Pcgamer 230 2012

THE WORLDS NUMBER ONE PC GAMES MAGAZINE
INSANITY!
TOTAL WAR: ROME II
DIABLO III
MAX PAYNE 3
CIVILIZATION 5
DAY Z
PLUS!
Why
Torchlight II
is better than
Diablo III pg. 24
NUMBER 230
SEPT 2012
STARCRAFT 2
HEART OF THE SWARM
Every new unit, dissected
Blizzard + Day[9]
talk new tactics
The rebirth of the
single-player FPS
BEST
$135 GPU
Play any
game,
cheap
FAR CRY 3
WE PLAYED IT!
Left side of Spread Right side of Spread
JUNE 2012 JUNE 2012 PB
#230 SEPTEMBER 2012
PC GAMER(ISSN 1080-4471) is published 13 times a year, monthly plus Holiday issue following December issue by Future US, Inc., 4000 Shoreline Court, Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080. Phone: (650) 872-1642. Fax (650) 872-2207. Website: www.futureus.com.
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Edit Squirrel Tabasco
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I twistedthe knobon the HelloKitty clock radio Idjammedinto my
dashboardto replace the oldstereo. It spat static on every
frequency. No help. Idbeen driving for three hours andthe bridge
still recededinto deadwhite fog. It didnt end. I was alone.
I pulledintothe emergency laneas if it matteredto check out a
blue phone box. Somewhere belowme the shallowbay was
sloshing against pylons, but I couldnt see or hear it. Just white fog
forever andwhite noise fromthe pink radio.
I hadno cell reception, andI expectedthe phone box to be
toneless. A rmyank crackedthe rustedhinges andthe lidswung
open. I startledback at a oodof green radiation. A CRTterminal
blinkedat me, awaiting input. >Youare on a bridge. _
Dead End Thrills (deadendthrills.com) calls himself a videogame
pornographer. More accurately, hes a former EDGE editor who
captures the best screenshots in the world (that, to be clear, arent of
naked people). Hes a Settings Sorcerer; he hacks his monitor drivers to
output at 2160pdouble the resolution most of us play at. I literally
burn through some of the most expensive
gaming hardware on the market to produce
many of these shots, he says. Heroic.
But really, hes just doing what millions of others
are doing: using a PC to do something really
interesting. Livestreaming a Dota 2 charity
tournament. Plotting the death of a solar system
in EVE Online. Surviving in the zombie apocalypse
with your friends and making a scrapbook about
what happened (bit.ly/dayzdiary). PC gaming is
increasingly malleable, even by its own standards of openness.
These are the beautiful byproducts of doing what we love. PC
gamers are producers, often by accident. A
king in that category is Day[9], an
ambassador not only for StarCraft but our
hobbys culture of inclusiveness. Hes done
more to humanize and evangelize the joy of
eSports than anyone else. We talked to him
on page 40, and Im awfully glad to share it
with you alongside our other words this month.
EVAN LAHTI
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
elahti@futureus.com
@ELahti
BRINGING YOU THE SCOOPS THIS MONTH...
Josh Augustine
@jaugustine
Josh hit level 31 with his
hardcore Monk in Diablo
III. How long can kung fu
keep you alive in hell?
Tom Francis
@pentadact
Far Cry 3 is being
BioShocked, Tom says.
Read why thats a good
thing on page 22.
Chris Thursten
@cthursten
Coming from a family of
mayors, Chris cant wait for
SimCity. He cant wait to
foil dynamic bank heists.
Rich McCormick
@richmcc
Rich got to interview his
eSports idol, Day[9].
Come read their chat in
the middle of the mag.
SEPTEMBER 2012 5
36
STARCRAFT 2
HEART OF THE SWARM
Radical changes and brand new units: the
latest straight from Blizzard HQ.
44
TOTAL WAR:
ROME II
The latest Total War features the biggest,
most detailed battles in the series history.
52
DIABLO 3
After a shaky launch, can
Blizzards long-awaited sequel live up to years
of anticipation?
22
FAR CRY 3
Fear, loathing, and deadly
enraged tigers as Ubisofts open-world FPS
ventures into the heart of darkness.
32
METRO:
LAST LIGHT
Return to the tunnels underneath post-
apocalyptic Moscow in this stunning shooter.
#230 SEPTEMBER 2012
SEPTEMBER 2012 7
78 Now Playing Duncan Geere builds a
working nuke in Minecraft.
82 Update Evan charts the rise of Tribes:
Ascends Brute class.
86 Top 10 Downloads DayZ joins Cube and
the best of the Portal 2 workshop.
94 The latest graphics cards reviewed
96 The PC Gamer rig
12 Top Story Watch Dogs revealed
14 Best MMO Conventions
16 The Spy
18 Face Off Do all games belong on PC?
22 Special Report Inside the world of
freelance game design
22 Far Cry 3
24 Torchlight 2
26 Dragon Commander
28 Aliens: Colonial Marines
30 Hitman: Absolution
32 Metro: Last Light
36 StarCraft 2: Heart of the Swarm
40 Interview: Day9
44 Total War: Rome 2
FEATURES
52 Diablo 3
58 Game of Thrones RPG
60 DiRT: Showdown
61 Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2
61 Moon Breakers
62 Max Payne 3
66 Port Royale 3
68 Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
70 Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
71 Alan Wakes American Nightmare
71 Hack, Slash, Loot
74 Evochron
76 Civilization V: Gods & Kings
77 Orion
77 Deponia
REVIEWS
PCG242.us_contents.indd 7 6/18/12 1:46 PM
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EMAIL leters@pcgamer.com
TWITTER @pcgamer
FACEBOOK facebook.com/
pcgamermagazine
WRITE PC Gamer Letters
4000 Shoreline Ct. Suite 400
South San Francisco, CA 94080
WIN!
Im not alone
I am 11 years old. PC Gamer
was always l337 to me. But it
seems like PC games have taken
a huge change. It was as if Grim
Fandango suddenly decided,
Hey, I should turn to
Dovahkiin and be more
modern, or something like
that. As computer specs became
better and better, older games
seem to fade. GOG.com is
probably only one of the few
websites that still care about,
Old games, memory sticks, and hairy men in shorts
well, good old games!
Those old-school games are
slowly vanishing, and it really
sucks to see a popular 1998 game
replaced by a game like Diablo
III. If I could, I would actually
get some really cruddy PC and
play Zork for the rest of my days.
Your Dont Quit: How to Save
Adventures article back in the
September 2011 issue made me
think Im not alone. Most of the
Star Wars games you reviewed
were both bad and good. You
gave high ratings to a game like
Star Wars: TIE Fighter and most
of the 90s games plus The Old
Republic. Do people still care
about these sort of games? Are
game devs putting gaming
nostalgia behind them? What
do you think? Should the
classics be put aside, or should
they be saved and make an
eventual return? Id love to see
those hip games in the 21st
century.
Nathan Adan
Thats the good thing about
Kickstarterlots of those games
are indeed coming back, along
with creators who either moved
or got pushed out of the spotlight
long ago. We just have to hope
that theyve still got it, and that a
few larger publishers bring back
the classics much like Firaxis are
doing with X-COM... and
ideally not like EAs Syndicate.
PCG
Go-go juice
When writing about Max Payne
3 on your website, you said the
good news is that the game will
recognize between 2 and 16GB
of RAM, so those extra sticks of
memory wont go to waste.
If someones putting sticks
into a computer, Id be sure they
are too young to know what a
computer is. A bunch of memory
contained on a single PCB is
called a module. Individual
chips are... memory chips. How
it looks like a stick, I dont know.
A graphics card plugs in, so
thats a graphics stick, if you
have two, you can have two
graphics sticks to get over twice
the power. If a site is called PC
Gamer, it implies basic
knowledge of PC parts!
I watched an 80s series and
they knew to use memory
module. Are we becoming
prone to downplaying parts? Do
we call gasoline/petroleum
go-go juice for a car? Do we call
spark plugs switches? After all,
they are turned on and off
quickly. Looks nothing like a
plug though. Why dont we call
a monitor a color board? Its flat
like a board, and has loads of
I just saw in my
latest PC Gamer that
53% want a remake
of Homeworld...
one of the all-time
greatest games, even
if its sequel thought
difcult = fun.
Thats a lesson Im
pretty sure they
havent learned yet,
so just let it die the
great game it was.
Curtis
These days its very
unlikely that a remake
will be made harder
than the original. If
anything, old fans are
likely to complain its
dumbed down. Pity
Homeworld missed the
Battlestar Galactica
remake craze tooit
was the perfect chance
to bring it back bigger
than ever.
Weve heard it many
times beforefrom
parents, teachers,
and the occasional
TV newscast: gaming
is bad for you! But,
according to recent
studies, gaming can
improve your hand-
eye coordination,
your creative thinking
facilities, and even
distract you from pain.
This could be a good
argument in future
debates concerning
child health and other
arguments about
the media and game
designers.
Otto Christenson
Itll also be really handy
when aliens nally
attack. Bagsie the BFG.
In your recent
review of Rayman:
Origins, you describe
being in a relationship
with the game, then
describe it letting its
dressing gown drop to
the oor. If Rayman
drops his dressing
gown, would there be
anything to see?
Ev Gill
12 years of abuse
We are treated every
month, by yourselves,
to the best that PC
gaming can offer from games to
hardware, but I have found a
problem that needs some publicity.
When games grow old the
communities keep finding ways to
let us replay them, but the same
cant be said for the hardware
peripherals that we buy.
Many years ago I saved up and
bought an expensive joystick that I
think I saw reviewed in your fine
publicationthe USB Logitech
Wingman Force. A fine,
extremely well made, sturdy, and
importantly expensive tool. So
good that it still works after nearly
12 years of abuse.
What doesnt work are the
drivers, which stopped being
made when Vista was released. So
the question I think we should all
ask is: should we buy amazing
expensive quality gear only for it
to be made so much junk by lack of
support after a few years, or should
we just buy stuff that lasts barely
longer than the game we intend to
play with it?
Peter Storr
While its unrealistic to expect gear
to be supported a decade later, its a
real shame when OS advances
actively stop it from working. A
voluntary system would be a good
idea, where the manufacturer
promises to support it for a certain
number of years, regardless of
platform changes.
PCG
If I could, Id get a
cruddy PC and
play Zork for the
rest of my days
With Tim Schafer back in adventures,
we might get a new Grim game.
THE HOT MAIL
SPK UR MND
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See above for how to get in touch with PC Gamer!
8 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_net_send.indd 8 6/18/12 12:16 PM
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colors. The list goes on, but I
should stop.
Keith Woolven
One moment. You caught us
chewing a stick of gum, scrolling
a window, and taking a leak.
Funny isnt it, how words can
have more than just one
meaning, and yet we all seem to
cope? Everyone knows what is
meant by stick of memory. Its
not like saying weve got 3GHz
of hard disk memory, for
heavens sake.
PCG
Anticipation
I have spent the last five years
waiting for Guild Wars 2 and
when I played during the recent
beta weekend event it was with a
mix of both positive and
negative feelings. I felt that
while the game was really a great
experience and one of the best
MMOs I have played, it still felt
like it wasnt living up to my
expectations. The hype and
anticipation Ive felt since
following every blog post for the
last five years had made my
expectations for the game
unreachable. It took two days of
playing in the beta to wear off,
and I could enjoy the great
game. I see now how this can
make sequels difficult to live up
to when the game is expected to
blow our minds away as much as
the first did.
Philip Shields
Its a rare game that lives up to
the version in your head. Is
Guild Wars 2 looking really
good? Yep. But its still an MMO
with much of the accompanying
baggage and design
requirements, no matter how
well done it is.
PCG
Trolls-be-gone
Game forums have historically
been a great place for beginners
to get in-depth advice, to see
what to expect in-game, or
discuss boss fight strategies.
Sadly, todays forums have
become rife with irrelevant
school yard fights between the
fanboys and trolls. Instead
of serious game or strategy
discussions, you get the latest
rant from a rage quitter about
how they wasted their money
and we should all storm the
gates of the game company. A
challenge to game companies:
moderate your forums and help
them regain some sense of
legitimacy and usefulness.
Chris Miller
World unto itself
I really miss the days when every
title was simply a world unto
itself and so incredibly original
that every time you purchased a
game you would be experiencing
something totally different from
the last.
These days everything seems
to be either an FPS or a GTA
clone. Its kind of like watching
the latest movie blockbuster:
you cant tell this one from the
last, and it bothers me. Sure,
you might say, but games back
in those days were rather crap.
Thats not my point. By the time
you figured out how to play the
game and realized what it was all
about, quite a chunk of time was
already spent romanticizing
how great the game might be,
and that in itself was a most
terribly exciting and fulfilling
process. Kind of like a half the
fun is getting there thing, you
know what I mean?
Anyway, all I am saying is,
damn, I want those days back. I
wish to once again revel in such
titles as Montezumas Revenge,
Bop N Rumble and Attack of the
Phantom Karate Devilsgames
that, to this day, you cant quite
figure out what theyre about.
Thats so rewarding. Its just like
listening to an old Bob Dylan
record and nodding along
furiously, pretending to know
what on earth hes singing
about, and not caring in the least
that you dont actually know.
Robert Roemer
You need to check out a few more
indie games. With names like
Dont take it personally, babe,
it just aint your story and 1...
2... 3... KICK IT! (Drop That
Beat Like an Ugly Baby), youre
in for some real treats.
PCG
Remember: you were
sad on Diablo IIIs
launch night, when
the server error messages kept you
from playing, but Diablo was
sadder. He was promised a party on
May 15, and then barely anyone
showed up. His complex emotional
state, a mix of anger and sadness, is
captured by the pen of one Rob
Dawkinsor perhaps two Rob
Dawkin who emerged from a
cloning vault to win a free digital
subscription to the magazine.
Yes, but if it oats
around like the rest of
his appendages it might
not be there at the time.
Never accept a hot dog
from Rayman, by the
way. Hes a prankster.
BioWare, please
make a Star Wars
game that plays
like Mass Effect
3, has lightsabers
that actually cut
everything (you know,
like lightsabers do),
and where the space
travel/combat portion
is a fully realised
modern X-Wing / TIE
Fighter type game.
JP
Agreed. And it should
be delivered by
supermodels (of the
gender of your choice, of
course) in a Ferrari, and
the developer would
be in a dunk tank as
you played just in case
you disapproved of any
design decisions.
Is it just me or is
Diablo III a letdown? I
spent $250 on a 560ti
and all I get are blurry
yellow globs which I
think represent wheat
elds. Titan Quest
kicks Blizzard's fanny,
and Torchlight is easier
on the eyes. No level-
up points!? Building
your character was
part of the experience.
Maybe I went and got
spoiled by Mass Effect
and Skyrim.
Albert Woody
Would that be an
English or American
fanny? We need to know
how much to disapprove
of such rudeness.
Romanticising,
in effect, about
how great the
game might be
Graphics card not good enough?
Try updating your RAM.
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Sendyour sketchesto letters@pcgamer.compick anyscene, weapon, or memorablegamingmoment to
illustrate, andthe onewelike the best mayend up in thenext issueof PCGamer.
SEPTEMBER 2012 9
PCG242.us_net_send.indd 9 6/18/12 12:16 PM
Left side of Spread
Right side of Spread
Who watches
the Watch Dogs?
U
bisoft surprised everyone by
lifting the lid on a brand
new gameone that finally
pushes the power of the
PC. Watch Dogs is a third-
person open world action game set in
near-future Chicago, featuring a morally
ambiguous hero who uses a variety of
hacking powers to take control of the
citys electronic systems and the people
around him.
The demonstration, which was running
on a high-end PC, looked stunninga
slick vision of the future with a moody
cyberpunk edge but enough real-life
detail to make it believable, like the rain
lashing off rooftops and pooling in
gutters. It showed main character Aidan
Pierce picking his way through an art
escaping by car and a cutaway to a
second character, on a nearby rooftop on
his own magic hacking doohickey,
watching the action unfold.
The Watch Dogs demo was carefully
staged, but if it is at all representative of
the full game, a stunning glimpse into a
world of open-ended problem-solving and
shooting people in the face. It has the
potential to be Deus Ex meets Grand Theft
Auto, with even more in the way of
paranoia and trench coats. Ubisoft also
promises ultra-exciting online features
that second character was apparently
another player. The plot is that
everything is connectedand connection
is powerso for us were working really
hard to mesh all the players of Watch
Dogs together, producer Dominic Guay
told Official Xbox Magazine. How thatll
work in practice is yet to be seen.
Watch Dogs is due out on PC in 2013. Im
dusting off my Human Revolution trench
coat in anticipation. Chris Thursten
show crowd, attempting to track down a
target. An augmented-reality interface
highlighted key information about the
people around himone attendee was
HIV-positive, another guilty of
plagiarism. In the final game, this
information will be used to trigger side-
quests and bonuses, and presumably to
find out who likes to pee in the shower
and lies about it.
Leaving the show, Pierce hacked the
streetlights at a nearby junction to cause
a multi-car pile-upincluding the vehicle
his target was traveling in. A gunfight
broke out, letting Pierce hide behind
cover before sliding over the bonnet of a
car like an action-movie hero from the
70s but with less hair. The sequence
ended with a cutscene, followed by Aidan
Ubisoft steals the show at E3 2012
with a demo of its next game
THE TOP STORY
12 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_mon_intro.indd 12 6/18/12 2:05 PM
Faildogs
Winners
Morally ambiguous heroes
aim for the kneecaps.
EXPANDED UNIVERSE
CAT PEOPLE THE OLD REPUBLIC
TO GET NEW PLANET AND RACE
BioWare has announced the next six
months worth of updates for The Old
Republic. The level cap is set to increase, and
therell be a new planet called Makeb to level on.
The feline Cathar is also being added as a
new playable racetraditionally
friends with Star Wars goodie
factionsand HK-51 assassin
droids will become available as a
new companion for all classes, all
as part of the monthly subscription.
No doubt BioWare is looking to
boost player numbers following
the 23% dip reported in May. CT
GOTTA GO FAST
NUMBERLESS NEED FOR SPEED:
MOST WANTED RETURNS
Burnout developer Criterion is making
another game in the Need for Speed series.
Need for Speed: Most Wanteda reimagining of
the 2005 cop-escaping racer of the same name
will combine the open-world driving of Burnout:
Paradise with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuits
Autolog social features. Your objective, they say,
will be to accrue the most Speed Points to be
rated Most Wanted among your
friends. You can achieve
the same thing by
bringing cake into the
office, mind. CT
-28% Vivendi 47,500 attendees 500K+ Bundles
Who watches
the Watch Dogs?
Minecraft
Has sold six million copies.
Epic Games
Rescued newly redundant Big Huge
Games employees.
Archery
Bows become the surprise theme of E3 2012. Far
Cry 3, Assassins Creed 3, Crysis 3the list goes on.
HEALTH BAR
CHECKING THE GAMES BIZS PULSE
Battlefield 3
Bug turns smoke grenades into deadly rockets.
BioWare Austin
Layoffs at the Star Wars: The Old
Republic developer.
Riot
European League of Legends account
details stolen by hackers.
Aidans hacking skills allow him to
control technology for his own ends.
SEPTEMBER 2012 13
PCG242.us_mon_intro.indd 13 6/18/12 2:05 PM
2
3 5
4
1
BEST OF THE FANFESTS RATING THE BIGGEST MMO CONVENTIONS
I
spent hundreds of hours with my
guildmates last year, chatting online
while downing dragons, super-
villains, and other big bads. But every
now and then, its good for a teams
morale to drop the daggers, get out of the
house, and just hang out with each other.
More and more MMOs are beginning to
host annual conventions to help their players
do just that. But its not just the games that
make each convention differentthe
theme, style, and length all vary as well.
From Iceland to Austin, Texas, we
attended five of the biggest MMO player
conventions last year to see what each has to
offer gamers. The results are below.
Dont get too discouraged if you find you
cant make it in person to any of your
favorites on this listalmost all of them
provide free livestreams of the main events
online. Josh Augustine
The best MMO events
Around the world, MMO expos are bringing gamers together
1 City of Heroes
Player Summit
Where Hotel in Palo Alto, CA, USA
Who Approx 100 players
Main event Audience input on
content design/tweaks.
Food Free greasy finger food.
Best dev bonding moment Playing
board games and Dungeons &
Dragons with CoHs lead developer as
your enthusiastic DM.
Overheard Oh, man. I LOVE the
mission you designed. Big fan!
Hours spent playing games 4
Party rating 5/10
5 TOR Guild Summit
Where Hotel in Austin, TX, USA
Who 200 invited guild leaders
Main event Presentations about
upcoming features.
Food Four free food trucks.
Best dev bonding moment Playing
Star Wars trivia in groups.
Overheard Man, sometimes you just
have to admit how much cooler tech
Star Trek has.
Party rating 4/10
2 BlizzCon
Where Convention center in
Anaheim, CA, USA
Who 26,000 players
Main event Game-specific panels
and pro tournaments.
Food Convention food for purchase.
Best dev bonding moment
Watching Mike Morhaime rock his bass
guitar on stage from the front row.
Overheard I just saw Gabe Newell
playing Diablo III with regular people!
Party rating 8/10
4 EVE Online Fanfest
Where Reykjavik, Iceland
Who 1,000 players
Main event Keynotes for each
franchise.
Food Meals/drinks for purchase.
Best dev bonding moment
Pounding drinks and lamb sandwiches
during the massive dev-led pub crawl.
Overheard No! Dont wait; wake him
up and launch the counter-attack
now. EVE player on the phone
outside the hall talking to his fleets
second in command back in the US.
Party rating 10/10
Where Hotel in Las Vegas, NV, USA
Who Several thousand players
Main event Tons of panels for each
game.
Food Fancy banquet feast, Las Vegas
buffets.
Best dev bonding moment Calling
their bluff on the poker table.
Overheard Hey, wanna see my
EverQuest tattoo? Its pretty cool.
Party rating 8/10
3 SOE Live
Many supervillains were
thwarted at the CoH summit.
eSports competition
winners won thousands.
Tens of thousands of
fans stormed Blizzcon.
14 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_mon_pc.indd 14 6/18/12 12:16 PM
echnology has come a long way, but
espionage ultimately relies on solid
human intelligence work. Thats
why the Spy values reliable sources,
and definitely didnt kill any of them last month or reveal
any kind of standard practice about doing that.
Serious, trustworthy sources dont come any more
respected than... really? derptemp6698 is his only
alias? Fine. That guy. The point is, he predicted the last
batch of Mass Effect 3 DLC in an anonymous reddit post
with perfect accuracy, and now hes predicting more.
Under this throwaway account, agent derp posts what
he says are the official blurbs for the next two packs:
Mass Effect 3: Earth and Mass Effect 3: Extended Cut.
Earth is multiplayer, adding Rio, Vancouver, and
London to the map roster, and a Piranha
assault shotgun, Acolyte pistol, and
Typhoon light machinegun to the
weapons. New classes are mentioned but
not described: Destroyer, Paladin,
Demolisher, Slayer, Shadow, and Fury.
The Extended Cut is the expanded
ending we knew about. As expected, it
doesnt change the ending, but adds
additional scenes and an extended
epilogue which reveal the impact of
Shepards choices on the future of the
galaxy.
Fine work, derptemp6698. Your untraceable and
explosive letter of thanks is in the mail.
From the radioactive ruins of Chernobyl rose Stalker:
a good videogame. From the radioactive dissolution of
the team that made it, GSC Game World, rose Vostok
games: now working on a free-to-play, massively
multiplayer, post-apocalyptic shooter. This much we
knew. But now, something else seems to be rising from
the same fallout zone.
Union Studio has been created together with the best
professionals that worked for GSC GAME WORLD
and other AAA class studios, says its LinkedIn profile.
The game its working on is a cross-platform action
shooter which will be available for PC, Mac,
PlayStation, XBOX, with a similar setting to such
games as Fallout, Mass Effect, Rage. The Spy wonders
where they think Mass Effect takes place.
The games industry is a seething mass of slimy
megacorporations, and the true horror of their dark
slitherings is seen only by the Spy. When the black
boomslang of Activision and the ice viper of Blizzard
started eating each others tails in a disgusting corporate
merger, the Spy knew dark times were ahead. The
combined company is majority owned by vast Parisian
python Vivendi, which also owns the Universal Music
Group, and there are now whispers that its discussing
whether or not to sell.
Vivendis stock has fallen 28% in the last year, despite a
4.5% rise in Acti-Blizzards. As the Spy can attest, the
best way to stave off a slow death is to sell your most
successful bits. Its why he doesnt have a larynx.
Since it owns 61% of Activision Blizzard, Vivendi could
manage its risk of success by selling off part of its share.
If it would rather avoid any chance of success by selling it
completely, then things get interesting.
Things areconveniently for this linkgetting
interesting at Bohemia, where the creators of Arma 2
have seen a ridiculous sales spike because of zombie
survival mod DayZ. It was a personal project by one of
their employees, but the dev isnt blind to its huge
success. So its asked him to work on it full time.
