PC Gamer

Something special has happened with Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, something genuinely game changing. For a gloomy, shadowy first person shooter to be making lots of noise about improved lighting seems counter-intuitive on the surface, after all that’s what the ubiquitous FPS flashlight is for, right? But, while the new ray-traced system does bring light to the darkness, the extra level of fidelity it affords actually makes the most cramped tunnels of the metro, or the underground bunkers of the Volga, even more terrifying. You actually get to see what’s lying in wait for you in all-too-real glory, and the exquisite,…

A film director has claimed Capcom used one of his creature designs for a monster in Resident Evil Village. Richard Raaphorst, who directed the 2013 found-footage horror flick Frankenstein’s Army, shared some comparison images on his LinkedIn page between the monster from his movie and the one from Village. The creature, which looks a bit like a Big Daddy with a desk fan glued to his face, is seen standing in a similarly derelict building in the first image. The second image shows both the movie and game version of the creature on fire. “In 2013 I directed my film…

Just a few months ago, Sennheiser announced it was looking for somebody to buy its Consumer product business—including its popular audiophile-grade headphones. It didn’t take long for it to find one, either, as the company has announced that Sonova, a Swiss hearing aid company, will take over the reins later this year. The €200 million ($243m) deal will earn Sonova ownership of the Sennheiser brand and product lineup, subject to a successful transfer by the end of 2021. Sennheiser will use this opportunity to focus primarily on its pro lineup. It’s unlikely you’ll see a Sonova HD 800 S replacing…

On an average day, about a dozen new games are released on Steam. And while we think that’s a good thing, it can be understandably hard to keep up with. Potentially exciting gems are sure to be lost in the deluge of new things to play unless you sort through every single game that is released on Steam. So that’s exactly what we’ve done. If nothing catches your fancy this week, we’ve gathered the best PC games you can play right now and a running list of the 2021 games that are launching this year.  PapeturaSteam‌ ‌page‌ ‌ Release:‌ May 7 Developer:‌ Petums Launch price:‌ $10.79…

Head over to NexusMods and you’ll find mods for each game in the Mass Effect trilogy. Over a thousand of them, with some of the most popular the graphical overhauls A Lot of Textures and A Lot of Videos. BioWare is aware of these mods, and while working on Mass Effect Legendary Edition, used them as a benchmark.  “We actually early on looked at some of those,” project director Mac Walters told me, “and said, ‘OK, well, this is our minimum bar and from here we have to then go bigger, right?’ Obviously they have limited access as a modder…

Wizards of the Coast has revealed some cards from the upcoming Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons crossover card set, Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. The sprawling set was announced last year, the first time D&D has come into Magic—though not the other way around. Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, or AfR, comes in July, arriving in Magic: The Gathering Arena on July 8th.  The set is quite big, including the new set  boosters and collector boosters, themed boosters for each color and a bonus unannounced type of themed booster, and four new Commander format decks. The set’s key…

Now that Resident Evil 3 has been in the wild for a few days there are a few meek, tentative attempts at modding the game. Changing weapon skins. Reshades. There are also absolutely unhinged jokes. I am here for the latter. So are you. First, let us continue the grand tradition of putting Thomas the Tank Engine into every video game there is with a reminder that the Count Theodora mod exists. (Image credit: Capcom)It is glorious. How about this one? A modder discovered that the model for the baby is compatible with, and rigged for, other kinds of skins….

The Independent Games Festival Competition has announced the nominees for all categories in its 2021 awards. This year’s nominees for the Big Shiny known as the Seumas McNally Grand Prize—a prize that in previous years has gone to games like A Night in the Woods, Papers, Please, and Minecraft—are surrealist immortal detective adventure Paradise Killer, destruction sandbox Teardown, color-themed puzzle-platformer Chicory: A Colorful Tale, jazzy cosmic adventure Genesis Noir, ferrymaster afterlife sim Spiritfarer, and Umurangi Generation, a photo safari set in the “shitty future”. Genesis Noir, a game that dares to ask “what if the Big Bang was more like…

It may be a shame that Lady Dimitrescu doesn’t have more screentime in Resident Evil Village, but the internet is here to make up for it. Everyone’s favorite vampire giantess has been a hit with cosplayers, and though her 9’6″ frame isn’t exactly easy to replicate they’ve outdone themselves anyway. Image 1 of 6 (Image credit: Ekaterina Lisina)Image 2 of 6 (Image credit: AllieCat Cosplay)Image 3 of 6 (Image credit: Lindsay Elyse)Image 4 of 6 (Image credit: Nana Berry)Image 5 of 6 (Image credit: Yaya Han)Image 6 of 6 (Image credit: Galina Zhukovskaya)Former Olympic basketballer and model Ekaterina Lisina had…

“The future of adult entertainment is photo-realistic adult stars in virtual reality” according to the developer of Holodexxx, which takes scanned 3D models based on adult film stars “and brings them to life using the latest in chatbot technology.” As Holodexxx’s developer explained in a recent blog post, after being rejected three times over the last year they have given up on trying to sell their vision of the “future of adult entertainment” on Steam. First, Holodexxx submitted a nudity-free “PG-13 experience” in which a virtual model of actor Riley Reid “performs a sensual dance” while a video of other…

The new character coming to fighting game Skullgirls this year is Umbrella, a little girl in a raincoat who wields as a weapon a living umbrella-like lovecraftian horror that eats people. Umbrella is the second new character for Skullgirls this year after Annie, who released in beta form in March.  Both Umbrella and Annie are part of the Skullgirls season pass, a first for the long-running fighting game. Umbrella’s weapon’s name is Hungern, and apparently it eats ice cream and also people. It’s not just lore, either, and Umbrella’s fighting style will revolve around how full or hungry Hungern is….

