PC Gamer (US Edition) September 2022

“OUR HANDS-ON REVEALS A VERY SURPRISING BEAST” There’s probably no phrase more likely to get the PC Gamer office all a-flutter than “The creators of XCOM: Enemy Unknown are working on…”. We’ve been champing at the bit to do a deep dive on the team’s upcoming Marvel game, Midnight Suns. Now, we have that feature for you. Our hands-on reveals a very surprising beast—with the strategy smarts of XCOM, but equally influenced by BioWare RPGs, Slay the Spire, and… billiards? It’s bold, experimental, and unlike anything Firaxis have made before. robin.valentine@futurenet.com ROBIN VALENTINE Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Put a bunch of Biros between his knuckles and said “Snikt!” to anyone who would listen. TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Email us at letters@pcgamer.com…

TYLER WILDE Twitter @tyler_wilde This month Went on an actual trip to play a videogame in person! Honestly I don’t think it’ll catch on. LAUREN AITKEN Twitter @L_Aitken This month Kept talking about the new Disney game, no matter how many times we asked her to let it go… FRASER BROWN Twitter @FraserIBrown This month Checked in on the new Saints Row, to make sure it hasn’t suddenly gone dark and gritty. TED LITCHFIELD Twitter @DORFpatrol This month Stepped into the shoes of The Lord of the Rings’ Gollum. Or, er, lack of shoes I guess.…

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was a major escalation in a conflict that has been ongoing since 2014. It is the most significant geopolitical event of the year, has created a refugee crisis, and led to unprecedented global sanctions against the Russian state. The war has impacted the game development scene too, with the wider industry taking a clear pro-Ukraine stance. The biggest commitment was made by Epic Games which, shortly after the war began, announced it would donate two weeks’ worth of Fortnite profits after launching a new season: this raised an astonishing $144 million USD for humanitarian relief organizations. MAKING THE MOVE Within Ukraine itself, the impact has been most visible with the high-profile studios. STALKER 2 developer GSC Game World was based in the capital city Kyiv,…

HIGHS PCStation Marvel’s Spider-Man will be out on PC by the end of 2022. Onecraft Minecraft developer Mojang has now made it so anyone with the game has the Java and Bedrock editions. PvP god Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida apologized for PvP balance changes that made black mage—his main class—overpowered. LOWS Mon dieu! The French ministry of culture has issued long French replacements for English words like ‘streamer’. Abandoned abandoned? A game by Blue Box Studios that some speculated was a new Silent Hill appears to be in disarray. Admin error Han Bing, a database administrator for Lianjia, wiped the company’s servers in anger they’d ignored his security warnings.…

Nobody asked for the ability to wear the faces of xQc, HasanAbi, and Nicolas Cage as VTuber models, but now you can, thanks to streamer and VTuber creator Fofamit. Each model stretches and deforms along with your facial movements like your face is made out of Play-Doh. All you need is a camera or an iPhone and a facial capture app to replicate the horror. Fofamit has made several cursed models, but the most popular of them is her haunted xQc mask. She made it in response to his and other streamer’s controversial misuse of the VTuber Twitch tag recently. Snuffy, one of Twitch’s most popular VTubers, put on her best xQc impression and Fofamit’s nightmarish version of his face and streamed with it. For an entire hour, Snuffy, as budget xQc,…

Oskar Stålberg joined UsTwo Games for two reasons. Firstly, the pay was better than he could get at Ubisoft. And secondly, like 26 million others with a mobile phone, he’d been wowed by Monument Valley—the mesmeric, Escher-like puzzle game about manipulating miniature dioramas. As it turned out, however, Monument Valley was the business of UsTwo’s London office. Working in Malmö, Stålberg was stuck instead with a Play-Doh project—not the kind of snowglobe worldbuilding he’d hoped for. Since going indie, Stålberg has made up for lost time—making a name for himself as a developer of exquisite, shrunken worlds. “I’ve always been fascinated by those kinds of things,” he says. “I’ve always liked looking at maps.” Since Google Earth came out 20 years ago, Stålberg has spent many happy hours flying around its facsimile…