But what next? DayZ creator Rocket says his mod
adapts easily to the engine of Bohemias next game,
Arma 3, leading to speculation that it could become a
game mode. The Spy doesnt buy it. DayZ is a game unto
itself, related but very different to the purist realism of
Arma 3. This is what the Spy would buy: a full,
standalone, open-world zombie survival game, with
dedicated servers, autopatching via Steam, persistent
characters and slick options to join your friends.
The Spy would buy that hard.
The Spy would like the record to reflect that he
was amazingly accurate in predicting the contents
of the first Skyrim expansion, Dawnguard. Its
crossbows and vampire lords. The Spy would
further like the record to be redacted where he
expressed skepticism that Dead Space 3 would
have drop-in/drop-out co-op, since apparently it
does. The Spy would then like the record to be
burned, crushed, dissolved into acid, and spat
into a volcano, along with all other records of
his existence. Spy out. The Spy
The new Mass Effect
ending adds scenes
and an epilogue.
T
The Spy has been
officially dead since
1969 and medically
dead since 1991.
BUT WHO WATCHES THE SPY?
PCG242.us_mon_spy.indd 2 6/18/12 12:27 PM
LET THE FLAME WAR COMMENCE
Owen Hill insists
on segregating
everything in his life.
He tosses his dinner
if his peas touch the
carrots.
Tom Francis believes
in integration. Forcible
integration for those
who dont integrate
with his beliefs.
Do some games not
belong on PC?
YES Some genres are designed for console
play. And thats fine.
NO The PC is versatile, you can have almost
any kind of experience you like on it.
TF: Indie developer Phil Fish, talking to NowGamer
about his colorful, world-spinning puzzle platform
game, says this: Fez is a console game, not a PC game.
Its made to be played with a controller, on a couch, on
a Saturday morning. To me, that matters; thats part of
the medium.
If the developer himself is not excited about the idea
of Fez on PC, then its fair enough not to make it. But
for what its worth, I think the PC can be a great place
to play a game with a controller, in a comfy chair, on a
Saturday morning. And I think most of the experiences
developers think of as uniquely console-suited actually
work great on PCthey just dont realize the diversity
in how PC gamers play.
OH: But my PC is in my office on a desk. Its not near
my sofa. And thats the situation for most PC gamers.
Sometimes I lug my PC downstairs for extended
sessions in extreme comfort, but even though its
possible, it feels wrong, like eating chips with a spoon.
I have a wired 360 pad, but I still need to use a mouse
and keyboard to boot into Steam, and living rooms
never have enough desk space to support that without
extreme rearranging. Everything ends up dusty and
messy and tangled and weird.
TF: Your analogy has failed, because now I want a
spoon of chips. Is there anywhere we can get that?
OH: Yeah, I do too. But still! Consoles are designed for
short gaming sessions with wireless controllers on big
TVs. Just because PCs can handle console games with
ease, doesnt mean they need to or should. I
know it, Fish knows it, even Uncle Gabe
knows it. Thats why hes cooking up a
dedicated big screen mode for Steam: to
solve these issues. I reckon itll let you
boot directly into Steam and navigate
menus with a controller. Itll probably
support big fonts for mega TVs too.
TF: Its true that the way you start a game is
different on PC, and probably true that Steams
Big Picture mode will aim to fix some of that. But I
dont think Valve is making a lounge-PC-specific
interface because relaxing, wireless gaming doesnt work
on PCs. I think theyre doing it because it does, and
Steam itself is currently an awkward gatekeeper to that.
My PC is in my bedroom, I use a 32 flatscreen TV
as my monitor, and I can play it from my bed. Gaming
doesnt get much more vegetative than that.
OH: What about the livelier end of the spectrum? The
Rock Band series is probably my favorite of the console
exclusives, and its a console exclusive because it
wouldnt work on PC. It involves ludicrously sized
peripherals, requires stupid amounts of room, and is at
its best when played through a meaty sound system.
Imagine the USB hubs and dongles and drivers and...
ARGH! The closest the PC came was a few Guitar
Hero games four years ago, but it wasnt the same and
they soon went back to console exclusives.
Then there are those dancing games, and the Kinect
malarkey. Theyre designed around sitting six feet from
the screen and wouldnt work on most PC setups.
TF: All those things need is peripherals and space
without those two things, they dont work on consoles
either. Most of us do use our main PC at a desk, in a
smallish room, but lots of people dont. Steams
investment in a Big Screen mode is an
acknowledgement of how many people are already
lounge PC gamers, and how many more will try it in
the future. Right now, it probably doesnt make
commercial sense to do a PC port of Rock Band. But it
did make sense to release a PC version of BUTTON, a
very physical, silly party game that weve all had fun
with. If some of the less extreme examples of console-
style games came to PC, the lounge PC gaming
audience could get big enough to justify the rest.
OH: Steam in my office, pocket, and living
room. Steam in my kettle. Steam in the
sauna I dont frequent. Sometimes I want
to use a clunkier interface and an inferior
control method. Sometimes I want to pay
more money for the same games with
worse graphics on console. And thats
every PC gamers right! Hooray for us!
TF: No! Every game must be on PC. Every
gamer must play on PC. And no PC gamer is
permitted to play on any other platform for any reason.
We will be the master race! We are the master race!
OH: We are no longer friends.
LET THE FLAME WAR COMMENCE
The
debate is
over!
But which
argument was most
pervasive ? Discuss
at pcgamer.com/
forum
18 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_mon_face.indd 18 6/18/12 11:10 AM
LOL OF THE MONTH
THE PINE EVIL
Shogun 2 fans get
free map editor
Creative Assembly supports the community
with tools and access
C
reative Assembly released a
free map editor for Shogun
2. Its the first official tool
released for any Total War
game, and heralds a new era
of support for the series active and
dedicated modding community.
The editor, which is downloadable
from the Tools section of the Steam
library, allows you to create maps that
can be played in custom battles against
AI opponents or other players.
In a post on Total War Center, CA
representative TW Craig announced
the developers intention to host a
modding summit at the end of July.
The main thing is [that] we can have
these conversations with you ourselves,
he told the community, to explain why
limitations are in place if they exist, and
help if theres any way we can.
While at CAs headquarters to see a
demo of Rome 2, we asked Total War
lead designer James Russell about the
developers commitment to support
their community. The appeal of
supporting modders is that it creates
engagement, he said. Modders can
increase the lifetime of the product by
creating content that they want to play
with each other.
Russell would not confirm whether
or not mod tools would be available for
Rome 2. It has become harder, he
explained. In the old days we worked
with very simple text files that were very
easy to modnow we have a proper
authenticated database. We dont
necessarily have all the editor tools that
the players out there think we do. As
designers, we struggle as well.
Chris Thursten
Player-created content is a great
way to extend the life of a game.
MODEST MEANS
BARGAINS LATEST HUMBLE BUNDLE
IS THE BIGGEST YET
The fifth Humble Bundle was the most
generous so far, offering cult classic
Psychonauts alongside Bastion, Lone Survivor,
Braid, Super Meat Boy, Amnesia: The Dark
Descent, Limbo, and Superbrothers: Sword &
Sworcery EP on a pay-what-you want
basis. It smashed bundle sales
records, selling over 500,000
copies in 10 days and netting
more than $5.1 million. The top
contributor was, as ever, Notch
his friendly rivalry with
HumbleBrony brought in more
than $20k between them. CT
The map editor is the first official tool
released for any Total War game.
Before a game goes on sale in China, it needs
to pass through a rigorous government
review processbut enterprising vendors have
been bypassing the law by renaming one
particular game Big Pineapple. Diablo, you see,
sounds a bit like d bluChinese for, well, you
can figure out the rest. Presumably a lot of eager
Chinese Diablo players sitting at home right now
holding accidentally purchased pineapples. Also,
hungry people chewing on copies of Diablo III.
Dark fantasy horror or fruit salad?
Its difficult to tell the difference, really.
LENS FLAIR
CINEMATIC CATCH INDIE GAME: THE
MOVIE ON STEAM
Community-funded indie development
documentary Indie Game: The Movie
is being sold on Steam, as Valves digital
distribution platform expands its remit to
include selling anything with the word game
in the title. The film follows the troubled
development of Super
Meat Boy and console
platformer Fez, as well
as featuring an
in-depth interview
with Braid creator
Jonathan Blow. CT
SEPTEMBER 2012 19
PCG242.us_mon_cult.indd 19 6/18/12 11:11 AM
T
here are only two types of
developer that gamers
tend to hear about. The
first work for large
mainstream companies
with monstrous budgets. The second
are intimate indie teams with no
money at all. But theres a third type
of developer out in the virtual
wilderness, one youve probably not
heard much about. Theyre the
freelance game developers, and their
role in the industry is growing.
Ken Bishop is a freelance character
artist and 3D modeller based in
California. He has worked on games
such as Command & Conquer 3 and
Transformers: War for Cybertron, and
is currently lending his talents to
Medal of Honor: Warfighterhis sixth
Medal of Honor title. Going
freelance was something I always
wanted to do. I worked on a number
of projects at EA before spending
about three years on a fantastic sci-fi
game. But despite valiant efforts,
sometimes things dont always work
out. The project eventually got shut
down and it ended up being a good
time for me to strike out on my own.
Freelancers like Ken normally
specialize in a particular aspect of
design, be it coding, concept art or
mapping, and will be brought onto
a project to do additional work that
the core team cant achieve when
deadlines are looming. Alternatively,
there may be a small but specific
aspect of a game where the team is
lacking in experience, or dont
require a full-time employee to
complete it. For Ken, freelancing
allows greater control over who he
works with and what he works on.
I have embraced it wholeheartedly
and I really enjoy the upside. In fact
Ive been offered full-time,
permanent employment a number
of times and have turned it down.
Until fairly recently, freelance
designers were relatively thin on the
ground, but their numbers have
substantially increased in the last few
years. Digital distribution and
crowd-funding are subtly altering
how games are made, blurring the
lines between indie and mainstream
development. Consequently, there is
a wider market for freelance talent.
However, Ken believes there are
other economic factors. Many
companies seem to be offering more
contract positions and outsourcing a
ton of work. I think thats partly due
to companies wanting to be flexible
in adding capacity only when needed,
and getting away from the pattern of
rapid expansion and subsequent
layoffs thats so prevalent in the
industry.
Theres definitely a lack of job
stability within mainstream
developmentrecently
highlighted by company-wide
The project got shut
down and it seemed a
good time for me to
strike out on my own
The secret world of
freelance game design
Rick says:
Freelance game
design is one of
the industrys
weird little
secrets. Devs
and publishers
hardly ever talk
about using
freelancers, and
it isnt clear why.
Perhaps they
think the idea of
outsourcing bits
of games would
suggest a lack of
cohesion in the
final product.
We speak to gamings shadowy but vital specialists
Medal of Honor is one of many
games that uses freelance artists.
20 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_eye_report.indd 20 6/15/12 12:43 PM
layoffs at Big Huge Games (which
created Kingdoms of Amalur:
Reckoning). Developing triple-A titles
is expensive, and profit expectations
increase with every penny spent.
Sometimes the cost becomes too
great, and publishers will cease
production of a game entirely after
spending millions of dollars and
countless man-hours on it.
As a result, more artists are taking
their futures into their own hands
although its worth noting that
freelancing comes with its own
hazards, which Ken explains. Ive
been burned before, charging a flat
rate to do characters and then having
the approved concept change
drastically, so instead of creating one
character for the flat price, youre
creating two or three.
So why not just go indie? If its the
freedom of freelancing that appeals,
then surely creating your own game
would be the ultimate liberation. But
freelancers want more than freedom
from corporate overlords. Much like
mainstream design, indie
development often involves
committing to a single, long-term
project that could go up in smoke,
whereas a freelancer can work on
multiple shorter projects, which
requires a very different mindset.
Indie development also requires a
broad knowledge of game design.
Being a freelancer is about applying
your particular skill in as many
different ways as possible. Because
of the global nature of the economy,
I have a lot of experience managing
outsourced work, Ken says. So a
big chunk of what I do now is art
directing and managing character
assets created overseas, in addition to
creating content in-house.
Full-time freelancing is difficult to
achieve without extensive experience
in the industry and a fat book of
contacts, but this shouldnt put off
aspiring game designers. Freelancing
takes many different forms, and
commissions can actually serve as a
pathway into game development.
Jamie Manson is currently a level
designer at Splash Damage. Prior to
this, however, he was approached by
devs at Valve after they saw his
experiments in map design in Team
Fortress 2. Valve is catering to their
community, as we all know, so they
have their ear to the ground. They
found out where I lived and sent
Gabe to my residence by mail. At
gunpoint and everything, it was
very exciting, he jokes.
Jamies first map, the complex
cp_steel, was commissioned by Valve
and released as part of TF2s Heavy
update. This spurred him on to
design a second map, cp_freight,
which Valve also picked up. It was
while working on cp_freight that he
was contacted by Splash Damage,
offering him a position on their team
to work on Brink. In truth, I was
very ignorant of the job structure in
the industry, but I was pretty happy
already doing personal projects at
home. Being headhunted for a job
was how I finally realized that I had
what it took to be in the industry.
The many faces of freelance game
development show how the industry
is becoming more flexible, in terms
of how games are made and how
designers become involved in them.
Adaptability and innovation are the
keys to survival, Ken concludes.
There is definitely a wealth of
opportunities for freelancers. Im
fascinated to see how this industry
continues to evolve and adapt.
Rick Lane
THE MAKING OF CP_STEEL How Jamie built his TF2 map
Planning
I had been
experimenting
with ideas in the
editor for Team
Fortress 2
prior to
its official release. It allowed me to lookat
the limits of the gameplay and how I
could stretch it without code support.
Achievability
The final node, point E, is
always open to capture
but its also surrounded
by a huge pit, which
makes it easier
to defend.
Class support
cp_steels complexity
is still its biggest flaw, but its also one of the characteristics that
people fall in love with. I tried to cater to every class in the game,
and it generally shows!
Control
points
Capturing
control points
in cp_steel
modifies the
layout of the
map, enabling the attacking side to approach the
final node from multiple directions. It was a big
risk. After all, it was a different gameplay idea.
Brinks run-down maps
didnt create themselves.
SEPTEMBER 2012 21
PCG242.us_eye_report.indd 21 6/15/12 12:43 PM
Lead script writer Jeff Yohalem cites
Apocalypse Now as an influenceit shows.
S
itting in a room and watching
Michael Mando scream and laugh
at a woman in a chair is a great way
to pass half an hour. He looks a lot
like his character, Vaas, the compelling
psychopath whos become the face of Far
Cry 3. Thats mostly down to the effective
performance-capture technologya full
suit loaded with reflective strips, and a
helmet with a camera strapped to it that
captures every movement of his face. Its
also because he has the same mohawk
hairstyle. As affable and likeable as Mando
is, hes not taking the role of Vaas lightly.
Producer Dan Hay suggests that there
have been some method acting moments in
the development, and writer Jeffrey
Yohalem (Assassins Creed: Brotherhood) has
worked with the actors
and directors to rewrite
the script to suit their
styles. Hay tells an
anecdote of how they got
the glint of madness that
made that original trailer
so compelling. Turns out
that it was a simple trick:
NEW INFO Far Cry 3s singleplayer descends into psychedelic madness
FAR CRY 3
making everyone repeat the same scene
over and over again until they were tired
and hungry, and then lying about turning
the cameras off. Its the kind of anecdote
you expect from a movie set.
As much as thats true, Jeffrey Yohalem
dismisses the idea of Far Cry 3 making a
good movie. The story depends on the
interactivity. There are strands of plot that
involve the interaction between the player
and the hero. It wouldnt make sense as a
movie. This hints at the higher levels of
narrative ambition going into Far Cry 3.
While FC2 had a decent story, the new
sequel doesnt just acknowledge video
game and Hollywood conventions, it uses
them as tools to mislead the hapless player.
The playable demo at E3 gives a great
taste of the varied aspects of Far Cry 3. It
begins during a scene with Vaass sister,
and seems to depict part of an initiation
ceremony inducting main character Jason
Brody as a warrior. This is tied to the
tattoos on his arms, which represent the
players journey through the story. Side-
missions, hunting and quests will earn you
new tattoosa sleeve woven in the order
in which you do things. Theres a good
chance your tattoo will be unique, as well
as the introduction to many let me tell
you about my gap year conversations
should Brody survive.
In this scene, Brodys tattoo is smoking
and warping, which plugs into the games
other themesreality, hallucinations, and
madness. The island is laden with
mushrooms, which the dangerously meek
Dr Earnhardt seems determined to distill
into something purer.
In the demo, I guide Brody towards
Vaass island by diving off a cliff and into
the sea. Pausing to admire a manta ray on
the short swim, Brody takes out a sentry
patrolling the pier with a stealthy lunge
from the water. Maintaining the quiet
approach, I find two more guards, giving
me a chance to try out the melee takedown
The tattoos on Brodys
arms represent the
players journey
through the story
READ ME
DEVELOPER
Ubisoft Montreal
PUBLISHER
Ubisoft
LINK
farcry.ubi.com
22 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_pre_farcry.indd 22 6/15/12 12:43 PM
Every man you fight deserves to have
his life taken from him. Errrm, OK.
HGTV gets gritty.
combo. Its an unlockable skill, which lets
you pinball from one lethal animation to
the next with just the tap of a button.
The shape of the map intuitively guides
you to the left, where a stack of boxes
compromises the perimeter wall. Im told
there are two other ways in, but however
you manage it, theres a small playground
of death insidea network of roofs to
stealth your way across, a machinegun
encampment, a large fuel tank that takes
some punishment but eventually explodes.
There are also buildings that reflect
Vaass unlikely preoccupation with TV, art,
and showmanship, plus a live tiger in a
cage. You can blast open the cage if you
want, and the tigers antics will add a dash
of chaos to the map until he inevitably gets
shot or burned to death.
Clearing the map leads me into a room,
where Vaas appears from nowhere and
plants a knife in Brodys shoulder.
Through drugs or unconscious dreaming
I find myself in a corridor of Vaas. The
path is made out of televisions. Vaas is
pole-dancing on the right, and taking your
place in the sex scene with his sister on the
left. And at the end is Vaas himself,
proving youre a pussy by putting your
gun to his head and telling you to pull the
trigger. I am you! You are me! he
screams. Its just too much of a gift, even in
a hallucination. You have to pull the
trigger. But Vaas disappears, replaced by
the friend youve already watched die
once.
Its a great slab of action and story,
reassuring me about the open arena of Far
Crys gunplay and raising juicy questions
about whats actually going on. Jason and
Vaas, the same person? How much of any
of this is real? And how tacky is that whole
white man leads an otherwise doomed
tribe to victory thing?
Yohalems way ahead of us all. The
greatest pleasure about telling a story, he
says, is to lead the player into certain
expectations, and pull the rug satisfyingly
from under your feet. Hes not surprised
by me mentioning Lost, Fight Club, and
Avatar, because he put those seeds there on
purpose. There are going to be some
pretty big rugs, says Yohalem.
Jon Blyth
Release SEPTEMBER 9
Jason has been separated from his girlfriend
and is searching the island for her.
This is why I dont like going
scuba diving any more.
Theres a motley cast of psychopaths
and renegades for you to take out.
SEPTEMBER 2012 23
PCG242.us_pre_farcry.indd 23 6/15/12 12:43 PM
Forgetting your
arrows: priceless.
T
orchlight was cheap, cartoony, and
fun, but its biggest advantage
over the Diablo series was that it
existed. When it came out in
2009, there hadnt been a Diablo game in
eight years. Torchlight recaptured the
simple, repetitive pleasure of clicking on
monsters to make loot come out, and
added a lot of sensible tweaks.
Your skills and spells deal damage
proportional to that of your weapon, so
equipment is just as important to a mage as
a fighter. You have a pet, regardless of class,
who can carry things and sell them for you.
All this is still true in Torchlight II, but
theres a difference: Diablo III exists. Now
we get to see how two very different teams,
with very different budgets, make an action
RPG in 2012.
Whats most striking
about Torchlight II is how
old-school it feels. After
level 10, it uses the
unforgiving system of
making you permanently
commit your level-up
points to skills without
PLAYED IT The scrappy contender to the action-RPG throne is already great
TORCHLIGHT II
being able to try them out first. It has stat
requirements for items, making you store
spare attribute points until you find a great
item you cant use, so you can spend them
on whatever it needs. And you have to
decide between unlocking new skills or
upgrading old ones, so its possible to
cripple yourself by overinvesting in tech
that turns out to not be enduringly useful.
Playing through this four-hour beta as
each of the games four classes, I cant say I
mind. Tough choices are fun. Investing in
skills you like is fun. Reshaping your whole
characters development just to use one
phenomenal axe is fun. They each have
drawbacks, but so does Diablo IIIs
consequence-free approach to character
development. And Torchlight II has one
thing that it does far, far better than Diablo
III in every way: loot.
Unlike Diablo III, every weapon can be
used by every class. And unlike Diablo III,
theyll actually use it: hitting something with
your weapon is your most common attack.
Exciting finds happen often: Torchlights
algorithms for randomly dropping cool
things from slain monsters are more
generous, varied, and have a clearer
relationship between rarity and usefulness.
When you find something youve never
seen before, its useful to your class, its stats
are staggering, and it looks awesome.
This time, each class has a charge bar
that builds during combat. The Outlander
gets a boost to speed and critical hits, the
Berserker deals constant critical hits, the
wizardly Embermage gets a period of
limitless mana, and the Engineers charge
bar makes his blows more powerful.
Torchlight II wont struggle to compete
with Diablo III. It makes opposite choices
on most of its key systems, and that
includes the big one: Torchlight II can be
played offlineyou can even take offline
characters into online games. So for some,
Torchlight wins again just by showing up.
Tom Francis
We get to see how two
different teams, with
different budgets, make
an action RPG in 2012
Release SUMMER
Were a long way from the
spectacle and excess of Diablo III...
READ ME
DEVELOPER
Runic Games
PUBLISHER
Steam
LINK
torchlight2
game.com
...but at least Ill get
decent loot from this.
But am I happy?
24 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_pre_torchlight.indd 24 6/15/12 12:42 PM
READ ME
DEVELOPER
LarianStudios
PUBLISHER
In-house
LINK
www.dragon-
commander.com
D
ragon Commander is a genre
stew. Theres some RTS in
there, some RPG, some turn-
based battling. Skew the mix and
youve got something unwieldy, something
less than the sum of its parts.
The game takes place in the studios
created land of Rivellon, home of both the
Divinity series, and men who can turn into
dragons. Its one of these men that youll
wear the skin of, flipping between man and
dragon-man to progress your war against
central antagonist Aurora.
In puny man-form, players live aboard
their flagship. Its here youll be able to
pore over the games continent map and
plan your next assaults into enemy
territory. It looks like fantasy Risk, as
Fahrang Namdar, the
games lead designer,
pushes his small stack of
unit counters over.
Fahrang has a chance to
play buff cards before the
fighting starts. He selects
one that lets him lob a set
amount of fireballs
FIRST LOOK Part-strategy, part-RPG, part-action, all dragon
nukes, as Fahrang calls themand
steams into the real-time battle mode.
Fahrangs little stack of units translates
into a small fleet of hovering airships in
Dragon Commanders battle mode. His AI
opponents army is smaller, but fields a
powerful destroyer. Its this that Fahrang,
in dragon form, heads straight for. A
jetpack seems superfluous for a beast with a
70ft wingspan, but it affords Fahrang a
burst of speed that lets him get around the
back of his foes fleet. He burps out one of
his nukes, quickly taking it down.
Now hes got more time to tend to his
own side. He flips the game into
commander view, turning the monitor into
a fullscreen map of the combat arena.
Fahrang directs a builder to start
construction on one of three convenient
rock pillars. Players can set up shop on
here, cranking out extra troops,
researching short-term upgrades, and
riddling their spires with protective turrets.
Setting his fleet in a defensive holding
pattern and using his dragon to whittle
away at the glob of enemies, Fahrang
eventually builds up enough of a bulwark
to start a push on Auroras forces. Soon,
only a few remain flying: Fahrang tosses
another nuke to finish them off.
Back on the ship, hes free to move into
the captured territory. But theres little
time to gloat. Hes called into the games
war room by two of his fellow shipmates:
a hat wearing imp and a walking, talking
skeleton. These are two of the games
advisors, emissaries from the games five
other fantasy racesDwarves, Lizardmen,
Undead, Elves, and Imps. Players have the
opportunity to side with specific characters
on a variety of quandaries in Dragon
Commanders RPG dressing.
Dragon Commander gives both its players
and its developers a lot to juggle. But it
looks so far like Larian has made a game
that will be more than the sum of its parts.
Rich McCormick
Dragon Commander is
a genre stew. Theres
RTS, some RPG, and
turn-based battling.
DRAGON COMMANDER
Fire in the front,
fire in the back.
The three-nozzled dragon jetpack
is now available in SkyMall.
The RTS overview looks
as hectic as dragon piloting.
26 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_pre_drag.indd 26 6/18/12 2:27 PM
ALIENS
COLONIAL MARINES
READ ME
DEVELOPER
Gearbox Software
PUBLISHER
Sega
LINK
bit.ly/MQZAWO
This places needs
some throw pillows.
Alien high five!
