PC Gamer USA 2015

EXCLUSIVE ACCESS
GRAPHICS
CARDS RATED
Star
citizen
Get the
best Gpu
for Your
budGet
Inside the $60 million

intergalactic epic
MASSIVE REVIEWS SPECIAL!
DRAGOn AGe
inquisition
The verdict on BioWares
biggest RPG ever
January 2015
HoTLInE
MIAMI 2
Dennaton on its
violently punk follow-up
Civilization:
beYond earth
The evil WiThin
borderlands:
the pre-sequel
The evil
WiThin
extra life
the horror of
Spec opS: the Line
We Bravely revisit
KirKWall in Dragon age ii
how pLanetSide 2 haS
changed in two yearS
the top 10 DoWnloaDs
#261 JANUARY 2015

EDITORIAL
Global Editor-in-Chief Tim Clark
Editor-in-Chief Evan Lahti
Executive Editor Tyler Wilde
Hardware Editor Wes Fenlon
UK Editor Samuel Roberts
UK Production Editor Tony Ellis
UK Deputy Editor Chris Thursten
Assistant Editor Tom Marks
Computer Large Pixel Collider
Contributors Dave James, Tom Senior, Andy Kelly, Phil Savage,
Emanuel Maiberg, Russ Pitts, Ben Griffin, Andi Hamilton, Cassandra
Khaw, Dan Griliopoulos, Jon Denton, Chris Livingston
ART
Art Editor John Strike
Contributors Andy McGregor, Cormac Jordan, Matthew Lochrie
SALES
Vice President, Sales
Stacy Gaines, stacy.gaines@futurenet.com
Vice President, Strategic Partherships
Isaac Ugay, isaac.ugay@futurenet.com
Regional Sales Manager, Northern California
Howard Berman, howard.berman@futurenet.com
Regional Sales, Manager Southwest
Brandon Wong, brandon.wong@futurenet.com
Regional Sales Manager, East Coast
Brandie Rushing, brandie.rushing@futurenet.com
Regional Sales Manager, Midwest/Pacific Northwest
Jessica Reinert, jessica.reinert@futurenet.com
MARKETING
Vice President, Marketing & Sales Development
Rhoda Bueno
Director, Consumer Marketing Lisa Radler
Newsstand Director Bill Shewey
PRODUCTION
Production Manager Mark Constance
Production Controller Fran Twentyman
Project Manager Clare Scott
Production Assistant Emily Wood
FUTURE US, INC.
4000 Shoreline Court,
Suite 400, South San Francisco, CA 94080, (650) 872-1642
www.futureus.com
Senior Vice President Charlie Speight
Vice President, Marketing & Operations Rhoda Bueno
Director, Human Resources Eric Buksa
Future Plc
Chief Executive Zillah Byng-Maddick
Non Executive Chairman Peter Allen
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Fortress forever
As we sit helplessly in the end-of-year hurricane of new releases,
Valves seven-year-old FPS Team Fortress 2 is still one of the mostplayed games on Steam. Can we take a moment to dissect why?
TF2s steady popularity isnt an accident, its hard work. For years,
that work has increasingly been done by the TF2 community. As Valve
has seemingly shifted developers to Dota 2,
it has activated modders, mapmakers, and
modelers, who churn out content that finds
its way into one of TF2s 462 free updates.
Yet I think TF2s longevity owes less to the
absurd amount of maps, modes, weapons
and hats, and more to how that stuff has
been contextualized by storytelling. From
the day TF2 launched, it meant something
to play as a Spy, a Heavy, a Medic. It said
something about you as a player if you only
played Engineer.
TF2s classes are laden with personality,
supported and expressed by all the media
Valve (and again, its fans) have produced. TF2
was the first multiplayer FPS to go all-in on
using patches as narrative opportunities. Thats
noteworthy because its something that game
designers usually avoid entirely. Shoehorning
exposition into a multiplayer isnt a great idea, EVAN LAHTI
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
as Titanfall demonstrated well, I think.
evan@pcgamer.com
Twitter: @elahti
bringing you the scoops this month...
Tyler Wilde
@tyler_wilde
Spent the last part of this
month hanging with
Spacey in CoD, just a little
too late for this issue.
JANUARY 2015
Wes Fenlon
@wesleyfenlon
Flew halfway across the
world, just to tell everyone
how much amazing food
he was eating on Twitter.
Tim Clark
@timothydclark
Went to Blizzconwe
hope. His last message
indicated he may have
gone to the wrong airport.
Andy Kelly
@ultrabrilliant
Talked to Chris Roberts
about his amazing plans
for Star Citizen. Read all
about it on p36.
For a limited time while supplies last. Terms and conditions may apply. 2014 NVIDIA Corporation. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, GeForce, GTX, TXAA, and NVIDIA Maxwell are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation. 2014 Ubisoft Entertainment. All
Rights Reserved. Assassins Creed, The Crew logo, and Far Cry, Ubisoft, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the US and/or other countries. Far Cry 4 is based on Cryteks original Far Cry directed by Cevat Yerli. Powered by Cryteks technology
CryEngine. All rights reserved. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.
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#261 JANUARY 2015
MONITOR
10 NEWS
EA details the next two years of Battlefield
14 THE SPY
Whats next with the Just Cause series
PREVIEWS
16 Battlefield: Hardline
18 Elegy for a Dead World
22 The Magic Circle
24 Dirty Bomb
26 Virginia
FEATURES
30 Hotline Miami 2 Dennaton Games on
making a sequel for the fans, the level editor
and choosing soundtracks
36 Star Citizen Wing Commander creator
Chris Roberts on the ambitious $60 millionfunded MMO project
REVIEWS
42
48
50
52
54
56
58
60
64
70
72
76
Dragon Age: Inquisition

Endless Legend
NBA 2K15
Sherlock Holmes
Styx : Master of Shadows
The Legend of Korra
Costume Quest 2
The Evil Within
Civilization: Beyond Earth
Final Fantasy XIII
Borderlands 2
Ryse
EXTRA LIFE
78 NOW PLAYING
Manipulating the horrors of war in Yagers

Spec Ops: The Line
42
DRAGON AGE
INQUISITION
Reviewed: the biggest BioWare
RPG ever made
30
HOTLINE MIAMI 2
36
64
CIVILIZATION:
BEYOND EARTH
91
We speak to the duo at Dennaton

Games about the making of the brutal sequel to
the 2012 cult hit
STAR CITIZEN
Chris Roberts talks to Andy about his

grand plans for the intergalactic MMO, as well as
the games complex spaceship economy
82 TOP 10 DOWNLOADS
We take a look at Doom Reborn and much

more in our downloads round-up
86 UPDATE
On the two-year anniversary of its release,

Andy checks in with SOEs PlanetSide 2
88 REINSTALL
Chris bravely re-enters Kirkwall and revisits

BioWares Dragon Age II
The Hard Stuff

91 GROUP TEST
The best graphics cards available
96 THE RIG
From diplomats to siege worms, we review this

sci-fi take on Civ
GRAPHICS CARDS
With new cards on the market, Dave

James rates the best of whats available right
now across multiple price ranges
JANUARY 2015
WoW dwarves arent what they used to be in the PC Gamer letters page.
USER REVIEWS
Binary Domain.
Its god-awful tripe.
Every moment is
a titanic struggle
between willpower
and the crushing
sense of boredom.
@badbonobo
Its for the underserved fans of the sexy
android subgenre.
Strolling through
Mordor still, with
a dash of GRID
Autosport in between.
@FiveStarZ
Dont drive through
Mordoryoull get done.
Unless, of course,
youre driving an eagle.
Rift wont catch on
I have a prediction for you:

the Oculus Rift will be a niche
product at best, and may even
disappear altogether after
the initial excitement has
dissipated, in a similar way to
3D movies at home. I know you
guys are excited about it, and
Im not doubting that its very
cool far cooler than 3D. But
lets be honest, how many

people are going to want to cut
themselves off from the real
world for extended periods of
time while gaming at home?
Pretty much all TVs come with
3D now, but how many people
actually sit down and watch
3D content on a regular basis?
A tiny proportion, Ill wager.
Maybe the Oculus Rift will
THE HOT maIl

WoW: Its the little things
that matter.
Wargame: Red
Dragon. Best RTS Ive
played, with a fantastic
attention to detail.
@TheDunntist
That name is overselling
it a bit, though. There
are no dragons in it.
Unironically,
Daikatana. Its not a
good game and hasnt
aged well at all, but I
only ever played it once
when it first came out.
@omgangrybees
We reckon there
should be a mod called
Unironically Daikatana.
JANUARY 2015
Smacking
my poor
dwarf
Ive canceled my subscription to

World of Warcraft. Not because
of the changes to character
classes, and nor do I have any
complaints about the
dumbing-down of gameplay.
I understand the financial
necessity of ensuring you appeal
to the widest possible audience.
No, I quit because they have
done the graphical equivalent
of smacking my poor dwarf in
the face with a piece of timber
(also known as updating the
character models). Can I make
a new dwarf, one that isnt so
hideous? Maybe, but thats not
the point. She wouldnt be *my*
dwarf, the one Ive spent hours
and copious money on leveling.
find some success in a cinematype scenario, where using it

for a session will be more of an
event with your friends, but I
very much doubt it will become
the default for home gaming.
Joe Reed
USF4 on PC, but

cant play online
because a) hardly
anyone plays online,
and b) my connection
is terrible anyway.
So just training mode.
@_The_Roy_42_
Training... for
more training?
Beyond Earth. Loving
every minute of it.
The choice within the
tech tree is fantastic.
@MytchJames
Even if it was a Civ V
mod with giant worms,
wed probably be happy
with Beyond Earth.
A fad or
the future?
And theres the rub. MMO

developers want you to bond
with your character. They
count on it so that they can flog
you bikini tops, vanity pets and
new mounts in their cash shops.
But its all an illusion. It isnt
*your* character at all. In fact,
it isnt even *your* game.
It seems that the biggest risk
you take playing online games
isnt your password being
hacked. Its the risk that at any
moment it might all disappear.
One small patch and the game
you knew is gone. At least in
Skyrim, the worst I had to fear
was my sweetroll being stolen.
CJ Toth
These bloody dwarf makeovers.

Stay off the botox.
PCG
A number of factors will

determine the success of the
Oculus Rift consumer model,
and price is a big one its not
the false start that 3D was.
Trying the Oculus Rift is the
best way to sell someone the
idea, and pricing-wise were
not expecting it to be in the
insane-thousands range that
3D TVs were when they first
came out. This wont be
a fad. And even if it is, well
just deny we ever wrote this.
PCG
Gained Sentience
I just watched your US teams

video about building the LPC,
and I was flabbergasted to
note that at no point did they
ever stop to consider what
would happen if it gained
sentience. Did they at least
purposefully not connect it
to their neurotoxin emitters?
Alec Walker
In our opinion, theres only one

way to deal with the LPC:
Hulkbuster Armor. Or are we
getting that mixed up with
something else? We all wear it
now. Alternatively, we just
make it and the Large Pixel
Collider Jr fight each other.
The aforementioned video can
be found at lpc.pcgamer.com.
PCG
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@pcgamer
HOT TOPIC
USER REVIEWS
Our best adventure

list: do you agree?
For me, it has to be the
Blade Runner game made
by Westwood Studios in 1997.
Not sure if it still comes
with membership, but
I got the wonderful Beneath
a Steel Sky free from GOG.com.
Also, the entire Broken Sword
series is a pleasure to play.
Grim Fandango:
you concur.
Steve Freiman
Glen Ricardo Fernandez Sarti
I actually enjoyed Curse

of Monkey Island more
than the first two games in the
series. Dont get me wrong, I love
Tim Schafers work but the
cartoony graphics and voiceovers
were really where the game
thrived for me, and it was quite
challenging, too. Also, Id have
Normality and Space Quest III:
The Pirates of Pestulon on my list.
I feel that Beneath a Steel

Sky should definitely be
on there but, other than that,
its an excellent list. Ive even
played most of the games on it!
Grim Fandango should be at
the top of that list. The lack
of Syberia and Amazonia is
somewhat disappointing, too.
Loom should definitely

have been higher, and there
were other notable omissions.
You should have added I Have
No Mouth, and I Must Scream.
And Indiana Jones and the Fate of
Atlantis. Instead of To the Moon,
you should have included The
Stanley Parable. And what about
Machinarium, Prisoner of Ice,
Alone in the Dark and LIMBO?
Samuel Ramsden
Sotiris Galanos
Myst, Grim Fandango,

Penumbra, Machinarium,
Sam & Max, Anna, Receiver,
Amnesia, The Oregon Trail and
Beneath a Steel Sky are my top 10.
Whoever decided to include

Loom in this list gets
utmost thanks. That little game
was the first game I played on my
very first PC. The music especially
the excerpt from Tchaikovskys
Swan Lakesounded surreal
back then coming out of internal
PC speakers, like the entire thing
had been rendered on a flute.
Hope someone makes a sequel.
Sten Jrgen Pettersen
Shane Rice
For me, Grim Fandango has

to be #1. A close second is
Monkey Island.
Grim Fandango has to be

my favorite adventure
game of all time. I also love,
or have loved, playing Full
Throttle, Strong Bads Cool Game
for Attractive People, the Sam
& Max games, To the Moon
and Gone Home.
Pedro Magalhes
Randall Lucas Pfeifer
Bryan Callaghan
Diablo III. A fantastic

game that can be
played drunk without
having to memorize
loads of keys.
@drewodrew
Shit, someone has finally
figured out our secret
review criteria.
Im currently playing
The Sims 4, which is
quite bad in its current
state; there are too
many things missing.
@VinceWald
Well, helper monkeys, a
holodeck and hot tubs
filled with chocolate
were always going to be
paid DLC.
James Orwin
Besides all LucasArts

releases, an adventure
game that I really love but
thats never mentioned is Veil
of Darkness. It has fewer RPG
elements than Quest for Glory
but its mostly overlooked or
ignored as an adventure game
due to its isometric view.
Nevertheless, its well worth
mentioning and playing.
PC Gamer
FutureUS
4000 Shoreline Ct. Suite 400
South San Francisco, CA 94080
Ayan Chatterjee
You can find our greatest

adventure list at www.bit.ly/
PCA25. Tell us what you think.
Elite Dangerous.
A ship, a fistful of
credits and the galaxy
ahead. See you in
the void.
@MaxUrsa
Yes! Spaceship optimism!
Playing Kingdoms of
Amalur. Cant believe
it doesnt get more
coverage. Great game,
beautiful visuals,
fantastic writing.
@IceyGrave
Its a good game and a
neat mix of RPG with God
of War-style combat. Its
just that name: a stones
throw from Kingdom of
Beard: Origins.
Wasteland 2. Its
like real life, but a lot
less depressing.
@Cromwelp
Youre right [gets kicked
to death by nuclear
zealots].
The Evil Within. Its
still great the second
time around. They really
did bring back survival
horror. Im looking
forward to the future.
@Astengar
Indeed! 60%.
JANUARY 2015
MONITOR
T HE P C G A MER V IE W OF T HE W ORL D
EAs two-year
plan revealed
THE TOP STORY
Star Wars: Battlefront to arrive with

Episode VII, Battlefield 5 landing in 2016
he next two years of Battlefield

games have been scoped out.
EAs first Star Wars title,
DICE LAs Battlefront, will
release late next year, the
publisher announced recently. Also
confirmed was the March 19 release date
for Battlefield Hardline, the heist-themed
entry originally meant to ship late this year,
and the news that we can expect to see
Battlefield 5 by Christmas 2016.
By the time DICEs Frostbite-powered
arena shooter arrives, it will have been ten
years since the release of Star Wars:
Battlefront II. The third Battlefront game
has been trapped in development hell for
many years now, starting out as a sinceabandoned project by TimeSplitters
developer Free Radical. EA grabbing the
10
JANUARY 2015
license was actually a bit of a relief for me,

but how it took a decade for such a
successful series to return is baffling.
Serious money was left on the table there,
as competitive shooters have escalated in
popularity over the last ten years.
EA only secured the license for Star Wars
in May 2013, and with a targeted window of
September-December 2015, thats only a
two-and-a-half year development cycle for
an entirely new series. But with Hardline
getting significantly delayed for a polish,
its always possible that Battlefront could be
pushed back as well. On the other hand, the
allure for EA will be getting a Star Wars
game out at the same time as JJ Abrams
Episode VII, on December 18, 2015.
EA also confirmed that its game will be
first-person, whereas the previous games
could be played first- or third-person. Note

that third-person has yet to be conclusively
ruled out, however.
As well as Battlefront, EA has at least one
more Star Wars game in the works from
Visceral Games, led by the former writer
and creative director of the brilliant
Uncharted series on PlayStation 3, Amy
Hennig. From that hire alone I would
speculate that this will be a strongly
narrative-driven project. On top of that,
when EA announced that the license had
been acquired last year, BioWares name
was mentioned as one of the three studios
working on Star Wars-related projects. Its
unclear whether this will be expansions for
The Old Republic or something new.
Hopefully it wont be completely
embarrassing to like Star Wars by 2017
when all these games are likely to emerge.
EA has a plan, then, and it mostly
involves shooting guys in arenas for the
next three years, be they soldiers, criminals
or, most excitingly, gungans.
Samuel Roberts
One Giant Leap Forward
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*Based only on consumer-class SSDs
2014 Samsung Electronics America, Inc. Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
THE SPY
BUT WHO WATCHES THE SPY?
ello, gamers of the PC

variety. Its The Spy here,
with more mildly interesting videogame news,
nuggets, rumors and gossip.
People often ask The Spy why he spends time
collating rumors for a popular games magazine when
hes an international man of mystery who lives a life of
excitement, intrigue and femme fatales in Swiss chalets.
Honestly, The Spy doesnt know, but
doing this for the past decade has
certainly taken the edge off his crippling
tuxedo habit. He had to buy a house just
to keep them all in.
Screenshots for an alleged Just Cause
3, running on Xbox One, have emerged.
If it actually is a game it will likely appear
on PC too, based on the series past
trajectory. The screenshots reveal
almost nothing except that the openworld vehicle-jacking revolution
simulator has had a serious visual
upgradeand a more desert-like setting. The Spy once
attempted to start a revolution in a small unnamed
mountainous nation, before immediately defecting on
realizing that the local military fought entirely with
Nerf guns. Someone tried to have his eye out, but The
Spy won the day by throwing a hedgehog grenade

loaded with plastic-tipped sponge.
With Prey 2rumored to be worked on by Dishonored
developers Arkanenow shut down, The Spy must don
his telescopic robot eye to determine what the studio is
working on next. Arkanes associate narrative designer,
Sachka Sandra Duval, mentioned voiceover recording
taking place on October 21 via Twitter. The Spy
speculates that this means whatever Arkane Studios is
working on must be at a fairly advanced stage, especially
as Dishonored is now two years old. With Prey 2 gone,
The Spy is fairly certain well see Dishonored II make an
appearance in 2015. Of course, this could be VO work
for anything. The Spy once endorsed a series of laser
pens that could burn through human flesh for
infomercials back in the late 90s. He resumed
Red Barrels is
developing a sequel
to its hit horror game
The Spy has

no friends,
only enemies.
The Spy
xx xx x xx x
xx x xx x xx
x xx x xx x
xx x x
governmental service when they refused to add six

zeroes to the end of his paycheck.
Red Barrels is developing a sequel to Outlast, its hit
indie horror game from 2013. We realized that we had
at least another horror game in us, co-founder Philippe
Morin told Bloody Disgusting. So, yes, we are working
on Outlast 2. As The Spy understands it, the new game
will be set in the same universe as its predecessor, but
with new characters and a different setting.
We have new ideas that wed like to explore,
continued Morin, and we think were cooking up
something special.
Cooking is, incidentally, an important skill for a
spy. If youre undercover as a chef, you need to know
how to make an acceptable lobster thermidor. The Spy
underwent a year of training in both the culinary arts
and killing people with kitchen utensils.
Namco Bandai has delayed realistic driving simulator
Project CARS until March next year, because it allows
the game the greatest chance of success and visibility.
The racing game boasts insanely high-res car models
and authentic handling, and will feature a raft of
licensed vehicles to skid about in and crash into
barriers. The Spy once pitched the people at Namco
an idea for a game called Project CARTS, featuring
realistically simulated horses and carts. Their loss.
Studio boss Ian Bell said that the delay will allow
them to make an unforgettable and pioneering
experience. The Spy approves. The Spy is
renowned for his collection of cars, almost all of
which feature some kind of fancy hidden gadget.
He has an Aston Martin with machine guns in the
headlights, a Ferrari that launches heat-seeking
missiles, and a Lamborghini with a four-slice
toaster concealed in the dashboard. Spy out.
The Spy
MONTH 2014
THIS GAMING PC
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AN EXCELLENT CHOICE IN TERMS OF VALUE,

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PREVIEW
Buy a golf club

and hit people!
Hardline localizes Battlefields

traditionally global story to America.
Hotwire, one of several new multiplayer

modes, is car-chase heaven.
BATTLEFIELD
HARDLINE
PLAYED IT Cop, drop and roll with two new campaign missions.
nner-city Miami. This isnt the palmtree-lined capital of Will Smiths

summer anthem, so dont expect any
partying all night on the beach til the
break of dawn. Instead, as rookie cop Nick
Mendoza, Im cruising with my veteran
partner, Khai Minh Dao, past the grimy
rap seeping from rundown bungalows, past
the woman unpacking groceries while
casually discussing her mans restraining
order, past the happy hobo who sprays our
windshield with an Evenin officer! then
shouts obscenities when we drive off.
For Battlefield Hardline, a full-length
crime-caper offshoot bringing a tenmission campaign and brand-new
multiplayer, developer Visceral returns
from Dead Space to find a
setting just as hostile and
alien. Says Hardlines
executive producer,
READ ME
Steve Papoutsis: When
developer
Visceral Games
we were doing the Dead
publisher
Space series, we had a lot
EA
of flexibility in terms of
link
what we wanted to do,
www.battlefield.
because nobody could
com/hardline
16
JANUARY 2015
tell us what the Dead Space universe looked

like. With this game, trying to recreate
something more real-world had to get the
designers thinking about more modern
design; about the real world and scenarios
that are fun and interesting in those spaces.
That connection between art and design is
what makes or breaks it.
The aim here is to find a man named
Tyson Latchford (L.A. Noires Adam
Developer Visceral
returns from Dead Space
to find a setting just as
hostile and alien
Harrington), whos slipping drugs to his
hoodrat buddies. We park the car to avoid
suspicion and stoop through darkened
alleyways, enemy vision cones and
awareness arcs helpfully displaying
precisely how noticeable we are.
Now to enter a gang-occupied school for
the first of what Visceral dubs fortress
sectionsopen areas you can approach in
several ways. It plays into the cop fantasy
of a stakeout, Papoutsis explains. Youre

given a scannera tactical device to mark
enemies, determine whos a bounty and
listen in on conversations. And we add
another layer to the game, which is, of
course, the investigations. If you use the
scanner, you can find various clues. And if
you interact with these clues, you can scan
them and get additional detail that explains
a background character or story thread.
After tagging two guys, I approach and
yell Freeze! A compliance meter appears
above their heads, meaning that if I dont
give them equal attention, one will get
cocky and reach for his gun. Non-lethal
play nets you more cash to purchase fresh
weapons, and equipment such as ballistic
shields, breaching charges, gas masks,
tasers and even golf clubs (for hitting
people, obviously).
After skulking around the school
chucking empty bullet casings to distract
guards, then knocking them out for being
stupid, I find Tyson. That is, the monitor
Tysons face is on. Hes gloating over Skype,
so Dao calls for a trace and we speed off
after him to end the level. Its an effective
MONITOR
Do you mind? I just

wallpapered this room!
Nick Mendoza. A few years ago, hed have been

played by a gruff, bald white guy.
continues Papoutsis. It was always about

the 4th of July and really trying to do
something that stood out from a visual
perspective. At one point, we thought it
would be cool for the bad guys to cut the
power, so that we could light up the room
with that, and the designers were like, Hey,
what if they had flashlights? As we zipline
out, golden explosions illuminating the
night, its a dramatic end to my two-mission
playthrough that showcases Viscerals
artful eye and Hardlines graphical might.
Among the characterization, Hardline packs in

bursts of Bruckheimer-style action.
introduction to Hardlines unique spin on

the shooter, at once stripped down (a pistol
and nightstick are among my few weapons)
and freeform.
The next mission: infiltrate a playboys
penthouse, dig up dirt implicating him
with Korean mobster Henry Kang, and
take down two legally dubious birds with
one stone. Again, there are plenty of ways
into the apartment: you can either duck
behind hedges to circumvent patrolling
guards, ascend the stairs of an adjacent
building and cross the rooftop car park to
get behind them, or blaze in through the
entrance. After multiple failed attempts at
sneaking in like Pierce Brosnans version
of James Bond, I go with the Daniel Craig,

bull-in-a-china-shop approach. Youre not
penalized for either tactic. The smart,
cover-only lean function proves that
Hardline is still just as tasty at gunplay,
enabling me to pick off oncoming goons
as the lift arrives.
Now comes the finalea rooftop defense
against waves of bad guys hellbent on
introducing me to my maker. A handy
weapons cache gives me access to laser trip
mines, which I proceed to plant on walls,
and infrared scopes that prove their worth
when the lights go out. Our creative
director pitched the idea for episode nine,
and it was always about the fireworks,
If Battlefield 4 is like
an epic war film,
Hardline is more akin
to a TV cop drama
If Battlefield 4 is like an epic war film
a Black Hawk Down, perhapsHardline is
more akin to a TV cop drama, less about
screeching jets and natural disasters, and
more about well-written characters,
believable settings and meaningful choice.
But those pining for the odd showstopping
set piece wont be disappointed either
in this, a vital refresh of the franchise.
Ben Griffin
RELEASE MARCH 19, 2015

JANUARY 2015
17
PREVIEW
Under this angry red sky, any
legend feels cousin to reality.
Its a library, Jim,

but not as we know it
Imagine watching Gravity

on LSD and youll be close.
The alien planets are based on British
Romantic-era poetry.
ElEgy for a DEaD WorlD
played it Poetry meets space exploration in this psychedelic scribe-fest.
oday, Elegy for a Dead World

had me writing a eulogy for a
rotting machine civilization.
Yesterday, I authored a rhyming
love letter from an old man to his planet
goddess. Sumptuous yet sparse, this strange,
melancholic almost-game is startlingly
good at what it sets out to do: inspire fiction.
Theres no action here, no high-stakes
adventure, nothing but vast landscapes to
slowly explore and meditate upon. In the
future, creators Popcannibal and Dejobaan
Games may eventually introduce puzzlelike elements that require you to reconsider
your narrative slant, but thats about as
gamey as it is going to get. Elegy for a Dead
World is all about surrendering to your
inner muse and
writing beautiful art.
Or, at least, semiinteresting bits of
READ ME
science-fiction prose.
developer
Dejobaan Games
Intimidating as all
publisher
of this might sound,
In-house
the game does come
link
equipped with an
www.dejobaan.com
abundance of writing
/elegy
prompts and visual cues to help you along.

