Table of contents for Issue 308 in PC Powerplay

THE SPY Last night The Spy dreamt that The Spy went to Manderlay again. The Spy is a master of many things. Upside down kisses in the rain. Extreme tiddlywinks. Whoopee cushion placement. You name it, The Spy has an accomplishment badge sewn onto The Spy’s pants for it. The Spy is also a master of perceiving strange ripples in the PC game industry continuum. Odd, beguiling, metaphysical patterns that seem to hint at, tantalisingly, a greater force at play in the PC gaming industry than even his most holy of holies, Lord Gaben. Cthulu is a distinct possibility, of course. The Spy is well acquainted with the The Great Dreamer’s mischief. But, no. More likely… the fates, perhaps, weaving their web? The Spy saw them once, you know, Clotho,…

Courtesy of the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the talented devs behind the long-running Yakuza series, Sega is finally bringing Virtua Fighter 5 to PC, and it’s doing so in its Ultimate Showdown version, which is the latest update released in Japan and the game that is still played in Japanese arcades today. Under the stewardship of Masayoshi Yokoyama, Virtua Fighter 5 REVO arrives on PC using Ryu Ga Gotoku’s in-house Dragon Engine, which is the engine used in all Yakuza games. As a result, max resolution has been lifted to 4K, while 60fps is guaranteed. The game’s netcode for online battles has also been reworked and tested, promising to bring a “new level” of multiplayer action. When playing the game’s beta, the series’ typical speed and dynamism is very evident,…

Finally this month, shoot ’em up fans can grab an updated version of classic vertical scroller Cho Ren Sha 68K, which has not only been updated by its original creator, Koichi Yoshida, but is also 100% playable on modern Windows systems. Cho Ren Sha 68K, which translates in English to Super Rapid Fire 68K, was originally released back in 1995 on the Sharp X68000, a now legendary Japanese-exclusive PC, and soon became known as one of the system’s very best games. If you like technicolour bullet hell shmups that boast numerous power-ups and huge bosses, then Super Rapid Fire 68K is well worth grabbing. shorturl.at/12R1l…

Witchfire is one of those games that’s hard to even define without context. Its store page describes it as a ‘dark fantasy RPG shooter’, which could describe any of a dozen FPS wizard ’em ups. So let’s set the record straight, and let me explain why you shouldn’t be sleeping on this deeply compelling Early Access tribute to Destiny’s combat sandbox Now, to call Witchfire a Destiny clone would also be deeply reductive. This is a rich, meaty stew of elements and ideas borrowed from other games, put together in a way that feels familiar and comforting for lifelong FPS freaks, but also distinct. There’s a little bit of Dark Souls in there, a pinch of Bloodborne (especially in its grim gunslinging gothic fantasy setting), a little bit of Slay…

The phenomenon of cosy gaming really took off during 2020-22, but the idea of following daily routines, making connections with nature and in-game characters, or games that offer their players lower amounts of stress than Elden Ring, has been around for a lot longer. You could go back to 1996, which was a pretty good year all round, but specifically saw the launch of Harvest Moon on the SNES. Known as Farm Story in Japan, and now the first game in a series called Story of Seasons, this series of farming life-sims has expanded beyond Nintendo’s consoles to PlayStations, Xboxes and PCs. In the Seasons games, you restore an old farm, grow crops, tend livestock, meet townsfolk and maybe even marry. And if you’ve played a certain 2016 life-sim, that…

HOW WE REVIEW We review each game on its own merits, and try to match it to a reviewer who’s a passionate expert in the field. The main aim of reviews is to help you make buying decisions. To this end, we’re selective about what we review, and try to focus on the notable, interesting, exciting or surprising. DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT DLC might be new missions for a game, or it might be a single new item. If we think you want to know about it, we’ll review it. EARLY ACCESS Any released alpha, beta, or otherwise unfinished game that you can currently pay for. For these games, we won’t assign a score, but we will tell you whether they’re worth your time. THEY'RE BACK Whenever there’s a bargain or re-release…

In 2007, a game called Peggle was released. In 2008, the world suffered a global economic crisis. To this day I refuse to believe these two facts were unrelated. Peggle was as allconsumingly moreish as it was simple – it was essentially just a pachinko machine, where you fired a ball into a screen full of ‘pegs’. The only agency you had was the direction you fired the ball in. After that, all you could do is sit back and watch, making it almost entirely luck-based. Once you finally accepted that, the spell would hopefully break, and you could finally uninstall the bloody thing. But now developer newobject has come up with Ballionaire, a twist on pachinko that adds roguelike deckbuilding elements. Essentially Peggle has gone to college, smartened up…