V
ideogame designers have spent
a lifetime ripping off Aliens, but
that doesnt mean that making a
game using the original creature
is easy. Gearboxs challenge in Colonial
Marines is working out how to make
swarms of identical xenomorphs
interesting for the length of a game.
Theyve found a couple of different ways,
the best of which is pretty simple: make the
xenomorphs human-controlled.
Colonial Marines team-based multiplayer
mode pits the aliens against Marines in
grey, smoky corridors familiar from the
films or the games single-player missions.
There are plenty of boxes and vents, and
aliens everywhere. Its a straightforward
score-based challenge, but the Marines
motion sensor alone makes it a little
different. As the Marine,
you can change your
loadout at the start of
each life, picking bet-
ween machine guns
or shotgunsor slightly
larger machine guns,
or machine guns with
PLAYED IT New team-based multiplayer pits Marines against xenomorphs
grenade launchers slung underneath.
Using the motion sensor means putting
those weapons away, but knowing the
locations of those little red blips makes you
feel both powerful and terrified.
Its not a fair setup, basically, explains
Senior Producer Brian Burleson. Youve
got to be smart, youve got to use your
tools well, and that adds a tension that isnt
usually in games. Its brutal. When you
watch multiplayer with first-person
shooters you normally see people just
running around and shooting stuff. Do
that here and youll die in under a second,
says Burleson. So here the Marines start
pulling out motion trackers, organizing
who shoots and who tracks, and working
together.
My anonymous Marine buddies and I
dont communicate much, but we did
learn pretty quickly to stay close to one
another. We found choke points where
we could stand back to back, and ledges
where we could reach higher ground.
I never got the chance to play as one
of the xenomorphs, but Brian explained
the games balancing act. The xenos are
basically melee characters, so they have
to be really strategic and wait and watch
in the darkness, looking for anyone who
has become separated. They dont have
much health, so if they just run straight
into a group of Marines, theyll die pretty
quickly too.
The core of the game is still its single-
player storya direct sequel to James
Camerons Aliens. Youll venture back
to the Colonial Marine starship Sulaco,
and revisit the settings of character
deaths from that film. The core of
the multiplayer is also still the drop-in,
drop-out co-op mode that lets you play
that same story with a friend. Which leaves
the team-based multiplayer mode to play
third fiddle, even if its the only option if
you want to play as an alien. And I do.
Graham Smith
People normally run
around shooting stuff.
Do that here and youll
die in under a second.
Release FEBRUARY 2013
Thankfully the acid
blood doesnt hurt you.
28 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_pre_aliens.indd 28 6/18/12 1:17 PM
READ ME
DEVELOPER
IO Interactive
PUBLISHER
Square Enix
LINK
hitman.com
T
he nuns started holy, then they
turned sexy. Underneath their
authentic garb was leather and
grenades and guns and a desire
to kill Agent 47. The message of Hitmans
introductory E3 trailer is unclear, other
than that no one is what they seem in
this dark world, and never trust a nun.
Alrighty then. The demo proper begins.
Chinatown is bustling, lit by lanterns and
neon. Everyone here has an agenda,
whether thats buying fish, guarding an
apartment, or preparing a meal for the
King of Chinatown himself. Handily, thats
the guy Im here to kill. And hes hungry.
The crowd swells naturally and the
soundtrack heightens as I get closer
to my target. Absolution is a slick affair,
no doubt.
The Arkham Asylum-
style Instinct Mode
highlights points of
interest, including my
target surrounded by
dirty cops on a central
pagoda. I push through
the crowd and end up
PLAYED IT Contract killing for points and prizes
HITMAN: ABSOLUTION
near a vendor preparing fish. I slink past
him, poison his food for lulz, then squeeze
my way to an apartment block over-
looking the entire square, and up to the
vantage point. The room belongs to the
kings drug dealer pal, whos left a sniper
rifle lying on the table. I take it, then spot
him retracing my steps. One well-timed
pistol double-tap and a costume change
later and the dealer is dead, clumsily
bundled into a locker. Crisis averted.
Its time to snipe.
But the king has moved. Even with
Instinct Mode enabled, Im struggling to
spot my target. But I neednt panic; after
a few seconds of looking down the scope,
an on-screen prompt congratulates me
on a clean murder. The fool ate my
poisoned fish and collapsed amid the
crowd. My work here is done. Its time to
leave the district and check my score.
Each stage in Hitman: Absolution has
multiple challenges which you can check
out in the options menu. And the more
checkboxes you tick, the higher your score
multiplier. Challenges for chapter two
include wearing costumes, pushing your
target into a manhole, poisoning drugs,
coffee and fish, and blowing up the King of
Chinatown. But you wont need to clutter
up your kills by doing all that in one
session: progress is persistent. Repeat a
level in different ways and youll get a
multiplier thatll boost later playthroughs.
The challenges mean less discovery but
more variation, highlighting how diverse
Absolution gets. Its a compromise though;
despite the variety, kills feel more scripted,
and the sensation of an awesome sandbox
muted. It feels like IO has plotted out all the
ways players can off their targets in
Absolution, rather than taking Blood Moneys
approach of handing you the keys to a grisly
toolbox and letting you get on with it.
Hopefully things get subtler and tougher
later on.
Owen Hill
I end up near a man
preparing fish, slink
past him. and poison
his food for lulz
Release NOVEMBER
Using Instinct Mode will render civilians transparent,
revealing the armed guards for your sniping pleasure.
Its Agent 47s time to shine.
Tasty sh! Buy my tasty-and-
not-in-any-way-poisoned sh!
30 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_pre_hitman.indd 30 6/18/12 2:28 PM
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Homemade weapon designs will make
a return. Nice trigger discipline, buddy.
N
o one expects Russian mutants
to be gorgeous all the time, but
its nice to see them make an
effort now and then. Ukrainian
developers 4A Games seem well aware of
Metro 2033s shortcomings, and first on
their to-do list is getting things dolled
up. Skulking through the underground
tunnels shows off the improvements,
but its the outside world that impresses
the most.
As the smoggy black ash clouds begin
to clear from the city, the next stages of
nuclear fallout kick in. Thick-cut lightning
appears intent on cutting the sky in two
as rain starts to fall, obscuring the main
character Artyoms visor.
As Artyom pushes through crunched-
concrete streets, his travelling companion
tells him to keep his head
down. More than fifty
mutated rat-like creatures
bound across the
crumbled vista ahead,
appearing equally
shaken-up by the storms.
Metro: Last Lights flair
for cinematic moments puts the efforts of
the slightly wonky Metro 2033 to shame,
but this upgrade comes with a shift in tone
that wont please everyone.
The regular presence of a follow-me-
buddy and an emphasis on building drama
through scripted moments reminds me an
awful lot of games like Call of Duty. If you
were holding out for something more like
Stalker, switch your eyebrows into frown-
mode now.
One of the first scripted moments I spot
makes me jump: a giant, horrible rat-like
thing leaps out of the shadows, showing a
mouth full of sharp teeth that not-so-subtly
hint towards sour intentions. Pinned to the
ground and away from his buddy, Artyom
forces the barrel of his shotgun beneath
what appears to be the beasts chin,
relocating key parts of its brain into a brand
new drippy red spot on the ceiling. Im
happy to invite more moments like this, but
other scripted sections dont nail the tone.
A supernatural sequence on a wrecked
airplane had great intentions, but fell a
bit flat. Flashing images of the planes
passengers just before the crash felt like
home-brand horror, and a longer sequence
showing the reactions of the pilots as they
flew towards a freshly-grown mushroom
cloud somehow misspells shock as schlock.
It reminded me of the iconic nuke scene
from Call of Duty 4, but the comparison
wasnt wholly kind.
The depictions of pre-disaster civilians
in the game feel wooden when compared
with excellently silly antics of neo-Nazis
and monsters. Hopefully these sequences
wont steal the spotlight.
Im withholding judgement until I get a
chance to play the game for myself, but
THQs Huw Beynon insists that the
mainstream-facing stuff wont detract from
what made the last game fantastic.
Dumbing down is when you strip all of
that stuff out and say lets keep it simple,
explains Beynon. What we want to do
Last Lights flair for
cinematic moments
puts the efforts of
Metro 2033 to shame.
NEW INFO Post-apocalyptic Russian scavengers do it with the lights on
READ ME
DEVELOPER
4A Games
PUBLISHER
THQ
LINK
enterthemetro.com
METRO
LAST LIGHT
32 SEPTEMBER 2012
Gamers like complexityand they also like blasted
post-apocalyptic worlds to scavenge through.
Last Light is a post-apocalyptic action survival
horror first-person shooter (now breathe).
A plane! What a find. Valuable, preservative-stuffed
peanuts are sure to be inside its dead cabin.
instead is to introduce these mechanics
better, and weave them into the narrative
more let players get comfortable with
ideas one at a time, and theyll gradually
realize a wealth of new options.
If linear jollies arent a total turn-off, this
one still looks set to be fun. Most of Metro
2033s esoteric features will also play a part
in Last Light, which means winding up an
electric torch, frantically hunting down
fresh oxygen canisters, and manually
wiping your masks visor clean. An excess
build-up of water, blood, or indeterminate
mutant-juice can severely damage your
ability to shoot things. And trust me, youre
going to want to shoot things.
Using bullets to kill things in the last
game felt like to trying to knock out
someone with half a sponge cake. Its
a criticism the developers have taken note
of, and gunplay seems more substantial.
One fight sees Artyom squaring up against
a giant bat-bastard, which insists on
grabbing him with both claws before
dropping him from an unhealthy height.
A few high-caliber rifle rounds make light
work of the beast, putting an end to the
encounter. The raucous exchange attracts
even more attention, though, forcing
Artyom and pals to make a dash
for the subway.
Making a last stand at the bottom of the
escalator, both rangers run out of Molotov
cocktails as giant rat-creatures continue to
arrive. A chunky sub-machinegun chews
through the mutants, but will be useless
once the ammo runs out. An incendiary-
flavored rescue arrives just as things are
looking truly desperate, and two
flamethrower-wielding rangers open the
doors to give the dirty creatures a blast.
Last Lights blasted, wrecked world looks
surprisingly beautiful, and Im fascinated to
see just how well it handles. Im also faintly
worried that 4A Games might have messed
up the balance between freedom and
scripting, but Beynon is making reassuring
noises that itll be something more than a
corridor shooter with added radiation.
People like complexity, and gamers arent
stupid, he says.
Last Light could shape up to be the sexiest
apocalypse in 2013.
Matt Lees
Release SPRING 2013
SEPTEMBER 2012 33
Gray on gray, but still the best-
looking apocalypse in gaming.
1TB SATA-III Hard Drive
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ALL
KILL EM
If at first you dont succeed, scrap it and start again for
STARCRAFT II: HEART OF THE SWARM
by Rich McCormick
36 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_feat_heart.indd 36 6/18/12 1:08 PM
AUGUST 2012 37
hey say that writers should
kill their darlings. More so
than any other developer,
Blizzard have taken this
advice to Heart. They
massacre their darlings.
Blizzard spend years crafting and
massaging and loving their
darlingsunits, mechanics or
ideasbefore taking them out back
and shooting them between the
eyes, jettisoning weeks of work.
Its tough. Its very hard on the art
staff, especially as they put a lot of energy
into some of these units. StarCraft II Game
Director Dustin Browder knows Blizzards
ruthless streak better than most. Across all
global leagues and laddersfrom the lowest
bronze league, all the way up to Korean
tournaments with huge prize pools
StarCraft IIs three races are within one
percent of each other in terms of win rate.
That statistic is the result of two years of
tweaking, patching and hotfixing. Browder
has finally got the balance of multiplayer
StarCraft II exactly where he wants it.
Heart of the Swarm is the follow-up to
StarCraft II expansion, following 2010s
Blizzard finally has
StarCraft II exactly
where they want it.
RELEASE
2012
SEPTEMBER 2012 37
have gone completely, replaced by new
ideas that presumably have a grip on
survival as tenuous as their now-
deceased forebears.
Browder points to the now-cut
Shredder unit for a helpful illustration
of that point. The Shredder was an
irradiating mine, designed for Terran
territory control. Blizzard thought it
would help multi-tasking Terrans
refocus their attentions in more helpful
places during multiplayer matches; the
vocal StarCraft II community thought
it would become an all-too-dangerous
raiding device in one races arsenal.
The fans won out. According to
Browder, it hurt. The full model was
weeks of work. I had to go to [the art
department], say sorry, I screwed up,
and ask them to take it out.
But Browder is unrepentant. It can
be very hard to do that kind of work,
but you cant really argue with the
results. It has been valuable to us in the
past to have the kind of courage to be
able to say we thought this was going
to be great. This part is not, and were
going to take it out.
I ask Browder if he knows before his
teams creations are with the public
whether they will be as great as they
hope. We just put out the best
balanced toys; then we try to take off
some of the sharp edges that are
causing problems. From there, its up
Wings of Liberty. In single-player, itll
focus on the insectoid Zerg race. But
no matter how well tested, it will upset
the multiplayer modes delicate
balance. How does Browder feel about
that? Its terrifying. And awesome and
cool and exhausting.
We have to give new strategynew
strategy is cool, right? Once we go to
beta with this, itll be a whole new can
of worms we have to deal with. Were
confident weve done it before, were
also very confident in our community.
Our community has helped us in
balancing and delivery, they helped us
develop the beta, they helped us in the
development of Wings of Liberty.
Im speaking to Browder above a hall
filled by that very community. Major
League Gamings Anaheim Spring
Championships are taking place
downstairs20,000 people are there,
the majority to see live StarCraft II
matches, and Heart of the Swarm is
playable. Over the course of the three-
day event, the line to play the new
game is three rows deep.
Makeover magic
The last time I played Heart of the
Swarm at Blizzcon 2011, Blizzard had
introduced a gang of new units. Playing
it now, almost every single one of those
new units has undergone a hefty
change in application or looks. Some
to the community. In some way its
easier than it sounds, because of the
community. If they were disinterested
this would be impossible. But we have
this great community thats constantly
showing us how the game could or
should be played.
Thats not to say his team dont have
their own ideas of how they want their
game to work: Heart of the Swarm is
intended to fix trends in the metagame,
ranging from tiny tweaks to massive
racial shifts. Browder provides me with
examples.
We get a bit grumpy that the Protoss
dont really have the tools to be more
aggressive early on. They have too
many expensive units that move too
slowly to risk early-game maneuvers
unless theyre really committed to an
all-out attack. So if youve got a bunch
of Sentries (slow-moving Protoss units
that support a larger army with area-
blocking forcefields), you know theyre
not coming home if they dont win.
Were looking to give our Protoss the
ability to raid, to push, to come home
if they need to.
The result is a new Mass Recall
ability, available soon after the game
starts, enabling Protoss players to hit
the panic button and return home
should their assault break down.
Similar shifts are taking place for the
Terrans and Zerg. Terran versus
THE NEW WAR How Heart of the Swarms new units will play with the old
The Zerg player
burrows new
Swarm Hosts
just out of
range of his
foes Siege
Tanks. The
Hosts start
to spurt out locustsweak
attacking but tough mini-
unitsthat force the Terran
to reposition. As he
moves his tanks,
Vipers reach
in and pull
them out
of safety.
An Oracle uses
its Entomb
ability to
lock off the
Terrans third
expansions
mineral
patch for a time,
only to activate a
Widow Mine
buried nearby.
The Mine
leaps out of
the ground,
attaches itself
to the Oracle,
and destroys it.
TERRAN BASE
Once upgraded, the new
Protoss Tempest has
a ridiculous range of
22. In StarCraft speak
thats from one
side of the screen
to the next, and
nine more than
the long-range Siege
Tank. Fortunately, Tempests
are prohibitively expensive and
only arrive in the late game.
A mixed Protoss force moves
across the map, only to be
greeted by a gang of new
Warhounds and Hellions.
Warhounds do extra
damage to mechanical
units, so the Protoss Stalkers
melt. Hellions go toe-to-
robotoe with melee Zealots.
An early push with Zerg
Roaches would normally spell
doom for the Protoss, but
the new Mothership
Core, costing 100
minerals and 50 gas,
can turn into a massive
cannon while sitting on
top of a Protoss Nexus. It
lets players hold off early
rush attacks.
ZERG BASE
PROTOSS BASE
38 SEPTEMBER 2012
Kill it with fi-.... oh
you already are.
Bleurgh. Might just go home
instead of attacking this base.
Burrowed Widow Mines are like
murderous, explosive spots.
STARCRAFT II: HEART OF THE SWARM
that Protoss and Terran players factor a
counter-strategy into their own play.
Abduct can be used to break Terran
Siege Tank lines, Vipers pulling
entrenched Tanks towards the body of
their chitinous and disgusting army for
an easy kill. As the Terran player sends
Marines out to clear up the mess, the
Vipers can dump a gas cloud, allowing
them to escape.
Against Protoss, the Viper is a clear
reaction to the popularity of the floaty
mouthless sanctimonious spacemens
deathballs. Units like the Protoss
Colossus form the center of these
blobs, a near-undefeatable fist roving
the map in the latter third of a game.
When the Viper can pull powerful
units out of place, the Zerg can start to
dismantle more powerful armies.
The hovering Protoss Oracle is built
from the races Stargate, and like the
Viper, is a counter to the deathball. But
where the Viper destroys, the Oracle
hopes to construct, giving Protoss
players a choice to raid their foes in the
early game, rather than sitting back
and building up an all-
dominating force. The Oracles
Entomb skill is the biggest
threat: when cast, it covers
mineral patches in a glowing
blue field, restricting the
gathering of resources for a time.
Players can destroy these casings, but
with 15 other things running through
their heads, not without some
economic interruption.
Leveling the field
Units like the Oracle feel like theyll be
dangerous in the hands of new players.
The actions required to halt your
opponents economy are easy to pull
off, letting you feel crafty and powerful
even when youre not blessed with
preternatural clicking powers.
The result is a game thats both more
complicated for experts and more
transparent for new players. As
someone somewhere in the middle, I
can already see where Ill slot a gang of
Warhounds into my build, or how Ill
have to mask Tank lines with Vikings
to stop Vipers from pulling them to
their doom.
Behind the scenes, Blizzards cutting
room floor is littered with the
corpses of dead darlings, but their
sacrifice wasnt for nothing: Im
excited to use the new toys, and
excited to find new ways to stop
others from using theirs on me.
Having seen the queues to play at
MLG Anaheim, it seems the
community shares my excitement.
Terran matches often devolve into
stalemate battles, two immobile groups
of Siege Tanks staring at each other
until one players dinner is ready and he
has to go. The new Terran Warhound
gives a focused siege-breaking unit to
reset these kinds of battles. And the
Zerg have traditionally had trouble
solidifying a position after a victory. It
feels that if I win a substantial victory,
there should be a way for me to really
push. Were hoping thats what units
like the Swarm Host and Viper allow
Zerg players to do.
Of those new units, the Zerg Viper
stands out as one of the flagshipor
flag-horrible-sky-monsteradditions.
Floating above the battle, the Viper
cant do damage directly, but can access
three powerful abilities, each of which
requires slowly-regained energy to
activate. Consume lets the Viper feed
on friendly buildings, siphoning their
health for energy. Blinding Cloud
squits out a circle of gas that reduces
the effective range of all biological
units caught inside, and Abduct sees
the Viper send out a flesh tendril to
grab enemy units. These abilities are a
mixture of the visually obvious and
tactically vague, but already they open
up new dimensions in a Zerg players
multiplayer game, as well as demanding
Tempests are just pimped-out
Cylon Raiders, really.
SEPTEMBER 2012 39
I
caught up with Sean Day[9]
Plott twice at Major League
Gamings Anaheim
Championships. The first
time I saw him, it was 1:30
a.m. and he was almost deliriously
sleepy, having committed to an
entire day of filming for Heart of the
Swarm. The second time, he was
gleefully well-rested and looking
forward to a deserved vacation. I
cornered him before he escaped to
ask him some questions about the
next StarCraft II expansion.
Whats your favorite of Heart of the
Swarms new units?
Certainly the Viper, because its the
most visually clear one. I like it for
so many reasons. For one, when you
use it, you reall snatch that shit up
[Sean mimes the Vipers abduct
skill]its awesome. Its a really
viscerally pleasing thing.
Also, in terms of thinking a lot
about the design of something as an
eSports title: how do you make
something visually clear? One army
versus another army? OK, well
make them color-coded. One race
versus another race? Well give
them really distinct looks. Heres
one: there are no wheels on any
Protoss unit. They dont have
wheels. They all have mechanical
legs. That kind of gives you a sort
of clean visual look. Plenty of
Terran units have wheels: Hellions,
Tanks. Maybe that might be it. And
then we think about the abilities. In
Brood War a lot of the abilities
werent intuitive. Psionic Storm
[Plott mimes the psionic storm skill.
He likes miming.] does damage.
Dark Swarm though, is an orange
cloud. Underneath it, ranged units
dont do damage. Its a particular
sort of thing: these units are broke
and take damage over time, but you
dont visually see that pop. Thats
what I love about the design of the
Viper. Its instantaneous, and
completely clear exactly what it
does.
Can you see how theyll be used in
game?
Theres the Swarm Host and the
Viper. Swarm Host is what I would
call a late Lair [the Zergs mid-tier
unit producing structure] tech. Your
Lair finishes and then you can start
building the Swarm Host, then you
can research. Its later than
Roacheswhich are early Lair tech.
And then Vipers Hive tech. So it
essentially means that the game for
Zerg play is completely unchanged
for the first ten minutes, maybe
around eleven.
But then weve seen Zerglinging/
Roach timing attacks being really
popular, largely due to Stephano.
What if he instantly evolves his
Lair into a Hiveusing five gas
geysers instead of four to get his gas
upand does the same huge attack
with five Vipers? Hed probably be
able to do the attack around
thirteen, fourteen minutes and do
this big Viper/Ling/Roach attack.
And now all of a sudden a Protoss
player whos relying on any big unit:
Colossus, Immortal, even Sentry,
the Zerg player can just snatch that
s#&* up. Even then, drones can
start building geysers on his
enemys half of the map to do this
really aggressive Roach/Ling/Viper,
then use consume [a Viper skill] on
the buildings to recharge energy.
Were used to seeing StarCraft II
deathballs. Do you see matches
looking different after Heart of the
Swarm?
I think therell potentially be
smaller engagements. The issue is,
no matter how well you control a
unit, itll never be that much better.
Just the way that the units are
designed, its like... if I just let the
unit go therell be one effect. But if
I micro really, really hard, therell
be 1.2 times the effect. Its just not
that big. In Brood War you could
get four or five times effect;
whereas in StarCraft 2, if I have
some Roaches and you have some
Immortals, I die.
Now thats not to say theres
somehow something badif you
think about chess, you cant make
the units any better than what they
can be. You cant be so good with
pawns he can move two steps
instead of one, or move sideways.
Theres a lot that ends up being
predetermined by what you chose to
build, as opposed to how you
control what you have right now. I
think a lot of it will stay focusing in
big groups, but youll start to get
big game-changer units that have
the potential to do sort of comeback
effects. A Terran Widow Mine
where I wasnt watching can do a
little damage, or huge damage
depending on how much attention
Im paying. Im hoping for a little
spread-out-iveness. I think most of
all it going to make the variety of
strategies really, really wide.
Do you see it making the game
more complicated?
Definitely more complicated.
Theres just a lot more to consider.
Sean Day[9]
Plott
Professional
Shoutcaster at
www.day9.tv
Credits: eSports commentator,
including Major League Gaming
and Dreamhack. Ex-pro
StarCraft: Brood War gamer,
winning World Cyber Games
2005s Brood War
championship, brother of
Nicolas Tasteless Plott, fellow
beloved StarCraft personality.
How do you choose what
project to do next?
My answer is so bad. Its driven
by how Im feeling at the time. I
mean, I love casting at MLG. Its
the most fun Ive ever had and
the most excitement Ive ever
felt. And simultaneously Im so
delighted to be just sitting here
with you on Sunday, having
slept in til 10, having eaten
breakfast and thinking Wow, I
didnt have to get up at 9 and
cast and go to bed at 2.
THE
INTERVIEW
StarCraft superhero SEAN DAY[9] PLOTT on Heart of the
Swarms new units, new strategies, and new players
by Rich McCormick
Therell definitely
be a multiplayer
surge.
PCG242.us_int_day9.indd 40 6/18/12 1:45 PM
Zerg is the one I can wrap my head
around now, because the first ten
minutes are going to be the same as
Wings of Liberty. When I consider
something like the Mothership
Core for the Protoss, all I need is
50 gas. And now I have a giant
death cannon and I can recall all
my units from battle and I can do
all sorts of stuff. Its hard to process.
I think the biggest thing that I
can hope for is that inexperienced
players find it hard to die. In Wings
of Liberty, its really easy to die.
Even if you build a bunch of
defense at your ramp, every race is
gonna walk right up to your main
base immediately. Because the thing
about a Warp Prism, a Warp Prism
has a limitless amount of units
coming out of it that just
circumvent the land.
Its not like, heres four
Mutalisks, and if I defend those four
Mutalisks then they go home. Its
like hey, if I dont hit that Warp
Prism right now, Ive a hundred
units in my base. Or I walled up
my entrance with buildings and
Reapers just hopped up the cliff to
get in. Its just all these things that
circumvent the terrain. Im really
excited about the Purifier which
turns the Mothership Core into a
big cannon. Oh Im in trouble. Get
cannon!