Even its premise seems devised to cultivate
wonder. Youre the sole survivor from a
cabal of explorers, sent from Earth to study
and document three alien planets. How
does anyone go about undertaking such
a desolate labor?
Elegy for a Dead Worlds true genius lies in
how easily it guides you along the creative
process, supplying sentence fragments and
The game is all about

surrendering to your
inner muse and
writing beautiful art
vivid imagery like breadcrumbs on a
clockwork regime. Its excellent at making
you think, and making you rethink your
thought process with every playthrough.
To date, the single world available in the
preview has given me three short story
ideas, and the beginning of a Lovecraftian
utopian novella.
The controls for Elegy for a Dead World
are as minimalist as its overall design.
You use either the WASD keys or the

directional arrows to navigate through the
gorgeous watercolor environments, and the
Tab key to swap to writing mode. The
audio is equally sparse. Much of it is
composed of your breathing and footsteps,
with a whispery female voice to punctuate
your actions.
While largely a solitary endeavor, Elegy
for a Dead World allows players to connect
through their writing. Once youve
finished wandering through one of the
games three worlds, you can publish your
musings for others to find. From there,
members can peruse your experience,
then commend your work if they judge it
entertaining or profound enough.
Elegy for a Dead World is an intriguing
piece of work, more a bold experiment than
any attempt to profit from mainstream
audiences. Its hard to say if the completed
game will remain compelling in the longterm, especially since there are only so
many things you can say about the same
places. At worst, however, it may become the
coolest tool in creative-writing class ever.
Cassandra Khaw
RELEASE MARCH 31, 2015

18
JANUARY 2015
Bits of the old game protrude out
PREVIEW
This little guy will soon breathe
fire and be a helicopter.
Up yours, Sky Bastard.
The world is pretty much seamless.
The Magic circle

played it A fascinating game inside a game.
ve just reprogrammed a dog to attack

mushrooms. Im told Im the second
person ever to do thisthe first
being former PC Gamer writer Tom
Francis, coincidentally. I created this
scenario with a seething some men just
want to watch the world burn mentality.
The dog is actually something called a
howler. I can reprogram any creature in
this environment. I can customize how
they move, who their enemies are and who
they consider allies. Ive started this demo
with a dog attacking a mushroom, but Ill
end it by charging into battle controlling a
mini-army composed of a flying fireproof
dog, a brave turtle who is constantly being
killed and a fire-breathing helicopter robot
that can possess other
helicopter robots but can
no longer fly.
Created by ex-BioShock
READ ME
staff Jordan Thomas and
developer
Question
Stephen Alexander, and
publisher
Dishonored AI
In-house
programmer Kain Shin,
link
The Magic Circle is a
www.magiccircle
game about
game.com
22
JANUARY 2015
reprogramming NPCs in a mini-sandbox,

set within a game thats stuck in
development hell. I first sampled it back at
GDC earlier this year, and since then its
come on a long way in terms of how
intuitive it is to play. The goal is to confront
the Sky Bastard, essentially the creative
director of the game-within-the-game
(which is also called The Magic Circle). This
context is introduced via a mainly non-
I turn my ordinary
howler into a beast who
gets around with a little
helicopter rotor
interactive opening that takes the form of a
generic black-and-white fantasy RPG
revenge premise, which is being talked over
by the games creative director and a
dissenting member of staff. Things arent
going well on the project, and its about to
get even worse.
Once the fantasy fluff ends, your
character literally walks through the title
screen of The Magic Circle into the back-end
The palette is occasionally

bursting with color.
of the game, as it were. Here, an entity from

a previous version of a game made by this
team urges the player to help him wreak
vengeance on the Sky Bastard. This leads
you through an evocatively System Shocklike retro sci-fi environment and youre
taught how to reprogram AI, which is the
core conceit of The Magic Circle. Youre then
dropped into a mostly black-and-white
open world. From here on, its down to you
to explore this sizeable hub and solve
puzzles to help you gather the skills to
eventually take on the Sky Bastard.
The games title also refers to its key
means of interaction. Before I can
reprogram NPCs, I have to capture them
in first-person by drawing a circle of light
onto themthis freezes them so I can
approach them and begin reprogramming.
Lets say Im being attacked by a howler, the
aforementioned standard enemy dog NPC.
I draw around the howler and stop it in its
tracks. I then walk up to it and open up the
inventory menu, where each behavior for
this enemy is listed on a late 80s-style
green-screen menuas mentioned, this
includes who their allies are, their enemies,
MONITOR
I got lost in this maze

bit at least twice.
the way they attack and even special

attributes (I can make a character fireproof,
for example). The more NPCs you try this
on, the more values you collect and can
later use to reprogram other characters. So,
while at first all I can do is make the howler
attack a mushroom with a melee attack,
later, when Ive used the circle on a
character that breathes fire, I can change
the howlers attack patterns from melee to
fire-breathing.
Once youve captured a creature, its
yours to summon from the map screen at
any time. You can set waypoints for
creatures to help them do your bidding
what starts as having a battle pet soon turns
into managing a squad of augmented
creatures whose nature you have defiled,
like those fucked up but benevolent toys in
Sids room in Toy Story.
Eventually, once Ive explored the
environment in full, I turn my ordinary
howler into a flying, fireproof beast who
gets around with a little helicopter rotor on
his back and vanquishes anything that isnt
my friend. Its a satisfying arc, getting to
that point, and I have a nice sense of
ownership over the creatures Ive mangled

to my satisfaction. And that urge to
experiment grows as you unlock more
values to play around with. Every new
enemy is an opportunity. When I first gain
the ability to make any of my little guys fly,
it feels like a real breakthrough moment.
Lets improve a turtle!
Combat is one application of crafting a
mini army, but progress actually relies
I have a nice sense of

ownership over the
creatures Ive mangled
to my satisfaction
more on lateral thinking and treating the
environment like a puzzleone seemingly
simple example is a river of lava that you
have to cross. Thomas would rather I didnt
give the solution away, but its neither
obvious nor straightforward to pull off
nor is it the only solution. What these
puzzles do is galvanize your enthusiasm for
programming and reprogramming the
characters, in a build up to your assault on
the Sky Bastard, whos represented by a

glowing eye in the distance (reaching him
was the final puzzle of the demo).
With such scope for self-expression, your
experience may be entirely different from
mine, but you wont resolve these situations
without a lot of chopping and changing in
the inventory menus. My programming of
the howler to attack a mushroom was
evidently a rare decision. You can pick your
own inanimate objects to devastate.
I havent gone too in-depth with the story
here, and thats because I want to leave
some of it as a surpriseliving in a game
stuck in limbo is an original and
compelling situation (not to mention one
thats quite tough to explain on paper), and
wandering out of the existing black-andwhite world and into System Shock-like
chunks of environment is a real treat. But
even outside of this narrative, The Magic
Circle is systems-driven in a way thats very
exciting for a player like methe kind who
likes to put a bit of himself into a game. I
think the specific audience that finds this is
going to love it.
Samuel Roberts
RELEASE 2015
JANUARY 2015
23
PREVIEW
Proxys melee attack

hits you for six.
Canary Wharf underground

station is well replicated.
Londons architecture is
impressively accurate.
Each character in the game

is armed with different weapons.
Nader is not named after two-time US

presidential candidate Ralph, sadly.
DIRTY BOMB
PLAYED IT Splash Damage turns its home city into Enemy Territory.
resher developers may feel obliged

to do something different every
time, but Splash Damages
veterans know the value of
specialization. The companys two
acclaimed Enemy Territory titles made it the
multiplayer-shooter specialist du jour, so its
well aware that its found its niche. As the
games writer, Ed Stern, tells me,
Dynamic objective teamplay is sort of our
special sauce. Thats Dirty Bomb all over.
Its a free-to-play multiplayer-only team
shooter set in an abandoned, near-future
London. The city has been devastated by
the dirty bomb of the title, a radioactive
explosive. You play as mercenaries from
PMCs, dropped into the city to loot it as
quickly as possibleand
stop others from doing
the same.
Its got Splash
READ ME
Damages mapmaking
developer
Splash Damage
knowhow, Enemy
publisher
Territorys teamplay
Nexon
focus, and all the flash of
link
the Arkham Origins
www.dirtybomb.
multiplayer. We can only
nexon.net
hope that it hasnt inherited any of Brinks

flat combat and launch problems.
The team showed off two of the five
areas, both modeled on areas of their home
city of London. Chapel is based on
Whitechapel, and Underground is based
on Canary Wharf. Both are long, thin
maps using the Stopwatch game mode,
where the attacking team has to complete
multiple objectives in order to achieve
We can only hope that

it hasnt inherited any
of Brinks flat combat
and launch problems
their nefarious objective. In Chapel, you
have to escort an armored vehicle to a
docking station, then hand-deliver some
EMP charges to take down a building.
In Underground, you must capture some
extractor-fan controls, then destroy the
pump controls to flood the station.
Diving in, you pick three characters,
whom you can swap between in-match.
Each of the 15 characters has unique
weapons and abilities, much like in Evolve.

Then you can choose a loadouta further
customization that heavily alters the
characters cooldowns and abilities
Theres a nice mob of characters to
choose from. All players start with the same
line-up, and more advanced characters are
unlocked through play. Splash Damage is
taking great care to balance them all.
In the game itself, combat has the variety
and resilience of Team Fortress 2. The actual
moment-to-moment action is achingly
familiar, but still compelling to play. At this
stage, it lacks the comical complexity thats
been thrown up by TF2s multiple
mutators, modes and endless equipment.
Communication was key to victory
every time my team was silent, we lost, but
when we relayed info clearly and quickly,
we won, both on defense and offense.
The single mode I played was thrilling
yet familiar, the array of characters meshed
nicely together, and the tried-and-tested
team mechanics had received a knowingly
modern refresh. Dirty Bomb may set the
world alightor it could be a damp squib.
Dan Griliopoulos
RELEASE 2015
24
JANUARY 2015
MASSIVE POWER
INSIDE AN INCREDIBLY
SLIM DESIGN.
17.4
14.1
4.4
ONE OF THE FASTEST AND ONE OF THE
QUIETEST MICRO TOWERS- Maximum PC
DIGITAL STORM BOLT II
PREVIEW
The X-Files and Twin Peaks are clearly strong
influences on Variable State.
VIRGINIA
PLAYED IT A Lynch-inspired first-person adventure.
love that Twin Peaks manages to keep

finding new generations of fans, to
the extent that this ever-growing
morass of people has somehow
summoned it back to TV 25 years after it
first aired. It was the progenitor of modern,
credible serialized television, but its
influence has extended beyond TV and
into our medium, where the likes of Deadly
Premonition and Alan Wake have borrowed
liberally from the series oddball mix of
comedy and drama, and reinterpreted it
through their own voices.
Variable States Virginia is a confident
first-person mystery that feels like it lives in
a slightly twisted version of that world,
complete with a similar missing-person
premise and the
suggestion of dark
supernatural forces at
work behind the scenes.
READ ME
I begin the ten-minute
developer
In-house
demo at night by a car in
publisher
the middle of a forest.
Variable State
The viewpoint cuts to a
link
lake in the middle of tall
www.variable
green trees, then to a
state.com
26
JANUARY 2015
corridor of red trees where the leaves of one

turn into hundreds of origami birds that
scatter and leave the branches bare. We
move to a diner that is straight-up based on
the Double R from Twin Peaks, and now
Im sitting opposite my FBI partner. This is
tone-setting stuff. The premise of the story
is relayed a bit later through two key scenes:
one where youre handed a dossier by your
boss with an order to investigate your
partner, and another in a family home
where police are standing around an upset
family whose son has gone missing. Its not
utterly Twin Peaks, but the stirring music
straddles the line between early X-Files
synth and Badalamenti grim.
Id say we perhaps leaned a little heavily
on the Twin Peaks references in our demo,
creative director Jonathan Burroughs
admits. Our intention isnt to parody or
pastiche that TV program, fond of it as we
are. But weve certainly inherited some of
the premise; both our story and Twin
Peaks deal with outsiders entering a closed
community, with a harrowing crime and
with paranormal occurrences. Were also
fascinated by Twin Peaksand I think this
MONITOR
Another slice of that

cherry pie please, Norma.
There are two strands of

investigation at work here.
Solving the supernatural:
just another day at the office.
In terms of dialogue,
less is definitely more.
Now then, where

did I put my desk?
is true of many David Lynch films

mixture of the mundane and the
extraordinary. But Virginia will be an
original story.
There are other ways Virginia feels like
its own world outside of Twin Peaks, too.
The snippets of story in this demo are
delivered entirely by character animation
and environmental detailsno dialogue
or voice acting. The boys disappearance,
for example, is telegraphed by the family
paintings on the walls of the house where
his obviously distraught parents are talking
to detectives. It oddly reminds me of the
Buffy episode Hush in the way that
characters mime to tell the story, though I
wonder about the challenge of doing that
across the entire game.
In part, it was a practical decision,
Burroughs says. Virginia will feature quite
a large cast and, given that were only three
developers, were we to pursue full voice
acting, we were worried about the time we
would have to devote to iterating on voice
performance and making sure it was of the
best quality, in addition to wanting to put
time and effort into the animation and
physical performances. But I was also
worried about conversations slowing the
game down. Our story is told at quite a

pace, and I think dialogue between the
player and other characters may have felt
like an unwanted interruption.
I like that we are not giving people a very
precise explanation of every scene, that
they have the chance to interpret each
interaction and put the story together for
themselves, adds art director Terry Kenny.
That is quite satisfying. There is a lot to be
gleaned from that Buffy episode, though;
Theres a suggestion
that dark supernatural
forces are at work
behind the scenes
its an inventive and compelling show
because of the constraints it has set for
itself. The score is great and its visually a
striking episode. I guess in Hush, everyone
is aware that their voice is gone, whereas we
need to find naturally silent moments in
our story and communicate the necessary
details in other ways.
In terms of moment-to-moment play,
Virginia wont have puzzles or padding.
This is just telling the story. It is
intentionally light on mechanics,

Burroughs tells me. Our aim is that it is
first and foremost a drama you participate
in... weve quite purposefully avoided
opportunities for puzzle-solving or
exploration; anything that impedes the
story or that might be a roadblock. I think
its important players go in not expecting a
reinterpretation of a point-and-click
adventure game, or to roleplay as a
detective in the LA Noire sense. But instead
to experience what I hope will be a
captivating and affecting story.
I think thats a confident choiceI
enjoyed how briskly the demo moved
between snippets of narrative and gave me
a lot to take in at once. Theres a suggestion
that otherworldly elements are at work
within Virginia, not dissimilar to the
relationship between reality and fantasy
that Twin Peaks has. The demo ends with
my character opening a desk in the familys
house and finding a toy UFO container. As
she pries it open, out comes a dead animal,
a cardinalVirginias state bird. Ill have to
wait to uncover the deeper mystery below
the surface, but this definitely wont be the
last time I think about Virginia until then.
Samuel Roberts
RELEASE 2015
JANUARY 2015
27
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30
JANUARY 2015
reated by the Swedish two-man team

of Jonatan Cactusquid Sderstrm
and Dennis Wedin, Hotline Miami
topped game-of-the-year lists in
2012 due to its addictive action, tight
game mechanics and effortlessly
cool aesthetic. The ultraviolent
blend of classic Grand Theft Auto,
Robotron and, hell, even a bit of
Rainbow Sixs Open and Clear
murdering, put their two-man
studioDennaton Gameson the
map as one of the most exciting indie
developers. As Hotline Miami 2:
Wrong Number approaches, the duo
talk me through their backgrounds
and making the sequel.
I have a band called Fucking
Werewolf and I had an idea for a
long time that I would like to make a
music videogame for it, Wedin says.
I started hanging out with Jonatan

and his brother. He was making
games, so I approached him and
asked if he wanted to make this game
with me, and he said he would do it
on the one condition that I made all
the graphics, because he didnt want
to make it all himself! So that was
the first time I ever did pixel art. We
made that game and it was really fun
working together, so we kept on
going from there.
Dennaton is a truly independent,
punk rock game studio. Just the two
of them, even after the success of the
first game, and they still work from
home rather than having an office.
Throughout the interview, they
repeatedly mention that Hotline
Miami is a game they made for
themselves and that it is the game
Jonatan Cactusquid Sderstrm and Dennis Wedin reflect on

the making of Hotline MiaMi 2: wrong nuMber.
By Andi Hamilton
JANUARY 2015
31
IAMI 2
M
E
N
I
L
T
HO
InterpretIng Hotline MiaMi

A concise stab at whatever the hell was
going on in the original
Irreconcilable differences
The plot of Hotline Miami splits in two at a point where

Jacket and Biker, the two playable protagonists, fight to
the death in a call center.
Phoned in
In one timeline,
Jacket wins. He
gets phone calls
telling him to go to
places where he kills
everyone in sight,
usually Russian
mobsters.
Win some
He saves a girl
from one of the
levels. She appears
to become Jackets
girlfriend, living in
his flat, before being
killed by a guy in a
rat mask.
Dont ask
The usual suspects
Cop out
After escaping
hospital, Jacket
goes for revenge. He
wipes out an entire
police station, only
to find out rat mask
guy gets the same
calls he does.
He kills the leader of the Russian mafia, some old

guy shoots himself and Jacket smokes a cigarette and
looks at a polaroid on a balcony. What?!
In the other timeline, Biker easily dispatches Jacket

and goes looking for answers. He eventually tracks down
two guys the developers.
Because we can
At first, the pair simply tell

