PC Gamer (US Edition) May 2022

As soon as we got a Steam Deck in the office, it was all we could talk about. It was immediately obvious we were in possession of something special. Will it change the face of PC gaming? That’s hard to predict. But what we can certainly say is that Valve has created a fascinating piece of hardware—and we couldn’t wait to share our experiences with it with you. Our huge feature was even partly written on the Steam Deck itself. How’s that for really committing to a story? robin.valentine@futurenet.com TALK TO PCGAMER Have your say! Email us at letters@pcgamer.com…

Before 2022 had even really began, Microsoft shocked the games industry by announcing it would acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. The scale of the buyout is staggering, and will give Microsoft control of some of the biggest game series around, including Call of Duty and Overwatch, and overnight make it the third-largest game company in the world by revenue. It’s not a done deal, and the US Federal Trade Commission will be investigating, but the general consensus among business and legal specialists is that it will go through. Microsoft has said that it expects to complete the takeover by July 2023. The deal raised questions about Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who has recently faced strong criticism accusing the company of ignoring or mishandling allegations of workplace harassment. There have been…

HIGHS Announcement storm Blizzard’s announced two new ‘unannounced’ projects (don’t ask). ARM & a leg Nvidia is no longer buying Arm from SoftBank, following resistance to its proposed $40 billion takeover. Resi 4 HD HD A Resident Evil 4 HD fan mod that was eight years in the making has finally been released. Hero to Zero Guitar Hero record-setter Schmooey admitted he’s a fake following heroic internet detective work. MineScam One of the latest NFT rug-pulls involved Blockverse. It raised over $1 million: Then disappeared… Battlefailed 2042 EA is down on Battlefield 2042 and developer DICE has gone into salvage mode on a game that feels like it didn’t launch in a good state. LOWS…

Once or twice a decade we get one of my favorite treats: a new game engine tech demo. These are not actual games. They’re better: They’re promises of what games could be, pure spectacle showcases for the majesty of a million more polygons on screen and bumpy tessellated surfaces and lifelike ray-traced lighting. Tech demos are raw power and unhinged artistry mashed together, gleefully disregarding pesky problems like ‘writing’ and ‘design’ that have to go into proper videogames. Maybe the best of them was 2011’s Unreal Engine 3 Samaritan demo, a three minute slice of gritty sci-fi (still more evocative today than playing Cyberpunk 2077 in 2021 turned out to be). In 2005 Square Enix created a tech demo of Final Fantasy VII for the PlayStation 3 that ended up haunting…

One of the tensions throughout my career is that the stuff I want to be making is on the edges of commercial viability,” says Johnnemann Nordhagen. “They’re the sort of thing that, if you get the right niche interested in them, they may pay for themselves—but they’re never going to make a billion dollars.” It’s not as lonely a position as you might think. Nordhagen spent a formative part of his career at Bioshock 2 developer 2K Marin, surrounded by people who loved immersive sims like Thief and Deus Ex. The genre has always teetered on the boundary of commercial viability—requiring big budgets, but rarely getting large audiences. At times, it’s seen as indulgent—more for game designers than players. “Most people were there because they were excited about games being something more…

THE GETAWAY IS THAT RARE GAME ENHANCED BY ITS PRODUCT PLACEMENT Look at the paper map of London folded into the front of The Getaway’s DVD box, and you’ll be struck by two things. First, just how incredibly faithful it is. And second, the uneven street density. Where most of the city is a condensed network of main roads that take you round the back of Buckhingham Palace and across Hyde Park, that changes as you cruise through Covent Garden into Soho—the game world becoming a close crosshatch of squares and side streets. It’s the natural focus of a team that lived and worked in the area—Team Soho, as they were then. The same core staff that would end up founding Team Bondi, and making LA Noire. The Getaway has a lot…