Do you think thats going to bring in
new players, making it easier for
new players to play multiplayer?
Or do you think itll stay the same
group who are already playing
multiplayer will carry on?
Therell definitely be a multiplayer
surge. Im hoping it changes so it is
hard to die, and people stay with
the gamebut you actually have to
know what youre doing to push it
over and take the win. But its so
hard for me to predict.
You say its hard to predict, but Im
going to ask you to predict whats
going to happen over the next few
years.
When Heart of the Swarm comes
out Im fairly convinced that Zergs
gonna come out of the gates strong.
I feel like at the start that will
certainly be true. I mean it might
be one of the other two races, but
certainly for the first five months
people will be going, oh my God,
Zerg cant be stopped I think the
way the new Zerg units work is
most intuitive for how to reintegrate
the old Wings of Liberty stuff.
Do you think releasing StarCraft II
in three separate packs was the
correct way to do it? Is it still?
I think announcing that it was
going to be in those thirds was just
brilliant in terms of dealing with
the community. Now people who
think things like they dont care
about this game, theyve abandoned
us. Well, you cant say that because
theyre actually specifically working
on StarCraft II for many, many
more years in expansion packs. Oh,
OK, what about: well this race is
really unfair! I hope that they, in
Heart of the Swarm, release some
cool new units. That constant
support is always on everyones
brain. You go to Blizzcon and hear
about Heart of the Swarm and all of
this stuff, and it kind of makes the
entire experience of going from this
game to the expansion a lot more of
a continuous moment. Im almost
imagining in a TV series, when
they show an actor whos going to
be in the next season.
Plott is a perpetually amiable
guy. Even in the face of a siege,
In his Brood Warring days,
Plott played Zerg.
SEPTEMBER 2012 41
PCG242.us_int_day9.indd 41 6/18/12 1:45 PM
Left side of Spread
44 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_feat_rome.indd 44 6/18/12 1:59 PM
Historys greatest and bloodiest empire returns to power
in TOTAL WAR: ROME II by Chris Thursten
hirteen years
after the
original
Shogun, the
appeal of Total
War can still be summed up with a
single word: scope. Creative
Assemblys ability to simulate war at
the level of the individual fighter
while making a game that is won or
lost on a national scale has driven the
series since its inception.
If you wanted to show someone
why Total War was cool back in 1999
youd first show them the abstract
campaign map, then zoom in on the
rows of flat little sprite-samurai
marching and scrapping in real-time.
Technology has changed, but that
series-defining flourish hasnt.
Creative Assemblys world-first
demonstration of Rome II begins with
the sound of voices over drifting
smoke: the senate of the Roman
Republic, around 151 BC, ordering
the total destruction of its long-
standing foe, Carthage. A younger
voice rises, offering to lead the
armies. This is Scipio Aemilianus,
adopted grandson of the general who
beat Hannibal. Giving voice to the
drama and personality of history at
this level is something the Total War
series has always been good atbut
its still a surprise that the first thing I
actually see is a close-up of Scipio
himself, on board a Roman bireme,
speaking to a subordinate.
Rome II runs on a new engine that
boasts full facial animation, and
theres something uncanny about
seeing a general actually turn,
gesture and speak in a Total War
game. Its a little stiff, but a far cry
from a near-motionless man on a
horse rattling off a canned speech.
Scipios ship is loaded with infantry
who fidget and shuffle and hop about
in anticipation of the battle.
The camera pulls back to reveal
dozens of Roman warships, each
loaded with troops, approaching the
North African coast. Ahead of them,
across a short stretch of sand and a
few hastily-assembled barricades, are
the walls of Carthage. In Rome II,
there is no longer a technical
distinction between land and sea
battles: if the circumstances demand
it, one can lead to the other, or they
can run concurrently. Carthage itself
is vast, easily the largest and most
detailed city seen in a Total War
game. Smoke rises, arrows arc toward
the Roman fleet. Defenders mass on
the walls.
The Romans reach the shore and
troops spill out of the biremes,
RELEASE
2013
SEPTEMBER 2012 45
TOTAL WAR: ROME II
ARMING AN EMPIRE Gear of war
Scutum
Rectangular shield.
Full-body protection,
used to form testudo.
Verutum
Short javelin.
Thrown by
skirmishers.
Pilum
Throwing spear.
May have bent on
impact.
Gladius
Infantry sword.
Predominantly used for
stabbing.
Hasta
Thrusting spear.
Carried by Hastati.
Creative Assembly has looked at the
physiques of mixed martial arts fighters
to create its troops.
forming into lines and wedges. At
this point, the camera is at the
approximate height that Total War
players will be used to, and the sense
of familiarity this creates is the first
proper sign that this demonstration is
happening in-engine.
The game is still a long way from
alpha, however. The demo appears
scripted, although the camera is
being controlled live. Its best seen as
a proof of concept of the new kind of
cinematic conflict Creative Assembly
wants to present with Rome II: the
biggest battles in the series history,
fought by its most detailed soldiers.
Theres something very special
about Total War in terms of scale,
says Lead Designer James Russell. If
you look at a battle, you have
incredible detail close up and you
zoom out and see thousands
and thousands of
soldiers on the
battlefield, and we
really want to push
both ends of that
spec-trum in Rome
II.
As they reach the
walls of Carthage, the
Roman troops spread out.
One cohort, including
Scipio
Aemilianus, readies siege towers and
begins to approach the most thickly
defended part of the enemy line.
Another takes advantage of a breach
in the walls caused by off-shore
catapult fire.
The camera zooms back in. Were
seeing the inside of the siege tower
from the perspective of a man in his
unit. Scipio barks a few more orders,
theres a moment of silence, then the
boarding ramp crashes down and the
Romans charge into the blinding
sunlight. Its extraordinarily dramatic
and it grants the fight for the battle-
ments a sense of urgency and danger
it wouldnt have had otherwise.
Creative Assembly hasnt yet
decided how moments like this will
work as part of regular skirmishes
the siege of Carthage itself is likely to
end up as a standalone historical
battlebut its something its
keen to explore. [For] the
whole game, were
trying to create
something with a
human face, with its
own history and its own
background, Lead Battle
Designer Jamie Ferguson
told me. Every part and
every piece feels like
something important to the
game. You really feel that
everything you do and say,
and that every decision you
make is important.
The drive to humanize
war is something that
comes up again and
again. Doing away with
Parma
Round shield.
Reinforced, strong
against missiles.
Pugio
Dagger.
Near-universal sidearm.
Spatha
Cavalry sword.
Longsword, originally Germanic.
Plumata
Throwing dart.
46 SEPTEMBER 2012
what Ferguson calls the little men
drone experiencethe feeling that
youre commanding an army of
humanoid antsis at the forefront of
Creative Assemblys ambition. On
the walls of the city, Roman and
Carthaginian soldiers split off into
one-on-one duels that are longer and
better-animated than those in Shogun
2. When a killing blow is struck, its
because of something perceptible: a
mistimed lunge or faulty footwork
that suggests human error rather
than unforgiving battle-math.
Harboring enemies
As Scipio Aemilianuss men take the
walls, the flanking force pushes
through the breach, entering the
city near its harbor. As they spread
out into formation, two catapult-
carrying Roman warships enter the
mouth of the dock, providing fire
support against towers further
ahead. At a nearby crossroads,
Carthaginian troops form a
defensive line.
The expanded scope works both
ways. Although were not shown it,
Rome II will feature a new tactical
view for battles. Pressing a key will
zoom out to a kilometer-square area
of the battlefield, the positions of
various units represented by banners.
It wont be possible to micromanage
the whole battle from this
perspective, but it should reduce the
amount of time spent wheeling the
Cinematic doesnt even
begin to cover it.
In Las Vegas, rowdy behavior once again
mars the annual parade down the Strip.
camera around. For this demo,
however, thats exactly what the team
is going to do.
Scipios cohort joins the battle in
the street with a flanking maneuver
that traps the Carthaginian
defenders. Smoke from numerous
fires throughout the city begins to
thicken and subtly alter the lighting
profile. Lighting can make or break
an environment, says lead artist
Kevin McDowell. Every time we
approach a lighting setup we want to
have a clear idea of what were trying
to evoke with that lighting.
Everythings got to work.
For a city under siege that means
harsh, angled sunlight and
foreboding gloom. Shogun 2 stood
out because it was the first time that
every aspect of a Total War game,
from battles to the interface, all
cohered as part of a single artistic
direction. Rome II is showing the first
signs of continuing that trend.
Western audiences are far more
familiar with ancient warfare than
they are with feudal Japan, so theres
a tremendous amount of pressure to
give Rome II its own identity. To that
end, the design of the game has been
constructed from first principles
original archaeological sources,
filtered through a process of
SEPTEMBER 2012 47
TOTAL WAR: ROME II
xxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
Scipio Aemilianus looks out across the
burning skyline of Carthage, and gives
his famous order to raze the city.
If I had to wear a hat that
stupid, Id hide too.
research and artistic license.
What we aim to do when were
building places in all of our games is
really get to grips with the reference
material and understand what bits of
it are iconographic for that culture,
McDowell says. Even to the point
where we will take bits of different
buildings and combine them into
what we think is the perfect example
of that kind of building.
For some cultures, thats easier said
than done. While a vast amount of
source material exists for Rome, the
original Carthage wasspoilers!
burned to the ground and rebuilt by
its conquerors. The version were
seeing on the screen is a work of
informed conjecture. The Total War
team has taken what material does
exist and extrapolated it into a
believable place, taking the principles
of Greek design that are likely to have
inspired the city and adding
appropriate detail, like a large statue
of the Carthaginian goddess Tanit.
Theres a deliberately rough,
lived-in edge to the design.
Anything you see has been worn and
is in use, says McDowell. All of our
guys have got battle scars, and their
equipment isnt necessarily new.
Carthaginian buildings are chipped
at the edges and marred with graffiti.
Creative Assembly has looked at
the physiques of mixed martial arts
fighters to create troops that look like
they could hold their own in hand-to-
hand combat. Look at Roman
carvingslike on Trajans
Columnand look at those guys in
all their gear, McDowell says. If
you look at their physique, and then
you look at an MMA guy, youre like
oh Jesus, they match.
Scipios troops continue their
progress toward the center of the city.
Large sieges like this one will have
multiple dynamic objectives, from
taking the walls to securing key
locations one by one. Incoming
Roman catapult fire causes a
defensive tower to topple, and the
camera zooms down to street level to
watch it fall. Men tumble from it as it
collapses. Scipio charges into shot,
then stops to yell at his men.
Seamlessly, the demonstration has
transitioned back into a cutscene.
Theres a brief lull in the fighting,
followed by a bellowed order to hold
the line. A charging line of war
elephants emerges from the smoke
and bears down on the consul.
Abruptly, the battle is over. Scipio
Aemilianus looks out across the
burning skyline of Carthage and
gives his famous order to raze the
city. This is a great victory, he says.
But I fear that one day someone may
give the same order for Rome. For
all its demonstration-ending
bombast, its a line genuinely
attributed to Scipio by the historian
Polybius. This merging of the
cinematic and the historical is a neat
summation of Creative Assemblys
ambitions for Rome II.
FIGHT LIKE A ROMAN Opening moves
1
2
3
1 Velites throw javelins, retreat through Hastati.
2 Hastati form single line and charge.
3 Principes and then Triarii replace and reinforce.
Hasta
Scutum
Hastati
KEY
Velites
Parma
Verutum
Angry Scottish people
Scutum
Pilum
Gladius
Triarii Principes
Pilum
Scutum
48 SEPTEMBER 2012
machine until late in the imperial
period. If players want to introduce it
earlier, however, then Creative
Assembly is keen to give them the
freedom to do so.
Made Marian
The point of Total War games isnt
just to recreate history, Ferguson
told me. What were trying to do is
get a counterfactual history going.
We start from a historical point of
view and from that point onwards, its
about player interactions with the AI
and their environment. Theres still
some debate about how certain
historical factors will be represented.
I asked Ferguson whether the Marian
reformsthe hugely important
transformation of the Roman
military into a professional army by
the Republican statesman Gaius
Mariuswould be something that
the player would execute piece-by-
piece, or if they would represent a
fixed moment in history.
Were looking at that as being
some part of the gameplay, he says.
Whether thats through passing
laws, or through buildingsor is it
Will this be the game where CA
finally gets the naval combat right?
just a function of the experience of
the unit? Whenever we do a Total
War game we dont sit down with a
fixed set of rules about how were
going to make the game.
Creative Assembly is driven to
recreate history systematically, by
establishing a set of circumstances
and then letting the player determine
the rest. The way Ferguson describes
the mechanics of the campaign game
suggests that Rome II will have a more
fluid political system than previous
games. Looking back, you could
think that [the history of] the
Roman republic was a foregone
conclusionbut theres no reason
to suggest that, for example,
instead of an empire developing
they couldnt have gone back
towards kingship. Julius Caesar
was famously offered a crown.
We allow the player to make
those decisions, and allow
them to shape history.
This is why the focus on the
human aspect of warfarethe
trailer-friendly aspect, if
youre feeling
cynicalis
promising. In order
to deliver on the
promise of a
macro-scale
historical sandbox,
the simulation of
battle has to start
with individual
soldiers. Rome
was built by
people, and they
make Roman history
exciting. Total War is
still a one-trick series,
but its a really good
trick, and the rewards
for pulling it off are
bigger than ever.
Theres a lot were not shownthe
campaign game, for instancebut
Creative Assembly is willing to let a
few details slip. What were trying
to do is create a game where warfare
is more meaningful, says Jamie
Ferguson. Were placing much more
importance on battlesthat when an
army turns up it is an army. You may
find that the campaign game doesnt
look like it did in previous games.
Individual armies will be more
significant than ever, and theyll fight
fewer, larger, more significant battles.
The approach will hopefully do away
with the busywork that occasionally
creeps into Total War campaigns in
the form of auto-resolved skirmishes
between handfuls of scattered units.
Fewer armies also means more
control over their composition. The
Romans were resourceful when it
came to appropriating foreign
technology, and that will be reflected
by giving the player a degree of
control over how units are equipped.
Ferguson uses the example of the
spatha, the Roman cavalry sword.
Introduced by Germanic troops, it
didnt become part of the Roman war
SEPTEMBER 2012 49
The rest of the series, the
rest of the genre, has now
been utterly out-thwunked
What is it?
A top-down action roleplaying
game thats easy to play, with
complex skill combinations.
Influenced by
Diablo, World of Warcraft
Play it on
2.4GHz dual-core CPU, 2GB
RAM, GeForce 260/Radeon HD
4870, broadband internet
Alternatively
Torchlight, or wait
for Torchlight 2
Copy protection
Constant internet connection
Need to know
52 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_rev_diablo.indd 52 6/15/12 12:45 PM
MONSTROUS
DIABLO III is a profoundly satisfying creature-basher with
a cruel twist. By Tom Francis
I
have to start this with a
warning, then a little tantrum,
a few insults, and a dash of
paranoia. Apologies to those
of you who already know what
Im going to say and are either fine
with it or all raged outyou guys
can skip this section.
Diablo III can only be played
online. You can play it on your own
or cooperatively, but neither mode
works when Blizzards servers are
down, and neither mode is fun when
Blizzards servers are slow. In six days
of playing, I got disconnected twice
and experienced unplayable lag five
times, each time when my own
internet connection was working
fine. Sometimes, the servers were
down for hours.
Thats pathetic. There are valid
reasons for forcing multiplayer
characters to play online, but none
for omitting an entirely offline
singleplayer mode. If you dont have
a connection that you can reliably
play multiplayer games on, dont buy
Diablo III. Skip the rest of this
review. Blizzard has chosen to
exclude you completely, and Im
genuinely pissed off by the hostility
and callousness of that decision.
For the rest of us, its worth
knowing that the $60 weve paid for
Diablo III doesnt mean well always
be able to play it. The game itself will
have to be phenomenally
good for all this to be worth putting
up with.
Killer builds
The Diablo games are simplified top-
down RPGs: you click on a monster,
and your guy hits him with a
satisfying thwunk. If youd asked me
what made the repetition compulsive
beyond that, Id have said two things:
the agonizingly tough choices of
which skills to pick each time you
level, and the excitement of finding a
fantastic rare item.
In Diablo III, both those things
are gone.
You never make any permanent
choices about your character. Each
time you level up, you get access to a
new skill, and you fit these into an
increasing number of slots.
Eventually you can have six slots
equipped at a time, and between
fights you can put any of 20-odd
skills into them. Every level 30
Wizard has access to the same skills
as every other level 30 Wizard, the
differences are just a question of
what they currently have equipped.
It takes a while for your range of
possible skill combinations to get
interesting, particularly if you dont
realize theres a hidden option to
remove some of the baffling
restrictions on what you can
combine. But when it does get
interesting, about two hours in, it
gets really interesting.
Every level-up brings a new skill or
two, and every new skill can be the
foundation of dozens of different
character builds. Experimenting
with new abilities, and strategizing
about how to combine them with the
others, is the game. A seemingly
feeble skill sometimes spurs you to
try it with others youve shelved, and
to discover an entirely different
playstyle that works in its own way.
And a powerful skill sometimes
mixes with something youve been
using for hours to create a
spectacular new tactic.
As the Wizard, I liked to stick with
a set of area-effect spells that freeze
and shatter huge packs. But once I
got Disintegrate, a magic death ray
that cuts through whole ranks of
enemies at once, I was able to ditch
some of the others to focus on
survivability: teleportation,
invulnerability, and reactive ice-
armor to chill attackers. Its
incredibly satisfying when a new
tweak like that turns out to be
effective, and your playstyle ends up
feeling like your invention.
Part of the reason for that, and a lot
of the meat and complexity of this
system, is in the runes. Like skills,
they unlock at predetermined levels.
But they offer an optional
modification to a skill you already
have. I can tweak Disintegrate to fire
from both hands at once, hitting a
wider path of targets, or channel it
into one beam while smaller rays zap
anything that gets close to me while
I fire. Both are magnificently
powerful in different situations, and
I loved figuring out which one gelled
well with other skills.
By a certain point, the difference
between your Wizard and mine isnt
your Wizard, its you. The skill/rune
combinations youve picked from the
billions of possibilities are an
REVIEW
How they measure up,
based on T2s beta
Melee combat
Diablo III A
Torchlight 2 B+
Ranged combat
Diablo III B+
Torchlight 2 A
Magic combat
Diablo A+
Torchlight 2 B+
Loot
Diablo III C
Torchlight 2 A+
Skills
Diablo III A+
Torchlight 2 B+
Online play
Diablo III A
Torchlight 2 B
Ofine play
Diablo III F
Torchlight 2 A
Diablo III vs Torchlight 2
SEPTEMBER 2012 53
To a Wizard,
a bow is the
same thing
as a staff
expression of something very
personal about the way you like to
play, and that makes it easy to get
attached to them.
Its a fascinating test lab for skill
combos, but what makes it more
than an intellectual exercise is the
sense of power. I said the Diablo
games are about hitting a monster
with a satisfying thwunk: the rest of
the series, the rest of the genre, has
now been utterly out-thwunked.
Each Diablo III class has an
astonishing tactile pleasure to it.
Combat clicks
The Barbarian is convincingly
physical: all his attacks involve
massive effort and ground-shaking
impact. When they connect,
monsters arent just toppled: theyre
cannoned, decapitated, torn apart.
The Wizard is an electric
detonation: every crackling blast of
energy feels like something pent up
being releasedinto enemies that
spasm, blacken and split.
The Demon Hunter is a
backflipping tactician, forcibly
rearranging the battlefield to leave
everything trapped in a dazed
clump, to be butchered with a
spluttering stream of fire.
The Monk is a human projectile,
appearing at each enemy with a fist
already in their flesh, then snapping
through the rest of the mob in a
rhythmic strobe of precision blows
and showers of blood.
And the Witch Doctor hurls
flaming bats at people.
Its as much the noise as the look:
the sound for each attack is perfectly
judged to suggest something
excitingly potent is happening.
Sounds even change depending on
the rune modifying them: an
explosive rune for the Wizards
Shock Pulse adds a quiet charging
noise before each release, suggesting
an unseen payload of power.
The feel is more than aesthetic.
Most skills are very specialized,
useless in some situations but
devastating in others. Apply four or
five of them to the right kind of
enemy in the right order, and the
effect is more spectacularly
destructive than anything Ive seen
in a game like this. Armies are ripped
apart, whole ranks explode, blood
fills the air, the earth shakes. When
a sight like that is the result of a build
you personally designed, its a
satisfaction like no other.
Weirdly, only a handful of these
skills actually use the weapon in your
hand. In designing these intricately
configurable storms of damage,
Blizzard didnt have room to
incorporate everything you might
be holding. Three classes never even
swing their weaponit exists only as
an abstract number to multiply their
effectiveness. To a Wizard, a bow is
the same thing as a staff.
For other items, too, its hard to
care about the banal stats they offer
(see the boxout below). You do find
incrementally better loot, and theres
an inherent addictiveness to that, but
the excitement of finding something
truly remarkable is almost gone.
Theres not nearly enough variety in
either the type or effectiveness of
what you find, and the significance
of stats is fussily abstract: +93
strength has no effect on a monks
punching damage, for example,
because thats not her primary
attribute.
The only place I found
dramatically better items was the
new auction house, which also seems
custom-built to destroy the thrill of
finding anything good in-game.
With such a vast playerbase, of
course hundreds of people have
found the absolute best item for
someone of your class and level, and
of course that flood of supply has
made it all affordable. At every level,
pocket change could buy me a
weapon twice as powerful as the best
Id found by my own efforts. And the
one time I did buy one, it rendered
loot irrelevant for hours.
Blizzard has just unleashed a real-
money auction house at the time Im
writing this. The consequences of
that havent fully manifested yet, but
Im no longer worried that itll
undermine the excitement of finding
your own loottheres not much left
to undermine. It just isnt the core
appeal of Diablo any more. Luckily,
theres plenty to replace it.
Scenic views
Beyond leveling up, there is a sense
of discovery and reward as you play.
It comes from the world. Each of its
four acts is a new land to explore, and
each land is made up of sprawling,
beautiful places.
The soft-focus textures and
scribbly detail often make it feel like
youre walking through concept art,
in the best way. Each region throbs
with a new color: autumn fields,
dazzling sands, burning pits, and
more exotic themes I wont spoil.
Any time the terrain drops away,
the view below is staggering.
Sometimes its just a gorgeous
landscape, but later there are
sprawling cities and backdrops of
action and violence that show more
going on in the world than your own
quest. Its a constant pleasure for the
digital tourist, and these spectacular
settings give your journey a sense of
drama and adventure the series
hasnt always had.
REVIEW
Monster kills grant
+4 experience
Is that good? Is the
game better if I level up
faster than the default
rate? Shouldnt the
game designer
decide that?
Melee attackers take 1
damage per hit
Sweet! If I let him hit me
200 times, hell take care of
himself! And me. Much, much
sooner than that.
+7% extra gold from
monsters
Probably useful if youre
planning to buy everything
from the auction house
because found loot is so dull.
Health globes grant
+41 life
That is at least a positive, but
honestly, those things already
heal me almost completely
every time.
Each hit adds +1 life
I have 1,000 life. I would
have to hit someone 100
times to heal 10% of
my life.
+6 strength
Great, except this adds
nothing to my damage
unless Im a Barbarian.
Instead, it adds a bit
more... armor?
A rare item and why I dont care about it
Stats of dismay
54 SEPTEMBER 2012
The Monk feels no particular need
to use the weapon you give her.
Most of the things in this shot
are Witch Doctor minions.
Curse your slender stature,
skeleton archers!
The Barbarian can stomp so
hard that lava comes up.
Theres no day or night. This oasis is
in permanent, pretty moonlight.
Before I punch: Witch Doctor,
is this one yours?
Ragdoll physics adds a lot
to whacking flimsy skeletons.
SEPTEMBER 2012 55
Somewhere around here, there
must be a hell of a lot of flies.
I just punched a
cultists head off.
I just... OK, not sure
what Ive done here.
Disintegrate: its like an
angry laser made of blood.
Its nice knowing that those three
guys are totally, totally screwed.
I just sliced an
ogres belly open.
Hilariously, that skeleton will
be frozen solid when he hits me.
56 SEPTEMBER 2012
REVIEW
90
The online requirement is
damaging, but Diablo has
never been such
spectacular fun to play, or
so creative to tinker with.
Expect to pay $60 Release Out now Developer Blizzard Publisher In-house
Multiplayer Up to 4, online only Link www.diablo3.com
Adding to that feeling, theres a
range of interesting scenes you can
stumble upon between objectives. A
conspicuous corpse, a cryptic note, a
lone tombstone, or a land-locked
shipwreck. Each leads to an Event: a
small isolated story that usually ends
in a horrific onslaught of creatures.
The horde
Diablo III never runs out of hideous
things to throw at you, and the
variety is amazing. Each act, and
sometimes each zone, is dominated
by several species of creature youve
never seen before, all horrible and
entertaining to fight in a different
way. Its not hard to make a monster
look hellish, but its impressive how
many new and increasingly freaky
ways Diablo III pulls it off.