Biker that there is no reason
behind any of this, that they
were just bored. They mock his
(and your) need to justify the
violence. Ooh, satire!
32
JANUARY 2015
Just stop now
If you find a load of secret

letters, they instead reveal a
really quite convoluted plot,
which Biker cuts off for being
a tiresome and unnecessary
addition. More satire!
that they wanted to makeno

outside influence. Theyre the Ian
MacKaye to Notchs Henry Rollins.
It seems like an odd pairing, as
Wedin had no prior experience in
making games. Zero. By this point,
Sderstrm had already made, by his
own estimation about 50 games
before he started working with
Wedin (I recommend that you check
out the wild shoot-em-up Clean
Asia! and the Lynchian creepy as hell
Mondo games).
From the first time I played a
game, Sderstrm says, which was
when I was eightit was Super Mario
I always wanted to play as the
enemies instead of Mario, because I
thought he was a silly character.
Once I got older, I realized it might
actually be possible to make a game.
So I decided to just give it a try.
He reckons the first game he made
was probably when I was 14. I tried
to make it in Macromedia Flash but I
gave up because I couldnt figure out
how to do the programming. When
I got into high schoolI was 16 or
somethingI started
experimenting with GameMaker,
which allows you to make games
without doing any code, so I could
concentrate on ideas. It seemed like a
lot of fun to create games, creating
your own worlds. I made a game

about a cucumber with a head that
jumped over a ball. Then I made a
game about spitting on children...
They werent very good. Soon I
started thinking it would be fun for
other people to play my games, so I
started going onto online forums
and uploading my games. I got a lot
of response so I just kept doing it.
Its no secret that the eventual
release of Hotline Miami on Steam
wasnt the smoothest of launches.
Bugged achievements, rough
controller support, and in some cases
the game wouldnt run at all. The
duo chalk this up to an admitted lack
of experience when it came to
shipping an actual full release of a
videogame, some publisher pressure,
and simply running out of money.
Obviously, this is something
Dennaton are doing their utmost to
avoid for the sequel.
First off, we had never released a
game for cash, really, and if a game is
for free and it doesnt work no one
will let you know, Wedin explains.
So we didnt know anything about
the problems GameMaker had with
a new DirectX and stuff like that,
because we never got any feedback.
So when we released the game we
saw that it didnt run at all on
The action is as harsh and

uncaring as the decor.
Think of it as a
migraine with guns.
Hotline Miami: pretty much exactly

what your mom thinks videogames are.
Windows 8... it was very hectic at the

end. We were out of cash.
The sequel has a much more solid
base to work with. In fact, Hotline
Miami 2 started life as an expansion
pack for the original.
When we realized that the
expansion pack was going to be
bigger than the first game, we
changed it to a full sequel,
Sderstrm says.
We also wanted to make the
editor and other cool stuff, and that
took a lot longer than expected,
Wedin adds. We also wanted to call
it the sequel, because with
expansion packs I find its the same
formula but when you do a sequel it
has to be very innovative nowadays,
pretty much a whole new game. We
wanted to do a sequel like they did
with sequels back in the day for
people who actually enjoyed the first
game and want more, like with Mega
Man. So, we felt like we should call it
Hotline Miami 2, stick to our guns
and just give people that like the first
game another game that they will
enjoy. Not just trying to get a bigger
audience, but making a game for us
and people who liked the first one.
It will, however, be a more fleshedout and varied experience than the
first game. The story of the original,
the split narrative between Biker

and Jacket, is left intentionally
vague. (Neither Wedin or
Sderstrm is willing to divulge
which is the canon story, even going
to the extreme of banning the
question from being asked in some
interviews.) Hell, the characters
dont even officially have names:
Biker and Jacket came from the
fan community before being
adopted by the Dennaton lads
themselves. Hotline Miami 2 features
characters who have more clearly
defined roles in the story, as well as
their own unique abilities.
The biggest inspiration for the

second game is actually the first
game, Wedin says. When we made
the first game we talked about all
these back stories to the characters
fleshing out the universemore for
us than the players. We always felt
like we could make a second game by
expanding on this stuff. That was
the biggest motivation for us.
Sderstrm is quick to clarify that
Wrong Number doesnt deviate from
the original games tone. Theres
still a big part of the game thats
really vague, but part of it that is
more set in stone. Much clearer.
t
u
o
b
a
e
m
a
g
a
e
d
a
m
I
t
i
.
.
.
n
e
r
d
l
i
h
c
n
o
g
n
i
spitt
d
o
o
g
y
r
e
v
t
wasn
JANUARY 2015
33
k
n
i
h
t
t
n
o
Id
e
k
a
t
n
a
c
e
w
r
e
h
t
r
u
f
it any
after this
(including Cara Ellison, writing in
this magazine) found it to be in poor
taste, making use of an extreme topic
to shock, and frankly a bit crass.
Dennaton ended up removing the
scene from the demo, but when
asked if this controversy had affected
the development of the game or any
of the creative process, Sderstrms
answer was simply No. Not really.
At the start of the game, theres an
option to choose whether you want
the game uncensored or not, Wedin
adds. It was stupid to have it in the
demo, looking back. It doesnt really
Evidently at some point

you unlock Jarvis Cocker.
Since theres 13 characters, we

had to give them some kind of
personality otherwise theyd all be
bland, Wedin says. It worked for
Jacket, but for Biker we added
dialogue to make him different, so
were working on more stuff like
that. The story is jumping between
different times and settings, so youll
have to try and connect them.
Jumping around why, exactly, I
ask. In this game youre going to
have to play as a load of different
characters. Theres going to be a
level for just the fans, just the
detective, just the cobra guy, and
youll have to play as all of them. In
the first game people would just pick
the Tony mask and play the whole
game, so in this one were forcing
you to adapt a bit more. You have to
adapt to that characters ability. Like,
for this character I have to have this
weapon, or for this character its
better to use guns, you know?
Music is an integral part of the
Hotline Miami experience. The
soundtrack, a curated list of some
exceptional electro artists, plays a
huge part in the trance-like state you
find yourself in as you hammer R to
restart after an untimely death. As a
game that shifted a good 300,000
copies on Steam, the original
34
JANUARY 2015
provided fairly major exposure for a

lot of the artists included. It seems
like a slot on the soundtrack to the
sequel would be a pretty smart move
for the up-and-coming musician.
I think we got around 200 songs
sent to us, Wedin says, which was
cool! Searching for music is really
hard. Theres loads of cool tracks
that we used. Its about 50/50, music
that we found and music that
approached us.
As much as the original game was
recognized for its soundscape, it was
celebratedand criticizedstill
more for its intense graphic violence.
For the sequel that seems to have
continued as a trend. Earlier in the
year, a demo of the game was shown
that featured a character known as
Pig Butcher. After going through
your typical Hotline Miami level,
murdering everything in sight, a
post level sequence showed this
character threatening sexual assault,
before an off-screen director yelled
cut! revealing the whole sequence
to be part of a movie based on the
events of the first game. How meta.
Perhaps like the first games
portrayal of violence, this was an
attempt to critique the
objectification of female characters
in videogames, but a few writers
Its like Super Dry

but messier.
The bar where nobody

knows your name.
work if you cant continue playing

and see how it works.
One of the more interesting
features of the sequel is the level
editor, which is apparently the
number one request from fans.
Its not fully working yet, says
Sderstrm. We need at least
another week to work on the features
that are missing. We havent decided
how far we want to take it. Like, it
would be cool to add custom
graphics and stuff, but then you get
these kind of problems with what
kind of content users can add to the
game, like swastikas or whatever, so
were not sure we want to do that.
We do want to make it so you can
create your own storyline, like a
campaign. We also want to make it
as easy as possible for users to create
their own levels, so you dont have to
be good at programming to make
anything with the editor. Its on an
MS Paint level.
Another thing that fans were
asking for was the addition of
multiplayer, but that is something
that has been left outafter all, the
Dennaton duo are determined to
make games for themselves. The
breakneck pace of the game simply
wouldnt work with two players, so
cooperative killing sprees are out of
the question.
COVER FEATURExxxx
IAMI 2
M
E
N
I
L
T
HO
Green weights?
Seriously?
Its hard to keep that press R to

restart, die repeat die repeat with
two characters, Wedin says. Do
both characters die? Or if one
character dies, does the other player
have to wait? That, he says, would
break the whole hypnotic vibe of
Hotline Miami.
Hotline Miami 2 recently got
bumped from 2014 to early next
year. We are in the final stages of
our work, Wedin says, and then
theres going to be a lot of testing and
bug fixing. Weve been very close to
being finished for a long time but we
also discussed a lot of stuff that we
didnt have time to make for the first
one, like menus and how to design
Expect to play and kill a range

of characters in Hotline 2.
CreatIng Carnage The Hotline level editor in three easy steps
Choose a layout from the funky

80s-like menu.
Distribute enemies and objects

around it.
Play it! Thats actually just two

steps, now I think about it.
You can also use the level

editor to plan kitchens.
them so they work well in the game.

We made our own achievement list,
because we didnt like how Steams
own achievement notification had
weird colors from the game on them.
We wanted to make everything in
the game cohesive. This is the last
Hotline Miami because were
cramming everything we have in
there. I dont think we can take it any
further after this.
Its interesting the duo should hint
at the end of the Hotline Miami
universe. Providing the game is as
or moresuccessful than the
original, where does the studio
progress from here? Im interested as
to whether the size of their two-man
team restricts them from going as far
as maybe they would like.
We talked a bit about it,
Sderstrm hedges. We want to
keep it just the two of us, but maybe
contracting someone to do
something in 3D or whatever...
something we cant do ourselves.
We want to keep at least one
game that just me and Jonatan are
making, Wedin says. Maybe a side
project that we have creative control
over. Its just an idea, though. We
never felt like we wanted more
people. Things are way more
complicated when theres more than
two people.
JANUARY 2015
35
release
2016
36
JANUARY 2015
ith almost 60 million dollars raised

and counting, Star Citizen holds the
Guinness World Record for the
most crowdfunded project ever.
Chris Roberts, creator of the Wing
Commander series, is the captain of
this very expensive ship, and today I
have the opportunity to talk to him
about his vision for the space sim.
I start by asking if the money
raised is enough. Its never enough!
he laughs. We scale development
according to how much money is
coming in. The level of support
dictates our level of ambition. This is
a huge open-world game where you
can go from planet to planet, so we
could spend hundreds of millions of
dollars on it quite easily.
As well as the funds raised by
backers, Roberts studio, Cloud
Imperium Games, will be investing
around $100 million of its own
money into the project. Itll be at
least another 18 to 20 months before

the game is ready for release, so
whatever we raise in that time will
also be put into its development.
I ask Roberts what its like being
freed from the traditional developer/
publisher relationship and going
indiealbeit on a much grander
scale than most studios. Every day
we can just focus on what we think is
going to be the best game. When
youre working with a big publisher,
a lot of energy gets expended on
marketing and sales, and they
determine what your budget is... The
problem with that is they get a say in
what you do with the game. Ive had
situations where marketing has said
things like Call of Duty has this, so
you need to have this, and if we say
no, theyll mark the projected sales
down by a million units, lowering
the development budget. So you end
up doing things you dont believe in
so you get a good forecast.
Roberts is building a game he
believes in. The people backing it
believe in it too. Were not having to
have conversations with publishers
who may have other agendas... The
downsideand its not really a bad
thingis having so many opinions
and voices. Everyone has a different
idea about what they want the game
to be, so youve got to walk the line
Chris Roberts on the grand ambitions

of Star Citizen. By Andy Kelly
JANUARY 2015
37
STAR CITIZEN
of trying to deliver something youre
happy with, while making sure the
backers get what they invested in.
Roberts talks to Star Citizen
backers regularly. On the internet
you get people that dont have any
sense of how to get something across
in a constructive manner. But there
are plenty of people who are super
positive, and ultimately I dont mind
the bad ones, because everyone who
backed the game is invested in
making it better. You might not
agree with them, but they care.
Once a thriving genre on PC, the
space sim had, until recently, faded
into obscurity. Now we have Elite:
Dangerous, EVE: Valkyrie, No Mans
Sky, and others on the way. I ask
Roberts why he thinks these games
are making a comeback. I dont
understand why they went away. I
think people just love science fiction.
They like escapism, and playing
computer games is one of the biggest
forms of that. I loved games like
X-Wing and Freespace, and after
taking a break from the games
industry, I came back and saw that
no one was developing them any
more, which is why I wanted to make
Star Citizen.
When Roberts was working on
Freelancer in 2003, he had an idea for
a dynamic online universe shaped by
Moving from ship to foot

is totally seamless.
Make friends online, then

shoot them with lasers.
Your ship will begin to look

scratched and beaten up. Itll
never be pristine again
players. Star Citizen, he says, is a
natural evolution of that. My
biggest complaint about online
games is that they dont feel like the
players have much impact on the
world. It feels like a theme park. So
one of the big tenets of Star Citizen is
player impact.
Your actions will have some effect
on the world. If we put new star
systems into the game, we wont tell
players about them, and the first
person who navigates there will be

able to name the system... but we
wont have a million systems to
discover, so not everyone will get a
chance to do that.
He adds that the player-driven
economy will alter the appearance of
certain locations and the missions
they offer. If theres a settlement
and its doing well, itll grow. You can
come back six months later and itll
be turning into a city, which will
then generate missions to deliver the
materials to help build it. But if the
economy suffers, therell be crime
and unemployment, and things will
begin to look run down.
One of Star Citizens fascinating

ideas is that your character will die,
permanently. We want players to
have a lifespan. Your character, to
think of it in arcade terms, will only
have so many lives. If you get in a
dogfight and your ship blows up,
your body will be recovered and
taken to a hospital on the nearest
friendly planet. But theres only so
many times this can happen.
You might get a mechanical hand
to replace a damaged one. Every
death will age you, and once those
lives are used up, your character
will pass away, and your possessions
will go to a new character.
GreaTesT HITs Selected games from Chris Roberts long career

Times of Lore (1988)
An action-RPG inspired by the Legend of

Zelda games, notable for its, at the time,
huge world map, which was made up of
13,000 individual screens.
38
JANUARY 2015
Bad Blood (1990)
A top-down post-apocalyptic RPG that

used the Times of Lore engine. Featured
real-time combat, a day/night cycle, and
mutants called blargs.
Wing Commander (1990)
A sci-fi space sim that spawned a

successful series. Described by Roberts
as World War II in space, it was strongly
reminiscent of the Star Wars films.
The game isnt even out and

people are buying ships.
It looks as flashy as a game

of its budget should.
Hooray for the return of

the space simulator.
The idea is that youll be building a

legacy as you play, and a family line
that can be traced back. I want it to
feel like time is passing, rather than
you being this immortal character
and nothing ever changing. Ships
and items have wear and tear, so if
youre getting into fights, your ship
will begin to look scratched and
beaten up. You can get it repaired,
but itll never be pristine again.
Unlike Elite, which is built around
its players ships, Star Citizen is
essentially a first-person game. It
just so happens that a lot of time has
been spent on the vehicle simulation.
This has allowed Cloud Imperium
to do a lot more than it would if the
player was forever tethered to their
spacecraft. We can be walking
around on the surfaces of planets,
interacting with NPCs and other
players. These are places where you
can pick up missions, explore, talk to
people, and buy and sell cargo.
Wing Commander III:

Heart of the Tiger (1994)
Probably the best Wing Commander

sequel, with FMV cutscenes directed by
Roberts starring Mark Hamill, Malcolm
McDowell and John Rhys-Davies.
Well also have a limited amount

of PvE stuff thatll happen on
planets. Maybe youll go down a dark
alleyway to sell some contraband,
and youll get attacked by muggers.
Youll have to take them out, Han
Solo-style, with your blaster. We
want these places to feel like theyre
alive, rather than just glorified
shopping and mission interfaces.
But while Star Citizen is going to
be a game for solo privateers as well
as mega-corporations, multiplayer
will be a massive part of it. The
bigger ships have been designed with
co-op in mind, and players can take
on different roles, like piloting or
manning turrets. In space you can
open the airlock and leave your ship
in an EVA, and dock with another
ship, or repair your own. Or you
could be exploring a derelict sitting
in an asteroid field. We want to have
interesting, fun gameplay for
everyone. It wont be like World of
Starlancer (2002)
Created by Roberts and his brother Erin

(who now works at Cloud Imperium), this
sci-fi flight simulator let you customize
and fly your choice of 12 space-fighters.
Warcraft where you need a big group

to do the really cool stuff.
I finish by asking what he thinks
about the gray market: a community
built around the buying and selling
of Star Citizen ships, sometimes for
thousands of dollars, even though
the buyers cant even fly them yet.
We thought that if someone is
backing the game for $250, they
should get a better ship than if theyd
spent $40. Then we had a lot of
requests to sell ships separately, and
this is when we had to decide on the
pricing. We couldnt really take, say,
the Constellation, which was on the
$250 pledge, and make it a $30 ship.
Thats how we set the prices.
He cites the games insurance
system as a big factor. If your ship
gets destroyed in the game, youll get
a new one, providing you keep your
premium valid... But we decided
that, to reward backers, wed offer
them lifetime insurance on their
ships, and its those ships that
became highly sought-after on the
gray market.
Roberts is clearly incredibly
passionate about Star Citizen, and
you can tell hes approaching its
development primarily with a game
design brain, not a marketing one. I
sincerely hope the game can live up
to Cloud Imperiums bold, skyreaching ambitions.
Freelancer (2003)
This sim was based on the Starlancer

engine, but with added trading and RPG
elements. Star Citizen is seen by many as
its spiritual successor.
JANUARY 2015
39
Need to know
What is it?
The third in BioWares series of

fantasy RPGs.
Influenced by
Five years of lore, the mistakes

of Dragon Age 2
Play it on
Nvidia GTX 670, 8GB RAM,

i5-3570K CPU
Alternatively
The Witcher 2, 87%
Copy protection
Origin
Inquisition sits
happily alongside
BioWares best
42
JANAURY 2015
revieW
TALL ORDER
DragoN age: INquIsItIoN is the biggest game in the

series, but is it the best? By Phil Savage
eres a quick Dragon

Age quiz. Who are the
Seekers of Truth?
Whats their relation
to the Chantry? If
Divine Justinia V is killed in a
massive explosion that creates a
breach in the fabric of reality, do her
closest advisors have the political
authority to reform the Inquisition?
What is the Inquisition? What was
the Inquisition? If a person walks out
alive from the now swirling green
demon hole, are they the Herald of
Andraste? What do the Tevinter
Imperium have to do with anything?
If you dont know these things,
Dragon Age: Inquisitions opening
lore-maelstrom threatens to drown
you. Over two previous games, an
expansion, and numerous tie-in
comics and novels, BioWare has
created a rich and broad history,
much of which shapes the events of
this enormous third RPG. Its
initially overwhelming, as names of
people, places and events are tossed
casually into the narrative.
My advice? Stick with it. Inquisition
is taking you on a long and satisfying
journey, with plenty of time to work
out whats what and whos who. Now,
after the 50-plus hours it took me to
finish the main campaign, I feel
more versed in the intricacies of the
world than ever. More than that, I
feel like Ive had a bigger impact on it
than in either previous game. Ive
navigated the polite intrigue of
Orlesian politics, recruited powerful
and dangerous allies, and elevated
the Inquisition from a band of fringe
heretics into one of the most feared
and admired orders in all of Thedas.
Also, Ive fought a dragon or two.
The game opens in the village of
Haven. Its ten years after the events
of Dragon Age: Origins, a few weeks
after the epilogue of Dragon Age 2,
and the exact moment that the
Temple of Sacred Ashes is destroyed
in a sky-tearing blast of unknown

origin. Inside, the head of the
Chantrythe worlds main religious
organizationwas attempting to
negotiate peace between the warring
Templars and mages. Where the
temple once stood, there is now only
a dangerous and growing vortex that
threatens to engulf the world. You
are the only survivor.
Who you are, and why you were at
the peace talks, depends on the
character you create. There are four
races to pick from: human, dwarf, elf
or hulking grey Qunari. This choice
will provide plenty of special
dialogue options based on your
characters culture and history, but it
doesnt affect the setup. You emerge
from the breach with no memory of
what happened, and with the power
Faces by Frostbite
Inquisition is nothing like Battlefield 4, but,
thanks to its modified Frostbite 3 engine,
its faces share the same creepy detail.
1
2
3
4
Skin
An ever-present sheen, revealing Cole as

a greasy teenager.
Eyes
No, its not a black eye. He just doesnt

get much sleep.
Nose
Look carefully and you can see the

blood veins. Its kind of gross.
Giant hat
Covers up the hair, which doesnt look

nearly as detailed.
to close riftsmini-tears in reality

from which demons can cross into
the world.
Whatever your choice, youre a
curiously humanized Inquisitor. I
played as a Dalish Elfa people
known for their insular nature and
distrust of outsiders. Yet I didnt
and couldntact like any of the
Dalish Id met in the previous games.
Similarly, Qunari Inquisitors are
described as having rejected the
Qunthe strict philosophy that
made DA:Os Sten such a fun guy to
have at parties. The world does its
best to respond to your race, and the
differences add a welcome flavor. In
terms of the range of your dialogue
and actions, however, it can feel like
a mostly aesthetic choice.
Seeking closure
The breach is the story bridge that

links the high-level political
posturing of the worlds factions to
your own need to venture out and
kill things. Closing it requires
power, and that, initially, means
securing the support of either the
rebel mages or the now autonomous
Templars. To approach either, youll
first need to increase the
Inquisitions supportby
completing quests. Successfully
check something off your to-do list,
and youre awarded Power and
Influence. Power lets you unlock
new areas and progress the story,
while Influence unlocks perks, from
new conversation options to
enhanced lockpicking for your
partys rogues.
Youll have plenty of opportunities
to earn both, because the world is
huge and packed full of things to do.
The first main area you unlock is the
Hinterlands. Its an enormous
expanse, filled with hills and cliffs,
and crammed with nooks and
crannies hiding secrets, sidequests
and lush, verdant scenery. About
JANUARY 2015
43
The accepted posture for oh dear,

a rogue has phased through me.
You can turn on friendly fire, if you want

mages to kill everyone constantly.
Use the tactics screen to learn

the strengths of your foes.
Cullen, receiving his award for
Mr Serious Business, 2014.
A picturesque place
for stabbing.
Only the Inquisitor can close

Fade Rifts. So, you know, do that.
Leliana is questioning
her faith again.
44
JANUARY 2015
revieW
30 hours into the game, I returned to
check off another in my long list of
tasks. Id been poking and prodding
the area throughout, gradually
uncovering the borders of the map.
This time, I encountered a dragon:
first flying overhead, then landing in
a bowl of charred trees and scorched
rocks. It was only the second Id seen,
and its presence wasnt tied to a
quest. It was just out there, waiting
to be found.
Not all areas are this big. The
Orlesian city of Val Royeaux is a
mere marketplace square, used for
only a handful of quests throughout
the campaign. Then theres The
Fallow Mire, which acts as an almost
standalone undead vignette across a
mostly linear area. Predominantly,
though, youll be charting massive,
open spaces, each offering a distinct
environment and ecosystem. Some,
like the forests of the Emerald
Graves, are absolutely beautiful
filled with wild and vibrant plant life
in a multitude of primary colors.
In terms of the size and scope of
the environments, Dragon Age:
Inquisition is the total opposite of
Dragon Age 2. For the most part,
thats welcome, but I do miss the
presence of a proper, bustling city.
Inquisition is a game about taming
hostile lands, which means theres
nowhere as dense with people as
DA2s Kirkwall, or even DA:Os
main city of Denerim. Instead, the
most populated area of the game is
the Inquisitions headquarters. Youll
return here between missions to talk
to companions, assign tasks to
advisors, and optionally behead the
odd criminal or two.
The advisors are a nice addition.
Like your companions, they offer
personal quests and will chat
between missions. Unlike your
companions, you cant take them out
into the field. Instead they can be
summoned to the War Council, to
be given tasks through a map view of
Ferelden and Orlais. Each
assignment can be tackled through
diplomacy, intrigue or military
force, with different results and
completion times depending on the
advisor used. Once assigned, a timer
ticks down, after which you can
collect your reward.
The time for completion can vary
from ten minutes to the best part of a
day, but it ticks down even when
youre not in the game. This is a
great touch. For one thing, it means
Independent enquiry
The map screen is where you further the Inquisitions operations
Missions
Castles denote the next main

mission. These require Power to unlock,
which is built by completing quests out
in the world.
Areas
Tasks
For a smaller power cost, you can

unlock new areas. Each has its own
primary quest, and plenty of sidequests
and secrets to find.
Smaller pins denote actions that
can be assigned to your advisors. Each
will handle the task in a different way,
some better than others.
youll have a reward waiting

whenever you resume the game.
More importantly, it gives a sense of
the Inquisition as a growing political
force. It was these indirect tasks, as
much as my own actions through the
story and questing, that sold the
sense of the orders ascendance to
legitimacy and fame.
ram raider
Out in the world, theres plenty of

busywork to bulk out each zone.
Inquisitions sidequests are a variable
bunch, and the worst resemble
MMO fetch quests. Context is
important here. For instance, early
in the Hinterlands, youre asked to
gather the meat from ten rams in
order to feed a camp of refugees.
This makes senseits early in the
story, and the Inquisition is still
weak. Such charitable acts will
naturally raise the orders standing.
Fine. Elsewhere in that zone, you
can pick up a quest to kill three large
bears. Its triggered when you find a
noteaddressed to someone else
that can be glibly summarized as
first you get the bear claws, then
you get the power, then you get the
women. There is no reason at all for
the Inquisitor to do this, other than
it provides a flimsy excuse to visit
that part of the map.
Fortunately, theres plenty of
substance too. The campaigns story
is gated by both the suggested
experience level, and the Power cost
of unlocking each mission. I was
easily able to earn enough of both
while focusing only on the most
interesting objectives. As long as
youre exploring the world, righting
wrongs and fighting hostiles, theres
no need to churn through the

padding. Even so, the open-world
activities are different in nature to
past BioWare games. Many have a
clear and rigid goal, with little room
for on-the-fly moral choices.
However you wield the Inquisition,
its intentions are good. When tasked
with clearing an area of evil, theres
little room to question whether
things are really what they seem.
They are. Now go and kill the evil.
To counterbalance this, the main
story missions are filled with tough,
world-shifting decisions. They are,
almost without exception, wonderful
scenarios. Each mission is distinct,
memorable, and significantly moves
the story along. Initially, the
forming of the Inquisition seemed
hurried, and underwhelming
because of it. After about 20 hours,
that was revealed to be a deliberate
movethrough a sequence that
entirely changed my perception of
what the order was, and my
characters relationship to it. Before
that point, her involvement seemed
born out of necessity. Afterwards, it
was strengthened by conviction.
The story also provides
Inquisitions few instances of lengthy,
linear combat encounters. The
combat system has been significantly
changed for this incarnation. You
still have Dragon Ages classic trio of
Warrior, Rogue and Mageeach
with multiple skill trees to further
define the role. Now, though, the
emphasis is on direct attacks, using
the left mouse button to swipe away
at enemies between activation of the
skills assigned to your hotbar.
For the most part, it works, but
there are persistent minor
JANUARY 2015
The world
is huge
and packed
with things
to do
45
revieW
House of cads
Your companions are a quirky bunch heres a selection
A fulfilling
and worthy
sequel for
the series
46
VARRIC
Dwarf
Storyteller
CASSANDRA
Serious
Seeker
SERA
Friend of
Red Jenny
VIVIENNE
First
Enchanter
Likes Hawke,
Kirkwall
Dislikes serious shit,
red lyrium
Likes scowling, Varric

