to say will probably shock a lot of you greener devs on the team, but, get this… how about we include a bland looking, weak sounding shotgun in this future Game of the Year?! I know, guys, I know, this is why I'm the top dog at the studio.  Gameplay Get this,…