However spiky, vicious, and tough
the horrors get, theyre always
satisfying to kill. And some have neat
little tricks. Giant vultures circle,
refusing to swoop within attacking
range until youre busy fighting
something else. Giant wasps spit
streams of their young at you, slow
but deadly, forcing you to dodge.
Boss creatures summon walls
wherever they like, blocking your
attacks and sometimes intentionally
penning the two of you in, mano-a-
bosso. These foes are varied still
further by mobs of Champions and
Minibosses, Diablo staples that
provide walking difficulty spikes.
But what makes the monsters
really extraordinary, and the perfect
foil to your ridiculously powerful
character, is the scale. Some are so
big it takes a moment to register that
theyre even attackable, and others
swarm in numbers that fill the
screen. Smashing through these
skittering hordes in a spray of rent
meat and chitin is exhilarating,
spectacular, and gruesomely heroic.
Even the boss fights arent
awfula genre first, as far as I can
recall. Rather than simply being
absurdly tough to whittle down,
each is properly dangerous. The
challenge isnt to tank their damage
while you chew through a towering
health bar, its to move quickly
enough to dodge certain death.
Those particular fights are better
with friends, and co-op is beautifully
seamless: it takes one click to join
someone whos playing, and one
more to teleport to their side, mid-
fight. You can also revive each other
when down, which leads to some
dramatic rescues, despite negligible
penalties for respawning instead.
In longer sessions, co-op
sometimes feels like an awkward fit.
Theres a very intentional focus on
story this time, but almost no
systems exist to make that story work
with more than one player. If one
person skips a passage of in-game
dialogue, its skipped for everyone
with no warning, and often no way
to get it back. Even with cutscenes,
theres no way to vote on whether to
skip them, and no voice-comms to
discuss it. All of which makes
Diablos online-only policy more
baffling.
An easy choice
This is a phenomenally good game,
immediately fun to play and
enduringly compulsive, albeit for
very different reasons than the rest
of the series. But it comes shackled
to this pointless, damaging
restriction.
Should I give it a punitive 0% for
that? Thats not terribly helpful if
you want to know how good the
game itself is. Should I ignore it
completely and give the game the
score it would otherwise deserve? I
cant quite do that, either. Im just
less excited about owning Diablo III
when it lags out and kicks me off
from time to time.
Theres an easy way to resolve
these dilemmas. If you were a friend,
and you asked me whether you
should get this game, I would ask
you if you had a fast and reliable
internet connection. Id make you
aware of the problems beyond that,
slander Blizzard a bit, then say this:
God yes.
Giant wasps
spit streams
of their
young at you
The human bomb
How skills and runes combine into one devastating build
SKILL RUNE
Teleport
My rst move is to teleport into
the largest mob of enemies. Its
cool, I got this.
Wormhole
Lets me teleport several times
if I click fast enoughhandy for
getting to distant mobs.
Explosive Blast
Hurts everything around me, a
lot, but only after a short delay.
Time Bomb
Increases both the damage
and the delay, but thats OK,
because were about to...
Frost Nova
Freezes everyone around me in
place for three seconds, so they
cant ght back or run.
Shatter
If theyre killed inside of that
three seconds, enemies may
trigger another Frost Nova.
Wave of Force
Instant blast of damage
to everything around me,
coinciding exactly with
Explosive Blast.
Forceful Wave
Boosts the damage and
removes the normal knockback
effect, which we dont want
this time anyway.
Result > A huge mob is suddenly immobilised, then
hit with two massive blasts of damage. Everyone who
dies has a 50% chance to trigger another Frost Nova,
spreading the freezing effect outwards and refreshing it for
the already frozen. Fire everything you have at that ring of
ice, and Frost Novas just keep happening.
SEPTEMBER 2012 57
REVIEW
A mediocre
RPG, but one
that tells a
decent story.
STARK
When you play the GAME OF THRONES RPG,
you win or...well, you dont by Richard Cobbett
L
ike books, its often a bad
idea to judge a game by its
coveror even by its first
chapters. For the opening
hour or so of this spin-off,
the only real question was whether
Game of Thrones RPG was merely
comedy-bad or outright heresy
against George R R Martins
amazing, if increasingly bloated,
fantasy series. Awful graphics. Bland
combat. Voice-acting that smacks of
a producer leaning out of a window
and yelling at random passers-by,
Hey! Want to be in a licensed
abomination? Ive had more
enjoyable dental appointments.
After a while though, things
started to click. Even at its very best,
Game of Thrones is a thoroughly
mediocre RPG, but a mediocre RPG
that at least tells a decent story. Set
just before and during the first book,
it follows two seemingly unrelated
characters: a brother of the Nights
Watch called Mors, whose gravel-
voiced authority is sadly undercut by
the number of times he has to intone
the name Poddy, and a Red Priest,
Alester. Both are brought together
by a mysterious young woman on the
run, with chapters jumping between
their adventures.
The result is hardly The Witcher 2,
but the twists and turns of the plot
are oddly compelling, with several
nasty scenes and a fair amount of
control over how cynical you want
your heroes to be.
Alesters story, for instance,
revolves around him returning to
take control of his home town,
Riverspring. You get to decide
whether hes a man of the people or
one of Westeros typically dickish
lords. Mors is a hardline member of
the black brothers, but one still
willing to turn the occasional blind
eye when warranted. Both also have
some fun unique powersMors can
possess his dog for tracking and
stealth, and Alester can call on his
god Rhllor to manipulate fire.
Grey joy
The story is hyperlinear to the point
of feeling like a corridor shooter with
RPG combat, although there is a
dusting of sub-quests sprinkled in
and more than a few moments where
your decisions have at least some
minor impact later on.
The writing rarely has the sense of
punch and threat that makes the
books or TV series so effective, and
often writes checks that the engine
and acting simply cant cash. The
inevitable brothel scene is hilariously
coy compared with the TV show.
Still, its a solid story well enough
told, and becomes oddly compelling
once the new characters have settled
into the lore.
This is all the more impressive
next to the shoddy design. Game of
Thrones RPG is riddled with grating
idiosyncrasies where the developers
focused on the wrong areas: the
character creator is chock-full of
options, but the game tries to
pretend that four guys standing near
a castle constitutes a riot.
Combat especially feels weak and
ill-thought out, being based almost
entirely around status effects. Use
skill to make enemy bleed. Use skill
that does extra damage against
bleeding enemies. Repeat until all
enemys blood has gone. Other
elements are simply out of step with
the source material, such as glugging
down health potions mid-fight and
Alesters casual use of fire magic. Its
best to just switch the difficulty to
Casual and blitz right through.
Game of Thrones is a frustrating,
ugly, low-rent RPG thats flawed in
almost every way and impossible to
recommendbut which fans still
might enjoy. At the very least, its not
a lazy cash-in, just one trying its best
on too small a budget. If you can
tolerate thatand unfortunately, its
a lot to toleratedont necessarily
run screaming from its score.
Expect to pay $50 Release Out now Developer Cyanide Studios Publisher In-house
Multiplayer None Link gameofthrones-rpg.com
58
Far from the RPG that
Game of Thrones
deserves, but still better
than its components
have the right to be.
What is it?
The roleplaying game version of
the epic series, mostly drawing
inspiration from the TV version.
Influenced by
Dragon Age: Origins
Play it on
Dual-core processor,
2GB RAM, Radeon HD 2600
XT/GeForce 7900 GTX
Alternatively
The Witcher 2: Assassins
of Kings, 89%
Copy protection
Steam/TAGES
Need to know
The odd couple
Theyre both handy with a sword, but theyve got other tricks too
ALESTER
Red Priest
MORS
Skinchanger
Magically reveal secrets
Resurrection after falling
Explode burning enemies
Set weapons on re
Track scents
Rip enemy throats as a dog
Out-gravel actual rocks
Command dog in combat
58 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_rev_got.indd 58 6/18/12 2:28 PM
Your decisions dont mean much,
but have slight implications later on.
Wait, I just had a brilliant idea!
Hit. Bleed. Use bonus
bleed attack. Hit. Bleed. Etc.
The adult content is pretty
reserved beside the TV series.
Muttal Gear Solid.
Aw, that was my best spinal column.
SEPTEMBER 2012 59
PCG242.us_rev_got.indd 59 6/18/12 2:28 PM
What is it?
The louder, brasher spin-off of
the Dirt rally series.
Influenced by
Destruction Derby, Ken Block
Play it on
3.4GHz CPU, 2GB RAM,
GeForce Radeon 4850 /
GeForce 8800 GT
Alternatively
Dirt 3, 85%
Copy protection
Steam
Need to know
T
he Dirt series has always
been a kooky marriage
between Codemasters
Colin McRae roots and
the extreme (and
extremely marketable) excess of
ESPNs X Games. Dirt Showdown
dispenses with rallying altogether;
instead its a showcase of arcade racing
and trick-based showmanship,
topped off with an overzealous
announcer and wobbly dubstep.
Yet despite the focus on speed and
destruction, Showdown is the most
schizophrenic Dirt to date. The
excellent car handling model that
has evolved over the previous
gamesrealistic yet accessiblesits
uncomfortably against such arcade
trappings as the purely cosmetic
damage system or rechargeable
nitrous. Boost slowly builds up as
you drive, but to get a bigger increase
youll need to ram, shunt, and t-bone
your way through the field. The
problem is that bone-shattering
crunches into another racer are as
likely to put you sideways into a wall.
The AI cars have a tendency to
cluster together, so youll find
yourself at the back of the pack
before youve had time to adjust.
Its a problem compounded by the
lack of flashbacks, which in previous
games let you rewind mistakes to
have another go. In Showdown, when
those mistakes are as much about
luck as your own skill, losing this
feature can frustrate. In the figure-
eight circuits of 8-Ball mode,
wrecking out at the last corner from
a side-on hit is infuriating.
It means that in races, your best
tactic is to ignore the additions and
just race, using Boost in the few
occasions that its available, but
otherwise concentrating on a clean
run to the finish line. Despite a
lackluster start on the bland Miami
track, once you progress to later
seasons and get to race in snow-
covered Colorado or neon-lit Tokyo,
its a lot of fun. But this is ground
that was covered before and better in
Dirt 2 and 3.
Two other event types are
included, each with their own set of
cars to unlock and upgrade, and both
feel more at home in Showdowns
roster. Demolition, including the
destruction derbies of Rampage and
Knock Out, and the Hard Target
assassination mode, are romps of
vehicular violence. Meanwhile,
Hoonigan events favor precision
and skill, and as such are the only
modes to feature flashback rewinds
and licensed vehicles (including,
brilliantly, a classic Mini Cooper).
Gymkhana trick-runs make a return
appearance, but the highlight is the
Smash Hunt challenge. Here you
target specific colored foam blocks
in a strangely compelling mixture of
Simon Says and a driving test.
Its a lot of game modes spread out
over multiple courses, but even with
the variety, Showdowns ultimately
lightweight: youll fly through the
campaign. Its good, and at times
even great, but comes across like an
expansion to tide you over until the
next proper release.
Expect to pay $50 Release Out now Developer Codemasters Racing Studio
Publisher Codemasters Multiplayer Up to 8 Link bit.ly/MTJz36
Dirt Showdown provides
thrills while it lasts, but
afterwards youre left
wanting the deeper
experience of its parents.
79
BURN WUBBER
DIRT SHOWDOWN nicks its dads keys and takes the
series for a dubstep-scored joyride by Phil Savage
Did I hit 88 miles per hour?
Tracks are littered with tires
and barrels. Just because.
Probably not what the Self
Preservation Society had in mind.
Crashbacks are replays of your
best takedowns. Even of yourself.
Rampage mode is
ridiculous madness.
60 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_rev_dirt.indd 60 6/15/12 12:45 PM
SPIKY
UNSUITED
Expect to pay Free Release Out now Developer Imba Entertainment
Publisher Uber Entertainment Multiplayer 32 players Link moonbreakers.com
fluid, a problem compounded by the
horrible, poorly ported PC controls.
Keyboards are supported, but the
default controls are wretched and a
gamepad is the better way to go.
Even then, Sonic isnt much fun to
direct. Chains of jump pads are there
to impart a sensation of speed but
serve only to frustrate, wrenching
control away from you and guiding
you through on-rails sections. Its as
if the only way the designers could
get you to move through the level
quickly was to do it for you.
Each stage ends with a boss fight
scored with shouty music. Youll be
hearing it a lot: boss weakspots are
poorly signposted, leading to
frequent deaths and restarts. All the
elements of the old Sonic games are
here but they havent been
assembled well. Best curl
into a ball and wait for this
one to leave you alone.
in Moon Breakers space battles.
There arent many levels but they
compensate in terms of size, and
playing capture the flag with
spaceships has a laughably demented
feel to it as you glide through asteroid
fields. Sadly, slow ship handling
makes it hard to feel the intensity of
these maneuvers, and even
prolonged skirmishes rarely feel
anything other than leisurely.
On the plus side, developer Imba
Entertainment has been quick to
address game issues. Cred balancing
has been tweaked, and there are clear
plans to bring new stuff into the
game in the future.
But were not in the future. Right
now Moon Breakers suffers: its ships
handle like HGVs and its a
multiplayer game that
doesnt actually require
you to work with other
players at all.
S
onic recently turned 21. He
should be out of his awkward
adolescence and settling down
to turn what hes learned into a
polished platformer. Instead, with
loud echoes of its console origins
reverberating throughout, his recent
Episode II is a juddery mess that
quickly becomes frustrating to play.
Like Episode I before it, Episode II
drops you into a colorful side-on
platformer akin to the Sonic games of
the early 90s, but with most of the
level elements rendered in 3D. With
your companion Tails in tow, you
race through levels collecting rings,
dodging enemies, and making like a
blue lightning bolt until you hit the
finish linetheoretically.
In practice, youll find yourself
stop-starting the whole way. Just as
you pick up momentum, a wall will
appear out of nowhere to kick you
back to a standstill. Play never feels
T
here are two currencies within
Moon Breakers multiplayer
space shooter: Cred and HE3.
The first is basically a spendable
analog to XP, while the latter is just
real-world cash under a different
name. You can use either to buy new
shipsdogfighters of varying size,
speed, and toughnesswhich you
then pilot around large combat
arenas, trying to shoot another teams
fleet out of the sky.
Cred can be accrued after each of
the overly long 15-minute battles,
but the amounts doled out are so
pitiful they wouldnt even buy a
breath of air for your spacesuit. HE3
isnt cheap either: high-end fighters
equate to more than $25 in real
money. For that reason you have
Cred multiplierswhich are only
purchasable with HE3. Its
a circular problem.
There are a few pluses to be found
Expect to pay $15 Release Out now Developer Sega Publisher In-house
Multiplayer Local and online co-op Link sonicthehedgehog4.com
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 4: EPISODE II
bristles with frequent foibles by Julian Benson
Space shooter MOON BREAKERS
explores the freemium frontier by Joe Martin
34
40
A rubbish PC port means the game
is stuttery and difficult to control.
Its boss fight time! Better
put your earplugs in.
Bored? You Oort to be.
Want your attack to
work? Planet well.
REVIEW
SEPTEMBER 2012 61
PCG242.us_rev_sonicmoon.indd 61 6/18/12 11:13 AM
Max has
always
dealt with
adversity by
diving gun-
first into
rooms full of
armed men.
SLOW MOTION PICTURE
Go for a guided shoot-along through MAX PAYNE 3s
cynical theatrics by Tyler Wilde
T
he bottle of whiskey on
my desk wasnt going to
write this review, but I
was sure that old
familiar sting could
coax the words out of me like so
many twisted tapeworms. Reviews
are like parasites, after allcough
them onto the page or theyll chew
up your insides and wriggle out one
way or another. Swig.
Gross. I dont have tapeworms, for
the record, and maybe Im not the
best at melodramatic inner dialog.
Max Payne, however, is a pro. Hes a
pile of injured, cynical analogies and
booze-soaked emotional baggage
an ex-cop gone mercenary with no
comprehension of the mess hes in,
but plenty of wonderfully trite
venom to spew at himself and the
world.
Hes not the same Max he was nine
years ago. After losing his wife, child,
and lover in the previous games, Max
moved on by cultivating a gut in a
New Jersey bar until an old friend,
Raul Passos, offered him a job. Now
hes an addict playing bodyguard to a
rich family in So Paulo. He fails to
understand them, but hes at least
self-aware. Among other self-pity,
Max calls himself some hopped-up
gringo a long way from home.
One of the first things he does in
So Paulo is get drunk and dive
through a nightclub window. So its
not going very well, but Max has
always dealt with adversity by
popping painkillers and diving gun-
first into rooms full of armed men.
Thats just the videogame character
in him coming out.
Time flies
To make his one-man-army style of
justice possible, Max can speed up
his perception with Bullet Time.
The juice it runs on depletes quickly,
but he can always trigger his slow-
motion power if hes willing to take a
leap into the open with the shoot-
dodge technique. The trick can
clear a room if your mid-air shots hit
heads, but the resulting belly-flop
leaves Max excruciatingly
vulnerable. He doesnt last long out
in the open.
Max Payne 3 is tough, and on Hard
I had to replay certain sections
upwards of ten times. Sometimes,
repetition is part of the fun. I love
that I can sit back in my chair after a
couple deaths, build a mental map of
the segment Im having trouble with,
and then hit it again with
choreographed maneuvers (or
practiced bravado, as Max would
say) like Ive got supernatural
precognition. If I die, I retool my
routine and try again.
A few pieces of level design,
however, made me pine for a
quicksave feature. The checkpoints
were usually where I expected, but
one part near the end pit me against a
longer-than-usual series of goons on
a crumbling rooftop, and I had to
replay it so many times that I nearly
strangled my monitor. The boss gave
no indication of how to kill it, which
put me in a position to overthink my
deadly dance steps with a dumb
amount of trial and error. In the end, I
just had toyepshoot-dodge and
take his helmet off with a heavy round
to trigger another cutscene and end
the level. It took me over half an hour.
That arbitrary solution was a rare
frustrationan exception to a series
of mostly clear and well-crafted
levelsbut it helps illustrate my
biggest complaint: Im playing as a
drunken, time-dilating action hero,
but I hit the ground with a flower-
shaped exit wound in my head if I try
to act like one. Instead, I do what I
can from cover and then abuse the
shoot-dodge technique, leaping
forward and backward repeatedly
until everyone else has grown a
blooming head garden.
Its a mild complaint, because
shoot-dodging is fun on its own, and
on easier modes you can get away
with a few more indulgent
acrobatics. Still, I would have liked
more variation on the carefully
plotted encountersnear the end I
started to feel like someone else was
scripting my maneuvers, and the
exceptions are the best parts. During
a certain flashback, for example, I
What is it?
Cinematic third-person shooter
with slow-motion dodging and
deathmatch multiplayer.
Influenced by
Max Payne, L.A. Noire
Play it on
Dual Core 3GHz CPU, 4GB RAM,
Nvidia 8600GT/Radeon
HD3400, 35GB HD space
Alternatively
L.A. Noire, Modern Warfare 3
Copy protection
Steam and Rockstar Social Club
online activation
Need to know
REVIEW
Hide and seek
The GRAPHIC NOVELS of the previous games are gone, but
BIG TEXT over the CUTSCENES still peeks through.
62 SEPTEMBER 2012
Four against one? Max might
have to get up for this one.
Scripted sequences oddly force
you to use different weapons.
Thats a wall, Max.
Looking at it wont help.
The dreaded escort mission
is surprisingly good.
Big problems require big guns.
The new exit wound effects
are as graphic as they come.
SEPTEMBER 2012 63
What Max does with his
legs is sort of cute.
Nobody ever thinks about
the carpet cleaners.
The New York ashbacks are
some of the best parts.
Maxs rage comes from an
inner turmoil about his haircut.
The cover system doesnt
detract from the manic action.
Rockstars classic intentionally
annoying main character trope.
64 SEPTEMBER 2012
REVIEW
85
Youll watch as much as
you play, but Maxs story of
non-redemption is as fun
as his theatrical slow
motion headshots.
Expect to pay $60 Release Out now Developer Rockstar Studios Publisher In-house
Multiplayer Up to 16 players Link maxpayne.com
rabbited down a cemetery hill,
diving in and out of tombstone cover,
and that was the freest I felt.
But Max Payne 3 just isnt about
freedom or player agency. Its a series
of cutscenes (many of which mask
loading screens) interspersed with
shooting-gallery action vignettes.
Its a movie which drops you into the
directors chair every time theres a
reason to shoot guns instead of
scenes. Thank goodness, though:
the gunplay throughout is absolutely
satisfying. MP3 is one of the only
games that empowers me to savor
individual shots with its fidelity and
feedbackbad guys crumple with an
authentic sense of weight and
momentum depending on where
theyre hit. Slugs sent to eye sockets
and naked chests splash with over-
the-top blood decals.
I relished the moments of trigger-
spamming panic just as much. I
appreciate that MP3 is one of the few
games that make you vulnerable
when blind-firingarms and hands
can and do get hit when you expose
them. The messy luck of curving a
sawed-off shotgun around a corner
and catching some gangster across
the room with a buckshot cloud is
classically-good game design: risk
and surprise.
A gravely road
My instinct is to flatly criticize too
much non-interactivity in an
interactive medium, but Max Payne 3
is almost as fun to watch as it is to
play. I wanted more ill-humored
quips from gravely-voiced actor
James McCaffrey as much as I
wanted to shoot.
The filmic portions are well-
animated and directed. The motion-
captured characters occasionally
gesture with awkward stiffness, but
fast cuts and graphic-novel style
panels (a throwback to the preceding
games) mask technical limits by
keeping the eye moving and
drawing attention to the deceit and
fear spinning around every
interaction. Even when youre in
control, motion captured bitslike
Passos grabbing a rail as he ascends a
staircase, or the way Max shoves
open doors with the languid thrust
of a serial drunkardsuspend
disbelief and tie the action bits in
with the watching bits. This is a feat
that Rockstar keeps poking at
especially with L.A. Noireand it
works in MP3.
My favorite act of cleverness is how
Rockstar handles the disparity
between real people and videogame
people. The player needs something
to do, so the story pushes Max into
confused rages which result in piles
and piles of bodies. He leaves behind
too many bodies to make sense,
especially for a washed up alcoholic,
and Rockstar quietly acknowledges
that. The story doesnt outright
break the fourth wall, but it plays
with Maxs violence in wonderful
ways which I wont spoil.
The multiplayer is less successful.
Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch
are fun for a few rounds, but I felt
little motivation past a brief effort to
grind for better weapons. The
attempt to include Bullet Time and a
perk system sort of works, but its
unnecessary. None of the better
players seem to bother with shoot-
dodgingwhile Im foolishly
flopping through the air, theyre
standing upright and shooting me
with a fancy-looking revolver.
The other modes, which
annoyingly must be unlocked, have
interesting concepts but arent much
better. In Gang Wars, a series of
team skirmishes is strung together
into a vague story of territorial
battle. It seems clever on paper, but
Maxs style of gunplay just works
better against AI goons, which is
evident in the other special mode.
Payne Killer is the best of themit
transforms the first two killers into
Max and Passos, and they become
cooperative targets for the other
players. Kill one of them, and you
transform into that leading actor.
Playing as Max or Passos is more
fun, and Im surprised Rockstar
didnt just include a straight co-op
survival mode, which worked so well
for Mass Effect 3.
The Arcade section adds much
more for me. I love score and time
attack modes, as perfection through
repetition is often how I enjoy
games. That may be why I dont
mind that Max Payne 3 is all about
practiced bravadomemorizing
the path of each thug and hitting
them with the perfectly-timed
headshots of unfair precognition.
And I definitely dont mind the
single-player focus on story. Its
what I came for: Max is one of the
most entertaining game characters
to ride along with. Hes a complex
guy whos been reduced by fire into
a miserable cynic, and his bitterness
is both amusing and cathartic.
Sometimes you just want to say,
Screw it, Im gonna shoot up a
50,000-member militia, see if
anything good happens, and figure
out the whole deal with morals or
whatever later. Swig.
Max Payne 3
is one of the
only games
that
empowers
me to savor
individual
shots.
Time to recline
Maxs favorite post-dive
sprawl positions
A The One More Bottle And Ill Get Up
C The Hello Ofcer, Didnt See You There
D The Slow-Moving Commando
B The Forgot How Guns Work
SEPTEMBER 2012 65
What is it?
16th century naval trading sim
Influenced by
Patrician IV, Sid Meiers Pirates!
Play it on
Quad Core CPU, 4GB RAM
Alternatively
Anno 1404, 61%
Copy protection
Steam
Need to know
I
t has become standard practice
for games to implement the
campaign-as-tutorial teaching
tool. Port Royale 3 puts a twist on the
idea. The New World trading sim
has two tutorials: the economy-
focused Trader path and the pirate-
baiting Adventurer path. Except that
instead of tutoring you, they fail to
provide the most basic information.
Such as: how do you add multiple
ships to a convoy? (You click on a
lighthouse.) Or what does the
advisor mean by setting warships to
escort your convoy? (He means
telling your regular vessels to be
ready for combat. Apparently they
escort themselves.)