Dislikes levity, Varric
Likes pranks, talking

nonsense
Dislikes nobles,
weird elf shit
Likes tailoring, the

Chantry
Dislikes the
uncouth, mages
annoyances. I played as a rogue, and

found the combat animations too
slow for my liking. You can avoid a
lot of damage by dodging the
heaviest, most telegraphed enemy
strikes, but your movement is
limited while attacking. Without a
way to instantly cancel out of an
attack, I found myself having to wait
for the animation to finishoften
being hit as a result. Targeting
enemies can be troublesome, too.
There are few things more
frustrating than activating your
Inquisitors leaping strike, only for
her to vault off in the wrong
direction because the game hasnt
registered that youre attacking the
enemy in front of you. The best I can
say is that I learned to compensate
for these issues, and by the end could
maneuver through fights with
something approaching grace.
Control over the partys tactics has
been simplified. In previous games,
orders resembled absurd algebra
puzzles. If Morrigan drops below
25% health, should she turn into a
swarm of insects? Sure, but only if
she stops being insects at less than or
equal to 50% mana. In Inquisition,
you have some agency over when
healing items are consumed, but
skills can only be enabled, disabled
or marked as preferentialgiving
them priority over other skills.
I miss the fine-tuning the old

system enabled. Controlling
Inquisitions party requires either
accepting the inefficiencies of the
AI, or spending a lot of time micromanaging. Choose the latter, and
youll find the tactics battle screen
used to assign orders to the party
members youre not currently
controllinghas its own issues, all
of which are with the camera. It gives
you a top-down view of the
battlefield, but is awkward to move
and doesnt zoom out quite far
enough. There are times when it
shines, such as during battles with
dragons where theres a large space
and a single target. Against multiple
enemies, things can get confusing.
Supply and demand
The biggest combat change is in how

healing works. Mages can no longer
cast restorative spells, and characters
dont regenerate health between
fights. Instead, your entire party has
a shared pool of potionseight
initially, with the possibility of
upgrading. These can only be
restocked at the camps you set up out
in the world, or from supply caches
found scattered along the path of a
main mission. Its a decent system,
and completely changes how battles
are arranged. For one thing,
difficulty is no longer tied to the
Expect to pay $60 Release November 21 Developer BioWare Publisher EA

Multiplayer Up to 4 Link www.dragonage.com
JANUARY 2015
number of enemies, but rather their

composition. Even when fighting
three or four bandits, the presence of
a shield-carrying Templar can
provide a significant challenge.
Gone too are the long crawls
through enemy-infested caves. Most
battles are against small and often
avoidable groups out in the open
world, with spelunking a limited and
often short distraction.
That this review has highlighted
plenty of issues is because Inquisition
is imperfect in lots of small, yet
noticeable ways. Make no mistake,
though: I love so much of what this
game is. The story is something Im
eager to discuss with people as they
play through the gameto discover
what they did, and learn of the
breadth of divergence possible in
each persons campaign. More than
that, Inquisition is filled with
moments that make it such a
fulfilling and worthy sequel for the
series. The heartwarming
interactions with those companions
I befriended. The brief touches of
humor and levity. The way that,
through the Dragon Age: Keep
website, my decisions across the
previous games have been woven
into the fabric of this one. My first
fight with a dragonthe way its
animations perfectly conveyed
arrogance, annoyance, and
eventually exhaustionwill be one
of my most enduring gaming
memories of this year.
Theres even co-op multiplayer, in
the style of Mass Effect 3s horde
mode. As I write this, the servers are
empty, and so Ive been unable to test
it. Whatever its quality, it doesnt
affect a singleplayer campaign that,
all things considered, is a resounding
success. How much you enjoy
Inquisition will likely depend on what
it is you enjoy about RPGs. If you
want complex systems and hardcore
challenge, it could potentially
disappoint. I dont. I want a rich
world, interesting characters, and a
dramatic and memorable plot.
Judged on those criteria, Dragon Age:
Inquisition sits happily alongside
BioWares best.
A fantastic campaign and

massive open
environments, soured
only slightly by minor,
persistent flaws.
87
Beheadings are just one of

the jobs many perks.
The Fade: still weird.
Not being rude,

but... mint?
How to fight a dragon:

perforate legs, avoid teeth.
Its been a difficult year for the

Templars. This isnt helping.
So the big green hole

is bad, yeah?
Why ride a horse when you can ride

a weird, purple reindeer thing?
Theres a dying hyena

somewhere under all this.
Mages are good at

crowd control. And fire.
The Inquisitions keep.

Prepare to get lost.
Im going to need
a bigger dagger.
JANUARY 2015
47
review
Turning on the resource data view can
crack even the strongest mind.
The full-scale automated

battle screen.
As you zoom the world map out,

the detail disappears.
Multitudinous
For years to come, tales will be told of the fantasy

strategy game EndlEss lEgEnd. By Dan Griliopoulos
need to know
What is it?
4X strategy in a sciencefantasy setting.
Influenced by
Endless Space
Play it on
2.5 GHZ Intel Core 2, 4GB RAM,

1GB graphics card, 3GB HDD.
Alternatively
Fallen Enchantress, 85%
Copy protection
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t first sight, this is a

traditional 4X game. Yet
despite its franchise
heritage, at every stage Endless
Legend shines. Where it takes from
the past, it puts its own spin on it.
Where it innovates, it does so
cautiously and mostly successfully.
It comes with carefully, heavily
asymmetric factions. The Ardent
Mages are masochists who generate
magic, both in battle and on the
main map, through self-harm. The
Wild Walkers are an Elf-like faction
whove abandoned their forests for a
career in construction. And so on.
Civ-style, you build cities on
resource-heavy hexes, and turn food
into population growth into settlers
to make more cities. Except if youre
the Roving Clans, who can move
their cities. Or The Broken Lords,
who dont need food.
Even the diplomacy is innovative.
Want to attack another faction? If
you dont have the influence points,

you cant do it. But you can make it
cheaper by threateningand hence
warningthe other faction. On the
other hand, those same influence
points are used to pay for Empire
planscritical long-term buffs. So
the more international politicking
you indulge in, the less you can focus
on domestic policies. Unless youre
the insectoid-zombie Necrophages,
that is, who dont talk but just eat,
and so are permanently at war with
the other factions. Each faction plays
the game slightly differently, and has
different victory conditions.
The worst bit of most 4X games is
where youre either just clicking
next turn, or tending to a hundred
cities. Endless Legend has an answer
to that too, and not just the highlyeffective automated governors you
can put in charge of each city. Each
faction has a long, rich story,
unlocked through quests across the
Expect to pay $35 Release Out now Developer Amplitude Studios Publisher In-house
Multiplayer Up to 8 Link www.bit.ly/EndlessL
48
JANUARY 2015
map. Quests mix up what you want

to do. My peaceful game as the
Drakkan was derailed when a faction
story mission demanded that I not
only attack one of my allies, but seize
and hold one of their cities. Other
times, Ive been forced to make
peace, or find buried treasure, all
with pitch-perfect quest text.
The music is sweetly uplifting, the
art informative and beautiful, the
unit customization well-handled.
World-generation is spot-on. I cant
even say anything bad about the
GUI, which is a first, and its the
same great game in multiplayer.
The only disappointing bits are
the completely insufficient tutorial,
and the combat, which is like an
clockwork version of Heroes of Might
and Magic, where units take turns
automatically attacking and moving,
with terrain height and troop type
playing a big role. Thankfully, as in
Total War, you can skip battles.
Given the small number of units and
the semi-automation, I didnt find
these tactically interesting.
This is a game that wannabe
developers should play and learn
from. With its eight major factions,
all near infinitely customizable, the
replay value is, well, endless.
Shakes up the familiar

with quirky factions and
smart ideas. An endless
gasp of fresh air for a
staid genre.
89
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review
Shaq might be the worst pundit in history,
but everyones too scared to tell him.
Is that real life?
The one-man Village People idea

really wasnt panning out.
Funk, DunkeD
With NBA 2K15, the best sports series on Earth finally

gets the PC version it deserves. By Jon Denton
Need to know
What is it?
Basketball royalty.
Influenced by
ESPN, hip hop
Play it on
Core i5 CPU, DX11 3D card,

4GB RAM
Alternatively
NBA Live (dont do it)
Copy protection
Steam
lay an exhibition game from

the standard TV camera
position, and you can do that
thing where you call people into the
room and say look at this. Its no
overestimation to say that, at a
glance, NBA 2K15 looks real. With
visuals cranked up to High (youll
need a fair bit of grunt for this) its
incredible: picture-perfect character
models, world-class stadium lighting
and best-in-class animation.
The actual mechanics of
basketball have been marvellous in
this series for years, so the updates to
the engine are slight but significant.
Youll see new collision animations
as players clatter into one another in
the paint, a greater variety of bounce
passes into the post, and improved
smoothness when collecting the ball
on the run. There are still instances
where moving the ball around the
perimeter can look a little awkward,
but this is an engine making
thousands of physics and AI

calculations every second.
Be warned, though. This is very
much basketball for people who
know their crossovers from their
pick and rolls. The game encourages
you to mark your man by placing
arrows on the player selection
reticule that shrink as you get into
position, and a new meter shows
where specific players are most
prolific on the court, but without a
basic understanding of the sport, you
will struggle. Know that going in.
If youre a devotee, or even a lapsed
fan who remembers the Space Jam
hoops heyday of the 90s, there is
much to love here. The volume of
content is almost overwhelming, but
a vital place to start is My Career.
Here, you take your created player
from rags (middle class ragshe has
a flatscreen and a nice apartment) to
abundant riches as you rise up the
ranks of the NBA. The action is shot
Expect to pay $60 Release Out now Developer Visual Concepts Publisher 2K Games
Multiplayer Various modes, up to 5 on 5 Link www.2kgames.com/games/nba-2k15
50
JANUARY 2015
from behind, and you only ever

control your dude. You have to play
and know your role within the team:
youre scored on your performance,
and rewarded in currency you can
then spend on your attributes. The
mode isnt revolutionary, but the
amusing dialogue choices you get to
make influence your relationship
with the fans and you teammates,
which directly feeds into how your
team reacts to you on the court.
Sometimes those teammates will
stand frozen with the ball, running
the shot clock down, seemingly
crippled by choice, but more often
than not your cohorts will make
sensible, realistic movements and
decisions on the hardwood.
MyTeam is the Ultimate Team-alike, which maybe lacks that modes
gambling-lite compulsion but does a
solid job of mimicking it. The
standard online modes also play a
solid if unspectacular game, and
then theres NBA2KTV, where a
real person hosts a TV show about
the game and the sport itself, as if
theyre one and the same. And do
you know what, they kind of are.
NBA 2K15 is completely
intertwined with the real thing. Its
the best sports series on Earth.
An insanely good-looking
and packed basketball
sim, and a PC version
thats finally on a par
with consoles.
88
AMD A10-7850K $ 725

AMD A10-7700K $ 699
AMD A8-7600K $ 656
AMD A6-7400K $ 629
AMD A4-7300
$ 585
AMD Athlon X4 840 $ 599
review
Watson is always on hand,
but rarely useful.
Oh, Victorians.
Holmes (on the left) is

a master of disguise.
SuperSleuth
Sherlock holmeS: crimeS & PuniShmentS

is far from elementary. By Andy Kelly
need to know
What is it?
Period crime adventure starring

the famous detective.
Influenced by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Reviewed on
2GB GPU, 3GHz CPU, 4GB RAM
Alternatively
L.A. Noire, 63%
Copy protection
Steam
sailor pinned to a wall with a

whaling harpoon. A train
that vanishes in the night.
An archaeologist killed in a sauna
locked from the inside. These are
just a few of the mysteries youll be
investigating in this surprisingly
brilliant detective adventure.
You might be wondering where
the challenge lies in playing a
detective who can suss a mans life
story by looking at the state of his
shoes, but thats what makes it so
great. You might have the evidence,
and it might make sense, but you
could still be wrongand even pin
the crime on the wrong person.
This is a game of dizzyingly
detailed environments. From Baker
Street and foggy railway platforms
to ornate Roman baths and the cells
of Scotland Yard, everything is rich
with handcrafted detail.
When you interrogate someone
you can freeze time and study their
body language and clothing closely,

picking out clues to form questions.
This shows off the insane detail of
the character models and visualizes
what Holmes is figuring out when
looking at someonea neat trick
borrowed from the BBC reboot.
Its no open-world game. There
are (sometimes annoyingly lengthy)
loading breaks between areas. But
being able to choose where and when
you travel gives you a nice feeling of
freedom. Youll visit the crime scene,
gather evidence, then travel back to
Baker Street to conduct
experiments, or to Scotland Yard to
grill a suspect. Then you might visit
a dingy pub or a butchers shop to
chase more leads.
Once youve compiled your
evidence, you can enter deduction
space, which is like peering inside
Holmess brain. Clues will usually
offer two possible outcomes, and by
selecting the right (or wrong) ones,
Expect to pay $40 Release Out now Developer Frogwares Publisher Focus Home Interactive
Multiplayer None Link www.sherlockholmes-thegame.com
52
JANUARY 2015
theyll connect and give you a likely

conclusion. Then you have to decide
whether its accurate or not. This
gives you genuine agency over each
case, which detective games rarely
offer. Holmes can also choose to
convict or absolve whomever he
thinks the guilty party to be.
The cases are self-contained, so
the choices you make wont carry
over. You arent shaping a dynamic
narrative here. Its about the per-case
satisfaction of working the evidence
and nailing the right suspect.
You can choose to have the game
tell you if you were wrong (it also
compares your conclusions to other
players, Walking Dead-style), which
Id argue spoils the fun and is only
worth doing after youve finished the
game. You can go back and replay
the last part of a case too, but this
feels like a bit of a cop-out.
This is the detective game L.A.
Noire should have been. Theres
some ropey voice acting, Holmes
himself isnt entirely likeable, and
there are far too many bloody
minigame puzzles (mercifully, these
can be skipped), but overall its an
entertaining crime adventure that
offers compelling mysteries to solve
in a well-realized setting.
Rough around the edges

in places, but this is a rich,
detailed crime adventure
that actually lets you do
some detecting.
84
review
You want verticality?
Youve got it.
Roabiestheyre blind but boy

have they got good hearing.
Dont worry, therell be another

one along in a minute.
HOBBLED GOBLIN
Styx: MaSter of ShadowS is a great thief
but a rubbish fighter. By Jon Morcom
Need to know
What is it?
Third-person stealth with

modest RPG elements, set in a
wonderfully vertical world.
Influenced by
Thieves and hitmen
Play it on
2.4GHz CPU, AMD Radeon

HD 5850, Nvidia GeForce GTX
560 or higher
Alternatively
Dishonored, 92%
Copy protection
Steam
et in a gloomy fantasy world

within the soaring Tower of
Akenash, Styx is about a goblin
who wants to steal the heart of the
mighty World Tree. As you would
hope from the setting, the levels
offer a lot of verticality and plenty of
high road/low road routes through
fantastically open environments.
Styxs movement is mostly fluid
and the mouse and keyboard
controls work well. But his parkour
skills are not as precisely calibrated
as those found in say, Assassins Creed.
Unless youre scaling the obvious
climb points, ledge-grabbing and
jumping can be a fatal lottery.
The sneaking is satisfying and can
find you switching tempo in the
blink of an eye. You can be in a good
rhythm one minute, methodically
clearing an area full of guards, and
the next youre hiding in a cupboard.
Styx has no non-lethal takedown
option, just a muffled kill move that
leaves him vulnerable for five

seconds or a swift, noisy kill that
immediately turns him into a guard
magnet. He can also use Amber
Vision to identify alternative routes
and glyphs that point the way to
secret hiding places.
Tokens, relics and the completion
of primary and secondary mission
tasks all earn you points to augment
seven skill sets, although crucially
this skill-buffing can only take place
at the end of each chapter. The most
dynamic ability is Cloning. Styx can
puke up a clone of himself who, for a
short time, can pass through locked
gates, work mechanisms, create
diversions or even bump-off guards.
Combat is very much a last resort,
its implementation so perfunctory
its as if the developers deliberately
made it dull to push you down the
less confrontational path. Escape is
possible through repeated mashing
of the roll and jump keys but more
Expect to pay $30 Release Out now Developer Cyanide Studio Publisher Focus Home Interactive
Multiplayer None Link www.styx-thegame.com
54
JANUARY 2015
often than not youll be locked into a

one-on-one with the guard. Parry
his sword blows successfully a few
times and youll get a kill prompt so
you can finish him off. But unless
youve isolated that guard, others
will soon be on you until youre
overwhelmed. By the middle of the
game there are hundreds of guards
to whack or bypass, not all of whom
can be eliminated quietly, so you
need to make good use of all you see
in the environment. Frequent quicksaving is essential, but the balance of
the game is such that even when
youre crouched under a table,
staring at some guards groin, there
is always a way out.
When theyre not inadvertently
frotting the scenery or each other,
these guards demonstrate admirable
levels of general alertness, even if
their lack of any peripheral vision
means that you can often literally get
away with murder.
The most disappointing aspect of
the game was the revisiting and
repopulation of some areas. The
asset recycling also gives the
impression the whole thing has been
padded out. But those gripes aside,
Styx weaves an entertaining yarn for
around 20 hours of furtive fun.
Admirably open levels

reward exploration and
ensure high replay
valueas long as you can
overlook the backtracking.
78
review
Boots on fire? Kick them

out on a handy peasant.
Note the four-elements

UI widget bottom-left.
Im in a hurry, can you make

your own Daft Punk joke?
out of shape
For a beat-em-up, The Legend of Korra is a case

of dearth, wind and fire. By Tom Marks
need to know
What is it?
A beat-em-up based on the
popular Nickelodeon show of
the same name.
Influenced by
The Legend of Korra TV show,

Platinums other games
Play it on
Core 2 Duo+, 2GB RAM, Radeon

HD 3850/GeForce 8800 GT+
Alternatively
Metal Gear Rising:

Revengeance, 80%
Copy protection
Steam
was running up the steps of Air

Temple Island when another
mob of equalists attacked and I
had only my fists with which to
defend myself. Breaking the fourth
and final pot of spirit water, I
unlocked water-bending and
instantly felt like the badass I should,
tearing through the foes holding me
back. It was the first moment of The
Legend of Korra in which I was really
having fun.
Korra mainly consists of beating
up tons of dudes, walking a linear
path to the next area, and then
beating up some more dudes, trying
to rack up combos and find hidden
treasures along the way. After a
dejecting first level stripped Korra of
her bendingpowers that give her
control over Water, Earth, Fire, and
Airand forced me to attack with
clunky, short range punches, I was
worried the combat wouldnt live up
to the presentation. I quickly
discovered that the reality was more

or less the opposite of that.
The game is based on the cartoon
show of the same name, and
developer Platinum Gamesknown
primarily for frantic and violent
beat-em-upshas managed to
match the attitude and intensity of
the show almost perfectly.
Combat is far and away the most
fine-tuned part of the game. The
blending of four unique fighting
styles is smooth and satisfyingand
coupled with dodging and counter
systems, each fight becomes a
dynamic affair that looks and feels
like a scene from the show, while
leaving lots of room to perfect
your technique.
As a fan of the show, I found it an
absolute treat to play. The plot,
although light, is a new story that
takes place directly after the events
of season two, and each of the hidden
collectables is a callback to a
Expect to pay $15 Release Out now Developer Platinum Games Publisher Activision
Multiplayer None Link www.bit.ly/korragame
56
JANUARY 2015
memorable episode. The glaring

lack of most of the lead characters
and the poor use of the shows other
personalities and locations didnt
ruin the fan experience, although it
was difficult to look past.
There are only a handful of enemy
character models, and its frustrating
to put all your effort into fighting a
chapters boss only to have that boss
become a regularly used enemy next
chapter. Likewise, the level design is
beautifully cel-shaded on first glance
but quickly wears thin as you see the
same assets used many times over.
Story mode can be completed in
around five hours. It encourages a
second playthrough in New Game+
extreme mode, but by the third
chapter I had finished maxing out
my moves, which turned every fight
into a rapid left-clicking contest.
The extreme boost in strength Id
gained also removed any sort of
strategy the fights had previously
required. Graphical options?
Theres a choice between two
normal or smooth. Thats it.
This was a short but satisfying trip
into a world I love hearing stories
about, but if I werent already
engaged in the fiction, its limitations
would be much harder to overlook.
The best fan experience

for the series so far and a
great price, but bogged
down by cut corners and
awkward design choices.
63
review
Yeah, thats
probably a block.
Fight like an Egyptian.
Im sensing a subtle
dental theme.
Candy Rush
Costume Quest 2s colorful combat quickly

becomes routine. By Chris Livingston
Need to know
What is it?
A kid-friendly Halloween RPG

with turn-based combat and
a few puzzles.
Influenced by
Psychonauts
Play it on
2.2GHz CPU, 4GB RAM,

512MB graphics card
Alternatively
Lego Batman, 85%
Copy protection
Steam
megalomaniacal dentist
with an anti-candy agenda is
leapfrogging through the
space-time continuum, leading to a
grim future where Halloween has
been outlawed. Its up to siblings
Wren and Reynold, and a few of
their friends, to battle the minions of
Dr Orel White, and save the holiday.
Along the way theyll explore a
variety of neighborhoods, meet
loads of cute characters, solve a few
mild puzzles, and collect new
costumes. Unfortunately, Costume
Quest 2s main activity, turn-based
combat, wears out its welcome long
before the end.
The diverse, attractive
environments range from New
Orleans to a robot-patrolled
dystopian cityscape. Theyre heavily
populated with NPCs, most with
cute or funny dialogue, some
providing sidequests or puzzles.
Youll go trick-or-treating, search
for secrets, and piece together new

costumes. Some of these have special
abilities: the wizards wand lights
gloomy areas, the ghost lets you
tip-toe past enemy patrols, the
pterodactyl can blow away leaves,
revealing hidden stuff. Kids,
costumes, and even the evil (or is
he?) Dr White, are all adorable, fun,
and amusingly animated.
The real purpose of the costumes
arrives during combat, where they
transform the kids into warriors to
take on Dr Whites dental bots,
clockwork automatons and other
monsters. Combat is turn-based: you
choose a target, launch an attack,
then press again to land it, making it
an exercise in timing. Blocking
requires a similarly timed buttonpress. Each costume also has a
unique auto-hit attack or healing
power that can be used when a meter
is filled. Landing perfect shots is
quite difficult, but then again, you
Expect to pay $15 Release Out now Developer Double Fine Productions
Publisher Midnight City, Majesco Multiplayer None Link www.costumequest2.com
58
JANUARY 2015
dont have to: the combat is never

especially challenging.
Certain costumes work better
against certain enemies. The
Pharaoh, for instance, receives a
bonus against magical opponents but
takes more damage from mechanical
ones. Thing is, I rarely ever
considered which costumes my team
were wearing when approaching
foes: I just stuck with whatever they
had on, and it never stopped me from
winning, even if a hero or two got
knocked out. This may be
disappointing for those who are
looking for a bit of strategy.
Presentation saves the combat
from turning into a slog. I never got
tired of watching the rotund clown
bounce his way across the arena to
deliver a belly-flop. With costume
choices including a werewolf, a
wizard, and a ghost that vomits
smaller ghosts, the fights are
entertaining to watch even when
playing them has become routine.
Expect about six hours of
gametime, longer if you try to find
all the secrets and engage in all the
sidequests. The story is kid-friendly
with occasional references for adults.
Its also silly and charming, even for
a creaky old kid like me.
Amusing, colorful and

well animated, but the
combat is too simplistic
and repetitive to remain
interesting throughout.
70
review
OVERKILL
The evil WiThin replaces fear with ridiculous amounts of

gore and some questionable design choices. By Chris Livingston
need to know
What is it?
A third-person survival action

horror game from Resident
Evils Shinji Mikami.
Influenced by
Resident Evil 4, the works of

