PC Gamer (US Edition) Holiday 2022

One thing I love about PC gaming is the detail. Our beloved platform is the undisputed home of simulation—whether it’s modelling the complexities of an airplane cockpit, or the politics of a royal court. So how could I fail to be impressed by Sins of a Solar Empire II? Simulating everything from the orbits of moons to individual turrets on a spaceship, it’s a wonderfully intricate slice of deep-space strategy. Almost as wonderfully intricate as our in-depth cover feature on it. robin.valentine@futurenet.com ROBIN VALENTINE Twitter @robinlvalentine This month Simulated every individual finger on his hands to virtually type this sentence. TALK TO PC GAMER Have your say! Email us at letters@pcgamer.com…

One of Twitch’s most successful streamers has decided she’s just not that into it anymore. After a month-long break, Imane ‘Pokimane’ Anys announced she will stream less and will focus on posting non-gaming content on other social media platforms like Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. “I feel like other platforms fit into my lifestyle nowadays a little bit better,” she said. The 26-year-old started streaming League of Legends in 2013 and is now one of the biggest creators on Twitch, but said she’s lost her passion. “I hope it doesn’t sound big-headed of me to say, but nowadays when I see things on Twitch, it kinda feels like ‘been there, done that.’ “There’s such a pressure on streamers to follow every trend, to capitalize on viewership, to stream longer than the guy next…

HIGHS AI AI Jason Allen entered a fine arts competition with a piece of art he’d used AI to create and took first prize. World Record YouTuber DeanoBeano played Warzone using a recorder flute as a controller, and got headshots. Friendly Territory Bethesda is helping Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory fans keep the game alive by adding new servers. LOWS Have Mercy Blizzard has announced that Overwatch 1 will no longer be playable from October 2. Prey for him Raphael Colantonio, director of 2017’s Prey, says Bethesda forced the name on Arkane. NF Thanks “You could use people in the Philippines as real-life NPCs in your game,” says blockchain consultant Mikhai Kossar, apparently seriously.…

1 CUSHION PHYSICS One clip shows Jason unloading a gun into a ship’s seat, and the fluff puffing out from the bullet holes is a technical marvel. 2 RELOAD! While elements in these clips are obviously unfinished, Rockstar has clearly put a lot of work into new reload animations that do look spectacular. 3 DINER DASH! Clearly a Pulp Fiction tribute, the diner scene also shows huge fidelity to what the interiors look like. This may be the most ‘realistic’ GTA yet. 4 STARTING OUT In GTA V, the three protagonists are hardened criminals. Lucia and Jason don’t have that vibe at all: they just seem to be street punks.…

The gaming world was set abuzz on September 18 when, out of the blue, roughly an hour of footage from Grand Theft Auto VI was leaked onto the internet. There were 90 different clips in all, many only a few seconds long, showing early development footage and game testing in debug mode. There were other, longer clips showing interior locations and some character dialogue. Rockstar has confirmed the footage is genuine, was the result of a “network intrusion” by a hacker, and says the leak will not affect the game’s development schedule. Rockstar and parent company Take Two then went after everywhere that was hosting the leak, temporarily forcing the closure of the GTA forum where it had originated as well as other communities re-hosting the material. PC Gamer cannot reproduce…

In 2006, I got more headaches from The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion than I did from cramming for school exams. I played days upon days of Oblivion, but not on a PC—I was stuck on an Xbox 360, which was new and shiny but still barely capable of running Bethesda’s new RPG. Every play session more than an hour gave me a dull headache, which I blamed on simply too much Oblivion. It wasn’t until years later that I found forum threads online with people complaining about the same thing—and they blamed Oblivion’s field of view, or FOV, for giving them headaches or nausea. But game developers will tell you: finding the right FOV is not as simple as it looks. “FOV is a bit of a tricky thing,” says Sébastien…