I finished my first session
thoroughly baffled, and went away to
RTFM. (Manual review: a bit dry,
but lots of pictures. 70%.) Once you
know how to play the game, its
obvious that its pretty simple. It just
has an obnoxiously obtuse interface.
The usual complaint levied against
any economy management sim is
that theyre just good-looking
spreadsheets. To say that here would
be to miss the point: the spreadsheets
are the best bit. The trading is
dynamic, so you arent buying stock
at a flat rate. Buy too much at a dock
and youll end up paying well over
the average, even if your initial price
was good. Theoretically this means
you have to be clever with your
purchases, and your trading
destination, to maximize profits.
In practice? Heres how to be the
best merchant in the Caribbean:
create an automatic trading route, set
it to Profit, make a sandwich, come
back to hundreds of thousands in
gold. Eventually pirates become
more brazen in their raids, but youll
earn more than enough to recoup
anything you lose.
While your fortune pours in you
can build businesses, take missions
from town halls or worried women
in taverns, hunt infamous pirates to
collect their bounties, or just sail in
and attack a town. Unfortunately,
none of these things are interesting,
profitable, or much fun.
A business empire is fiddly to set
up, expensive, heavily dependent on
markets, andshould it all work
nowhere near as lucrative as trading.
If you take a more violent approach,
attacking other ships involves an
annoying combat system where you
circle enemies, firing when a
targeting circle turns green and
hoping your idiotic AI companions
dont get themselves blown up. Go
freelance for an empire nation and
there are only a handful of mission
types available. Some have such
strict time limits that, unless youve
done a mountain of prep work, youre
likely to fail.
Port Royale 3 has an interesting
trading system, but its let down by
poor implementation, counter-
intuitive interfaces, and tedious
diversions. Its a sunnier reworking
of Patrician IV, with all the problems
of that game and a hefty $40 price
tag. You can get both Dawn of
Discovery and its expansion for half
that price. So do that instead.
Expect to pay $40 Release Out now Developer Gaming Minds Publisher Kalypso
Multiplayer 2-4 Player Link port-royale3.com
Unintuitive, uninvolving
and overpriced. Not even
its satisfying trading
system can put the wind in
Port Royale 3s sails.
41
TROUBLED BERTH
Initially hard to fathom, PORT ROYALE 3 doesnt have
much beneath the surface by Phil Savage
Towns are pretty, but theres not much to do.
Trade routes: sit back and
watch the game play itself.
Combat is about as
exciting as it looks.
One of the genres better spreadsheets.
These arent the fun-loving
pirates of adventure games.
66 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_rev_port.indd 66 6/18/12 11:12 AM
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REVIEW
Titan ships explained
One of Rebellions 24
capital ships, the Vorastra
Class supercapital
Its got so
much going
on, you sink
into it like
a hot bath.
PRAYED FOR
Sizzling deep-space strategy abounds in SINS OF A
SOLAR EMPIRE: REBELLION by Quintin Smith
T
oo ruggedly professional
to die, 2008 sleeper hit
Sins of a Solar Empire
has returned. Titled
Rebellion, this third
expansion comes in a new,
expandalone format, and adds just
about everything except actual
rebellion. Silly developers!
Sins has aged well, partly because
its only competitor, Sword of the Stars
II, flopped harder than a snake
slipping off a diving board, but also
because its appeal is still intact. As
you develop your empire, swinging
from planet to planet, tumbling
down the tech tree, stringing
together fleets and leveling up your
capital ships, the game simply gives
you a bit too much to think about.
Its uncanny. As a beginner, youll
have your hands (and head) full
developing trade routes and
continuing the electric push of your
culture across the solar system,
perhaps with one eye on your prize
fleet, making sure its still winning
some 20-minute pitched battle. But
experts will be kept just as busy
micromanaging the powers on
individual ships, perhaps leaping
home to oversee the construction of
a Maginot Line-like array of turrets,
before snapping up the diplomacy
menu to offer a job, a ceasefire, a
demand, then back to the fight.
Sins sweet spot is that it always
threatens to overwhelm, but rarely
does. This isnt the riptide real-time
strategy of StarCraft II. Its more
sedate than that. But the game simply
has so much going on, its every
element rewarding not just attention
but obsession, that youre able to sink
into it like a hot bath. Want to fling
armadas around as if they were
plastic toys? Youll have a great time.
Want to orchestrate your fleets like
an interplanetary Rommel? Youll
see the rewards instantly.
The turtles dream
Which brings us to what Rebellion
adds. Perhaps most notably, it still
doesnt add a singleplayer campaign,
leaving you to fool around either
online or in the excellently robust
skirmish mode. Which is fine.
Theres also a whole new suite of
tutorials, which prepare you for
everythingexcept how to deal
with this much content.
Sins three relatively asymmetrical
races have been further rent into
Rebel and Loyalist variants, each of
which holds a new teasing selection
of powerful abilities and a unique
Titan. Well get to those. Loyalist
TEC, for example, are a turtles
dream, with one tech that increases
experience gained fighting in their
own space and another that lowers
the cost of the horrible Novalith
Cannon (which lets them slam-dunk
nukes into distant gravity wells).
Meanwhile, the nomadic Vasari
Loyalists gain the power to summon
NPC vagabonds and devour planets
like so many Mars Bars.
There are new corvettes and
capital ships for each faction, too, but
the Titans are the stars of the show.
Monstrously expensive and perfectly
suited to a long-form game like Sins,
its likely the fiercest fighting these
behemoths will see will be attacks by
wary players on their sprawling
dockyard before theyre completed.
As with everything else in the
game, however, they strike a
thoughtful balance. Completing a
Titan is by no means a win button,
but the automated report that
another player has finished one still
instills a gentle dread.
Outside of the lack of a singleplayer
campaign, about the only criticism
that could be leveled at Rebellion is
that its not much of a looker
anymore. But you know what?
When you jump some 50 ships on
top of an enemy fleet, announcing
your presence in a flutter of missiles
and hot burps of laser fire, you just
cant tear your eyes away.
Expect to pay $40 Release Out now Developer Ironclad Games, Stardock Entertainment
Publisher Stardock Multiplayer Up to 8 Link www.sinsofasolarempire.com
86
Bigger and more stable
than ever, Sins of a Solar
Empire: Rebellion will
happily strip-mine your
life of its free time.
What is it?
An epic space strategy game,
perfect for deep space skirmish
and multiplayer battles.
Influenced by
Homeworld, Civilization
Play it on
3GHz CPU, 2GB RAM,
Radeon 3400/GeForce 8400
Alternatively
Supreme Commander 2, 87%
Copy protection
Serial code to activate
Need to know
Desperation
This adds a stacking bonus to weapon
cooldown each time the ship takes
damage. Come to think of it, does the
Vorastra even have a crew?
Micro-Phase Jump
By voiding antimatter, the lumbering
Vorastra can vanish and reappear
anywhere in a planets gravity well.
Perfect for getting in, and out, of ghts.
Spawn Phase Stabilizer
A phase stabilizer lets you summon
reinforcements from Vasari tribes
outside the map to help you wreak
your revenge.
The Maw
The ship can slurp other ships toward
its mouth, destroying them utterly
on contact, and converting them into
precious resources.
68 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_rev_sins.indd 68 6/18/12 2:03 PM
Pirates, best of all the animals,
can be hired to harass your foes.
Toggling an entire fleet to jump in
tandem is maximum marvellous.
Captain, their Wibbly Green
technology is far in advance of ours!
Titans are to cruisers what
bleach is to stains.
Why are spaceships so
angry? Poor diet, we expect.
Battles of this scale can start and
finish without you even noticing.
The colored lines are cultures,
spreading between star systems.
This is my fave ship, because it looks
like an actual ship that got lost.
Always a sad moment when you
realize the lasers arent yours.
SEPTEMBER 2012 69
PCG242.us_rev_sins.indd 69 6/18/12 2:03 PM
What is it?
Four player co-op retelling
of Resident Evil 2.
Influenced by
Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil 2
Play it on
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 512MB
GeForce 8800GTS/
Radeon HD 3850
Alternatively
Left 4 Dead 2, 92%
Copy protection
Games for Windows Live
Need to know
T
elltale signs of a thoughtless
port: #12 Menus that dont
respond properly to your
mouse; #25 D-pad overlay on the
UI with no gamepad plugged in.
#33 A symbol that implies you
should be wiggling your keyboard.
#66 Backspace and Escape taking it
in turns to do the same job in
menus. All of these things are
superficial, and none ruin the
enjoyment of Raccoon City as a
shooter. It finds far more
substantial ways to do that.
Operation Raccoon City is an evil
four-player co-op shooter. You play
as members of the positively rude
Umbrella Security Service. This is
all good. Resident Evil has long-
fetishized its villains as much as its
heroes, and recognizes that people
want to play Wesker, HUNK, and
the ambiguous Ada Wong. So
Operation Raccoon City is a good fit.
Unfortunately, your opponents are
the all-new Delta Team, and theyre
generic nobodies playing second
fiddle to a cast of unsatisfying
cameos. Classes offer some unique
powers, but teamwork is no more
sophisticated than stick together,
dont hog the ammo, and if youre
going to use a first aid spray, do it
together so everyone gets some.
The story is functional, but
certainly not good or important
enough to be forced on you. Its no
coincidence that Umbrella Biohazard
Countermeasure Service shares an
abbreviation with Unskippable
Boring Cut-Scenes. On top of that,
the sound design is positively
deflating. You cant take a gun
seriously when it sounds like
someone making popcorn, and only
the zombies and spec-ops enemies
seem to have being hit animations.
Shooting larger enemies is
profoundly unsatisfying.
Its not meant for solo play. If you
thought RE5s Sheva was an amusing
liability, youll love watching your
evil AI teammates deliver melee
attacks to enemies who explode on
contact, blithely trip mines, and
utterly fail to revive you. Fill up the
slots with real people, and youve
got a fast and flimsy shooter thats
just pacey enough to blind you to
its faults.
Moments of thoughtfulness and
love appear like unconnected holes in
a cheese. There are a couple of
interesting competitive modes,
starring familiar characters from the
series. Survivor involves beating back
zombie waves before deciding who
gets to take the limited rescue seats,
and Biohazard involves bringing
G-Virus drops back to your base.
But the good stuff is all wrapped up
in that weak gunplay, an annoying
automatic snap-to cover system, and
moments like the Birkin-G battlea
fight so poorly communicated and
unfair that youll wish computer mice
still had balls so you could rip one out
and chew it while slobbering. Itd be
worth going back to picking matted
filth off your mouses rollers just to
make that frustrated gesture. What
goodwill Raccoon City inherits and
generates, it quickly casts away.
Expect to pay $50 Release Out now Developer Slant Six Publisher Capcom
Multiplayer 4 player co-op, competitive Link residentevil.com/reorc
A Weskered development
gives us the Wong game.
Resident Evil: Operation
Raccoon City is evil in the
wrong sense.
46
SHAMBLER
Take off and nuke the site from orbit in RESIDENT
EVIL: OPERATION RACCOON CITY by Jon Blyth
Canon dictates that you cant kill
Birkin-G. Youll want to, though.
In my day we had to go to work on
fire, and we paid for the privilege.
No blood spatters, no damage
animationsthey attack, and they die.
Get used to that character model.
Youll be seeing a bit of him.
The best part is when their limbs
drop off and their heads blow up.
70 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_rev_resi.indd 70 6/15/12 12:52 PM
ROGUE, LIKED
SNOOZE
Expect to pay $15 Release Out now Developer Remedy Entertainment
Publisher In-house Multiplayer None Link www.alanwake.com
items are scarce; every move you
make must be carefully considered.
Sadly, while strategy will carry you
part of the way, Lady Luck will often
punch you in the kneecap. Its
common to begin a quest surrounded
by monsters, or walk into a booby
trap at the last hurdle. Hack Slash Loot
doesnt help you understand why
youre dying, eithertheres no
in-game tutorial to explain the
heaps of stats detailing equipment,
enemy weaknesses, or player
abilities.
Teething problems aside, youll
love and hate this game in equal
measure. Sit through seemingly
countless deaths, and youll either
break through the system, and
master the statsor bounce off the
game and never go back.
For the price, its worth
finding out which kind of
hero you are.
In all, the campaign is only two or
three hours longa bit more if you
go searching for the scraps of Alans
diary that explain the story. Sadly,
the nightmare isnt particularly
visual, relying on these scraps to
tell, and not show, the ookyness at
the center of the plot.
The biggest problem is that
despite the increased focus on
action, combat remains
unchangeda couple of new
monsters, but few new tricks. You
shine a torch on things, you shoot
them, you dodge a lotbut
youre never short of batteries or
ammo, so things are never tense.
Still, if you enjoy that side of the
game, theres a new Horde mode
outside the story thatll last a while.
Five maps are on offer,
and Normal and
Nightmare difficulty
levels await you.
H
ack Slash Loot is a pure
roguelike, complete with
randomly generated maps,
more loot to plunder than Torchlight,
and blood-curdling permadeath.
There are six quests in total, from
raiding tombs to killing demons, and
32 unlockable characters with
strengths and weaknesses to exploit.
But the premise is always the same.
Hack at the dwarves, slash at the
zombies, and loot everything from
corpses to altars. But theres no
bottomless inventory in which to
stash said loot: instead, players have
eight bodily regions in which to slot
cuirasses, shoes, and headgear of +1
something or other. Potions and
healing items are used on pickup, so
you need to be tactical with your
equipment choices and item pickups.
And boy, youre going to need tactics.
This game is adamantine hard.
Enemies are plentiful and healing
W
itness if you dare, a
dimension of horror and
whimsy; a Twilight Zone
pastiche on a very different screen.
You are about to enter...Night
Springs. Submitted for your
potential download: Alan Wake.
Writer. Jerk. Self-appointed Herald
of Light, last seen battling the
insidious Dark Presence.
Set two years after the original
survival horror outing, this is an
odd release: a more combat-focused
game with a central story gimmick
thats often frustrating but cant be
described without ruining the
surprise. While its a clever concept,
it heavily reuses the games three
locations and the repetition feels
more a result of budget constraints
than narrative experimentation.
The first time you use a Kasabian
CD as a reality-altering weapon, its
clever. Third time, not so much.
Expect to pay $7 Release Out now Developer David Williamson
Publisher Self-published Multiplayer None Link www.hackslashloot.com
Do the first, then the next, then the last, in
HACK SLASH LOOT by Kim Richards
Wake up to ALAN WAKES AMERICAN
NIGHTMARE by Richard Cobbett
79
68
Bad luck and rock-hard difficulty often
leave you surrounded by angry monsters.
Pro tip: as soon as you unlock the Amazon, use
her. Her Divine Bow randomly replenishes health.
Not so scary when every
attack is easily dodged.
Hes back, and hes... FMV?
REVIEW
SEPTEMBER 2012 71
PCG242.us_rev_alanhack.indd 71 6/15/12 12:44 PM
www.coolermaster-usa.com
Enclosures: HAF XM
A mid tower version of the HAF X, which
comes with full tower features for PC
enthusiasts. It supports up to four
200mm fans to keep constant cooling
while housing high-end components.
Peripherals: Sirus Headset
Built for gaming enthusiasts and
audiophiles alike, the CM Storm Sirus 5.1
Surround Sound Headset creates an
immersive experience with hi-fdelity so
undscapes and intense bass.
Cooling: X6 Elite Notebook Accessories: X3
Being amongst the best value for the
dollar in CPU cooling, X6 Elite focuses less
on aesthetic fair and incorporates minor
changes to performance to achieve a
well balanced setup.
Power: Silent Pro Hybrid Series
Silent Pro Hybrid Series, built for the those in
need of high power that includes plenty of
options for customization and noise control.
Inspired by the vanguard diamond
cutting design, X3 inherits all the
advantages from X2, and upgrade the
blue LED fan to 200mm.
REVIEW
Only the
most patient
space cadets
need apply
ELITE-IST
Trade, battle, and explore your way across the universe
in EVOCHRON MERCENARY by Richard Cobbett
T
heres nothing quite as
liberating as finding
yourself in the middle
of the universe with
your own ship, a million
possible destinations and nothing to
do except make your own fun.
Mercenary. Trader. Racer. Soldier.
Intergalactic power broker. Your
ship can get you to your destiny just
as well as it jumps between starsif
not quite as quickly.
Evochron Mercenary is one of the
most absorbing takes on Elite in a
long timeat least once you grapple
your way onto a learning curve that
involves spending more of your first
hours in Wikis and on YouTube than
actually in the cockpit. Your starting
ship and gear are totally useless. The
autopilot sees no difference between
flying you to a planet and smashing
straight into it. F1 is your navigation
console, F3 your cargo, and F2 the
AAARGH! JUMP! JUMP!
hyperspace button. Even factoring
in a spectacularly dull tutorial
thrown in to show you the ropes,
only the most patient space cadets
need apply.
Behind this brick wall covered in
severed heads awaits a universe thats
usually worth the effort, though. Its
a galaxy where planets arent simply
background scenery on a skybox, but
places you can seamlessly fly down
to whenever you like; where combat
follows the laws of Newtonian
physics, and options to explore and
interact with the economy grow as
you move from simply ferrying
goods and fulfilling contracts to
surviving warzones, hiring crew and
a fleet of wingmen, and establishing
your own bases.
All of this seems even more
impressive when you consider that
its a one-man project, and a series
that began as a simple space shooter
written in a game creation tool called
DarkBASIC. Its hard not to draw a
comparison to the Battlecruiser
series, but this one does a much
better job. Its not as ambitious, but
its considerably more enjoyable.
Mine alone
Like a lot of space games, flying can
be a lonely experienceas much as
the other ships you see feel like
theyre up to their own business,
theyre not exactly chatty. You dont
have to play alone, though; not only
can you join a multiplayer server at
will, you can do so with your
singleplayer character and continue
developing your career. Its hardly
EVE Onlinemaxing out at 35
playersbut still handy if you have
friends to team up with.
The main problem is one shared by
most games like Elite: that theres no
real story to add context to your
actions. Missions are generic and
quickly become repetitive, while the
universe has little of the atmosphere
of Freelancer, Privateer, or X.
Evochron does successfully convey
the feel of a living place in many
ways, though, like the random
distress calls and the other ships
warping around and initiating trades
with you instead of just sitting
passively. And, as noted, theres
plenty of stuff to explore in this star-
studded galaxy. Even so, your sense
of satisfaction has to come from your
personal achievements: from finally
clawing together enough gear to
stand a chance in combat situations,
to surviving a trip down to Sol.
Theres no middle ground here. If
youre willing to put in lots of time,
and are happy to find your own fun,
Evochron Mercenary will reward it
with a galaxy-sized sandbox thats all
the more impressive for knowing its
effectively a one-man project.
If you need something more
structured though, or demand a
game that gets to the good stuff in
a hurry, dont expect Evochron
Mercenary to show any mercy as it
silently points you to the nearest
asteroid mine.
Expect to pay $25 Release Out now Developer StarWraith 3D Publisher Self-published
Multiplayer Up to 35 Link starwraith.com
76
A slow-burning but
compelling universe in
which to indulge your
trading, mining and
mercenary fantasies.
What is it?
A freeform space simulator
where you can make your
fortune in the great beyond
Influenced by
Elite
Play it on
2GHz CPU, 1.5GB RAM,
128MB 3D card
Alternatively
EVE Online, 84%
Copy protection
One-time unlock
Need to know
Goldilocks in orbit
The art of planetary
re-entry explained JUST RIGHT
But avoid the afterburner. Really.
TOO LITTLE
AKA Autopilot Suicide.
TOO MUCH
No. No, thats space. You missed.
74 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_rev_evochron.indd 74 6/18/12 11:13 AM
No! My asteroids!
Find your own!
Space racing. Damn
you, Isaac Newton!
Capital ships laugh at your puny
attacks. Mwah-ha-ha, they say.
That block of infinitely dull
text is where the story is told.
Small hold or not, minings the
easiest way to get money early on.
Meet the ground-based flight
system! Also the ground!
Huh. Turns out it is a
small world after all.
SEPTEMBER 2012 75
PCG242.us_rev_evochron.indd 75 6/18/12 11:13 AM
What is it?
An expansion to the life-
stealing rewrite history
sim Civilization V.
Influenced by
Religion; Civilization IV
Play it on
1.8GHz quad-core CPU,
4GB RAM , GeForce 8800GTX/
Radeon 4870
Alternatively
Shogun 2: Total War, 92%
Copy protection
Steamworks
Need to know
W
hen you crush someone,
even an entire civilization,
its always best to wipe the
slate clean of everything they
believed in. To help with this, a
mysterious city state has revealed
itself close to Civilization Vs
bordersan expansion thats ready
to introduce religion to an already
tumultuous world.
Gods & Kings can be seen as an act
of appeasement. It reintroduces
systems such as Faith and Espionage
that many Civ IV acolytes felt had
become part of the games
bedrockand who thought that the
successes of Civ V in combat and
game flow rang slightly hollow in
their absence.
Firaxiss approach to religion
provides a nuanced and personal
approach to a monolithic subject
matterletting you tend to your
religion from its earliest origins.
Faith is a resource like Gold or
Culture, and can be gathered from
the things you build and the social
policies you take onultimately
letting you create a Pantheon and
choose from a long list of potential
Beliefs. Each Belief can provide
bonuses to your Civ (say, a God of
the Sea who can help with your food
supply), and when a Great Prophet
starts mulling around you can make
your kooky belief system official. I
call mine Awesomeism and delight in
strapping extra founder and follower
beliefs to it, and of course using it to
infect the cities of non-awesome
infidels.
Its a hugely customizable system
that genuinely redirects the flow of
early diplomacy, and neatly plays
into advances made with City States.
Formerly the favor of these mewling
mini-Civs could be bought with cold
hard cash, but they now provide a
wider roster of potential quest hoops
for you and your rivals to jump
through to secure their love. These
can be global (say, rewarding
whoever generates the most culture
in 10 turns) or applicable to you alone
(perhaps building a specific Wonder,
or spreading Awesomeism). It forces
you to narrow your focus, and makes
you properly riled when rivals try to
butter up your charges.
Espionage is a little less tactile; an
overlay rather than a story played
out with units. Spies are ordered
around the map in a separate
windowproviding sneak-peeks at
enemy city screens, interfering with
City State elections and stealing
tech. Irritatingly, of course, these
aloof chaps can also be used against
you. Of all of Gods & Kings advances,
this feels the least well integrated,
but anyone who says it doesnt come
in handy has never shared a border
with Hiawatha. The two-faced
bastard.
Gods & Kings re-energizes Civ V,
providing a much stronger feeling of
direction and personalization to the
way you rear your society. For those
who, after an initial foray, retreated
back to the ever-fertile fields of Civ
IV it may have come too late, but
those who have shown faith will be
richly rewarded.
Expect to pay $27 Release Out now Developer Firaxis Publisher 2K Games
Multiplayer Up to 18 Link civilization.com
A grab bag of game
systems to bring new
life to Civ V. Definitely
worthwhile, and almost
certainly holier than thou.
81
GOTTA HAVE FAITH
Give the ignorant masses a dose of old-time religion
with CIVILIZATION V: GODS & KINGS by Will Porter
Units can now take more hits, allowing for more
tactical retreats and more epic confrontations.
Gatling guns and then WW1-era weaponry
make a pleasant showing. For you at least.
Bizarrely, brilliantly, theres a
steampunk scenario included.
New leaders include Theodora of
Byzantium, and Boudica for the Celts.
Witness the birth of Awesomeism.
An emotional moment for many.
76 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_rev_civgods.indd 76 6/18/12 2:27 PM
JUR-ASS-IC
Theres a decent selection of
weapons at least, but the components
are as unusable as the whole. Heavy
weapons handle like underpowered
Nerf guns and are mostly useless
against the three breeds of foe:
raptor, T-rex, and pterodactyl. Of
these, none is especially threatening.
The handful of vehicles only serve
to highlight the hilarious/tragic
animation and AI issues. Swarms of
idiot raptors will regularly charge
your speeding car, then ricochet
around with the graceless stiffness of
a childs toy in a washing machine.
The good news is that the bugs
reach out of the game itself, regularly
stopping you from connecting to
servers, most of which are empty
anyway. You can play Orion solo,
but Id prefer to take this
as a sign that its hurtling
towards extinction and
uninstall it. Fast.
S
ometimes the universe smiles
on humanity, sending meteors
to wipe out the dinosaurs and
enabling civilizations to flourish.
Other times we can only wish a rock
from space would crush us so we
dont have to play games like this.
Orion: Dino Beatdown is an entirely
broken FPS. The graphics are
terrible, the tutorial is absent, and
the nonsensical commentary sounds
like its performed by the Unreal
announcers nerdy cousin. And those
are just my first impressions.
Even Orions core concept is a
shattered mess, pitting you and up
to four friends against waves of
dinosaurs intent on devouring... the
generators that power your base?
There may be a reason why a T-rex
suddenly savors electrical circuits,
but itll be as incomprehensible as
everything else: Orion is dotted with
misspellings and errors.