Shinji Mikami
Play it on
64-bit Windows 7/8,

i7 4+ cores, 4GB RAM,
GeForce GTX 670
Alternatively
Alien: Isolation, 90%
Copy protection
Steam
bout halfway through

the game, I came
across five abandoned
wheelchairs in a
darkened hospital
hallway. To me, this image summed
up the philosophy of The Evil Within
perfectly. One abandoned
wheelchair in a hallway would be
spooky, but five? That must be five
times as spooky, right?
Forget about a blood trail leading
to a closed door, or a bloody
handprint on a wall: here comes an
actual river of blood that pulls you
down a chute of blood and deposits
you into a chest-high pool of blood.
Unfortunately, a hundred times
the gore doesnt produce a hundred
times the scares. The Evil Within is
extremely challenging, tense at
times, and often exciting, but in
place of real terror theres just a
metric ton of grisly gross-outs. If
youre looking for horror, youll find
it the many design flaws.
We start by meeting Sebastian
Castellanos and his fellow detectives.
Are you done meeting them? Good,
because after a few brief words
theyre whisked to a hospital where
they stand gazing at dozens of
brutally murdered bodies. Theres
no tension-filled foreshadowing: you
just walk through a door and wind

up standing knee-deep in it. Within
minutes, Sebastian goes from
hanging upside-down in a human
slaughterhouse to creeping through
gore-splattered hallways while a
hulking, chainsaw-wielding maniac
hunts him. A few minutes more, and
the ridiculously named town of
Krimson City is twisting in on itself
like a giant Rubiks Cube, and the
detective is on his own, in the dark,
surrounded by abominations and
with little to fight them off with.
Head games
Initially, Sebastians only chance is to

employ stealth. Although he has a
revolver, theres precious little ammo
to be found, and shooting his
shambling foes, even in the head,
rarely puts them down for good.
Careful creeping, hiding, and liberal
use of the knife is required, along
with setting fire to bodies to ensure
they dont get up again.
Later, a shotgun and a sniper rifle
are introduced, and most
importantly, a crossbow, for which
Sebastian can fashion a variety of
bolts by disarming mechanical traps.
While stealth remains important
throughout, The Evil Within opens
up into flat-out gun-blazing action.
The slow detective

A selection of Sebastians less astute observations
The effect
is that of a
nightmare
you cant
wake from
60
11 hours in
After witnessing
countless horrors and
impossible events. Am I
losing my mind?
6 hours in
After watching a
companion turn into
a monster: Theres
something wrong with
this place.
JANUARY 2015
Ten minutes in
Upon seeing a ghost
murder three policemen,
then vanish: What?
1 hour in
After fleeing a hospital
full of corpses, then
finding a living patient
in the woods: How am I
going to get you to
a hospital?
A number of arena-like encounters

require all the firepower you can
muster to fend off swarms of
mutilated creeps. Both the stealth
and action are fun: taking down
monsters with a knife to the brain,
splitting their heads with shotgun
blasts, or blowing their entire bodies
into chunks with explosive arrows
are all grandly gross and satisfying.
The crossbow bolts also function as
proximity mines, so even if you miss
they can still serve as traps,
important as every shot taken
diminishes your meager resources.
Over 15 chapters, Sebastian travels
from hospital wards to industrial
buildings to labyrinthine
underground torture chambers, and
even, oddly, a medieval castle town.
The interiors are typically dark,
often pitch-black, and liberally
strewn with gore. Their walls are
lined with glistening mucus, rusting
metal and peeling paint. The
outdoor areas are thus a welcome
change, and also the best designed
sections, especially a trip through
the shattered remnants of Krimson
City, which forces you to navigate
crumbling buildings, precarious
ledges, and buckling asphalt streets.
Theres no logical link between
these locations: at the end of a
chapter, Sebastian is simply whisked
off to the next, often after being
knocked unconscious by a fall or
some sort of psychic attack. The
effect is that of a nightmare you cant
wake from, and its a convincing one.
The mutilated enemies you face
grow from simple shambling
zombie-types to more active and
capable monsters. A few are invisible,
which makes for some great tension
as they open doors, leave footprints
in puddles, and jostle nearby objects,
giving you vital clues to their
location. Some wield axes, others
throw dynamite, several brandish
guns and even operate machinery
Put your hands up!

All four of them. Please.
Like turning wheels and
cranks? I sure hope so.
Hello? 1890s?
I found your lamp.
Zombies are full of the

finest burgundy.
The eyes have it.
Hmm. How about one

really big wheelchair?
Theres no shortage
of gruesome.
Explosive crossbow bolts. Just

what the detective ordered.
Dude, guns are my thing.

Stick with biting.
JANUARY 2015
61
Death from above,

pain from below.
Can anyone else hear...

the Ting Tings?
Behold the least gory
room in the game.
Hide and seek has

changed since I was a kid.
Dont forget to look up
every now and then.
Zombies on stilts
are the worse.
62
JANUARY 2015
review
such as spike-hurling turrets. Hell,
one zombie even arrives in a
speeding armored car with a
machine gun blazing. Which is
pretty awesome, really.
These are just the grunts, though:
the real challenge comes from the
boss baddies. One walks around with
his head locked in the safe resting on
his shoulders, one is a wall-crawling
collection of spindly limbs and
matted hair, and another is a hooded
wraith who shows up to either simply
taunt you or kill you with a touch.
Theyre gruesome, definitely, but
not really scary: since most bosses
are recycled a handful of times
throughout the game, they quickly
become familiar obstacles to
overcome or avoid.
At least the survival portion of
survival horror is apt. Sebastian is
fragile and slow, only able to sprint
short distances without hunching
over in exhaustion, making stamina
management a major concern. He
cant absorb much damage at all, and
health kits are at least as rare as
ammunition. Upgrading his skills
and abilities always took several
minutes of careful thought. Which
do I need more? A sliver more
health? To be able to sprint for a
couple of seconds longer? The ability
to carry more ammo, or for my
weapons to do a bit more damage?
The answer is yes, desperately, all of
the above, always.
While I didnt find The Evil Within
scary, I did at times find it tense and
exciting. There are areas so dark that
even Sebastians charmingly silly
old-timey lantern barely illuminates
the gloom, and even knowing full
well what youll find (monsters and
traps, inevitably) its impossible not
to be nervous while cautiously
exploring. There are also some
exciting action sequences, especially
those requiring Sebastian to hustle
toward camera as either a megamonster or a series of traps chase
him down narrow corridors. While
the characters are as dull as
dishwater, theres definitely a sense
of humor. One boss fight, very near
the end, was so ludicrously and
hilariously videogamey that I
laughed through the entire thing. I
wont even spoil it: its just too great.
This is also a very challenging
gamea genuine old-school torture
chamber that has no interest in

taking it easy on you. One sequence
throws everything in the book at you
at once: I had to manage my sprint
meter, have perfect aim, search the
floor for traps and scan the ceiling
for triggers all while killing loads of
lesser zombies and being pursued by
an essentially unkillable boss.
Difficulty by design
While intentionally making things

tough is fine, making them more so
through restrictive presentation and
rotten controls is not. The Evil
Within forces an aspect ratio of 2.5:1,
meaning about 30% of the screen at
the top and bottom is covered by
black bars. This makes the awkward
follow camera, which is already often
stuck directly behind Sebastians
head or body (or butt, when hes
crouching), even worse than it
already is. I spent far too much time
wheeling the camera around to get a
decent view of things.
Bethesda hurriedly released a set of
console commands enabling
fullscreen, but its accomplished by
zooming in, so Sebastians body
takes up even more space. Either way
the presentation sucks. The game
doesnt even look that great anyway:
while some of the environments are
nicely detailed, the characters look
like theyd be at home on the last
generation of consoles, and late
texture pop-ins were common and
distracting during cutscenes. The
framerate is capped at 30fps, and
while that felt smooth to me, when I
played with it unlocked it looked a
bit smoother, and I didnt experience
any problems.
Controlling the detective is also a
sluggish experience. With the
dozens of wheels, valves, and levers
he has to activate, getting him close
enough and facing the right
direction is often tricky. His melee
attack is a ridiculously huge
overhand lunge that moves him
forward a step and turns him
sideways, so that even smashing
open crates is an embarrassing
adventure, let alone clubbing
zombies. Guns auto-aim if monsters
are close, but when theyre too close
youll wind up zoomed in to the
extent you cant see your character or
even much of the zombie. I
blundered into far more traps than I
Expect to pay $60 Release Out now Developer Tango Gameworks Publisher Bethesda Softworks
Multiplayer Singleplayer Link www.theevilwithin.com
Down with the sickness

The most sickening things in The Evil
Within, and how you deal with them
Sickness
Cure
Swarms of zombie
babies crawling along
the floor.
Stomping them into

mushy puddles of dead
zombie baby.
Dude with a giant spike

through his face.
Shooting another spike

through his face.
Strung-up corpses
coming to life.
Burning them as they

writhe and scream.
Exposed brains in
decapitated heads.
Drilling into them and

extracting colored goo.
Enormous eyes.
Everywhere. They even
blink and look around.
Just... try not to look at

them.
The worst
should have, and was often caught by

monsters due to the clunkiness of
steering Sebastian through
doorways and around corners.
Further, XP is represented as green
goo, which must be manually
collected from jars or scooped up
from the bodies of dead enemies.
Want to watch Sebastian perform
his pick up animation one million
times? I sure hope so.
The story can be slowly pieced
together through journal pages and
recordings found in the usual places,
but theres nothing particularly
satisfying to the explanation of why
Monsters Are Happening.
I know that fans of Mikamis past
work wont want to miss this, but
despite some exciting action
sequences and enjoyable fights, and a
hardcore old-school survival
challenge, Id have a tough time
recommending it. The controls are
sluggish, the video options limited,
and the aspect ratio decision utterly
stupid. All of this drags The Evil
Within from enjoyably challenging
to needlessly frustrating.
A challenging blend of
stealth and action, but it
relies on gross-out rather
than fear, and is plagued
by poor design choices.
i spent
far too
much time
wheeling
the camera
around
60
JANUARY 2015
63
review
foundation and empire

Sid MeierS Civilization: Beyond earth
answers the question: what next? By Russ Pitts
need to know
What is it?
Classic 4x strategy given a

science fiction spin.
Influenced by
Civ 5, Alpha Centauri, Dune and

Starship Troopers
Play it on
Dual-core CPU, 2GB RAM, ATI

HD3650/Nvidia 8800 GT
Alternatively
Alpha Centauri, 91%
Copy protection
Steam
it is in
many ways
the same
game, just
spacier
eyond Earth begins with

the very sci-fi premise of
what if? What if you
took Civilization, the
classic turn-based grand
strategy game, and made one of its
signature endings the beginning of a
whole new game?
In Civilization, you can win by
building a spaceship to launch your
civilization into space, in search of a
new world. Beyond Earth takes that
ending and makes it a beginning.
You are now on that new world. Go.
The result is a game that succeeds
in almost exactly the same way as it
fails; a major case of cognitive
dissonance. Beyond Earth, while
bearing many attributes of a new
game, is based on Civ 5s engine and
mechanics. It is in many ways exactly
the same game, just spacier.
Is that a problem? That depends
on how much you like Civ 5, and how
willing you are to take the ride and
give the new space look a shot.
For me it was a problem all
through my first game. I played as
Boldly going where? and how?

Decisions for would-be space colonists
Who are you?
Choose a nation. Depending on who you pick youll acquire

different resource and stat bonuses, so shop around.
Who are you bringing?
Choose scientists, refugees, aristocrats, engineers or artists

with different bonuses.
What are you flying?
Starting bonusesin the form of ship add-ons with fancy

names like Retrograde Thrusters and Lifeform Sensors
reveal more of the map, show locations of alien nests, and highlight
resources. Its your choice of how to get an edge on the game.
What will you take with you?
Choose a bonus from extra population, free tech, a free

building, or free soldier and worker units.
Where do you want to go?
Choose between an Earth-like Terran planet, Atlantean

waterworld or Pangean supercontinent.
64
JANUARY 2015
the Brasilian civ, with its bonus to

melee combat. Being a Civ veteran,
without even realizing it I ported
over my go-to Civ strategy of
focusing on strength in the early age
to build the foundation of a strong
late-game civilization. And then,
turn-by-turn, I played the game
almost on auto-pilot.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I didnt
enjoy the experience. It took losing
that game and having to step away
and reassess how I was approaching
Beyond Earth to learn how to love it.
One small step
Beyond Earth has a lot of new looks:

new units, new victories, a
completely new tech tree (actually,
its a web), new leaders, new
civilizations and a handful of things
under the hood that are also
completely new. But the experience
of cracking it open, watching my
colony ship settle onto a completely
dark map and then setting foot
onto this alien world felt just like
playing Civ 5at first.
On the one hand, there are many
worse 4X strategy games to emulate
than Civ 5, and as that games
expansions have proved, while Civ 5
redesigned much of the original Civ
formula, it left a lot of room on the
table for reinventing itself. Beyond
Earth brings some of the better
reinventions along with it. Trade
routes feature prominently, for one
thing, as does a new strategic
component much like Gods & Kings
religions, called affinities.
Affinities enable you to evolve
your civ beyond its human origins,
focusing research into technologies
that will play to how you want to
interface with your new world and its
inhabitants. The Harmony affinity
enables you to meld with a planets
lifeforms and create new alien units.
Purity uses manipulation of the
human genome to build better
versions of your civ. Supremacy lets

you make your civs humans into
cyborgs with giant robot friends.
Each affinity allows for slightly
different victories and affinity-only
units, and can have a dramatic effect
on your overall game. Specializing
in Supremacy will unlock robot
soldiers, for example. The Harmony
affinity will grant you access to
alien-based units and the ability to
tolerate the new worlds harsh alien
environment. Other civs will
respond to you (or not) based on your
affinity, and actions you take in the
world can impact your affinity score.
This is most noticeable when
dealing with the planets indigenous
creatures. Instead of Civilizations
barbarians, Beyond Earth has a
variety of alien lifeforms, some more
aggressive than others. On the
surface, these seem to be more buglike versions of barbarians, but they
play and react quite differently.
Where barbarians will more or less
attack whatever is in range at
random, aliens will frequently not
attack unless provoked. I was able to
send explorer units carefully into
heavily alien-infested territories
without earning so much as a
scratch. At other times, aliens would
attack me at random, either
provoked by the presence of one of
my military units or by the
aggressive actions of my civ
neighbors. Over-aggressively
terraform your new world and your
Harmony attributes will be for
naught, as aggro aliens force you into
conflict. Whereas attempting to
clear out the new worlds alien
lifeforms (instead of attempting to
harmonize with them) can lead to
them becoming even more
aggressive, eventually luring more
powerful aliens toward your cities.
The other big newness is the
orbital layer. You can build and
launch satellites in Beyond Earth,
As in Civ 5, its all about carving

out territory and defending it.
Send your traders out to
make moneyand friends.
Your civilization is
fleeing a dying Earth
The Explorer unit

uncovers the map.
Upgrading your combat rover will eventually
grant you the power of levitation.
Harness the disgusting power

of the planets consciousness.
You can clear the health-draining

miasma with a worker unit.
JANUARY 2015
65
Affinity points and techs grant instant,

free upgrades to military units.
Building up cities is still all

about resources and citizens.
Guns (and telescopes, weather changers,

and communications hubs) in the sky.
You can earn extra money, science or

culture by performing specific tasks.
The orbital layer adds a

whole new, uh, layer.
66
JANUARY 2015
The sleeper has

awakened.
review
and these will impart benefits to
specific tiles. Some are quest- and
victory-based, and others are
magnificent weapons. The Planet
Carver, for example, shoots a
massive beam of weaponized energy
from space and it is glorious. You can
toggle between the planetary and
orbital layer with a button, and you
can knock enemy satellites out of
orbit with certain ranged units.
The orbital layer adds a fun new
twist and an engaging tactical
element to Civ 5s already finely
tuned tactical game. I found myself
chuckling at the misfortune of civs
that crossed my path when I had
Planet Carvers at my disposal. And
deploying Solar Collectors and
Miasma Repulsers (to clear away the
alien planets harmful, natural
vapors) made me feel like I now had a
new, more direct tool for improving
my cities.
Besides, who doesnt like
launching stuff into space?
Terra nova
Now for the bad news: Its easy to

feel like Beyond Earth is just an
expansion to Civ 5, albeit spacier
than others. For Civ 5 fans like
myself, this is a loaded proposition.
If you like Civ 5, then more Civ 5
equals more Civ 5, which is great!
But theres no denying that even as
much as I love Civ 5 (and I do love it,
quite a lot), I was expecting
something more from Beyond Earth
than Civ 5 with a sci-fi skin. And in
spite of the dramatic opening
cinematic, the rocketing descent of
my landing craft and the stirring
opening text about how my
civilization had traveled the stars to
start anew and blah, blah... as soon as
that first turn started and my
explorer unit stared across the
landscape dotted with hex grids and
covered with the fog of war, I felt a
rush of disappointment.
My newly founded city needed to
produce things, and although those
things bore new names, they seemed
to me the same old buildings in all
but name. And although the alien
landscape was littered with
seemingly-unusual resources, the
deadly miasma and the pods
containing goodies from home, all
that, too, felt same old, at first blush.
So I set about methodically
slogging through the familiar in
search of the new, and without my
even realizing it, I found it.
it is
actually a
completely
different
game
Better living through affinity research

Certain technologies unlock
special, affinity-specific units,
granting you new and better
ways to defile your foes.
A bug army
Dudes riding
bugs
Flying people
eater
Harmony
Purity
Supremacy
Cool shit
Really big
bug
Power
armor
Giant
hover tank
Death robots that

walk on water
Death robots
Hover tank
Mech
Better death robots
Death robots with

beam cannons
Beyond Earths many similarities to

Civ 5 mask, to its detriment, a game
that is remarkably new and different,
and once I was able to see past those
similarities, the newness and wonder
of playing in a future Civ sandbox
washed over me. I was engrossed
before I knew it.
As the Brasilians, I was aiming for
a Purity affinity, but fumbled my
way through the research web willynilly and eventually lost the game
without ever realizing one of my
enemies had been close to victory.
Not great, but thats when it finally
dawned on me that Beyond Earth, in
spite of its heavy foundation in Civ
5s mechanics and rules, is actually a
completely different game.
So I started again, this time as the
Slavic Federation. I would specialize
in Supremacy and after a bit of
research on what the new victories
actually were (pro tip: read the f-ing
manual), I decided to shoot for the
Contact victory, but build a strong
enough civ that, should all else fail, I
could at least take over the world.
Beyond Earth offers five victory
conditions, although two differ only
in which affinity will unlock it.
Contact involves discovering an
alien signal and unlocking the secret
of your new planets Progenitor
species, an ancient alien race that left

mysterious ruins behind. It is by far
the most narrative of the victories,
although its attempts at narrative
dont always mesh well with Civs UI.
One portion, for example, called for
sending a military unit to a recently
discovered alien ruin. I located the
ruin and dispatched a rover... and
waited. And waited. And waited. I
wasnt sure if I had skipped a step.
After several turns I finally noticed a
new button had appeared in the
rovers action panel. I pressed the
button and the quest concluded with
a text box and a ding. Where
Firaxiss other sci-fi game, XCOM,
uses cinematics to impart such
momentous advancements, the
Beyond Earth solution felt more than
a little hollow and frustrating.
Domination is what it sounds like,
giving you the win if you capture all
of the opposing civs capitals. This is
the most Civ-like of the victories,
although it does require some
mastery of Beyond Earths new
technologies and units.
Emancipation and Promised Land
are two sides of the same coin. You
must research the technology to
eventually open either an
Emancipation or Exodus gate back
to Earth, bringing those left
JANUARY 2015
67
review
diary of a domination Nothing must stand in the way of the glorious Slavic Federation
Kill the bastards
The ARC have landed a colony

in our valley! Their mistake.
TUrn 22
TUrn 81
Worm sign
While exploring south of our

first colony, Kharbrost, weve
discovered a fertile valley just
beyond the great mountains.
when my
mind flower
bloomed,
i felt like
i finally
understood
TUrn 92
Were back!
You like the

jets?
Weve returned to the ARC

colonies with our now battletested army. Its time to take
back what is ours (or will be).
TUrn 161
TUrn 213
Run away!
The ARC were

tougher than
expected.
behind either salvation or

dominance. If you are Purity or
Supremacy, this is your affinityscientific endgame.
Transcendence is the Harmony
victory. It involves researching alien
technologies to create a mind
flower that will unite your
consciousness with that of the alien
planet. City buildings can aid in this
victory, shortening the time it takes
for the mind flower to bloom.
In addition to the endgame
victory, Beyond Earth brings smaller
quests. Some new technologies or
improvements will offer a choice as
to how they are used. Bringing
additional money or food, for
example, or presenting a moral or
philosophical choice. Eradicate
aliens or domesticate them? It made
more dramatic an aspect of the game
that has typically been ho-hum.
Occasionally quests are simply fun
things to do. The game has siege
worms, for example, and a late-game
Harmony tech will enable you to
control them, like Paul Atreides in
Dune. But an early-game quest with
no affinity restriction simply tasks
you with killing one, and if you can
pull it off, its a hoot.
Playing as the Purity Brasilians, I
eventually corralled a worm and
with the help of one air unit, three
ranged units, a melee soldier and a
satellite buff, I took it. It had already
destroyed two settlers, half a dozen
military units, countless trade
convoys and an outpost. The quest
reward didnt nearly repay what I
lost, but it was a glorious struggle.
As the Supremacy Slavs, I
slaughtered alien lifeforms with
abandon, reaping monetary and
technological rewards, and tried to
JANUARY 2015
That bastard Hutama walked

right in like he owned this
colony! I must kill him. (Note to
self: Kill him.)
Dear Hutama:
Im coming
for you. Soon.
TUrn 254
Whos next?
The Polystralians have been

overstepping their borders. We
may have to kill them. (We will
probably kill them.)
TUrn 279
TUrn 308
I cant help myself
Whoops. We just conquered

two of Hutamas colonies.
Sorry Hutama. (Not sorry.)
focus my research on Supremacy

techs to grow my military force.
When the ARC civilization landed
on a plain I had planned to colonize
myself, I decided to take them out.
What followed was at times a
tedious, but overall a successful
campaign to take over the ARC land,
and in the process clear an alien
infestation from a mountainous
jungle that would eventually form
the production center of my empire.
Using Brawlers, Rovers, and
Gunners, I first attacked ARCs
capitol and was repulsed, and then
withdrew into the jungle to wage war
on the aliens while earning upgrades
and improving my equipment with
scientific research. Dozens of turns
later, I emerged from the jungle with
a seasoned army and conquered the
ARC one city at a time.
As my neighbors inched toward
various victories, I invaded their
lands to secure my dominance,
building a robot empire on the bones
of their fallen civilizations.
Childhoods end
For my third game, I wanted to win

without firing shot. I almost
succeeded. I picked the FrancoIberian civ and focused on the
Harmony affinity. Instead of
clearing the alien miasma, I left it
alone and eventually developed
immunity through technology.
Focusing on trade and science, I
built a civ that spanned two large
islands on an archipelagic planet. I
traded with every other civ, giving
both them and me a boost to income
and science. I made deals for
resources I had in abundance. I made
friends. Meanwhile I used my trade
vessels to boost my own productivity
Expect to pay $50 Release Out now Developer Firaxis Games Publisher 2K
Multiplayer Up to 8 players, traditional or hot seat Link www.bit.ly/CivBEarth
68
Sneak attack!
TUrn 387
F*** it
Marching on
Hutamas city,
because I have
death robots.
and growth, and built city and tile

