PC Gamer June 2021

There’s something wonderful to me about an idea as ridiculous as ‘what if orcs played American football?’ enduring for 35 years and counting. Not just enduring, in fact – thriving, with a new edition on the tabletop and a new videogame adaptation heading to our PCs this year. Of course, you need more than a sublimely silly premise to make a good strategy game, which is why we’ve gone behind the scenes of Blood Bowl 3 to properly test its turn-based chops, grill the developers, and even chat to the guys at Games Workshop about their endearingly bizarre creation.…

JODY MACGREGOR Twitter @jodymacgregor This month Said a lot of unprintable things about a set of virtual dice while checking out Blood Bowl 3. WES FENLON Twitter @wesleyfenlon This month Investigated why Metallica’s new stuff sounds like a Legend of Zeldasoundtrack. ANDY KELLY Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Got through an entire preview of the Gollum game without making a ‘my precious’ joke. TYLER WILDE Twitter @tyler_wilde This month Learned to hate certain specific medieval weapons of war in Chivalry 2.…

The major digital storefronts have faced reckonings in recent years, and haven’t always come out of them smelling like roses. This is partly because they have kicked certain decisions into the long grass, but are now being forced to come down one way or another. The other side, sadly, comes down to political pressure to de-list games that certain regimes, in this case the Chinese communist party, don’t like. Recent months have seen some of these issues come to a head when Valve, notoriously reluctant to intervene in the content available on Steam, refused to sell a game called Super Seducer 3. SS3 is a full-motion video offering that uses multiple-choice dialogue for the player to go through dates with women. “STEAM DOES NOT SHIP SEXUALLY EXPLICIT IMAGES OF REAL PEOPLE” These are,…

HIGHS Accept Cookies Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida showed off his lalafell black mage in a seven-hour Twitch stream while baking coffee cookies. Total domination The Total War series has sold over 36 million copies. Prepare for Titanfall Respawn has announced it will be bringingTitanfallcontent intoApex Legends, beginning with season 9. LOWS Sub standard Blizzard’s changed how it sells WoW game time, so players can no longer just pay for 30 days up-front: it has to be a minimum of 60. Among duds The long-awaited Airship map arrived for Among Us and… it’s not great. The huge space makes it trivial for imposters to win. Cyberfunk Cyberpunk 2077’s latest patch fixes 484 issues – and it’s still buggy.…

The Spy is outraged! Incensed! Scandalised! Other synonyms! Having just returned from the dead drop that receives The Spy’s subscription of PC Gamer, The Spy was horrified to learn of the existence of a game that glorifies supervillains and the secret bases they’re so inexplicably conditioned to build. The Spy was further appalled to note that this so-called Evil Genius 2 received a 75% score – a recommendation of all things! After everything The Spy has done for this publication, they go and praise an enemy profession. The nerve! Clearly payback is deserved, and so The Spy will now release the secrets of the PC Gamer staff – real salacious stuff that is guaranteed to sully the name of this magazine’s creators. First, though, The Spy needs to impart some videogame…

1 Tom Francis’ Mass Effect 3 cover feature leads a bounty of exciting previews. Elsewhere there’s a hands-off report from a little game called Skyrim, and some fresh info on the irresistibly exciting Prey 2. Alas, one of these games would never make it to release, while the other has been released multiple times across multiple platforms and versions. 2 Portal 2 heads up our review section. “Valve’s platform puzzler sequel makes you feel like the dumbest genius ever,” writes Dan Stapleton. 3 Craig Pearson predicts the future of indie gaming by rounding up some of the most exciting upcoming ideas from small PC creators. Some – Frozen Synapse and Nidhogg – were absolute classics. Others – Monaco and Confetti Carnival – didn’t make much of a splash. One – Spy Party…