PC Gamer (US Edition) March 2022

ROBIN VALENTINE Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Had his annual brush with insanity courtesy of the Christmas short deadline. Apologies for any weirdness within. The thing that wowed me when I first played Dark Souls wasn’t the brutal combat, mysterious story, or bleak aesthetic. It was the level design—the way its areas layered one upon another, constantly reinforcing how all the pieces fit together. So I’m fascinated to see how FromSoftware bring those sensibilities to a vast open world for Elden Ring. Even in our hands-on time so far, we’ve seen a setting of wonderfully ambitious scale—and in our cover feature, we’ve delved into every corner we can. TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Email us at letters@pcgamer.com…

JACOB RIDLEY Twitter @RidleyJG This month Spent more time with the new Intel CPU than is healthy. Can love bloom, even on a motherboard? HARRY SHEPHERD Twitter @HarryyShepherd This month Learned the importance of eating well and getting enough sleep. Only in Skyrim, however. CHRIS LIVINGSTON Twitter @screencuisine This month Found a way to bring his love of fishing in games to Crusader Kings 3. JODY MACGREGOR Twitter @jodymacgregor This month Looked back on 2021, in order to complain about too many RPGs looking back even further.…

After years of struggling to combat hacks and DDoS attacks that at times have rendered Titanfall unplayable, Respawn Entertainment has decided it’s time to throw in the towel. The studio said in a statement that it has stopped all sales of the game, and will remove it from subscription services on March 1, 2022. The decision to end Titanfall sales follows a back-and-forth battle with hackers that dates to 2019, resulting in a ‘mostly negative’ user review rating for the game on Steam. Players sometimes overstate a given game’s ‘hacker’ problem, but in this case it was absolutely endemic. There were flashes of hope earlier this year—Respawn told players that “help is coming” in April—but by mid-May the situation was as bad as ever, and in mid-July Respawn community coordinator Jason…

HIGHS Riot act A League of Legends rhythm game and an RPG surprise-launched on the same day. Pass it on Xbox Game Pass on PC has hidden games, including Crysis. Nintendo bashes Bowser (again) 52 year-old Doug Bowser, has pled guilty to piracy-related charge, but now has a new civil suit against him. War never changes Battlefield 2042 launched into a wave of community negativity—though it isn’t unusual for the series. The Matrix Sleeps Epic’s been working on The Matrix Awakens and… it’s only on consoles. Old problems New World has had a slightly torrid time of it recently with duping glitches. Now, it’s battling an invasion of bots. LOWS…

INSPIRATIONS AND CONNECTIONS IN GAMES If you’re yet to start Far Cry 6, I have a recommendation for you. Once you’re on the far side of its tutorial—and find yourself sitting between the pincers of a vast, curved Caribbean island named Yara—head straight east to El Este. There, the farms harbor teenage terrorists, and the mountain has become an old people’s home for former revolutionaries. It’s the perfect staging ground for inter-generational conversation and conflict. A place where the elderly have plenty to teach, but are too tired to pass it on—and the young have righteous anger, but no desire to listen. As protagonist Dani, your job is to bridge the generational gap, connecting student killers with the jaded veterans. It’s a process that’s clumsy and often funny—a relatable tragicomedy for anyone…

LINEAGES EXPLORED THE WITCHER TOOK FIVE YEARS AND MORE FUNDING THAN THE BUSINESS STRICTLY HAD TO FINISH CD Projekt Red is a phenomenon that could only have occurred in Poland—and only, really, in the ’90s. It’s a time that explains more than the studio’s ludicrously anachronistic title. This was not just the golden age of the CD-ROM, but the golden age of piracy, too—at least in the former Eastern Bloc. Under communist rule, without legitimate access to Western retailers or any copyright law to speak of, Polish PC gaming culture grew in the street markets, where games were sold for $3 a pop—according to the excellent reporting of Eurogamer’s resident Witcher scholar, Robert Purchese. As the iron curtain lifted, local companies—including a pair of skinny young hopefuls named Marcin Iwi ski and Micha?…