improvements that gave me a
scientific edge.
When war broke out between the
Polystralians and the PAC, I took no
sides. When the Brasilians edged
closer to their own Transcendence
victory, I made trade routes to beef
up my science and closed the gap.
When I pulled ahead, and Brasilia
began massing troops near my
border, I formed alliances elsewhere
and quietly poured money into my
military and defenses.
Ultimately, war never came.
Although I was forced to kill a
handful of arbitrarily aggressive
aliens, I dominated my fellow civs
with science and trade, with my guns
silent. And when my mind flower
bloomed, I felt like I finally
understood everything Beyond Earth
had to offer. And, just like for my
Harmony civ, with understanding
came a deep appreciation for my new
world/games many complexities.
This is how Beyond Earth succeeds
in spite of its similarities to Civ 5. It
offers a game steeped in the
traditions of the series, thats
nevertheless new in often
unexpected ways. Ive conquered
countless civilizations on the planet
Earths of the various Civ games, and
each time its felt like reinventing a
fantasy version of the past. In Beyond
Earth, victory feels like living in
and forginghumanitys future,
and I can honestly say Ive never had
more fun building a civ to stand the
test of time.
Its foundation in Civ 5

makes it familiar, but this
is a game full of surprises
that are pleasantly
difficult to master.
87
As in Civ V, air units can

perform sweeps, etc.
Generate culture to unlock

powerful benefits.
Live in harmony with your new

planets native wildlife. Or destroy it.
All is darkness until

you explore.
Yeech. Whatever it
is, burn it.
Other leaders will occasionally

stop by just to be a jerk.
The tech web

replaces the tech tree.
A late-game Harmony
upgrade leads to this vehicle.
Deal devastating
damage from orbit.
JANUARY 2015
69
review
Creased Lightning
Final Fantasy Xiii is a problematic port of a
flawed RPG. By Samuel Roberts
his is, by some accounts,

the most hated of the
long-running series. It
takes the usually openstructured world of a
Final Fantasy game and swaps it for
journeys down seemingly endless
corridor levels, losing the sense of
exploration thats been intrinsic to
the series since the start.
FFXIII is primarily about turnbased, real-time battles and a giant,
baffling narrative. Enemies wander
about in the field, and if they detect
your character, charge, and the
screen cuts away to a battle. At the
same time, if I sneak up on an enemy,
my character gets first strike at the
start of the encounter.
need to know
What is it?
2010 console RPG finally

arrives on PC with no
panache.
Influenced by
Cycle paths, tunnels

that never end
Play it on
AMD FX-6200 CPU, 16GB

RAM, AMD Radeon HD 7870
Alternatively
Mass Effect 3 , 93%
Copy protection
Steam
anatomy of an archetype
New to Final Fantasys brand of moody
protagonists? Allow me to explain
Coiffure
Sword
Spiky hair of an
unnatural color,
unattainably nicer
than it would look in
real life.
Blatantly
impractical but
cool sword that is
also a gun.
Multiple
buckles
Face
Must never
smile, ever.
These are essential,

apparently.
Outfit
Clothes that
definitely have
no place in the
field of conflict.
In battle, only one character can

be controlled at a timethe others
in my party fight automatically
based on the roles I assign them.
Lets say my default party contains
two ravagers (mages) and a
commando (warrior). Theyll attack
based on the move-set of their class.
If Im damaged by the enemy and
need to rethink my strategy midbattle, I can instantly use the
Paradigm Shift system to load a
different set of preset classes and tell
my team to become two medics
(white mages) and a sentinel (a
damage-absorbing unit with loads of
HP). They automatically start
throwing out spells and abilities
based on their new roles.
Its an attempt to move to higherlevel strategy, which becomes very
successful as the classes and abilities
begin to open up. Trouble is, that
takes fucking ages.
One of the better parts of this
situation is being able to create new
paradigms in the menu outside of
battle, to mix and match classes to
my preference. So if I want three
characters to focus on ravager
abilities, I can set that up and load it
next time Im in a fight. Setting up
pre-loaded sets of strategies and
using them to control the flow of
battle is a brilliant bit of design
ingenuity. Every battle gives you a
rating out of five based on speed and
efficiency, so theres a sense of racing
against yourself to throw the right
tactics together.
This is underlined by a somewhat
freeform progression system called
the Crystarium. Its a little like a
board game in the way you unlock
new skills and stat boosts based on
how you spend experience points.
Enjoy it, because its the only real
freedom that FFXIII offers.
Expect to pay $15 Release Out now Developer Square Enix Publisher In-house
Multiplayer None Link www.finalfantasyxiiigame.com
70
JANUARY 2015
The first 20 hours are just walking

in a straight line between battles and
cutscenes. The story, set in the two
warring states of sci-fi city Coccoon
and the wildlands of Gran Pulse,
follows a mostly irritating group of
characters who are cursed by gods
known as the Falcie into fulfilling
their destinywhich I think, feeling
my way through the impenetrable
terminology, is saving the world.
The core group is led by the muchdespised Lightning, who I actually
like. Shes a grumpy, spiky-haired
warrior with a cool yet utterly
impractical sword. The rest of your
six-character party and the extended
cast is mostly made up of people I
wouldnt cross the road to save, and
with so many cutscenes youll have
plentiful opportunities to build up a
seething resentment toward them
and their lovely hair.
Until it finally opens up after
around 20 hours, FFXIII is a
nightmare for most people to get
into. Eventually, you will reach Gran
Pulse, a lovely open environment
with impressive giant enemies and
even some sidequests. From there, it
finally starts to come together.
FFXIII has forgotten its on PC. It
has no graphics settings, locking
itself at 720p. In the fieldand by
field, I mean a shiny corridor with
three guys in itit can drop to
below 20fps on my mid-range card.
FFXIII is far from essential in this
form. Id be remiss not to mention
Durantes fix (www.bit.ly/1tozgcq),
which solves many of the issues in
this port, but thats not the version
Square Enix is selling you.
Parts of Final Fantasy XIII

are worth the absurd
amount of time it takes to
properly open up, but this
port is a big letdown.
48
Hope you brought

a damn sponge.
Summons transform from mythical

creatures into vehicles. Really.
They should have

called him Mope.
Didnt any of you remember

to bring clothes?
Much of the creature

design is fantastic.
I love the battle animations,

I just wish the port was better.
JANUARY 2015
71
review
MORE-DERLANDS
Its a bullet ballet in low gravity, but Borderlands:

The Pre-sequel is gasping for new ideas. By Evan Lahti
need to know
What is it?
Roleplaying shooter
Borderlands 2, with low gravity.
Influenced by
Reduced mass
Play it on
Dual-core CPU, 2GB RAM,

GeForce 9800GT/
Radeon 4870
Alternatively
Borderlands 2, 90%
Copy protection
Steam
ifteen hours in, I realize

Im playing Borderlands:
The Pre-Sequel as a
flying Ghostbuster
Captain America.
My character class, Gladiator,
grips a round shield in her left hand
when her class ability is triggered,
absorbing or reflecting damage
before hurling the shield like a
boomerang-frisbee. In her right is
my favorite weapon, Miss Moxxis
Vibra-Pulse, a laser that spits a wavy
line of volts like Egons proton pack.
The shock damage it deals cascades
like Diablos chain lightning spell,
arcing between enemies in reach. As
Im electrocuting and shield-tossing,
Im floating through the air, kept
aloft by the low gravity of Elpis, The
Pre-Sequels lunar landscape.
Borderlands is best when its
irreverence is reflected in its combat,
when its layering the insanity of its
characters atop weird weapons and
enemies. Near-weightlessness is a
terrific tweak to that formula;
launching rockets at vulgar mutants
and mechs its more playful when you

(and your co-op teammates) are
lilting softly through the air. I
bounded my way through most of
the game. Tapping the jump button
while airborne spends a single
mid-air boost from your Oz kit (a
new item that takes the place of
relics), and hitting Ctrl sinks your
character down to the surface.
The Oz kit is also what keeps you
breathing while youre out in the
vacuum of space. I was worried that
oxygen would turn out to be an
annoying fuel gauge, but refills are
plentiful and having to manage your
air counter in the middle of a
shootout discourages you from
cowering behind cover. Oxygen also
comes into play a little bit on offense:
headshots knock out some enemies
breathing masks, and some grenades
sap oxygen. Youll hear a new line or
two when you shoot the air out of
bad guys, but basically it amounts to
another form of elemental damage.
A new vehicle, the Stingray,
mirrors the movement abilities you
hunter season
The Pre-Sequels four new playables
im floating
through the
air, kept aloft
by the low
gravity
72
Athena
Tank. Throwable
shield absorbs
forward damage.
JANUARY 2015
Claptrap
Randomized,
unpredictable
abilities.
Nisha
DPS gunslinger with

many skills that
trigger on kills.
Wilhelm
Gadgeteer.
Summons healing
and combat drones.
have as a player, too. Its an agile

hovercar with good lateral
movement, but more importantly
you need its vertical boost ability to
pop over certain crevices. While in
the air, you can also slam back to
earth as an attack. Shattering enemy
buggies and squashing footsoldiers
this way is terrific.
The changes to movement bring
novelty and a weird gracefulness to
Borderlands combat. But otherwise,
The Pre-Sequel feels like a supersized mound of Borderlands 2 DLC.
While the new setting, classes, and
weapon types reinvigorate things a
bit, it doesnt deviate much from the
feel and format of the last game. Its
fun, but its exceptionally familiar.
rayguns and railguns
I finished The Pre-Sequel wanting a

greater variety of missions,
especially missions that made
creative use of the new movement
mechanics, of which there are nearly
none. Almost every story and side
mission I completed followed the
same structure: go to a location,
press the use key on a computer
console or character, and shoot some
enemies along the way. Even quests
that are thematically different, like
delivering flowers to suitors for
Nurse Nina, or exploring ice caves
to place a mining drill, or retrieving
a scientists lost teddy bear, feel like
equivalent errands punctuated by
similar firefights. My least favorite
were those where I had to scour a
room for a hidden Echo device,
about as fun as searching someone
elses room for a missing wallet. The
Pre-Sequel wouldve benefited from a
large-scale combat sequence or
maybe an escort-sniping mission.
The problem with mechanically
simple missions is that their fun
relies entirely on funny dialogue and
interesting firefights, both of which
are inconsistent throughout The
The wavy beam weapons

are fun to control.
Athena, the tank, can ignore

forward attacks entirely for a time.
Snipers still have

high utility.
The story is all about Jack.

Sadly, I encountered no talking
guns in my playthrough.
Man, Princess Leia is really

bossy in this game.
JANUARY 2015
73
Half the game takes

place indoors.
Its very unclear when

youve scored a crit.
The new lasers are great.

Cryo weapons, less so.
Wearables sure have gotten

out of control in the future.
Borderlands remains a more-ismore approach to game design.
This charming NPC is basically a

sci-fi Oliver Twist.
Agile alien enemies

appear late in TPS.
74
JANUARY 2015
review
Thats no moon
Broadly, thats the extent of whats

new in The Pre-Sequel; there arent
many other new weapon types or
attributes to fill out the armory
further. Having spent a hundredplus hours with the series,
everything else feels exceptionally
templated. Enemies pour out of
spawning points that are helpfully
beside explosive barrels and sets of
Expect to pay $60 Release Out now Developer 2K Australia, Gearbox Software Publisher 2K Games
Multiplayer 4-player co-op Link www. borderlandsthegame.com
Grind time
INPut
One of my results with The Grinder, The

Pre-Sequels weapon-conversion station
three way Hulk
(Torgue shotgun)
Alkaline refracted
splitter
(Tediore laser)
PROCESS
ammunition containers. I was

starved for a mission that wasnt a
fetch quest, and though pieces of
Elpis are gorgeous, the orbiting
space station that you spend about
half of the game on is a set of
familiar, futuristic city interiors
lined with unpopulated facades.
Elpis is meant to be the Australia of
Borderlands, and its a decent frontier,
but the game as a whole feels
underpopulated. There arent many
NPCs that you can have meaningful
reactions with.
Likewise, I didnt find the new
enemies to have nearly as much
personality as Borderlands 2s halfclothed, charmingly crude bandits.
Mechanically theyre interesting
enough: tracking jetpackers while
you yourself are airborne is a fun
challenge, and engineer enemies
throw up bubble shields that force
you to engage at close range. But so
many of the baddies that youre
blasting after The Pre-Sequels
halfway point are straightforward
space marines, who dont provide the
same vulgar quips and last words
that I loved hearing from BL2s
scavs. The late-game aliens are in
the same boat, never uttering a word
as you fight them. These enemies
arent boring to fight, but their
seriousness doesnt match the
otherwise silly tone of the game.
I do love the way that 2K Australia
pokes some reverent fun at its
homeland, though. The best
dialogue in the game comes from
the inappropriately cheerful citizens
of Elpis, who casually shrug off the
moons many dangers and drop
exaggerated Australian slang. New
charactersand cameos from old
ones like Roland and Sir
Hammerlockmiss more than they
hit. Jack has some charming oneliners, but as The Pre-Sequel is
primarily his backstory, he spends
most of the game being kind and
helpfulcharacter development
that came off as more off-putting
than interesting to me.
Loot-wise, a new station, The
Grinder, gives you something to do
with unwanted rare guns. Three
weapons of the same rarity can be
loaded in and destroyed to spit out a
weapon of higher rarity. When
operating the machine, you can
optionally spend moonstone, the
OutPut
Pre-Sequel. The combat is

occasionally greatone of the first
bosses pounces and floats between a
bunch of indoor platforms, some of
which are electrified. Chasing him
without shocking yourself and
fending off his airborne minions was
frantic and tough.
The Pre-Sequel ends on a high
point too. The last chapter
mercilessly throws a variety of
jumping, somersaulting, flying,
cloaked, ranged, and melee aliens
and soldiers at you, alongside
enemies that enter a cocoon state
and level up if you dont kill them
quickly enough, similar to the
Goliaths in BL2. Its a terrifically
exhausting sequence that demands
careful spending of abilities, and the
mid-air dash maneuver to dodge and
reposition yourself for reloads. Most
of the skirmishes at the end of the
game had me cycling through all
four of my weapons, throwing
multiple grenades at a time and
narrowly making it out alive. I wish
more of The Pre-Sequel had put me in
this kind of pure chaos that the last
section of the game did.
New guns help mitigate these
sorts of threats. Cryo weapons freeze
enemies into solid blocks when their
elemental effect triggersI liked
sniping jetpacking bandits into ice
cubes to make them plummet back
to earth. Better are the new lasers:
wrangling a wavy line of energy in
mid-air is like trying to spray
someone with a firehose after
leaping off a trampoline. Two other
kinds of laser were less interesting to
me: a scattergun type that essentially
behaves like a slightly-longer-range
shotgun, and a railgun thats
practically an unscoped sniper rifle.
I did have good times with a
penetrating railgun that I nabbed,
but otherwise these weapons dont
feel fundamentally different.
Shoom rokkets
(Scav assault rifle)
Grind
(with moonstone)
Conflagrating photon railgun

(Maliwan laser)
Damage 165
Accuracy 92.6
Fire Rate 1.2
Reload Speed 2.1
Magazine Size 32
Burn Damage / sec. 44.1
Ignite Chance 48%
resource used to upgrade ammo

capacity, to have a chance to create a
luneshine weapon, which adds a
random special attribute such as
restoring oxygen to your Oz kit
when you damage enemies. Its a
good addition: I found myself using
The Grinder a lot, and it spat out
weapons that stuck with me for a few
hours. Secret recipes for The
Grinder are still being discovered
online, so theres a ounce of depth to
the device as well: you cant simply
load three purples in to get a
legendary orange weapon.
The Pre-Sequel is a happy to be Just
Another Borderlands Game. I
enjoyed it for that, but I also finished
it thinking my time wouldve been
better spent on one of the more
original games thatve released this
year. I love seeing Borderlands
embrace the FPS trend of
unconventional movement. Apart
from the low-gravity leaping,
though, The Pre-Sequel doesnt do
much to freshen what weve been
playing since 2012.
A well-executed but
unambitious extension of
Borderlands 2. Low-grav
jumping adds a new
dimension to combat.
Sniping
jetpacking
bandits into
ice cubes
77
JANUARY 2015
75
review
No seNators soN
Third-person sword-fest Ryse: son of Rome doesnt
get far on looks alone. By Emanuel Maiberg
need to know
What is it?
An action game
set in ancient Rome.
Influenced by
God of War, Batman:

Arkham Asylum
Play it on
Quad Core CPU, 8GB RAM,

DX 11 2GB graphics card
Alternatively
Batman: Arkham City, 80%
Copy protection
Steam
i kill them,
relieving
them of
a limb or
two in the
process
arius, a Roman
legionnaire with a
neck as thick as a
glazed ham, is on a
mission to avenge
multiple murdered father figures.
He finds Rome beset by the most
ferocious barbarians the world has
ever known: British people.
A group of them corner me in a
courtyard, but theyre no match for
my ability with a gladius and scutum.
With slashes, bashes and dodges, I
weaken them until execution
markers appear above their heads, at
which point I kill them one at a time
or in pairs, relieving them of a limb
or two in the process. Its all about
timing and matching the right attack
to the right enemy, whos always
conveniently glowing the color of
the corresponding button.
I can, at any time, press one of the
directions on the D-pad to choose
whether a successful execution
restores health, or increases damage,
XP, or focuswhich I can use to
slow time and kill enemies even
more easily. If I miss a button press
Ill still kill the enemy, only without
getting the desired bonus. This is
not a big deal because Ryse: Son of
Rome is never hard enough to make

me feel like I need it.
Its about as complex as Simon
Says, and while it did get repetitive
quickly, Im not going to pretend
that I was too sophisticated to derive
some pleasure from it for the five
hours Ryse lasted. Im not proud of it,
but a childish, depraved part of me
enjoyed the shiny graphics and
dismemberment every time.
Its essentially the combat from the
Batman and Assassins Creed games,
which I like. What makes those
games so much better is that they
start with those core mechanics, but
slowly add new gadgets, enemies,
and other wrinkles. They have open
worlds where I could use that combat
to accomplish a bigger goal. Ryse has
none of that.
From that first encounter to the
last, nothing changes. At all. There
were brief sections where I led
Roman troops in a straight line by
holding the stick forward, and turret
sections straight out of Call of Duty
(only with a ballista), but Ryse is
almost entirely third-person combat.
I could revive a friend in the two
player co-op arena mode, but
otherwise it was more of the same.
Perfect execution
A step-by-step breakdown of one of Ryses brutal finishing moves
1
Hello, yellow
A yellow hue around the barbarian is

a sign that you should press the (you
guessed it) yellow button to deflect his
attack with your shield.
Blue the goon
Now that hes unarmed, a blue hue

indicates that hes open for an attack.
This is in slo-mo, so you have all the
time you need to press the blue button.
Off color
Hes on his knees now. This blue hue

will be his last. Go ahead and press the
blue button to finish him off. Or dont.
The animation will proceed anyway.
Expect to pay $40 Release Out now Developer In-house Publisher Crytek
Multiplayer Two player co-op Link www.crytek.com/games/ryse
76
JANUARY 2015
Watching the executions over and

over did give me the opportunity to
appreciate them. I noticed that its
not just the body animations that
were realistic, but the facial
expressions. Marius frowns, winces,
and grunts at the right times. The
barbarians jaw goes lax, his eyes
wide in shock and maybe a hint of
curiosity at the sword that just
emerged from his chest.
But while the digital acting of the
extras is convincing, there are only a
handful of them, and its particularly
obvious in this game because
enemies have a near photo-realistic
specificity. Ryse tries to hide this later
by introducing enemies with masks.
That was one of many tricks it uses
to hide its limitations, and after a
while I could see through all of them.
For all its beauty, Ryse is incredibly
narrow. It took me to ancient Rome,
the wilderness of York, and a cliffside
outpost battered by waves, but
somehow I was always on a path
barely wider than Marius, and with
him taking about a third of the
screen most of the time, it feels
claustrophobic. Theres always
something obstructing the view. Its
like looking at the most beautiful
game ever made through a keyhole.
Im also annoyed that Ryse is more
inspired by God of War than history.
This is ancient Rome. Theres no
need for impossibly intricate armor,
transforming coliseums, and a story
that dips into the supernatural. Its
meant to create the sense of an
ambitious, epic tale, but it just makes
all the limitations that much more
obvious and sad.
The combat and

incredible graphics are
entertaining, but its too
narrow and repetitive,
even for a short game.
57
Dont look so surprised.
Minotaurs: one of the less

well-known enemies of Rome.
Skirting around the enemy

takes on a whole new meaning.
The facial expressions really

sell these moments.
Looks like a big battle, but it

was the same old combat.
This hardly
seems sporting.
Motion blur adds to

the sense of cinema.
Ive killed this character

model a hundred times.
JANUARY 2015
77
GET MORE fROM yOuR GAMING
NOW PLAYiNG
Spec Ops is banned in Dubai, which is a bit like

banning Escape From New York in New York.
THE PC
GAMER
TEAM
SAM
These are not my choices

Captain Walker is not me
Lets taLk about spoiLery white phosphorus in Spec OpS: The Line
SAM ROBERTS
CHRiS
BEN
ANDY
TOM
This month Set some

civilians on fire, felt
terrible, then calmed down
with a bowl of fried beef.
Also played Alien:
Isolation, Half-Life 2
pec Ops: The Line is clearly a smart

game written by smart people.
While as an adaptation of Heart of
Darkness its never as successfully weird or
iconic as Apocalypse Now (despite making
similar creative decisions), its daring and
ambitious in the way it portrays US
military intervention in the midst of
escalating chaos. Ive thought about the
story a lot since I completed it recently. But
what I interpret as its central conceitthat
the player is the one making the decision
to push forward and cause every conflict,
and is thus the villain of the storyisnt
really supported by the game itself. This is
especially highlighted by the notorious
white phosphorus scene halfway through,
where protagonist Captain Walker and his

what. I tried not to hit them, but I was
two squadmates accidentally wipe out
always going to.
civilians with a real-life weapon that burns
The cutscene that follows shows the
flesh to the bone.
full extent of the carnage: charred corpses
Spec Ops wants to make a BioShockeverywhere and the distressing image of
like message about human behavior and
a dead mother hugging her child, both
choice, but in this key moment, there is no
burnt alive. If Call of Duty did this, thered
choice to be made. Im at the top of a
be uproar. Its to the credit of Yager, the
building looking down into an enclosed
developer, that the context justifies the
bowl where an army of enemies is about
horror in this case.
to be ambushed by one of the worst
But the fact remains that I didnt kill
weapons on this planet. I man the
those civiliansYager forced that
artillery, which triggers a birds-eye
outcome. While the aftermath still makes
targeting camera, and bring fire down
me uncomfortable, the fact that I was
upon scores of enemy troops. I figure out
aiming around the civilians absolves me
where the civilians are cowering, in a
of guilt as a playerand Im not sure that
trench near the back of the field of
was the intent. Theres a strong narrative
conflict, and aim around thembut it
emphasis on the escalating madness in
doesnt matter. The radius of the white
Dubai being of Walkers making, but
phosphorus impact automatically
lacking choice, I start to grow apart from
extends to scorch the group of innocents,
that character.
and while this is a
The only choice I get to
story beat thats
make comes in the
READ ME
technically
aftermath, as I slowly tread
released June 2012
interactive, it needs
through the blackened
our review October 2012, 71%
to happen no matter buy it $30, Steam
corpses and stick a bullet in
more www.specopstheline.com
78
JANUARY 2015
I am a Fisher Price war

photographer.
Non-committal
covering fire!
Spilling black blood
on the Black Road.
Im the one who killed those

ghuls. I did the work
battLing uruk society in ShAdOw Of MOrdOr
after his boss, most likely, or gather up a
few more collectibles. Then, I make a fatal
error at least according to the rules of
This month Was heard
to mutter Glass Ceiling of
meritocratic orc society. I get clever and
Mordor, more like.
use a huge area-of-effect finishing move
Also played Dota 2,
to wound Ukbuk while clearing out the
Civilization:
remaining ghuls, which inadvertently
Beyond Earth
finishes the captains beast hunt for him.
Uruk society apparently regards this as
make my move against Ukbuk the
Ukbuks well-deserved victory, and
whatever-hes-called while hes
rewards him with a power boost granting
engaged in a beast hunt, battling a
him a bunch of new traits. Among these is
pack of ghuls ravenous little beasties
combat master, which makes him
that surround his party. Its clear that hes
completely immune to the techniques Im
not going to lose this fight without a little
currently using to try to kill him.
help, so I go on the aggressive and leap
How convenient. Seemingly unaware of
down into the fray, slaying uruks and
the dramatic advantage that the rules of
ghuls alike while whittling Ukbuks health
his society have arbitrarily granted him,
down with combo finishers.
Ukbuk kills me and levels up again.
Eventually its just the
This is bullshit, I
two of us among the
think. Im the one who
READ
ME
crowd of surviving ghuls.
killed those ghuls. I did
Ive defeated many uruk released October 2014
the work.
our review Holiday 2014, 85%
captains like this one.
Then I consider what
buy it $50
My mind wanders to
it might be like to be a
more www.shadowofmordor.com
what Ill do next: go
woman in tech.
CHRiS THuRSTEN
I thought Id have a hard time illustrating

how brutal Spec Ops is, but hey ho.
anyone unfortunate enough to have

survived. Thats power put back into my
hands as a playerI choose to kill those
civilians to make up for Walkers poor
choice with the white phosphorus. But
again: that was his decision, not mine. It
was Spec Ops most important narrative
moment and they took it out of my hands.
The impact is extraordinary, but had they
genuinely hoodwinked me into killing
civilians, it couldve lived with me forever.
And unlike BioShock, where the entire
game is built to support a killer twist for
the ages, in Spec Ops it becomes
increasingly obvious that these are not
my choices. Consequently, inspiring an
equal reaction is impossibleCaptain
Walker is not me. I am grateful that Yager
tried to do something so different with a
military shooter, exploring an angle that
makes every modern FPS seem gaudy to
me in the way they present war, even with
that clash between player and character
in mind. I only hold this story to a higher
standard than I usually would because I
feel the developers have earned it.
Its like Im a ghost

or something.
Yeah, you rejoice mate.