TREASURE HUNTING Why gamble in the sea when you can gamble in the soil? Whip out the metal detector instead. LOTTO SCRATCHERS As a gacha gaming sicko, Webfishing’s lotto tickets have become my sole reason for fishing. FLOOR ARTISTRY I can’t draw to save my life, but the chalk lets people cook up some floor doodles, mandatory phallic drawings included. MUSICAL PERFORMANCES Grab a guitar or tambourine and soundtrack everyone else’s fishing. Strum out some tunes.…

HAWKEYE With a one-shot headshot alongside a two-shot body shot for strategists and duelists this hero can be deadly. JEFF I love Jeff the Land Shark, but his ultimate is so powerful. With the right timing, you can get a team wipe. MOON KNIGHT Siphoning damage from Moon Knight onto enemy players with any aiming required can be tough to beat. IRON FIST Giving a melee fighter autosnap is a recipe for chaos. I enjoy Iron Fist, but the lock on it is too strong right now. SCARLET WITCH This hero has an auto-lock ability for her primary fire. The only problem is that the reach of this can be pretty ridiculous. LUNA SNOW One of the best strategists, her healing output, speed and ability to damage boost makes her…

ROBERT JONES THIS MONTH Punched Blackshirts, whipped lemons. ALSO PLAYED STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora The cat I’ve been looking for is tantalisingly close. I’ve been on its trail for ages and, if I can only go eyes-on with it, then I’m going to really take Indy’s adventure to the next level. No, I’m not talking about the main plot MacGuffin that kickstarts a globe-trotting romp in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, one where he needs to track down a stolen cat mummy, but instead the cutesy side-quest in the game’s Vatican hub world where you need to find and photograph cats. Yes, Indy has 100 percent got his priorities straight here. I know the cat is close as I can hear its plaintive meowing,…

After thousands of hours spent in combat with orcs, androids and enemy militants, it’s become harder to find novelty in videogame violence. While Steam overflows with trucks, farms and city builders for when I’ve grown battle-weary, violence remains the mode of interaction, even in triple-A RPGs that tout player freedom. Fallout co-creator Tim Cain says that’s not going to change as long as we all keep buying it. In a YouTube video that went public on New Year’s Day, Cain responded to a viewer who asked whether he thinks we’ll ever see triple-A RPGs move beyond violence as the default way for players to interact with the world. Cain’s answer was simple: big-budget RPGs will centre combat as long as combat sells. “Companies make games – and in general, products…

TIMETABLE A regular heartbeat to the game, like getting to bed or a shop opening, gives it a comforting rhythm. GROWING Plant seeds, raise animals, watch them grow over time and harvest their products, then craft from them. GATHERING Explore the world, see what’s laying around. Take it home. Don’t worry about stealing, more will spawn tomorrow. COMBAT Optional, but this videogame staple has a place in cosy games. Can speed up gathering, or just make you feel good. FRIENDSHIP Give NPCs gifts, and watch the number of hearts go up. Friends will give you extra dialogue, options, and even marry you.…

PC PowerPlay has the very best editorial team in gaming journalism, with many of the very finest industry writers on our staff. However, despite this, there have simply been so many top games released on PC over the last year that we’ve not managed to cover all of them at launch. If anything, this shows the PC gaming industry’s remarkable ability to keep on producing fantastic new experiences even when, at the big-business end at least, many studios are being shuttered. As such, while we’ve got some notable new games reviewed this issue, we’ve also got a selection of older games that, due to their quality, we felt we needed to go back and do make-up reviews for. These are games worthy of our attention too, as their high scores…

MARSH TAUR The marsh taur uses a freezing ray to keep enemies in place. Downside: you do need two pairs of boots. Boo. BZZZT A bug with the power to generate their own electricity and an affinity for tech. Downside: honestly kind of gross. PRAETORIAN PRIME A true-human guardian from an icy arcology. Always on watch thanks to built-in night vision. FIRST GARDENER From the jungles comes a master of stalking the underbrush for tasty treats – makes use of the buffs you get.…

I played Mouthwashing entirely in one sitting and had to lie down for a while afterward to recover. I felt vile, unsettled at what I’d seen over the previous three hours. Mouthwashing is about as classic a walking simulator as you can get mechanically, and while its stabs at more intensive gameplay fall a little flat for me, its narrative, vision, and atmosphere make it one of this winter’s standouts, a people’s champion of indie horror for very good reason. The game begins with you playing as Captain Curly of the long haul delivery space ship Tulpar, purposefully setting the vessel on a collision course with an asteroid. After crash landing, the ship is compromised while Curly is horrifically maimed and burned in the crash, leaving him unable to speak…