Expect to pay $10 Release Out now Developer Spiral Studios
Publisher In-house Multiplayer Up to 4, co-op Link spiralgamestudios.com
ORION: DINO BEATDOWN makes you
beg for an extinction event by Joe Martin
10
Big game, hunting.
Not-so-clever girl.
STUNTED
Where Mad Riders does improve
on its predecessor is in its sense of
progression. Initial races are
straightforward chases to the flag,
but as you advance through the
campaign, new objectives and
shortcuts are introduced among the
new circuits, altering the challenge
to keep things fresh. But that plan
collapses when Mad Riders attempts
to introduce stunts into the
equation. Theyre welcome as an
additional way to unlock boosts
during races and time trials, but its
trick mechanic isnt sophisticated
enough to sustain scored events.
Fortunately, the scored events are
only a minor surprise in the
selection box of event types.
Its a diverting racer that will keep
you occupied for a few
hours longer than you
might expect, but remains
eminently disposable.
I
t pays to be suspicious of anyone
self-identifying as mad.
Theyre often the least crazy,
limiting their ambition to quirks
like pronouncing style to rhyme
with Kylie. Real lunacy is far more
colorful and unpredictable. In a
similar fashion, Mad Riders isnt as
bonkers as youd hopeyoure still
riding a standard quad bike, rather
than a fire-breathing, jet-powered
walrus made of liquid mercury.
What it does have is velocity. Just
like the previous Techland quad
racer, naild, this runs at a ridiculous
rate. Although its not quite enough
to hide the fact that the handling is
floatier than a helium balloon.
Theres just no sense that the
rugged tires are digging into mud
and theres no variety of surfaces.
The challenge comes simply from
hanging on as the track banks and
swoops at eye-watering speed.
Expect to pay $10 Release Out now Developer Techland
Publisher Ubisoft Multiplayer Up to 12 Link ubi.com
MAD RIDERS tries to go speed crazy but
suffers from mental block by Mike Channell
67
Its essentially naild but
for a third of the price.
Presumably the suit makes it easier to
put him back together after an accident.
REVIEW
SEPTEMBER 2012 77
PCG242.us_rev_orion_mad.indd 77 6/18/12 11:12 AM
TEXT
10
TOP
xxxxxxx
B
ored of Minecraft? Me too. Lots of
people get lots of different things out
of it, but my favorite part has always
been tech tree progressiongoing from
primitive wood, through iron, to an arsenal
of enchanted diamond tools.
The problem is that the top of that tree
comes disappointingly soon. Once youve
mastered enchanting and potion-brewing,
theres nowhere new to go.
Nowhere except Minecrafts vibrant
modding scene, that is. A friend invited me
onto his housemates private server, which
runs a compilation of mods called the
Technic Pack. It offers those a little hesitant
to muck about in Java folders the
opportunity to expand their game to
PUTTING TOGETHER A NUCLEAR POWER PLANT WITH MINECRAFTS TECHNIC PACK
I decided to set my sights a
little higher: nuclear fission
eye-bulging horizons: jetpacks, mining
lasers, vast automatic quarries and even
nuclear reactors.
It starts innocuously enough, just like
vanilla Minecraft, with you dumped in an
unexplored wilderness. After putting a
shelter together, I began to dig, and within
ten seconds came across something
unusual: a vein of copper ore. Digging
further, I found tin, emeralds and rubies,
silver, cobalt, and even uranium.
I set to work consulting a variety of
occasionally conflicting wikis, trying to
navigate the vast range of possibilities the
Technic Pack offers. Almost everything in
the game needs to be powered, so my first
priority was to build a generator. I hooked
that up to a grinding machine called a
macerator, which lets you get twice as much
metal out of each block of ore, and an
electric furnace to smelt
the ensuing dust into bars.
But I had to keep feeding
the generator with coal, so
I upgraded it to a solar
panel. All well and good,
but my machines now only worked in the
daytime, when it wasnt raining, so I needed
to add a battery box to store power. A few
hours work later, I had a jetpack, a helmet-
mounted solar panel, a mining laser and a
vast factory, automatically scanning the
earth for ore, mining it, and smelting it into
bars automatically dumped into a box in the
corner of my house. I had almost entirely
automated Minecraft.
I decided to set my sights a little higher:
nuclear fission. The Technic Pack includes
the ability to split the atom, releasing a fire
hose of energy thats extremely difficult to
keep under control.
The wikis were no help here. They
contained vague warnings about how
reactors were for experienced players only,
and rather more specific warnings about the
dangers of meltdown. But they didnt
explain how to build one,
so I turned to the forums
instead. Here, players were
happily trading designs for
different types of reactor
from the ultra-safe Mk1
READ ME
RELEASED November 2011
OURREVIEW Feb 2011, 96%
BUYIT $27
MORE www.technicpack.net
The effects of a nuclear
meltdown in Minecraft.
NOW PLAYING
GET MORE FROM YOUR GAMING
THE PC
GAMER
TEAM
TYLER
TOM F
CHRIS
DUNCAN
GRAHAM
NOW PLAYING
This month Automated
the mining of uranium in
Minecraft. Split the atom in
his bedroom.
Also played Diablo III,
Tribes: Ascend
DUNCAN GEERE
78 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_life_now1.indd 78 6/18/12 11:14 AM
H
ell has won. The hero of prophecy alt-
tabbed out to check his email and
was slaughtered outside New
Tristram. My Monk is dead, and in Hardcore
mode, death is final. Death didnt even drop
by for a game of chess.
Lets try this again: a new Hardcore hero,
Raah the Barbarian, is born. My last attempt
was half-hearted, but Im serious this time.
You know a guy with a Khal Drogo beard isnt
messing around.
Raah takes no chances.
My other living character,
Dee the Pathetic
Respawning Wizard,
barely glances at magic
loot before salvaging it,
but Raah is a meticulous
appraiser. SMASHING GOOD, he says. But
this axes lack of strength or damage
modifiers is alarming.
Throughout Act One, Raah becomes a
regular at The Slaughtered Calf Inna warm
place to sift through his haul and spend his
coin on pints of reassuring health potion.
While Dee flits through town with the same
careless whimsy she takes into battle, Raah
is bound by something shell never know:
fear.
Even early in Raahs adventure, the
inconspicuous globe of health juice on his UI
feels like a cruel joke. It depletes silently as
he fills the screen with fireworks of blood
and corpses, and only when hes drops away
from death does he see red through his rage.
Thats when its time to panic.
But a fear of death gives Raah something
else non-Hardcore characters dont have:
bravery. I guide his axe
through a wall of teethed
flesh to reach a Health
Globe, saving myself and
my companion. It takes
guts to confront Hell when
Hell can win.
BRIEF ADVENTURES OF A DIABLO III HARDCORE PLAYER
reactors that dont generate much juice, to
high-end, uranium-chomping Mk5 reactors
that are about as stable as a drunk toddler
on a unicycle.
I plumped for something mid-range, and
set about putting the parts together. The
biggest issue was where to locate it. If I put it
far away in a desert, then getting the power
back to my house would be a nightmare.
Instead, I decided to put it in the room just
below my factory, which also happened to
double as my bedroom.
I surrounded the reactor in reinforced
glass to mitigate a cascading failure
scenario, or meltdown as the media would
probably have reported it. I filled it with
coolant cells and heat dispersers, carefully
inserted the uranium fuel cells, andwith
my heart in my mouthhit the on button.
With a total lack of explosion, the reactor
hummed into life. I checked the attached
battery box, and it was filling up nicely.
Now, what am I going to do with all that
boundless atomic energy sloshing around? I
think a mass fabricator and a teleporter
might be in order.
The hero of prophecy alt-tabbed
out to check his email
READ ME
RELEASED May 2012
OURREVIEW May 2012, 90%
BUYIT $60
MORE www.diablo3.com
Id hardly call being killed by a Scavenger
in the first quest a deed of valor.
Leahs obviously a goth.
My hammer is bigger than my
enemies. I dont take chances.
My factory, ready for business.
Ore is automatically smelted into
bars and sent to a box in my house.
Pumping lava directly out
of a volcano.
TYLER WILDE
This Month Embraced his
mortality and stopped wearing
armor because it looks cool.
Got killed by half a zombie.
Also Played Tribes:
Ascend, DayZ
SEPTEMBER 2012 79
SURVIVING ZOMBIES AND BUGS IN THE DAYZ MOD FOR ARMA 2
I was bleeding, and couldnt see
where the shot had come from
READ ME
RELEASED 2012
OURREVIEW August 2009, 83%
BUYIT Arma II: Combined Ops, $30
MORE www.dayzmod.com
Chernarus: it looked like the end of the
world even before the zombies showed up.
I shot him in the back
in self-defense.
A view like that would
make you kill anyone.
NOW PLAYING The games we love, right now
T
he DayZ website says that the
average lifespan of a player is 28
minutes. My first ever character had
been alive for over 11 hours when he died.
DayZ is an unfinished Arma 2 mod that
turns the games 225km
2
island of Chernarus
into a stage for survivalist dramatics.
Forests become homes for bandits, airfields
play host to heroic last stands, and every
town is the focus of daring raids for precious
resources. Its amazing and broken.
My 11-hour-old character wasnt
particularly great or anything. I had a rifle I
couldnt fire because it was too loud, and a
Makarov pistol with only four bullets. I had
no food or water left. I hadnt found a
compass, a map, a hunting knife, or any of
enough to find out, I heard a crack. My screen
wobbled. Id just been shot. My victim must
have had a friend somewhere nearby. I was
bleeding, and I couldnt see where the shot
had come from.
Another crack. I turned and ran, making it
behind some bushes at the top of a hill. I had
been lucky, but I needed to bandage myself
quickly before I bled to death.
I pressed the middle-mouse button to
bring up the context-sensitive menu and
apply a bandage. The option wasnt there.
Uh oh. A patch had just come out to make
the inventory system more intuitive.
I pressed G and brought up my inventory. I
clicked on Bandage on the list of items to
the left. Nothing. I right-clicked on it,
nothing. I pressed B. Nothing.
I died alone on a hillside, pressing the
bandage in my hand against a wound and
shouting HOWWW!?!!?!
DayZ is amazing, but
also broken. If youre
patient, you should play it.
Flip to page 86 to find out
how to get it working.
the rare items necessary for survival.
I had no valuable items to lose if I died, but
Id imbued my current life with value by
virtue of the 11 hours spent crawling across
forests and sneaking into barns. Not to
mention the roughly four or five hours of
technical tinkering to get the mod working.
I had to find food and water, and quickly.
My best chance was to raid a nearby power
station and hope there were supplies inside.
But when I approached its outer walls, I
spotted another player. Like me he hadnt
killed anyone. At least, not yet.
We looked at each other, circled around a
little, and eventually settled on the idea that
we were friendly.
Then he turned his back.
I only had four bullets, and I would almost
certainly not get out of that power station
alive. I hesitated for just a moment, and put
two bullets in the back of
his head. I was a bandit
now, a player killer, but itd
be worth it if his backpack
contained food.
Before I could get near
This month Was
devastated by death in
a multiplayer game.
Started a new character
immediately.
Also Played FIFA 12
GRAHAM SMITH
80 SEPTEMBER 2012
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S
ince launch, the Brute has been Tribes:
Ascends black sheep. In the
imaginary high school cafeteria of
Tribes, he sits at the loneliest table, his
elephant hands clumsily extracting egg
salad from Ziploc.
Hi-Rez admits that the Brute was Tribes
least-played class. Players loved the glory
of playing a track star (the
Pathfinder), giant goalkeeper
(Doombringer), power forward
(Raider), or the appreciation that
came from being a Technician, the
base janitor. Being able to do a
specific thing very wellbreaking a
generator, shadowing a flag carrier,
physically blocking flag grabs with
your immense bodyis central to
Tribes appeal.
The Brutes problem was that he
didnt have a calling; he played like
a Soldier with a slow metabolism.
Among his weight class, he was the
only one without a long-range weapon. The
Doombringer had the chaingun and the
saber launcher; the Juggernaut had two
flavors of slingable death in the fusion
mortar and MIRV launcher.
Spitting fire
Players of the class actually formed a
support group, the Sad Brutes Club, in
April. I am a very sad Brute, The Gargoyle
said in the thread. Former flagfat, then a
disco fever convert, now a sad sack of
cholesterol... reporting in, Papyrifer wrote.
Not even my Fractals joyous green glow
can warm my spirits.
Hi-Rez knew the Brute needed love, so
they made him the subject of Tribes fourth
update, Stayin Alive. I played the class
exclusively for a week, picking up his new
PLAYING THE SLOWEST, FATTEST WARRIOR IN TRIBES: ASCEND by Evan Lahti
passers-by; I get ganged up on. And I cant
figure out the Gladiator in open areas. On
paper, its triple burst creates a generous
window of time and space to dent enemies
that pass through it, but the grenade itself is
one of the slowest projectiles in the game.
I swap back to CTF. The newest map,
Tartarus, pops into the queue. Its a sniper
and flag-runners paradise: uncluttered
space, long sight lines, and plenty of back-
to-front routes. Our turrets keep going
down, so I trade my Gladiator for a repair
tool. Inevitably I get attacked, but the
Plasma Cannons rate of fire and wider
hitbox (compared to the Spinfusor) let me
deal with lightweight players that can spend
more time airborne than I can. I try this role
again on Sunstar, winning one of my most
satisfying matches ever. My K:D is only 15-7,
but I buzz between our turrets like an
attentive gardener, fertilizing them with
upgrades and swapping my Gladiator for a
repair tool. These turrets score a fat 17 kills.
This is what was missing from the Brute
before. Playing this forward defender/
occasional engineer wasnt always viable
for me as a medium class, and the
Doombringers Chaingun felt heavy and
unwieldy. I finally feel useful. After a week,
I score 328 kills, 150 assists and 189 deaths.
My 1.7 K:D is lower than what I get as a
Soldier, but I feel like I have an identity; no
longer am I playing the class that has the
Fractal Grenade. Im a durable deterrent.
Hi-Rez is pushing out these updates at
breakneck speed, which has produced some
bumps (the Raiders plasma gun shipped
with a wide, broken hitbox that was later
shrunk by 40 percent), but Tribes remains
the best multiplayer shooter on PC at the
moment. The next update will add 27
variants of existing guns to the weapons
pool, rounding out existing classes.
Medium-term, Id love to see Hi-Rez build
more new maps. Theyve experimented
with modes with mixed results: TDM is great;
Rabbit was sequestered; Capture and Hold
is a nice distraction but borrows existing
maps. But sliding across new terrain and
figuring out routes is key to my enjoyment
of Tribesthat combination of high speed
and unfamiliarity is precious.
Gladiator grenade pistol and Plasma
Cannon. This gear (which includes a health-
and energy-boosting Survival Pack) costs
800 Tribes Gold, or about $8.
At first I try Bruting as a generator killer.
The Gladiator seems like a perfect base
infrastructure breaker: it fires a single sticky
bomb that detonates three times. Each
explosion releases a wider, weaker wave of
damage. The Gladiator and my Plasma
Cannon do well indoorsI barely have to
aim to catch enemies hovering near the
ceiling with splash damage. The Cannon
sounds like its searing the air as it fires; when
you reload it, the thing hums like its
siphoning the sun for energy. But these
attacks turn into suicide missions. Unlike a
Raider, I dont have the agility to make a
clean getaway.
I swap from CTF to team deathmatch.
This is my comfort zone; your responsibilities
are slim in TDMdie less than you killand
the reduced emphasis on teamwork makes
Tribes absence of VOIP less of a frustration.
Most of Tribes TDM maps are bowl-shaped.
They tend to flow like a NASCAR racethe
single flag carrier skirts the perimeter of the
map, with a ball of players forming a swirling
train behind. Chasing is everything, and its
here that I get into trouble. I get baited by
wounded Soldiers and Infiltrators, and
pursuing them I run out of energy. My super-
sized silhouette is a juicy target to
READ ME
FIRSTREVIEWED
June 2012 issue, 88%
DEVELOPER
Hi-Rez Studios
PUBLISHER
In-house
REQUIRES
Dual-core CPU, 2GB
RAM, 512MB 3D card
LINK
tribesascend.com
COMMUNITY
bit.ly/tribesforum
MUST GO FASTER
The Brute didnt have a
calling; he was like a Soldier
with a slow metabolism
SPORTING CHANCE Can Tribes make it as an eSport?
PROS
Broadcasting deals with leagues like the
NASL, ESL, and CSN
CTF provides visual focal points: flags can
be fumbled, saved, intercepted, punted
Tribes added Twitch.tv integration to
stream matches
Expert movement is as remarkable for
spectators as a great kill
Its readablealmost every weapon has a
recognizable projectile effect
CONS
No deal with the big league yet: Major
League Gaming
More action, but one camera cant capture
all the activity of a 7 on 7 match
Shuttling a whole team of players to on-site
tournaments is expensive
Its harder for viewers to get emotionally
attached to a team than to one star
Left unattended, Tribes players go feral and
eat each other
UPDATE
Whats new in the biggest games
82 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_life_update.indd 82 6/18/12 2:44 PM
MUST GO FASTER
The new Brute: part gardener, part
engineer, 100 percent useful.
It puts on a pretty show, but I found
the Gladiator almost useless.
Whoopsie!
Tribes doesnt have many explicit teamwork
mechanics, but you find ways to help each other.
The Plasma Cannon is my favorite. I did not choose the flag.
The flag chose me.
SEPTEMBER 2012 83
PCG242.us_life_update.indd 83 6/18/12 2:44 PM
Left side of Spread
I
m hiding in a shed, on the verge of death.
Im out of food and desperately need
water. Im going to have to venture out.
I sprint to the nearby houses, my health so
low I see in blurred outlines. A sudden noise
by my ear panics me, I run into a fence, and
theyre on me.
Good news: zombies are terrifying again.
DayZ is an Arma 2 mod. Its still in alpha, so
its buggy, confusing and idiosyncratic. Its
also likely to be one of the best, most
affecting, and atmospheric games
you will play this year.
You spawn on a large island
with a pistol, a few clips,
bandages, beans and a
flask of water. None of
these will last for long. Your
goal is survival, scavenging
the open land for anything
to increase your chances of
living through another night.
Zombies meander the landscape
until they spot you, then charge with panic-
inducing speed. But they dont overwhelm,
and if youre careful, they canand should
be avoided. The real threat is other players.
Those with better gear will hunt those
without. Groups of bandits will ambush
anyone who wanders into their crossfire.
Every encounter has the possibility to
become violent.
To install the mod you need both Arma 2
and the Operation Arrowhead expansion. If
youve neither, get the Combined Operations
pack from Steam. Head to OAs directory
and create a folder called @DayZ and, inside
it, one called AddOns. Extract the mod files
into AddOns, then find OA in your games list.
Right click, select properties, then Set
Launch Options. Enter -mod=@
dayz -nosplash without
quotes. Launch the game,
selecting Launch Arma 2:
Combined Operations.
One of DayZs most
impressive features is its
persistence. Your character
will be waiting for you with
the same inventory, in the same
spot, whichever server you pick.
While the mods popularity can mean long
waits to connect to local servers, its worth
persisting. DayZ is rapidly evolving into
one scary ride. PS
dayzmod.com
2
MOD THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE COMES TO ARMA 2
DAYZ
1
PHIL SAYS...
Who are the
real monsters,
zombies or
man? Zombies.
Obviously.
He looks like a
banker. So kill him.
TINY TREASURES
GAMEJAM LUDUM DARE 23
L
udum Dare, the 48 hour
game-making challenge,
themed its latest event Tiny
World. It received over 1000
entries, so heres a tiny, selective
look at four of the best. PS
ITS A TAB
A browser-based game
about navigating through
a perilous maze. Whats
tiny about it? A neat twist at the start
makes it clear. bit.ly/LDTab
GRAVITY
Shoot deadly blocks out
of the sky, then push
them off your island.
Why? Your island is oating over lava
and theyre pulling it down. bit.ly/LDGrav
TINYSASTERS
Build and upgrade tiles
on your 8x8 island to
gather resources. Simple
enough, except for the epic disasters
every few seconds. bit.ly/Tinysasters
HOUSEFLY
Youre a y, trapped in
some guys bedroom.
Buzz around looking for
ways to escape in this short but well-
designed adventure. bit.ly/LDFly
DOWNLOADS
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86 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_life_free1.indd 86 6/15/12 12:47 PM
FREEWARE ESCAPE A DEADLY GAME OF GIANT PINBALL
ROBOT PINBALL ESCAPE
SEA OF GHOSTS
T
his university project casts you as the
least exciting Transformer evera
robot who can turn into a pinball. Its
part 3D platformer, part pinball machine,
and you switch between the two states to
complete a number of objectives. Its short,
but integrates the two states into
something remarkably cohesive. PS
bit.ly/FuelRL
C
A
BREAK ENTRY
WEBGAME HACK THE PLANET
A
nother competition submission,
this time for the Toronto
Independent Game Jam on the
theme the worlds not ending.
Break through the layers of a digital
planet, your green dot exposing
weak points, diving deeper into the
maze of partitions, while avoiding
health-sapping blue dots and the
one-hit-kill red dots.
Progress is made not by using
arrow keys to directly control your
dot, but by typing words to give
commands that get it hacking
further into the core. The side of
the screen is a vertically scrolling
catalog of your successes and
failures. BREAK, SCAN, DIVE,
BREAK, EXIT, ANTI, SLOW, DIVE,
BREAK, DIBEno!EXIT, EXIT, EXIT.
One mistype, one unexpected
encounter or misjudgment of
timing, can send you into a spiral of
mistakes that ends with you running
for the safety of the top layer to
recoup. Break Entry is proof that the
simplest of ideas can become the
tensest of challenges. PS
bit.ly/BreakEntry
5
A
ROBOT MODE Youre more maneuverable like
this, but too many hits and youre kicked into
ball mode, bouncing around to replenish energy.
MULTIBALL Two additional pinballs are in
play. If one should hit you while youre in robot
mode itll take a big chunk out of your energy.
OBJECTIVES Your current mission is marked
by yellow columns. Complete it to reach a
timed platforming section above the table.
4
3
B
C
B
It would look great with two
of every animal on deck.
MOD SET SAIL FOR AN ISLAND-HOPPING SKYRIM ADVENTURE
S
kyrim modder
ThirteenOranges quest
mods are some of the highest
rated in the Steam Workshop,
showing flair and
understanding for what makes
a good adventure.
His latest, Sea of Ghosts, is no
exception. Once installed, you
activate it by hiring the
Winters Warmth, the ship now
docked by the East Empire
Trading Company outside
Solitude. You can now travel to
various new islands using the
map in the Captains quarters.
There are seven missions,
some of which span several
islands. The real highlight,
however, is the exploration:
setting a course for a new
island, and seeing what hidden
stories can be found there. PS
bit.ly/GhostSea
SEPTEMBER 2012 87
8
6
Y
ou start Cube in a cube, which leads to
another cube, which leads to a room
built from cubes that reconstruct into a
puzzle in which you platform across cubes.
That leads to a room with a Portal 2
cube. You use it to jump onto a
cube. If nothing else, Cube has
a true dedication to its name.
This Russian-made Half-
Life 2: Episode 2 mod has
you run through a series of
test chambers completing
increasingly convoluted
puzzles around a specific
theme. Its the standard post-
Portal setup, but inventiveness and
stylistic flair raise it above the crowd.
Youre told that the test chambers are
repurposing themselves into newer, more
difficult rooms as you go. The adjustments
each puzzle makes as you first enter an area
really sell the fluidity of the environment.
You eventually get access to the Gravity
Gun, reskinned to fit the theme of a
Russian lab subcontracted by
Aperture Science. But despite
the familiar tools, it keeps up
with new ideas throughout.
Cube is an extremely
difficult game in places,
requiring precision leaps,
both physical and logical.
That can become exhausting
long before the halfway point of
this lengthy mod, but the teams
map-making panache ensure its worth
spending time with. PS
bit.ly/HL2Cube
YOU HAVE TO WIN
THE GAME
FREEWARE SAGE ADVICE FROM
THIS INDIE PLATFORMER
D
espite the You Have to Burn the
Rope reference, You Have to
Win the Game is more akin to the
old-school throwback platforming
of VVVVVV or I Wanna Be The Guy.
Its even framed inside a virtual
CRT monitor, a slight sheye lens
effect simulating the curved screen
of low denition gaming.
You run and jump between
screens avoiding the many
monsters and spikes. Where
YHTWTG has learned from the
retro-platform revival is in its
generous checkpointing. Its
difcult, and at times unfair with
it, but youre never far from the last
respawn, so trying again is painless.
Its as much about exploration
as challenge. Your job is to collect
bags of money, and a percentage
completed counter in the corner
tracks your progress.
The cave complex youre
navigating is big and meandering.
Special objects can be activated
that unlock areas unreachable on
a rst run through an area. Actually
winning the game requires paying
attention to where you cant go, as
well as where you can. PS
bit.ly/WinGame
MOD APERTURE SCIENCES RUSSIAN HL2 OFFSHOOT
CUBE
7
WEBGAME COMMAND AN ARMY OF PIXEL TRIBESMEN
REPRISAL
The fun of Portal, cubed.
PHIL SAYS...
Despite Fringe
references, you
never meet
an alternate
universe self
from another
timeline.