That was my kill.
JANUARY 2015
79
NOW PLAYiNG
THE GAMES WE LOVE, RIGHT NOW
That other caption is a Morrissey

lyric, if you didnt know.
Splitting up is always a good

idea in a haunted warehouse
feAr expLored and repLayed. For everyone, a reminder
laughing (whats so funny?), a burning
man walking slowly (oh my God I should
help him), a half-second shot of a gory
This month Celebrated
adulthood by laughing
face (stop that). No, its the shootouts
at ghosts.
that prevail. This game should be called
Also played Alien:
SHOOTYFUN but I dont know what it
Isolation, The Sims 4,
could torturously serve as an acronym for.
Battlefield Hardline
I rappel from the chopper alongside a
bunch of hard-looking spec ops dudes
ccording to the irrefutable
who are obviously going to die first.
Wikipedia, fear is an emotion
Splitting up, which is always a good idea in
which induces changes in brain
a haunted warehouse, I encounter enemy
and organ function and ultimately results
soldiers. I forgot just how effective they
in behavior such as running away, hiding
were. They never stay put for more than a
or freezing. This is not to be confused with
second, sliding over desks, leaning round
FEAR, the first-person survival horror
corners, chucking grenades, flanking.
shooter that I was too scared to play in
Screw ghosts, these guys are proper scary.
2005. Its 2014 now and I survived puberty,
I blast a transformer off a wall to fry
so I decided to give Monoliths annoyingly
one, then tag a fire extinguisher which
formatted shooter another crack.
explodes unnecessarily and takes out
Like fear the emotion, and the 2008
another. Combat demands improvisation,
Lily Allen song The Fear, FEAR the game
it forces you to think on your feet. At one
induces changes in brain functionality
point a man kicks over a table for cover so
and behavior, but you dont so much run
I shoot him through the wood. Postaway or hide here as dual-wield assault
combat, the levels are littered with glass
rifles and kill a bunch of men. The truly
shards and concrete crumbs, the air thick
frightening bits have
with gunsmoke. I start
been rendered
to play FEAR as a sort of
READ ME
impotent by
multiplayer arena
released October, 2005
vasectomy-loving
shooter, the arenas
our review November 2005, 92%
Father Time: a girl
offices and the
buy it $10
BEN GRiffiN
more www.tinyurl.com/kavxxp4
80
JANUARY 2015
opposition an all-knowing supercomputer embodied by trigger-happy

mercenaries which is actually a scarier
scenario than the games own.
There was a brief period in the midnoughties when small children were the
pinnacle of horror (The Ring, The Grudge,
the Undertakers WWE entrance video,
etc), but what endures here is fast-paced
gunplay that feels fresh and immediate
and some of the smartest AI in games. As
Ian Brown sings in his seminal 2001
release F.E.A.R.: Forget everything and
remember, which admittedly doesnt
have anything to do with what Im saying,
I just think its a cool song.
Alma matters in mind, body and
soul. In part and in whole.
I watch the film again, and I

feel like Ive been there
The hypersleep chamber.

I want to sleep here.
a cLassic comes to LiFe in ALien: iSOLATiOn

in three dimensions; I can walk around,
press my nose up against things.
I go from the hypersleep chamber to
This month Explored a
famous sci-fi film set, got
the dining room, then to the bridge. The
eaten by an alien.
path the characters take in the film. The
Also played The Long
attention to detail is quite staggering.
Dark, Shadow of
This ship has always felt real to me, but
Mordor
now I have a sense of it as a physical space
I never had before. I watch the film again,
ve watched Ridley Scotts Alien many,
and I feel like Ive been there. I know what
many times. Wandering the ships
lies around each corner.
corridors in Alien: Isolations DLC,
But whats next? Another Alien game,
exploring the bridge, Im
hopefully, but Im also
struck by a surreal
dreaming of a Blade
READ ME
feeling. I know this place
Runner game created
released October 2014
inside out, but only from our review Holiday 2014, 93%
with the same passion.
a flat 2D screen. Now its buy it $50, Steam
If only.
ANDY KELLY
Not pictured: harpoon

gun, angry alien.
more www.alienisolation.com
The boys too soft to survive a life of exile

ditching straggLers in
finAL fAnTASy Xiii
TOM SENiOR
This month Plotted ways
to surgically remove an
entire character from Final
Fantasy XIII.
Also played Alien:
Isolation
wish Hope would stop moping. Yes, he

watched his mother fall of a bridge to
her death, but hes spent four hours
since then staring sadly at things. Buck
up! Weve got a world to save.
I share the view of steely protagonist
Lightning, who thinks the boys just too
soft to survive a life of exile. Shes a soldier
trained to carve through enemies with a
gunblade; hes a kid who fights with a
boomerang and gets knocked out a lot.
But then the game tries to engineer a
bonding moment between the two by
confronting us with Odin. This spirit will let
us summon him into fights if we pass his
challenge, and will kill us if we fail. Alas,
his challenge requires Lightning to heal
Hope relentlessly to inspire a more caring
relationship between the pair.
How I wish I could

live without Hope.
from dispassionate associate to a mentor

Fat chance. I run the scan ability and
discover Odin is weak to lightning attacks. figure and the game continues. Whats
Odin KOs Hope about five seconds in, but I the point of a roleplaying game when I
cant affect the roles? I resort to pettier
command Lightning to leave him on the
tactics and leave Hope
floor and zap Odin
out of the party
repeatedly until he
READ ME
whenever I possibly can.
finally capitulates.
released October 2014
Enjoy your exile, you
My rebellion achieves
our review January 2015, 48%
miserable punk.
nothing. Lightning shifts buy it $16, Steam
more www.bit.ly/1tEEbYv
JANUARY 2015
81
TOP
10
DOWNLOADS
Free games sTuFF FrOm The web

There are almost 20
polygons in this shot.
Doom ReboRn
MOD Doom 3 gets a visit from the pareNts
he obvious question is why?

Its a much tougher shooter. While the
Doom is getting on a bit, but its
action is only slightly slower than the
still perfectly playable. Its the
original games, the enemy AI is more
crotchety old man of game design
varied, and accuracy more difficult to
waving its shotgun and telling military
maintain. It fundamentally alters the
pace. Rather than running-and-gunning,
shooters to get off its lawn, before
tapping a panel on the side of its house to
youll need to perfectly time your strafing,
open up a secret room full of helmets. It
and make use of corners to avoid the
didnt need to be remade.
constant and deadly marine gunfire.
Even so, it has been remade.
The mod is currently in preDoom Reborn is a mod that
beta, so not all the levels
phil says...
ports the first two Doom
have made it across.
Its still
games into Doom 3s id
Players right now have
less violent
Tech 4 engine. And while
access to the first
than Brutal
it isnt necessary, it is a
episode of Doom and
Doom.
worthwhile experiment.
four Doom 2 levelsas
Its a faithful
well as the latters secret
recreationmore so than
Wolfenstein level. Even in
Black Mesas conversion of
that state, its still a great
Half-Life to the Source engine. All
proof-of-concept, and a neat
the original nooks and crannies return,
way to recontextualize Dooms maps.
Installation is handled by a selfcreating an eerie feeling as you barrel
installer that just needs pointing to your
towards some half-remembered secret
Doom 3 directory. Its possible youll hit a
among familiar but upgraded halls and
lighting bug from the second level. If so,
corridors. But its not the environments
open the console, type image_
that make Doom Reborn worth trying. Its
useprecompressedtextures 0, and then
the way the challenge of the game is
vid_restart to fix. PS
altered by the move to an engine
www.doomreborngame.com
designed to natively support mouselook.
82
JANUARY 2015
2 The SimS 4
HOUSES New homes for your
virtual wards
ead into the Sims 4 Gallery

and youll find thousands of
community created objects like these
new habitats. PS
FriEnDS APArtMEnt
The two apartments and
Central Perk in a single
building. All thats missing
is a twee, overly saccharine, Sims-style
rendition of The Rembrandts.
BlUtH COMPAny
MODEl HOME
Yup, Arrested
Developments model
home. At least here you dont have to worry
about the build quality. Its solid as a rock.
tHE GOlD lAkE MAnOr
Moving away from
recreations, this detailed
mansion features over 50
pieces just in its roof. Start saving, as itll set
you back over 800,000 simoleons.
CHOMPyS MOviE PArk
This clever design uses the
enlarge item cheat (shift +
closed square-bracket) to
create a TV the size of a cinema screen. Its
the perfect social hangout.
of The
3 CRiSiS
ConfeDeRaTion
MOD CRuSaDeR KingS 2 GETS MEDIEVAl
risis is still early in

development, making
the current download
largely a proof of concept. Its a
good concept, though: Crusader
Kings 2 in space. For the most
part, much of the base games
medieval framework remains,
which is a little odd for
supposedly advanced
civilizations. But new custom
features have been introduced,
such as the new succession
type for appointing an heir

from outside of your family.
The starkest change is the
map. Its now a series of
connected star systems,
collected together into sectors.
Each has multiple planets and
moons that can be upgraded
much like the towns and
castles of the source material.
With some work, this could be a
fine total conversion. PS
www.bit.ly/SpaceCK2
Space isnt very good

at dramatic landscapes.
4 SupeRDimenSional
wEBGAME three dimeNsioNs, No buttoNs
he theme of the most recent

ludum Dare was connected
worlds. In this winning entry your
task is to guide a ball using your mouse to
expand pocket dimensions. Each has

different properties that must be quickly
transitioned between to avoid danger. PS
www.bit.ly/SuperDim
anTbaSSaDoR
FrEEwArE leNdiNg a fiNger
c
a
BlUE wOrlD The default

world adheres to the basic laws
of physics, and comes with plenty of
cliffs to potentially plunge off of.
GrEEn wOrlD The

underwater world. Here, the
ball will float, letting you bypass the
chasms of the blue dimension.
OrAnGE wOrlD Here, the

ball will become sticky and can
roll up steep slopes. This world is also
filled with industrial traps.
ntbassador won the ludum Dare

30 jama separate three-day
event with more relaxed rules. It still
used the theme connected worlds,
which here has been taken to mean
a diplomatic visit between two very
different nations.
One is a nation of ants; the other
a nation of giant fingers. Both were,
until recently, at war. You play an
ambassadorial finger sent to formalize
the peace treaty. As a giant lumbering
digit, you have to be extremely careful
to avoid squishing any of the small,
vulnerable ants. Which is unfortunate,
as you must perform some delicate
actions using a mouse-driven control
scheme entirely unsuited to the task.
Its funny. The action leans towards
QWOP-style slapstick comedy, and
the brief story is filled with silly detail.
The ants have a hat-based society,
headwear defining their position in
life. In order to gain the trust of your
new friends, youll have to retrieve or
remove these hats as ordered. PS
www.bit.ly/Antbassador
JANUARY 2015
83
TOP
10
DOWNLOADS
Free games sTuFF FrOm The web
Dont worry, its even more

confusing than it looks.
S.W.a.p.
FrEEwArE FIRSTPERSON SWAPPER
wap, or Subterfuge Weapons

Assessment Program, is a multiplayer
twitch arena shooter without guns.
Instead, you fire your robots hand at other
players. If you hit, you swap places.
This is disorientating, and potentially
deadly. For instance, if youve activated a
trap, the person you swap with will then be
killed by that trap. At least, they will if you hit
them. Each map contains multiple hazards,
punishing the unwary.
The player count is currently a bit slim.
Bring some friends. PS
www.bit.ly/SwapGame
aTom SmaSheR
FrEEwArE particle physics: the game
blaCk loDge 2600
FrEEwArE hows atari?
win Peaks is coming back for a

new series, and what better way
to celebrate than by playing a game
based on the ending to the second
(and, at the time, final) series? You
know, apart from rewatching the
show, or listening to its theme tune on
repeat for hours.
Black Lodge 2600 is notable not just
for being based on David lynchs eerie
soap opera, but also for mimicking the
style of the Atari 2600. Its incredibly
basicabandoning the shows
building narrative in favor of a score
attack game about working your way
through endless red-curtained rooms.
Sometimes theres an owl shooting
minigame, too.
Your objective is always the
top-right corner, which leads to the
next room and increases your point
total. A few rooms in, Agent Coopers
doppelganger begins to give chase,
and if he catches you, youll lose one of
your three lives. Not only does he get
faster, but the residents of the lodge
will also impede your progress. laura
Palmer is a particular hindranceher
screams disorient Cooper and reverse
the games controls.
According to the games faithfully
authentic Atari manual, something
special will happen if you can get to
5,000 points. I havent come close. PS
www.bit.ly/BlackLodge2600
84
JANUARY 2015
ts pretty straightforward, you

add some Microwave Klystrons, wire
probably wont need a tutorial, says
them up, and watch the MeV rating rise.
the creator in his tutorial video (www.
Soon, wiring becomes an issue. The
bit.ly/aSTutorial). That proved an
game will always select the wire
overestimation of my ability to
closest to the wall from the
understand particle physics.
selection running above the
After watching the
machine. To combat this,
phil says...
Fail and
tutorial, though, the
you need to pull away
you probably
game became a lot
unneeded cables,
wont open a
clearer. At its most basic,
ensuring the correct
black
its a bit like Pipe Mania if
color matches the
hole.
Pipe Manias ultimate goal
correct socket.
was to unlock the very
Theres no penalty for it
secrets of existence.
being wrong, other than the
Your job is to build a series of
machine not working. At its core,
increasingly complex particle colliders to
atom Smasher is a clever yet gentle
achieve each levels target speed. In the
puzzle draped in a science wrapping. PS
www.bit.ly/AtomSmash
beginning, this is relatively simple. You
The quest for the Higgs
Voxel continues.
bRofoRCe
lEvElS carefully made levels for you to destroy
aking a Broforce level seems like a thankless task. Itll be all

but demolished by the time the games action-hero
parodies have blasted their way through it. Despite this,
there are plenty of user-made levels to discover, and theyre now
easily accessible thanks to the recently added Steam Workshop
support. Here are three of the best from the current selection. PS
beRnbanD
FrEEwArE Nightlife
ut there on the internet, a battle

rages over the exact definition
of what is and isnt a game. Is Dear
esther a game? Is Microsoft Excel
a game? Is this magazine a game?
These impassioned philosophers now
have a new maybe-game to add to
the list: Bernband. I say we let them
get on with it, and instead retreat to
enjoy the remarkable world it depicts.
Set in a futuristic alien city,
Bernband has no real interaction
beyond that of walking to a place
and looking at a thing. What makes it
worth trying is the number of things
to be walked to and looked at. While
the streets are often empty, many
rooms bustle with activity. You might
stumble across a jazz concert, an art
installation, or a night club. Or youll
simply step through one of the maze
of elevators and emerge on a bridge
flying cars swishing above your head.
The sounds give an extraordinary
sense of place to the lo-fi pixelated
environment. It wont take long to find
most of what it has to offer, but its
still worth taking the time to do so. PS
www.bit.ly/Bernband
tHE CAMP AlPHA

Currently the highest rated level on the
Steam Workshoplikely thanks to fans
searching for something a little more difficult. Its
filled with enemies, contains plenty of perilous
tight spaces and has precious few captives and
checkpoints. As with the main game, youll be
better off if you bring some co-op support.
www.bit.ly/BroforceA
OBSiDiAn tOwEr
Rather than the usual left-to-right layout,
this channels its explosive action upwards.
This poses a problem for your average Bro, as
their tools of destruction tend to leave levels in
ruins. Carefully placed ladders mean youll always
have a route, but fall back to the ground and
youll face a more tricky second ascent.
www.bit.ly/BroforceB
tHE AntEPEnUltiMAtE
DAnGEr
More varied than the other two, this is
no less action-packed. It starts on a thin
platform, before moving to a more traditional
nest of buildings and destructible terrain. Its
not about mindless destruction, either: some
explosives open alternate routes.
www.bit.ly/BroforceC
machinima
SEE THE FOWl FACE OF TERRORISM IN DEFUSE On tHE Fly
This was
created for
this years
Saxxy AwardsValves
community-voted
competition to find the
best Source Filmmaker
animations. Based on
CS:gO, this story of an
unusual bomb arming
attempt didnt even
make the shortlist.
Thats a shame. PS
www.bit.ly/DefuseFly
Arming
The terrorists arm the

bomb. So far, so expected,
but moments later they
realize its been picked up by a
chicken. This, it seems, is not
part of the plan, and they race
to regain it before the
counter-terrorists find out.
Fight or flight
In a move straight out of

the Roadrunner playbook,
the chicken jumps off a
balcony and gives a few
experimental flaps. One
terrorist follows; his slow
motion dive is interrupted as
gravity finally kicks in.
Defusing
The counter-terrorists
show up, and the two sides
battle each other and their
free-range friend. When they
secure the chicken, they
realize that they dont have
enough time to defuse the
bomb. A scuffle ensues.
round draw
With seconds left, one

of the counter-terrorists is
able to stash the chickenbomb in an ammo box. Both
sides celebrate their escape,
and withdraw to enjoy the
tasty remnants of their
feathered nemesis.
JANUARY 2015
85
UPDATE
WHATS NEW IN THE BIGGEST GAMES
WORLDS OF HURT
PlanetSide 2s colossal space war rumbles on. By Andy Kelly
wo years after launch, PlanetSide 2

is still going strong. Play with a
team of organized players and its
one of the most thrilling multiplayer
shooters on PC. Alone, however, you often
feel like a needle in a haystack. But the
team at Sony Online Entertainment have
been supporting their game with regular
updates, and some of these have had a
dramatic impact on how the game plays,
especially for new players.
The first big change came in January,
when warp-gate rotation was introduced.
Periodically, faction ownership of a warp
gate will change, which mixes the map up.
Players will naturally fight over the same
territory, but from a different direction.
The idea here is to keep the maps feeling
fresh, although the community reaction
was mixed. January also introduced the
ability to spawn into squad-owned
vehicles, which lets players get into the
thick of a battle much more quickly.
Infiltrators sneaky space-ninjas got
a new gadget called a Motion Spotter
that reveals enemies within 25 meters on
the minimap. The trade-off is that using
one will reveal the Spotter itself to nearby
enemies. Infiltrators also got a new ability
called Stalker Cloak. If the Infiltrator stays
still with it active, itll last indefinitely, but
at the expense of using primary weapons,
and a longer recharge rate than the normal
cloak. A nifty tool for ambushes. As if that
wasnt enough, the Hunter QCX crossbow
and MKV suppressed pistol were added.
February also saw cloak visibility
reduced in all movement states except
sprinting, which made it marginally more
READ ME
first reviewed
Nov 2012, 90%
developer
Sony Online
Entertainment
publisher
In-house
requires
3GHz CPU, 1GB
GPU, 4GB RAM
link
www.
planetside2.com
community
www.planetside.
wikia.com
Valkyrie profile
A look at PlanetSides nippy new aircraft
type Fast attack, transport
Crew
Passengers
Health 3,000
Cost 250 Nanites
Primary weapons
M20 Wyvern, CAS 14-E,

Hellion G20, Pelter Rocket
Pod, VLG Missile Launcher
86
JANUARY 2015
effective. But to make Infiltrators lives

a bit harder, all flashlight attachments in
the game were turned into darklights,
which reveal a cloaked player when
shined on them. Tank mines were made
smaller, and the audio was updated on
rocket launchers so that they can be heard
more clearly and from further distances.
at long last, the lattice
The grassy plains of Amerish also saw a

major revamp in February, with the lattice
system finally implemented. This new
method for capturing territory sees key
parts of the map linked by an invisible
network, or lattice, that players must
systematically capture. Nine new
outposts were added, and roads were
improved. Player corpses were given a 30second decay timer, and revive attempts
In April, a bunch of new carbine rifles

were added: the NC AF-4A Bandit, the
TR HC1 Cougar and the VS Zenith VX-5.
Snipers got another treat: an attachment
that lets you remain scoped while bolting
the riflea lifesaver in those hairy reload
moments. Night vision in vehicles was
tweaked to have a longer range and a
brighter shade of green, and there was a
list of balancing improvements too long
to print herecheck out the changelog
on the PlanetSide 2 wiki for full details.
August saw another bumper round of
updates, startingwith the shifting of the
Resources system from three (Infantry,
Mechanized, Aerospace) to just one,
called Nanites. This did away with a lot of
needless complexity. Acquisition timers
were also removed from vehicles and
MAX suits, meaning that if you have the
Some of these updates

have had a dramatic impact
on how the game plays
would be met with a 10-second accept/
decline timer. Medics will now see a revive
icon blinking if the timers about to run
out. A class quiz was added to help new
players decide what role they want to
play in battle, granting them suitable
starting gear. There was good news for
snipers, too, as a new rifle was added for
each faction: the NC AF-8 RailJack, the
TR TRAP-M1 and the VS Phaseshift VX-5.
March saw the death screen given an
overhaul: it now shows your killers
relative position to yours on the minimap,
along with the weapon and attachment
they used, and gives you a summary of
your last life. The Liberator gunship was
updated and given a range of powerful
new weapons, including the L24R Spur
nose-gun, the Hyena Missile Launcher
and the D-75 Duster belly-gun. Vehicle XP
was also adjusted. Experience is now
shared among the crew, but a smaller
amount is granted to passengers. And
camouflage can now be added to heal
and repair tools, for support players who
want to stay hidden as they work.
Nanites, you can jump straight into one

without having to hang around. New
players start with 600 Nanites, and they
naturally regenerate at 50 resources per
minute, up to a maximum pool of 750.
The repair tool was reworked to make
its range more consistent, a six-person
fast-attack aircraft called the Valkyrie
was added, and an achievement-like
system called Directives was added to
give players new goals. Finally, in an
attempt to increase the amount of time
players stay alive, the lethality of heavy
assault launchers, primary tank weapons
and M60 Bulldogs was greatly reduced.
In October, the handling of the Flash
was improved so that its harder to flip it
over or lose traction, and crosshairs were
changed from static to dynamic, to better
represent where your weapon is firing
when moving, firing or flinching.
Its heartening to see PlanetSide 2
getting so many updates, including ones
that dramatically alter the rhythm and
flow of the game. This planetary war
shows no signs of slowing.
At the controls of the

new Valkyrie aircraft.
A close call with

a rocket launcher.
PlanetSide 2 does big

battles like no one else.
The new death screen

is loaded with info.
The new lattice
system in action.
Snowy Esamir is like Hoth

in The Empire Strikes Back.
Hit T and you can switch

to a third-person view.
JANUARY 2015
87
REINSTALL
CLASSICS REVISITED
Dragon Age II has arguably

the best cast of a BioWare RPG.
A city youll never remember;

people youll never forget
CharaCter is at the heart of Dragon age II. By Chris Thursten
READ ME
first reviewed
March 2011, 94%
developer
BioWare
publisher
EA
released
2011
88
t begins, as RPGs often do, with a family

tragedy and a burning village. In the
aftermath of the destruction of
Lothering, a mage, warrior or rogue called
Hawke escapes into the wilderness
with his or her family: mother, brother,
sister and (if you installed the right preorder DLC) their dog. In Dragon Age:
Origins, you left Lothering behind shortly
before its destruction, heading off on
your quest to unite the kingdom and end
the darkspawn threat. Here, you see a
different side of those events, rendered
in a way that establishes a fundamental
change in the series creative direction.
The darkspawn have been redesigned;
Ferelden reimagined as a terracotta
wasteland; Flemeth transformed from
old lady in a swamp into fortune-teller
dominatrix (she also transforms into
a dragon, but thats another matter).
Yet even in these rough early moments,
there are glimmers of the diamonds to be
found. The Hawke family speak to each
other like people, and the introduction of
voice acting for the protagonist allows
JANUARY 2015
you to immediately establish whether