Looks like Rambo isn’t the only 80s movie hero heading for Call of Duty: Warzone. A tweet from the official Call of Duty account makes it look like John McClane, the wisecracking protagonist of the Die Hard movies played by Bruce Willis, is on his way to Verdansk. Air ducts are a complicated network of danger. If yours are in need of repair, call the best in the business at Nakatomi Duct Cleaning. Learn more here: https://t.co/0PN0f3HliO pic.twitter.com/4vJEdiQ7OKMay 8, 2021 See moreThe tweet advertises an air duct cleaning service owned by the Nakatomi corporation, the company that owned the skyscraper…

No one will blame you for thinking Resident Evil Village was a game starring Lady Dimitrescu, a centuries old vampiric mistress looming over us all at over nine feet tall. From her first reveal she was embraced, perhaps unexpectedly for Capcom, by the horny confused masses.  Within days, fanart flooded social media, very good and fun ‘How tall is Lady D?’ videos popped up on good and fun websites about PC gaming—Resident Evil Village was suddenly thrust into the mainstream, both longtime fans of Resident Evil and the oblivious falling in love at first height.  But, Resident Evil Village is…

When videogame sidekicks rub people the wrong way, they really rub them the wrong way. Maybe they’re a bit clingy, maybe they get in the way during fights, maybe they aren’t as sexy as the characters everyone else likes. Maybe they have the misfortune to be literally any sidekick from a Resident Evil game. But you’re moved to stick up for at least one of them, dammit. One of the characters who falls outside the top 20 on our list ranking the Mass Effect companions, for instance. If only the world could see it from your point of view! Well, now they…

From 2010 to 2014 Richard Cobbett wrote Crapshoot, a column about rolling the dice to bring random obscure games back into the light. This week, crime meets punishment, only to end up in a head-on collision with the prison whose only regular break is with reality. Hard Time is the only game I’ve ever played whose character creation screen lets you choose to be a child abuser, a terrorist, or a rapist. You don’t have to be, of course. You can simply be a drug abuser, a vandal, or in trouble for prostitution—though Hard Time doesn’t specify what part of…

The Epic v Apple trial keeps delivering interesting information, particularly about deals and spending related to the Epic Games Store. We’ve learned, for example, that in 2019 and 2020 Epic promised about $1 billion in advances for exclusives, including $115 million for Borderlands 3. A new trial exhibit—which was apparently released accidentally—shows that Epic offered Sony a $200 million advance to get first-party PlayStation games on the Epic Games Store exclusively. We don’t know what kind of deal Epic and Sony may have arrived at, as the document in question was made before any handshake. It says that Epic offered…

Two weeks ago, shortly before the beginning of the lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple, Epic added the Itch.io app to its store. As we noted at the time, it was a head-scratcher: Itch.io is a competing storefront, for one thing, and why would anyone want to go through one storefront to buy games on a different storefront? Under the circumstances, though, it made some cynical sense as a demonstration of Epic’s willingness to embrace competition and share space with other sellers. It also led to an interesting twist during the trial today, as Apple’s lawyers went after Epic for…

I stop paying attention to Fortnite for half a second and it apparently starts turning into a 1930s-style cartoon? In the short cartoon above, perfectly titled Toona Trouble, Fortnite’s resident ripped cat cop Meowscles has been transformed into a Felix the Cat or Steamboat Willy homage. It’s a fun little short, but of course, this being Fortnite, Toon Meowscles is also a skin you can buy right now and use in-game. This is cool, right? Everybody loves Cuphead, but this era of animation is still underused in games. I especially like that Toon Meowscles is a black-and-white cat living in…

Lost Judgment, the sequel to the 2018 Yakuza spinoff Judgment, was officially unveiled today after leaking just a little bit early last night. It was announced for PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and for a brief while there was an expectation that we’d get it on PC too: As noticed by the Yakuza fan site Tojo Dojo, the Sega Japan website had it listed for Windows 10 and Steam as well as consoles, and mentioned the Steam logo in the webpage source code as well. The eternally watchful Wario64 picked up on it as well.  Ryu Ga Gotoku site briefly mentioned…

HighFleet kicked the absolute crap out of me. If aerial physics is involved, I seem to have an almost pathological need to crash and explode. And there’s a lot of dizzying sky brawls in HighFleet. It demands some fast fingers when you’re controlling your ships in its brisk arcade battles, but before that comes tonnes of preparation, strategy, and even a spot of diplomacy. It’s an unusual cocktail of systems and genres that collide to create something quite surprising.  Its closest relative is probably FTL. HighFleet puts you in command of a ship on a dangerous mission, undertaken across a…