Six months. That’s how long poor Red Candle Games spent trying to come up with a combat move for its debut Metroidvania that was as unique as Hollow Knight’s downward slash. Personally, I would have given up after six minutes. Thankfully, the developer was made of more disciplined stuff, and its efforts have paid off magnificently. Because I think Nine Sols’ swordplay has every Soulslike of recent times beat (yes, even the one about the shadowy tree). You play as Yi, a feline samurai who looks cute, but is actually as shadily motivated and untrustworthy as my actual cat. After taking a seemingly fatal tumble off a cliff, Yi cashes in one of his nine lives and recovers in a village full of actual humans. But when the village engages…

If the decades-old Shiren the Wanderer series is famous for anything it’s for being shockingly unforgiving, and The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island is no exception to that intimidating rule. Life-saving equipment might not appear at all, and traps could be hiding under any and every inch of the floor. Anyone who falls under these harsh conditions loses everything they were carrying and has to start the randomised dungeon crawl all over again. The odd thing is it doesn’t feel that merciless in practice. The first few floors are so keen on getting even complete newcomers up to speed the tutorials don’t just cover simple concepts like attacking and diagonal movement, they even go so far as to explain what the heck a ‘mystery dungeon’ is anyway. Seasoned spelunkers will…

Following on from LCD, Please – Lucas Pope’s painstakingly authentic LCD demake of his game Papers, Please – comes a brand new game from Pope that offers more morally straightforward fun. Moida Mansion is a game about exploring a mansion and trying to rescue your friends while a monster stalks you. My main thought while playing was quite how much I would have enjoyed this, if it had existed as a real LCD game. I played a few back in the day and none were as charming, inventive, or so enjoyable to play as this modern throwback. After entering a randomly generated mansion, you’re tasked with looking out for clues and searching every room until you find your friends, while a monster shows up like clockwork to hassle you. When…

FORMULA ONE GRAND PRIX, 1991 The height of racing simulation in the DOS era, and it felt properly magical with a joystick. DESCENT, 1995 An FPS played from inside a spaceship. There are no other peripherals on the planet that can do that experience justice. IL-2 STURMOVIK, 2001 A legendary flight sim that equally legendary PCPP alumnus Tim Stone mentioned in every article for at least a decade. ELITE DANGEROUS, 2014 Docking your ship in Frontier’s 1:1 scale virtual Milky Way is, surprisingly, one of life’s great joys.…

JODY MACGREGOR THIS MONTH Sent someone to their death and loved it. ALSO PLAYED Arctic Eggs, BallisticNG The YouTube algorithm keeps threatening me with videos about how the new Dragon Age is a crime against gamers. I haven’t watched any of them, but my recommendations still overflow. However, I’ve enjoyed most of my time with the game. Not all of it, of course. Like too many BioWare RPGs, Veilguard frontloads its worst companions. This time the Carth Onasi you suffer before you’re allowed to hang out with the cool kids is Neve, a detective whose schtick is being Sherlock Holmes without deductive grandstanding, drug addiction, or the ability to put emphasis on words. It didn’t take long before I met more memorable companions, though – a Grey Warden griffin dad,…

The pinnacle of fun in The Sims when I was a child was building a monstrosity of mansion that took up an entire suburban lot and running out of ideas for what kinds of rooms to put in them. Mansions have rooms entirely dedicated to a single grand piano, right? Nowadays in The Sims 4, my ambitions are significantly smaller, but no less of a challenge. Building tiny homes is now my favourite pastime in The Sims 4. The Tiny Living stuff pack for the Sims 4 first launched in 2020 and though the pack itself was small – with only 36 Build Mode objects and 32 new Create-A-Sim items – it had a huge impact. It formalised and popularised a niche way to build by giving bonuses for attempting…

HIGHS Critical hit Larian’s Swen Vincke called out the game industry and told it to start putting devs and players first. Power through Underselling indie game Endlight is putting out 20 seasons of content. Royal flush Balatro has absorbed eight new crossovers in its quest to turn all videogames into playing cards. Busted flush PEGI won’t budge on Balatro’s 18+ rating, despite games with actual gambling getting lower age limits. Belongs in a museum Did you get a free Indiana Jones key from Humble? No you didn’t: the storefront revoked them all even if you already redeemed yours. Where there's smoke… Banned CoD players are in uproar about its new bong gun. Hmm. LOWS…