R
eprisal is an RTS god-game. You
hover around a square island,
indirectly controlling your subjects
by placing waypoints and using totems to
control the elements with earth-changing
powers. Populous, then? Yep. Its called
Reprisal for a reason. Its a stylish pixel-art
tribute to Molyneuxs first classic, with a
great chiptune soundtrack.
Each level starts with a couple of your
pixelated followers milling around as
they look for somewhere to erect the
shacks that will grow into your
settlement. Your initial job is to terraform
the land, leveling out the area around
each house so that theyve room to
expand from simple wooden huts to
sprawling castles. The larger the house,
the better defended itll be from
attacking tribes, and the more powerful
the soldiers it will spit out to bolster your
own assaults.
Objectives involve wiping out rival
tribes and collecting new totems to
increase your godly powers. You get
access to destructive fire spells early on,
but by the end youll be causing tidal
waves and burning your enemies in lava.
Because thats what gods do.
Reprisal is a lot of fun, and a loving
homage to the genre. PS
bit.ly/ReprisalGame
DOWNLOADS
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88 SEPTEMBER 2012
MACHINIMA
HILARIOUS CO-OP HIJINKS IN SAINTS ROW: THE THIRD
1
Pilots licence
Check this out. Im gonna
try flying it. The boys
discover the Specter Hover
Bike. It doesnt go well. As one
gets himself lodged in a
doorway to his hideout, the
other is careening into the
wall beside him.
2
Friendly nudge
Dude, get in my
helicopter. Annoyed that his
friend wont get in the
helicopter, our hero fires a
warning rocket at him.
Directly at him, as it turns out.
It hits and blows him off the
side of the building.
3
Tag a granny
The boys go granny
hunting, sneaking through
the urban jungle, and using
the remote devices to tag
their prey. It sends the poor
dear running off, arms flailing.
She doesnt get far though:
those devices are explosive.
4
Plane error
Fun with planes now,
when an attempt at low
flying causes them to clip a
bridge. The plane flips out,
quickly and repeatedly. Later
they attempt a handstand
on a VTOL jet. Guess how well
that works out.
Its funny enough
when youre on your
own, but add another
person and Saints Row:
The Third evolves into a
masterpiece in the art of
messing around. Thats
why one YouTuber and his
friend have uploaded a
montage of their pointless
exploits, where they put
themselves in increasingly
crazy scenarios simply
because they can. PS
bit.ly/SR3Hijinks
PORTAL 2
MAPS MINI-CAMPAIGNS,
COURTESY OF PORTAL 2S
MAP MAKERS
9
P
ortal 2 is home to some great puzzles
created by its community, thanks to
its easy-to-use level editor and
Steam Workshop. But some map-makers
have gone a step further, using Workshop to
host more intricate ideas created with the
Source engines editor, Hammer.
These are found, added and played in the
same way as regular maps: just subscribe in
the Workshop and theyll appear in your
in-game community maps queue.
Rather than continuing the existing story,
however, these maps contain their own
custom graphics and animations to create a
full mini-campaign. Here are three of the
most interesting collections. PS
12 ANGRY TESTS
Funny and clever, 12 Angry Tests is a
seven-part campaign that mirrors the three-act
progression of Portal 2. Creator CaretCaret brings
plenty of visual spectacle as youre taken from
the main facility, down through the caverns of old
Aperture Science and back again. Theres even a
surprising antagonist hindering you at every stage.
The puzzle difculty is pitched just right and the
whole thing is capped off with a satisfying boss
ght. A huge success.
bit.ly/P212AT
DERELICT
Derelict takes Portal 2s theme of a run-
down lab and brings it to an extreme conclusion.
Everything is falling apart and test chambers have
collapsed in on themselves. The puzzles this creates
are much tougher than the main game, the second
part getting particularly hung-up on the intricacies
of lasers. The third parts vertical climb to freedom
is sublime, giving you a huge space to work through
without leaving you feeling overwhelmed.
bit.ly/P2Decay
A LA TAG
A La Tag is an attempt to recreate Tag:
The Power of Paint, the student-made game that
eventually led to Portal 2s gels and the team being
hired by Valve. Rather than a portal gun, youre
carrying a blue-gel-ring paint gun. Its a bit broken,
as the paint gun doesnt always work as expected.
You cant fault this project for ambition though, and
the two parts thoroughly explore the potential of
applying loads of bounce gel to an area.
bit.ly/P2Tag
ENDLESS, NAMELESS
WEBGAME ATTACK TEXT
ADVENTURES
A
dam Cadre is back after an
eight-year absence from the
Interactive Fiction community. His
previous text adventures, including
the ne 9:05, have both played
with the genre and provided great
starting points for newcomers.
Endless, Nameless is not that.
Its deliberately old-school, both in
setting and delivery. You begin in a
tavern in a fantasy town, and soon
get put on a quest to kill a dragon
to the south. There are trials, ghts,
spells and a difculty curve that
makes it easy to write your way
into a corner.
Theres a reason why this
adventure is seemingly so hard.
Endless, Nameless is also about the
ctional bulletin board that hosts
the game, and through a couple of
unexpected turns, it creates a deep
adventure thats fair, even when
its not.
If youve never played a text
adventure before, 9:05 and
Jeremy Freeses Violet are great
introductions. For those that are
up to speed, Endless, Nameless is
a great example of what the genre
can do. Just dont expect an easy
ride. And also (hint hint) dont be
afraid to die. PS
bit.ly/NamelessIF
SEPTEMBER 2012 89
The greatest games on PC
MUST PLAY
Dont miss out on these legends
GOTOWAR
SHOGUN 2:
FALL OF THE SAMURAI
Fight for the old ways against the march of
technology, or embrace change and
bombard your enemies with artillery. The
best historical strategy game just got better.
totalwar.com/shogun2
ALSO
Dawn of War II, Frozen Synapse, Company
of Heroes, Unity of Command, StarCraft II
HAVEANADVENTURE
DIABLO III
Fight, explore, and collect your way to hell
and back. The online requirement is a
misstep, but Blizzards legendary polish
makes the game itself worth the effortnot
to mention the inevitable loot mania.
battle.net
ALSO
Rayman Origins, Deus Ex: Human
Revolution, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Mass Effect 3
SHOOTMEN
BATTLEFIELD 3
Close Quarters changes Battlefield 3s focus
from wide-open joint arms combat to
corridor-by-corridor gunplay. Be prepared to
get smoke in your eyesand, more often
than not, bullets in your face.
battlefield.com
ALSO
Modern Warfare 3, Stalker: Call of Pripyat,
Red Orchestra 2, Just Cause 2, Left 4 Dead 2
GETSOMETHINGFORNOTHING
SUPER MONDAY NIGHT
COMBAT
Uber Entertainments free-to-play sequel
takes the tug-of-war strategy of DotA and
gives it a third-person shooter makeover. Its
even got a bit of Team Fortress 2s charm.
uberent.com
ALSO
Tribes: Ascend, TrackMania Nations
Forever, Spelunky, N, Freespace 2
BEAGAMINGPIONEER
DAYZ
Your time in this rough-around-the-edges
Arma 2 mod is likely to be short, brutal, and
entirely your ownbut its got the potential
to be the zombie apocalypse sim weve
always wanted.
dayzmod.com
ALSO
Endless Space, Cobalt, Dwarf Fortress,
Project Zomboid
PLAYONYOURNETBOOK
PLANTS VS ZOMBIES
The key to a good netbook game isnt just
low system reqs: its being able to deliver a
fun, accessible challenge right out of the
gate. Immediacy is what makes Plants vs
Zombies so great on the move.
popcap.com/games/plants-vs-zombies/pc
ALSO
Monkey Island 2 SE, Peggle, Bookworm
Adventures, World of Goo, Braid
PLAYSOMETHINGINDIE
REALM OF THE MAD GOD
This isometric shooter MMO pares the genre
down to its absolute basics: running,
shooting, and leveling up. Joining a train of
players is one of the best things you can do
in public with 50 wizards.
realmofthemadgod.com
ALSO
Limbo, VVVVVV, AudioSurf, SpaceChem,
Super Meat Boy, Magicka, Cave Story+
FLY, DRIVEANDRIDE
RIDGE RACER UNBOUNDED
Community-generated maps and
spectacular destruction make this arcade
racer by the creators of FlatOut a real
contender for Burnouts crown. It manages
to reward dedicated practice, too.
ridgeracer.com
ALSO
F1 2011, Silent Hunter 4, Race Driver Grid,
DiRT 3, Burnout Paradise, Microsoft Flight
PWNSOMENOOBS
LEAGUE OF LEGENDS
Its staggering success is a testament to the
draw of the MOBA and the undeniable rise
of free-to-play. Super-competitive team
strategy at its best. Be prepared to put some
serious time into mastering your Champion.
leagueoflegends.com
ALSO
Counter-Strike: Source, StarCraft II, Team
Fortress 2, FIFA 12
NEW
ENTRY
NEW
ENTRY
NEW
ENTRY
NEW
ENTRY
NEW
ENTRY
90 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_life_must.indd 90 6/15/12 12:46 PM
www.futureus.com
www.techradar.com
Covering the
latest new
technology
in depth
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fully tested
gear
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that promises to change the way
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visit your app store.
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to subscribe now!
PC Gamer magazine is
published by Future US, Inc.
2011 Future US, Inc.
*Subscription offer good in U.S. only. Newsstand price per year is U.S. $8.99 per issue.
Game trademarks and copyrights are properties of their respective owners.
ITS PC GAMING
EVERYWHERE!
In your mailbox, in your pocket,
on your tablet
www.pcgamer.com/everywhere
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Exclusive previews, hardhitting reviews, winning
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BUYERS ADVICE
VIDEO CARDS
(which we
havent
reviewed yet).
Plus there are
some
notebook
chips, like the
one in the
Alienware
M14x
reviewed on
page 118.
In other words, theres nothing yet
for the price range where most
gamers spend their graphics card
money.
How do you know how much
gamers spend?
Valves Steam Hardware Survey is a
pretty good guide. The GeForce 560
series has been the number one
choice on there for months now.
Perhaps thats why Nvidia is so
reluctant to replace it.
So why are you looking at graphics
cards now?
AMD has new cards that are
interesting, and what weve seen of
Kepler so far is very impressive in
terms of both performance and
power efficiency. If you want to get
Battlefield 3 running in Ultra mode,
the GTX 670 is about the best way.
Ive heard a rumor that GTX680
was supposed to be mid-range, but
they
cranked the
price up when they
saw AMDs Graphics Core Next.
We heard that rumor, too, and
dismissed it as hearsay until recently,
when Nvidia announced another
much more powerful Kepler chip for
its Tesla range of workstation cards
codenamed GK110. It wouldnt be
madness to assume that this was
originally going to be the top-end
desktop chip until GK104 (aka GTX
680) turned out to be so fast.
When will we see the GTX 660?
Thats the card everyones waiting
for, but loose talk at a recent Nvidia
conference suggested that GTX 660
or a similarly named chip wont be
out until after the summer. No one
knows for sure.
How about SLI or Crossfire?
How about it? Given the power of
both AMDs HD 7970 and Nvidias
GeForce GTX 680, you only need to
start thinking about dual graphics
cards if youre planning on using
three screens for gaming. Or if
youre thinking of playing in
stereoscopic 3D, maybe.
OK, you can stop laughing now.
DICTIONARY
GK104 > While
Kepler is the family
architecture of the
GeForce GTX
6-series, GK104 is
the specific chip on
the card.
Battlefield 3
Ultra mode > Has
become the de
facto way of
measuring really
demanding game
graphics. And its not
that demanding.
PCI Express 3.0
> Newer
motherboards and
graphics cards
support this. Its only
important if youre
running more than
one graphics card,
as it means you can
have two 16 lane
slots working at full
speed at once.
Image quality >
Settings such as
shadows, high
dynamic range,
motion blur and
high resolution
textures that you
can turn off to make
demanding games
go faster.
I
n the past few issues weve
looked at several graphics
cards, but its a subject worth
revisiting because things have
already changed. AMD has
finished releasing its HD 7000 series,
all based on the new Graphics Core
Next architecture. Nvidia,
meanwhile, has started to put out
chips using its new Kepler design.
Whether you last bought a new
graphics card in January or in 2006,
theres new stuff out, so its time to
take stock and ask whether or not you
need to upgrade. Heres where you
get up to speed.
Whats Kepler?
Johannes Kepler was a 17th century
German mathematician whooh,
you mean the new Nvidia chip
architecture? The company always
picks famous scientists names as
code words. Im looking forward to
the GeForce Einstein one day soon.
Kepler is also known as the GeForce
GTX 6-series. Its different from
Fermi-based cards like the GTX 580
in that is has many more shader
processors per chip, but runs at a
lower speed. Fermi was one of the
guys who invented the atomic bomb,
in case you were wondering.
So do I need one?
Probably not yet. So far, Nvidia has
only launched Kepler cards at the
very high end and the very low
Buying a graphics card?
Here are seven answers
thatll get you up to
speed by Adam Oxford
Visit
www.techradar.
com/reviews
to nd the latest,
best prices
SEPTEMBER 2012 93
PCG242.us_tech_intro.indd 93 6/15/12 12:55 PM
GROUP TEST
Upgrading your graphics and dont
know what to get? Read on.
by Adam Oxford
VIDEO CARDS
HOW WE TESTED
Gaming performance >
Measured by the number of
frames per second a card can
generate, 60fps is the goal for
completely lag-free gaming.
For single-player games, you
can get away with as low
as 30fps.
Image quality > Most
of our tests are run at high
image quality settings to
punish the cards thoroughly
and sort wheat from chip
chaff. Turning off anti-
aliasing, for example, will
almost double the slowest
cards performance.
Power use > We measure
an average draw for the
complete system at the
mains outlet when it is idle
and when it is running the
Heaven 2.5 benchmark.
Cost > The best graphics
cards can run any game you
throw at them with ultra
high detail settings. But is
it actually worth forking
over an extra $200 just to
experience slightly more
complex character meshes?
GET THE PC YOUR GAMES DESERVE
Radeon HD7770
$135 Sapphire
GeForce GTX 670
$400 Nvidia
SPEC GPU core GK104 Unified shaders 1344 Core speed 980 Memory 2GB GDDR5 Memory speed 6000MHz Memory bandwidth 256bit Texture units 112
ROPS 32 Idle power 72 Load power 211 Shogun 2 (2560x1600, high) 36.64fps Skyrim (1920x10800, high) 95.07fps
T
his is the reference GTX 670
card Nvidia sent to accompany
the launch of its new GPU,
included here as a guide if youre
thinking of buying one. A glance at
online retail sites suggests that you
can pick up a stock model for about
$400a price competitive with the
MSI opposite.
Thats unfortunate, because as
much as I like AMDs GCN
architecture, this is by far the
superior choice. And if you happen to
get hold of one that will overclock
like Zotacs AMP! modelby no
means a certaintyyou can make it
perform like a GTX 680.
At default speeds its no slouch
the gap between this and a stock
GTX 680 is never more than 10
percent, and theres no game on a
single monitor that isnt playable
at its highest possible image
quality settings with this card
and a recent quad core CPU
behind it. Plus, it uses only a few
more watts than the HD7850
when running hard.
If youre after multiscreen
gaming, it also scales well with SLI,
increasing framerates by a good 50
percent again over those shown here.
M
ost of the cards in this round
up are fairly expensive
top-end models, but what
should we be comparing them to? At
the time of writing, Nvidia hasnt
started shipping its cheap Kepler
cards, the GTX 640 series, but heres
AMDs approach. The HD7770
makes use of a Cape Verde iteration
of Graphics Core Next, with 640
unified shaders and 40 texture units
to produce some very respectable
benchmarks for the price.
At 1920x1080 itll fly through any
game without anti-aliasing on, and
even with multisampling enabled
produce 43 frames per second in
Battlefield 3, which is playable if a
bit prone to lagging. As a guide,
its not a long way behind the
figures I was getting from the
$270 GeForce GTX 560 Ti
generally speaking its capable of
equaling that card in DX11 tests,
but falls behind a bit in older
games. The lower memory
bandwidth is also telling when
resolutions and image quality are
pushed up.
Physically, this isnt a big card, with
just a single six pin molex power cable
required, but Sapphires example is
quiet too. The large fan
spins slowly, and the chip itself is
never in danger of getting too hot
its a great option for a PC by the TV
or in an otherwise silent room.
An excellent choice if
youre on a budget, but its
worth spending a bit more
for an HD7850 if you can.
84
SPEC GPU core Cape Verde XT Unified shaders 640 Core speed 1000MHz Memory 1GB GDD5 Memory speed 4500MHz Memory bandwidth 128 bit
Texture units 40 ROPS 16 Idle power 66W Load power 126W Shogun 2 (2560x1600, high) 23.36fps Skyrim (1920x10800, high) 42.11fps
This is one of the very
few cards where Id say it is worth
investing in an overclocked version.
But if you cant quite
stretch to the extra $50,
this is still an excellent
choice.
88
Visit
www.techradar.
com/reviews
to nd the latest,
best prices.
94 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_tech_super.indd 94 6/18/12 12:18 PM
GeForce GTX 670 AMP!
$400 Zotac
SPEC GPU core GK104 Unified shaders 1344 Core speed 1098MHz Memory: 2GB Memory speed 7560MHz Memory bandwidth 256bit
SPEC GPU core Pitcairn XT Unified shaders 1280 Core speed 1000MHz Memory 2GB GDDR5 Memory speed 4800MHz Memory bandwidth 256bit
O
f all the cards with
customized heatsinks
in this test, this is the
one that I like the most.
It may be bigthe
large metal shield takes it to a massive
three slots width rather than the
more common twobut its also very
elegant. Its large copper heatpipes
make me want to build a steampunk
PC ready for the next BioShock.
More impressive, though, is its
performance. While Id still have
reservations recommending anyone
spend more than $350 on a GPU
right now, if you do want to treat
yourself to something special this is
the best way to do it.
It uses all that cooling to increase
the core clockspeed by 183MHz,
which is a hefty 20 percent over stock
speeds, and its possible to overclock it
even further using the Nvidia drivers
or Zotacs supplied tools. By default,
that means the core is capable of
overclocking itself to 1176MHz using
Nvidias boost technology. Its also
Radeon HD7870 IceQ
$350 HIS
speed of a single gigahertz. What
that big cooler does do, however, is
virtually silence the card. Even
running flat out itll be drowned out
by the sound of your power supply
and CPU. You can overclock it to the
same level as MSIs Hawk overleaf
and its still barely audible.
The trouble is that even when
overclocked, its hard to recommend
an HD7870 at the moment. Despite
costing more than the HD7850, the
performance gains arent significant.
Youll get around 5 percent faster
frame rates, give or take, and thats
just not enough to make any
perceivable difference to gaming
with the lesser card.
I will say that if youve got your
heart set on an HD7870, this is the
one to buy. After all, its as cheap as
any other stock speed model and as
the MSI review overleaf shows, this is
not a chip that scales dramatically by
increasing the clock in the same way
accompanied by an exceptional
overclock on the memory, which is
running at 1850MHzthe
equivalent of over 7.5GHz when
accounting for the quad speed
bandwidth of GDDR5.
The interesting thing about the
670 AMP! is how it compares to the
GeForce GTX 680. Physically, it uses
the same GK104 chip, with one batch
of shaders turned off. Losing 192 of
these cores might seem like a lot, but
bear in mind that its rare for every
core on a GPU to be in use at any one
time. By using higher clockspeeds
than the GTX 680, the Zotac card
makes up the processing deficit. It
delivers benchmarks that are almost
identical andin some cases
better.
Sure, you could argue that a GTX
will overclock even further than it
does at stock, but essentially this is a
$400 card that behaves like a $600
one. Its as fast as the fastest single
chip card currently available.
And other than the size of that
heatsink, theres no drawback. The
only card that runs more quietly is
the HIS HD7870 IceQ below.
If youre going to spend more than
the HD7850 on the previous page
costs, Id go all-out and trade up to
something like this rather than a
card that delivers just a bit more. If
you value performance so much, go
for the best possible rather than
shopping somewhere in between.
I
m not completely sure what
that funnel-shaped heatsink
reminds me of. Cruelly, it has a
certain snail-like silhouette
about it. That might suggest
theres something a little slow about
the card, and nothing could be
further from the truth. It just
happens that the cooler is very big
and not especially attractive.
In terms of the technology, the
HD7870 makes use of a processor
identical to the one that powers the
HD7850except it has a full
complement of 1280 cores enabled
rather than 1024. It uses AMDs
Southern Islands technology also
known as Graphics Core Nextfor a
graphics pipeline based on SIMD
processing rather than VLIW (Very
Long Instruction Wordsdont
worry about it, honestly).
Despite the enormous heatsink,
HISs card isnt overclocked by
default. Instead it runs at the standard
Provides more graphics
power than most of us
need, and outperforms
the top-end GTX 680 in
many tests.
89
Uniquely shaped and
very quiet, but not
enough performance
to recommend over
an HD7850.
74
as Kepler GPUs seem to do. All the
same, my money would be on an
HD7850, with an eye to picking up a
second one cheap for Crossfire at a
later date.
A motorcycle chain guard. Thats
what it reminds me of.
SEPTEMBER 2012 95
PCG242.us_tech_super.indd 95 6/18/12 12:18 PM
GET THE PC YOUR GAMES DESERVE
CPU
Intel Core i5 3570K
Its Ivy Bridge and
overclockable. Great
value and a chip that will
last years.
FITTED July
MOTHERBOARD
Gigabyte Z77-D3H
The cheapest Z77-chipset
around, with Crossre
support. Cheaper Z68
boards are also an option.
FITTED July
RAM
Crucial Ballistic Sport
Eight gigabytes of fast
1600MHz DDR3 for under
$50. Grab it quick, just in
case its a misprint.
FITTED November
CASE
BitFenix Merc
Not as nice as the Corsair
Carbide case it replaces,
but excellent value for
the price.
FITTED August
HARD DRIVE
Seagate Barracuda 2TB
Theyre still not quite as
cheap as they were last
year, but 2TB for$120 is
still a good deal.
FITTED May
DVD DRIVE
Samsung SH-222AB
Theyll be free with a box
of cereal next. At this
price, you may as well
buy them in bulk.
FITTED June
VIDEOCARD
AMD Radeon HD 7850
The tiny size and quiet
fan are worth the upgrade
over the 560 Ti alone.
Also, its a faster card.
FITTED July
POWER SUPPLY
Cooler Master 80+
A decent 650W PSU thats
rated well for efciency.
The minimum you should
try to get away with.
FITTED November
MONITOR
AOC i2353Fh
Spectacular quality for
gamers, easily beating
screens that cost twice
as much.
FITTED May
KEYBOARD
SteelSeries 6Gv2
Will last forever, fully
mechanical and
absolutely brilliant. Well
worth spending more for.
FITTED May
MOUSE
Logitech G400
Classic Logitech style
in a brand-new design,
this 3600dpi mouse is
comfortable and precise.
FITTED November
HEADSET
SteelSeries 3H VR
These offer decent sound
for the price, which not
many cheap headsets do.
Spend more if you can.
FITTED August
Do you overclock?
The PC
Gamer Rig
A
few forumites have
brought up the subject
of overclocking, having
read on other sites that
the Core i5 3570K we
fitted last month wasnt as good a buy
as the Core i5 2500K it replaced, as it
gets hotter when overclocked.
I dont think its worth worrying
about. In my testing, the i5 3570K
overclocks just as easily as the older
CPU. Its trivial to get it running at
4.5GHz on air cooling, and not much
more work to go beyond that. At all
speeds, including stock, it runs faster
than the Core i5 2500K. Not that it
matters enormouslyboth these
chips will be limited by the graphics
card rather than number-crunching.
There is one overclocking issue
with the i5 3570K to think about.
Adam Oxford
Hardware Editor
$1255
TOTAL
PRICE
WHATS NEW AND WHY
Scythe Ninja 3 > An optional extra, but worth investing in if you plan to do any overclocking
of the new Core i5 chip.
Bitfenix Merc > A very basic case that doesnt have the rubberized exterior of other Bitfenix
cases, but very quiet and cheap. Itll be available in the US starting in August.
SteelSeries 3H VR > Its hard to recommend a cheap headset, as most of them are garbage.
SteelSeries 3H has decent sound quality, though, and folds away neatly for LAN parties.
$85
Because its a smaller chip, the heat it
generates is over a smaller area, and
harder for a heatsink to disperse.
At really high overclocks, this
might be a problem. At stock speeds,
with an ordinary air cooler, I
struggled to get the Core i5 3750K
running hotter than 104F.
If you are concerned, it might be
worth investing in a heatsink rather
than relying on the stock Intel one.
Ive been using the Thermaltake
Frio Advanced, although at $60
thats a bit pricey. Try a
Scythe Ninja for about
$10 less instead.
$47 $120 $20
$38 $190 $85 $240
WHATS IN
THE BOX
$120 $240 $40
$30
96 SEPTEMBER 2012
PCG242.us_tech_buyer.indd 96 6/15/12 12:52 PM
R
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.
PCG242.us_next.indd 146 6/18/12 12:30 PM

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