After the death of one of your siblings
your Hawke is supportive, aggressive or
(which one depends on the class you
flippant in the face of danger. When one
chose at character creation), the need
of the Hawke siblings is killed, their death
to keep the surviving family together
is abrupt and the reaction to it wellintensifies. You flee to Kirkwall, Hawkes
performed. When the Hawkes encounter
mothers birthplace, and take mercenary
a wounded Templar and his warrior wife,
contracts to pay off your deadbeat
their fate is similarly grounded. The
uncles debts and gain entry to the
experience of beginning Dragon
city. The first act is spent trying
Age II is of encountering
to scrape enough money
a world that has grown
together to fund an
Chris sAys...
smaller and uglier,
expedition that might lift
I have a real
love-hate
populated by characters
the family out of poverty.
relationship
who have gained depth
You contend with your
with Dragon
and personality. It is
mothers disappointment,
Age II
likewise a game that
and, if she survives, your
comes draped in all of the
mage sisters need to stay
worst trappings of last-gen
hidden from the magicEA (empty, streamlined combat;
policing Templars that hold
pre-order dogs) but takes an unorthodox
power in the city. If you yourself are
approach to BioWare storytelling, with a
a mage, you must deal with something
framing narrative and three-act structure
pettier: your little brothers anger at living
that defies the expectations of veteran
in your shadow, his lack of purpose and
playersfor better and for worse.
desire to chart his own course through life.
This begins with the notion that Hawke
These are novelistic flourishes, not epic
is never entirely free of responsibility.
ones. Dragon Age IIs greatest strength is
Isabela and Aveline see

romance very differently.
You see this warehouse

far too many times.
The combat seriously lacks

Origins strategic direction.
Much of the first half involves

this Qunari Tony Soprano.
the way it concerns itself with believable

people, and the way it is comfortable
telling stories about things that might not
threaten the safety of the world but are
very important to the people experiencing
them. The result is a narrative that you will
either find incredibly compelling or utterly
lacking in drivethis is a game that you
either fall in love with to the exclusion of
its faults or slink away from, disappointed.
Dragon Age IIs roster of companions
are not indentured servants that bind
themselves to Hawkes service forever,
as Shepards friends dothey have their
own homes, jobs and opinions. They also
have complex relationships with each
other. Their rivalries and affections are
brilliantly presented through incidental
dialogues that occur as you move around
the worldif you didnt click with Dragon
Age II the first time around, try walking
between destinations rather than using
the world map to skip about. Many of the
games best conversations only occur
when youre on the move, whether thats
Isabellas ceaseless teasing of Aveline,
Varrics subtle protectiveness of Merrill,
or Fenris and Anders sniping. I smile when
I play this game because of the moments
of character that, for me, define it
Varrics choice of nicknames for everyone
(except Aveline); Isabella calling Merrill
kitten; the moments when Anders sense
of humor surfaces above the broody
spirit of vengeance that inhabits him.
Seen in this light, your decade in
Kirkwall is an exploration of these
SOCIAL NETWORK The interaction between the characters

Hawke
Lover, rival, friend, nemesis.
Carver
Magnanimity in the face

of a stammering crush.
Varric
Flirting like old friends.
?
Isabela
relationships, with many highlights

finding a husband for Aveline, Isabellas
betrayal and return (or not), introducing
Merrill to civilization, Anders final, tragic,
explosive expression of his frustration at
the treatment of mages. BioWare has not
created a narrative with this much nuance
since, nor so many clever moments
like when an innocuous murder-mystery
sidequest grows and grows until it
becomes a very real, very tense race to
save the life of a loved one. Yet this is a
game with crippling flaws. The extensive
reuse of a limited pool of environments
was unforgivable at the time and has
aged worse. Combat is dreadful, with
extensive padding and AI so bad that it
doesnt matter whether youre fighting
smugglers or spiders, because you press
aveline
Friendship suggested
by severe bickering.
Merrill
Patient, protective and fond.
the same buttons. This game that does

so much to make you believe in these
people and their situation squanders
any attempt to realize that fiction within
its game systems or environment.
Ludonarrative dissonance would be
the polite way to put itdisastrously
sub-par as a game would be the other.
Dragon Age II is a reddish-brown city
that youll never remember, occupied by
people that youll never forget, and it is
as suchquite a lot like going to
university. Its a distinct and characterful
voice applied to a familiar set of ideas,
and a paean to the notion that these
games have always been about
personality first, game second. It could
have been so much better, and yet, in
its own way, it has yet to be bettered.
JANUARY 2015
89
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GROUP TEST
3d cards
Keep up to date in the everchanging world of graphics
hardware. By Dave James
Dictionary
TDP >
GPU >
Overclocking >
ithout a good
graphics card you
stand little chance
of getting decent
framerates. Its
not the only component that will
affect your gaming, but it has the
most impact. A weak processor will
hobble the performance of a
high-end card and a slow hard drive
will lengthen load times, but Id
always advocate putting a little more
weight on the GPU side of a build.
So this is where I should spend the

most cash?
Yes, but temper that with a little
reason. If you check out the PCG rig
the graphics card is the priciest thing
on the list, but I could have gone for
a still more expensive one had I
opted for a cheaper Core i3 CPU and
a weaker motherboard. But
weighting things that heavily on the
GPU side wouldnt have netted a
better performance, because the
slower, less-advanced CPU would
then be holding that GPU back.
What about if Im upgrading?
In that case spend as much money as
you can afford on a new graphics
card. Upgrading can be a slow,

ongoing process, but starting with
the graphics card is a good bet for a
gamer. Even if your current CPU
does end up holding back your new
GPU, you at least know there is
performance left in the tank to
support future upgrades. Also, with
product cycles lengthening as they
currently are, a quality graphics card
purchase will last far longer than at
any previous time in the history of
PC gaming.
As before, leaven your spending
with common sense. If you just have
a 1080p monitor, you dont need the
high-end performance of a GTX
980. Todays mid-range cards are
more than capable of running the
latest games at the highest settings
on a 1080p screen.
What about power?
A good point. When upgrading your
machine you definitely need to take
note of what your current power
supply can deliver. If you dont have
the necessary wattage or sufficient
power connectors for your new
graphics card its not going to take
you anywhere. Most new cards will
at least come with adapters to
connect to your PSU if you dont

have enough dedicated graphics card
connectors. But if youve bought an
R9 295X2 and youve only got a
450W PSU in your rig then youre
going to be in trouble.
Keep an eye out for the TDP of
your new card, as that will give you a
decent idea of how much extra power
its going to demand.
Should I buy a card thats been
pre-overclocked?
If youre just looking for extra
performance out of the box its
probably not worth it: theyre often
not that much faster than the
cheaper reference-clocked versions.
But they do usually have superior
coolers. AMDs R9 290X and R9 290
standard coolers, for example, leave
the GPU running at a sizzling 93C.
The OCed Sapphire Tri-X versions
cut that down by more than 20C.
These pre-overclocked cards also
often use cherry-picked GPUs,
which are likely to run faster than
normal. Combined with the
improved cooling, that means if you
want to do your own overclocking,
these versions are likely to give you
the best results.
JANUARY 2015
91
GROUP TEST
3d cards
Current gaming graphics cards

reviewed. By Dave James
how wE tEStEd
Gaming performance
> A selection of gaming
benchmarks were run
at different resolutions,
to measure each cards
performance in both average
frames per second (fps) and
minimum frames per second.
The closer the numbers are,
the smoother your game
will run.
Thermal performance
> Hardware monitoring tools
were used to check how

hot each GPU ran under its
cooling array. The cooler it
runs when being used, the
less likely it is to slow down or
degrade over time.
Value > Speed isnt
everything, and most of us
have a budget to stick to
when buying new hardware.
The price of each card was
measured against frames
per second to determine the
overall value of each card.
GTX 970 G1 Gaming

$380 Gigabyte
he GTX 970 may be the

second-tier Maxwell
card to the mighty
GTX 980, but its still
one of the most
impressive graphics cards Ive tested
in recent timesespecially in this
Gigabyte Gaming incarnation.
The GM 204 GPU in the GTX
970 is missing 384 CUDA cores and
another 24 texture units, but thats
where the differences end. Its not
really about what Nvidia has decided
to cut, but what it left in.
Its got to be
pretty galling for
anyone who spent a
fortune on a Titan
You still get the same 2MB of L2
cache, the same 64 render output
units and the same algorithmic
advances that make the 256-bit
memory bus viable for 4K gaming.
And, on that 4K note, its the 4GB
of GDDR5 video memory Nvidia
has retained for this card that keeps
it so competitive despite being priced
far lower than its big brother. I
genuinely expected Nvidia to slash
and burn more of the GM 204 GPU,
and I am so glad it didnt.
What Gigabyte has done
impresses too. The GTX 970 has
been overclocked 128MHz above
the reference version to 1178MHz,
but it also boosts all the way up to a
stable 1329MHz. Gigabyte has also

added a bit of extra power, with a 6+
8-pin configuration instead of the 2x
6-pin connection of the reference
version, along with a mighty
Windforce triple-fan cooling array.
All this creates some incredible
performance numbers for the
moneyas in outperforming a
GTX Titan Black. Thats got to be
pretty galling for anyone out there
who spent a fortune on a Titan.
The G1 Gaming has another
couple of tricks up its sleeve, in the
form of super-chilled operating
temperatures and serious

overclocking potential. That will
give you a supremely powerful
gaming rig that isnt going to make
your room feel like a sweat lodge
after half an hour in Battlefield 4, and
wont make a noise like someones
strapped a jet turbine to your PC.
Gigabytes G1 Gaming has become
my favorite Maxwell card.
A seriously fast,
well-priced, overclockable
graphics card, that still
manages to run incredibly
cool and quiet too.
SPEC GPU Nvidia GM 204 Shaders 1,664 Texture units 104 ROPs 64 Memory 4GB GDDR5 Memory bus 256-bit TDP 145W
92
JANUARY 2015
93
GET THE PC YOUR GAMES DESERVE
Radeon R9 295X2
$1,000 MSI
f youre just measuring straight

performance, this is the card to
beat. Im not a big fan of
dual-GPU cards in general, theyre
often more trouble than running a
pair of graphics cards, but this is the
best of them. The performance is
incredible, so long as your games
actually support CrossFireX, and it
is most definitely the only single
graphics card youd want to use with
a 4K monitor.
The fact you can hit a full 60fps in
Battlefield 4 at 4K Ultra settings is a
testament to the engineering work
AMD has put into this card. Packing
in a pair of the GPUs that power its
top R9 290X cards is no mean feat.
In the reference-cooled 290X those
things run at 93C each, so two of

them into one card needs some
serious chilling. And thats where the
closed loop liquid-cooler attached to
the R9 295X2 comes in.
As well as keeping the GPUs
chilled, the water cooler also enables
them to run slightly faster than on
individual 290X cards. Considering
every dual-GPU card in history has
come with slower clocked GPUs
than their single-GPU equivalents,
thats quite an achievement.
The R9 295X2 is incredibly fast,
beating Nvidias GTX 980 by some
way, but its far more expensive. And
theres also the worry of two GPUs
in one card: theres twice as much
chance of something going wrong.
An excellent dual-GPU
card, and blazingly fast,
but I still have nagging
doubts about the
reliability of this tech.
85
SPEC GPU 2x AMD Hawaii XT Shaders 2x 2,816 Texture units 1x 176 ROPs 2x 64 Memory 2x 4GB GDDR5 Memory bus 2x 512-bit TDP 500W
GTX 980
$550 Nvidia
his is the faster big brother of

the GTX 970but if its
faster, why hasnt it won? The
answer is that its a lot more
expensive than its sibling, and not
that much more speedy.
This was the first time Id seen the
Maxwell GPU architecture made
use of in a high-end graphics chip
and it was an incredible thing to
behold, but not necessarily from an
in-game performance. In real terms
it hasnt blown Nvidias previous top
cards, the GTX 780 Ti or GTX
Titan Black, out of the water. Its
faster but not a generational leap
ahead. The GM204 GPU in the
GTX 980 wont end up as the top
Maxwell chipthere will surely be a
GM210 arriving later.
165W TDP is, however,
unprecedented for a modern,
high-end GPU: the R9 290X is
almost twice as power-hungry.
What sinks the GTX 980 is that

Nvidia hasnt cut much out of the
GPU to make the GTX 970. Thats
great for us, but not so great for the
GTX 980. Theres an extra 384
CUDA cores in the GM204, but
keeping the same frame buffer,
ROPs and similar clockspeeds has
made the performance difference
between the two new Maxwellbased cards very tight. And since
both boast 4GB of video RAM thats
even true at high resolutions.
The gap may widen when we start
seeing pre-overclocked versions of
the GTX 980 turn up, but Ive got a
feeling the GM204 isnt going to
clock much higher than the 1.5GHz
I managed with my reference GTX
980. The third-party coolers that
well start to see may drop the
temperature, but I doubt theyll
really offer much in the way of extra
GPU speed.
The GTX 980 prices itself

out of the top spot. Its a
great card, but its being
shown up by its cheeky
younger sibling.
87
SPEC GPU Nvidia GM204 Shaders 2,048 Texture units 128 ROPs 64 Memory 4GB GDDR5 Memory bus 256-bit TDP 165W
JANUARY 2015
93
GROUP TEST
Radeon R9 290 Tri-X

$299 Sapphire
ith the release of

Nvidias new
Maxwell-based
cards the reaction
from AMD and
its partners has been to drop prices.
Thats why this excellent
overclocked R9 290 is now around
the same price as a GTX 970.
Sapphires Tri-X cooling design
has reduced the maximum operating
temperature from a super-heated
93C to a more chilled 71C. Given
the already impressive gaming
performance, that makes this card a
very tempting prospect at this price.
It may not be quite as fast as the
Gigabyte GTX 970, but its a bit
cheaper and almost as good at the

very highest resolutions, too.
This is however one of the more
expensive variants of the R9 290.
Shopping around will net you more
savings on a different manufacturers
spin of the same card, such as XFX,
and you still wont be lumbered with
the reference AMD cooler.
The massive GPU inside the R9
290 is over-specced in some ways,
especially the memory setup,
making this a good second-place
upgrade card just behind the GTX
970. If youre a dyed-in-the-wool
AMD fan, unwilling to make the
switch over to the green team, then
this is the card for you.
The second-tier AMD

card has benefitted from
a price cut, making it a
very tempting prospect
for gamers.
86
SPEC GPU AMD Hawaii Pro Shaders 2,560 Texture units 160 ROPs 64 Memory 4GB GDDR5 Memory bus 512-bit TDP 275W
Radeon R9 285 Dual-X

$250 Sapphire
hen I first heard

about the new
Radeon R9 285 I
will admit I was
unimpressed
with what looked like a downgrade
from the R9 280 card it was
ostensibly replacing. But I will also
admit to being wrong.
On the face of it there isnt much
of a difference between this new
Tonga Pro GPU and the Tahiti Pro
GPU in the older R9 280. They
both have the same number of
cores, texture units and ROPs.
Where they differ is that while the
new R9 285 is clocked faster, it has a
weaker memory configuration. Its
lost a full 1GB of GDDR5 RAM
from its frame buffer and has been
bumped down from a hefty 384-bit
memory bus to a 256-bit one.
The twist is that AMD has used a
similar memory compression
technique on its new Tonga GPU as

Nvidia has with its new Maxwell
GPUs, so the effective memory
bandwidth is actually higher. This
makes the R9 285 at least as good as
the older R9 280, but with a tasty
new price tag. Its also the latest
version of the GCN architecture,
where the old R9 280 was essentially
a three-year-old GPU. That means
the R9 285 has the latest feature set,
which includes the True Audio
gaming tech, improved Turbo boost
speeds and support for Adaptive
Sync, which forms the backbone of
AMDs open source Free Sync
system for eliminating tearing.
With the price cut, and the new
features of what were calling GCN
1.2, the new R9 285 is actually one of
the most impressive lower mid-range
cards around. Id go as far to say its
the only gaming card really worth
going for in this price range.
A surprisingly fast and

good-value graphics card
for the money, with all the
modern features that
AMD can provide.
SPEC GPU AMD Tonga Pro Shaders 1,792 Texture units 112 ROPs 32 Memory 2GB GDDR5 Memory bus 256-bit TDP 190W
94
JANUARY 2015
85
GET THE PC YOUR GAMES DESERVE
GTX 760
bEnchMaRkS
the numbers that
matter, side by side
$220 Asus
he elderly GTX 760 is

looking like Nvidias midrange sacrificial lamb right
now. With the release of the GTX
980 and 970, Nvidia has ceased
production on the GTX 780 Ti,
GTX 780 and GTX 770. Now only
the GTX 760 remains of the old
guard, and its not able to put up
much resistance to the competition.
The GTX 970 price/performance
ratio has compressed the rest of the
GPU market below it. Now you can
get previously high-end cards like
AMDs R9 290 for great prices,
while AMDs new Tonga GPU in
the R9 285 has been priced down to
go toe-to-toe with the GTX 760.
DirectX 11 4k gaming performance

Grid 2 (min) avg fps (higher is better)
DirectX 11 1600p gaming performance

BioShock Infinite (min) avg fps (higher is better)
DirectX 11 1080p gaming performance
Nvidia must be ready to release

lower-end Maxwell cards soon to
replace it, but for now the GTX 760
has been left to fend for itself in a
crowded end of the market. With
none of the memory compression
magic of either the Tonga or
Maxwell GPU architectures, the
2GB/256-bit memory
configuration of the GTX
760 makes it seem very
much off the pace.
74
Battlefield 4 (min) avg fps (higher is better)
GIGabyTE GTX 970 G1 GaMInG

55
38
21
70
92
61
MSI R9 295X2
80 99
20
SPEC GPU Nvidia GK104 Shaders 1,152 Texture units 96 ROPs 32 Memory 2GB GDDR5
Memory bus 256-bit TDP 170W
102
105
68
nVIDIa GTX 980
58
44
GTX 750 Ti
103
49
SaPPhIRE R9 290 TRI-X
$150 Gigabyte
40
e cant all spend hundreds

of pounds on a new
graphics card, but that
doesnt mean we cant all enjoy good
gaming performance. Thats why
Im such a fan of Nvidias first ever
Maxwell GPU. The GTX 750 Ti is
the most efficient graphics card Ive
ever tested and one that could bring
PC gaming to any desktop PC user.
Its no high-end monster, the lowly
core count and weak memory bus
should make that obvious, but its
still capable of delivering entirely
playable framerates in the latest
games at their highest 1080p
settings. Knock back a few of the
more expensive graphical effects in
your favorite games and youll get
pleasingly smooth performance.
The best thing is the reference
design doesnt use any external
power connectors. For me, this is
78
19
50
16
55
49
73
SaPPhIRE R9 285 DUal-X
what makes the GTX 750 Ti the

most inclusive card ever. Even that
cheap, off-the-shelf PC you picked
up a year ago for college will have a
spare PCIe slot, and this is a quick
ten minute upgrade to deliver 1080p
gaming the instant you turn your
basic machine back on.
Some manufacturers have missed
the point and stuck extra power
connectors on the GTX 750 Ti
anyway, trying to make their
versions the fastest, so its worth
shopping around if youre
looking for an easy
gaming upgrade for a
weaker machine.
SPEC GPU Nvidia GM107 Shaders 640 Texture units 40 ROPs 16

Memory 2GB GDDR5 Memory bus 128-bit TDP 60W
88
29 35
14
45
34
54
nVIDIa GTX 760

22 29
39
48
26
nVIDIa GTX 750 TI

15 20
7
26
23
36
JANUARY 2015
95
The PC
Gamer Rig
Roll on the new GPU war
s AMD has no real

answer to Nvidias
new cards it has opted
to compete on price.
That means the R9
290, which has always offered great
performance, is now very affordable.
When youre building a machine
like the PC Gamer Rig, the best
gaming PC you can make on a
budget, thats great news.
Go for an R9 290 with a thirdparty cooler, and you wont even

suffer from the heat problems the
reference cards had.
Dave James
Hardware Editor
167
whats in the boX The components that make up the PCG Rig
$240
$119
$78
$60
$54
$67
CPU
Motherboard
raM
Case
storage
CPU Cooler
Intel Core i5 4690K
Gigabyte Z97X-SLI
Crucial Ballistix Sport
Corsair Carbide 200R
Seagate Barracuda
Zalman LQ310
The Devils Canyon

i5 is in the PCG Rig.
Overclocking fun ahoy!
An official overclocking
board, and it comes with
the luxury of SLI, too.
Eight gigs of fast

1600MHz DDR3, but the
price is climbing.
Component prices have

been on the rise; this is a
cost-saving compromise.
To save money, storage

has been restricted to a
single terabyte of HDD.
Zalmans water cooler is

an excellent choice for
near-silent cooling.
Fitted October 2014
Fitted November 2014
Fitted November 2011
Fitted December 2013
Fitted September 2013
Fitted August 2013
NEW!
$299
$57
$170
$90
$59
$52
graPhiCs Card
Power sUPPly
Monitor
Keyboard
MoUse
headset
AMD Radeon R9 290
SilverStone Strider
Essential 500W
ViewSonic
VX2370Smh
Ozone Strike Pro
Plantronics
Gamecom 780
SilverStone is a reliable
name, and thats what
you need in a PSU.
A budget monitor with

the picture quality of a
much pricier model.
Full size, decent features

and comes with your
choice of Cherry MX
mechanical switches.
Shogun Bros
Ballista MK-1
With a perfectly placed
and accurate sensor, this
laser mouse is a bargain.
Plantronics work on
virtual surround with
Dolby pays off here.
Fitted April 2014
Fitted February 2013
Fitted July 2014
Fitted March 2014
Fitted December 2013
The recent price cuts

have made AMDs R9
290 a great card for a
strict budget.
Fitted January 2015
Possible UPgrades
AOC U3477Pqu > Super high-res 4K displays are leaving me cold at anything below 30
inches, but this 34 inch 21:9 IPS screen is a seriously lovely gaming screen.
Kingston HyperX Cloud > Somehow Kingston have taken the QPad QH-90 headset
and made it better. Theres more bass, but its still just as crisp at the high ends too.
Nvidia GtX 970 >> If you can stretch to a little more GPU cash the GTX 970 is my
absolute favorite graphics card around, and available for not much more than the R9 290.
96
JANUARY 2015
TOTAL
PRICE
$1,345
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In our opinion, theres only one

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