XVI-BIT GLORY Final Fantasy VI’s character sprites had one consistent size, separating them visually from past Square RPGs. FINAL FANTASY 3D Final Fantasy VII introduced CG cutscenes, which helped players form closer connections to the characters. FINAL FANTASY, NOW IN HD The shift to high definition meant even more detailed cutscenes and characters – Lightning’s design is beautiful. FINAL FANTASY, NOW EVEN MORE HD Square Enix clearly spent considerable time on Final Fantasy XVI’s visuals.…

Having seen one game starring a fox only last month (Spirit of the North 2) along comes another: This Dead Winter features a fluffy red specimen whose home, where a few remaining animals are hidden in a deep valley, is gripped by an enduring winter and whose cub mysteriously disappears. A third-person adventure, the fox explores the ruined landscape and learns to make use of all the switches, mechanisms and secret knowledge humans have left behind to make her way through areas that aren’t as dead as you may believe. SPIRIT IN THE SKY There’s much more than human artefacts and the mixture of high-technology and stone castle walls they’ve gifted to the world’s new masters to interact with, however. This world is filled with spirits, from giant fish that…

TINY BOOKSHOP A management game that taps into the dream we’ve all had of packing it all in and opening a bookshop by the sea. OUT AND ABOUT A foraging adventure that incorporates cosy game staples such as cooking, crafting, and harmony with nature. KITORI ACADEMY Wizard’s apprentice life-sim with a school timetable to provide that all-important cosy game structure. Also talking frogs. HAUNTED CHOCOLATIER Little is known, except it looks a lot like Stardew Valley in style and will be very cosy.…

JON BOLDING Specialist in Whimsical distractions Currently playing Caves of Qud This month Fought horrors from the darkest corners of the cosmos. We call them console gamers. ELIE GOULD Specialist in Wearing spandex Currently playing Marvel Rivals This month Decided to go to Edna Mode for a new superhero costume. There were… no capes! JOSH WOLLENS Specialist in Rob Zombie’s beard Currently playing Hall of Torment This month Torched his many enemies with a giant flamethrower. Oh, and in Halls of Torment he… TED LITCHFIELD Specialist in Comeuppance Currently playing Mouthwashing This month Ran around PCPP Towers brushing people’s teeth. We’ve told him about that. MATT ELLIOTT Specialist in Elementary deductions Currently playing Sherlock Holmes This month Worked out that, yes, console gamers are in fact 67% less attractive than PC gamers. Fact.…

SPRAY-A-BRAIN An item to turn an inanimate object into a new friend. Tables, doors, you name it. EVIL TWIN You can kill the evil twin, cut off its face, and wear that on your own face for a bonus. Yes! MUMBLE MOUTH A fungal infection that whispers secrets of the universe to you. Definitely worth it. PHASE OUT Move your matter to the next dimension over. Be sure not to come back inside a solid object. PSYCHIC GLIMMER Sufficiently powerful psychics attract extradimensional assassins. Uh-oh. HOOKAH You can smoke mint waterpipe with a camel-man like it’s the 1990s all over again. Dude!…

The constant search for nostalgia often ends in disappointment, but Webfishing is different. It’s managed to capture things I loved so dearly about the bizarre social chatroom games of the 2000s – Habbo Hotel, IMVU, Gaia Online – while cultivating the kind of community I never really found in those older romps. Mere minutes into booting up Webfishing, and I knew I was stumbling into something special. It’s crunchy-looking in all the right ways, sporting a pixelated, lowpolygon art style reminiscent of earlier Animal Crossing games. But instead of being the sole human isekai’d into an animal world, I get to be the critter. I can choose from a cat or a sort of wolf-dog hybrid – I go for a cat, of course – before either jumping into an…

"Oh Dicky, this is all so ugly," Carmen replied when I questioned her about Rusty's death. "Oh Rusty, he was such a sweetie. I saw him leave the tavern on his own, but… I should've been there for him, when instead I was just being selfish and looking out for my own happiness!" When I asked Carmen what she meant, the dame clammed up, but said Brody would explain everything. I caught up with Brody as he sat with Vivienne. They seemed close and, as Vivienne turned to a call from Eddie who was fixing them all another round of drinks, I swore his gaze lingered upon her for just a beat too long. Brody sure could've lifted Rusty into that barrel, but he said he'd been with Carmen at…