THE HIGHS
Phil Savage: Jungle excursion
I've taken a quick break from writing up my Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns review to do this, and so I might as well keep writing about Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. Spoiler: I like it, a lot, albeit with some reservations. For one thing, it's a beautiful looking expansion. ArenaNet's jungle region is dark, twisted and labyrinthine. It's varied and surprising, too. There's always something cool around the next corner. As an MMO, there's a lot more factors to consider than simply how it looks, but a vast, enchanting world is a definite boon. I've spent a good chunk of the last week wondering around the new zones in first-person view, taking screenshots as players swarm through the gorgeous scenery.
As for the rest, you'll have to wait for the review.
Andy Kelly: Space is the place
This week I visited the UK studio of Star Citizen developer Cloud Imperium. I can’t go into what I saw—you’ll have to wait for the next issue of PC Gamer to find out—but it was a really good experience. I always love visiting developers and watching them work, because it gives you a more intimate insight into the game than a standalone interview. I watched a lot of very talented people making spaceships and other cool stuff, and it made me appreciate just how much craft and love goes into a game of that scale. You forget that sometimes.
It can also be a bit of a curse, though, because whenever I’m reviewing a game, and I don’t like it, I imagine the developer’s sad face as I slam their work. Obviously I still will, ‘cause that’s what a critic does, but being reminded that a real human with real human feelings is behind everything in a game (except procedural generation, I guess) isn’t always a good thing.
Tim Clark: Fluffy little clouds
Sap Green, Magic White and, of course, Van Dyke Brown. Until yesterday I was entirely unaware that these are the most important colours in the kaleidoscope. Now, thanks to Bob Ross and his gently cradled palette, I know better. Given that we’re already a day into Twitch’s ambient painting marathon, I’ll spare you the full hot take about how soothing watching a man with an astonishing perm dab “happy little clouds” onto canvas is, but suffice to say half the PC Gamer team spent the small hours of last night chugging audiovisual valium.
Here’s what I loved most: Twitch chat, so often a den of scum and villainy, was super sweet and funny pretty much the whole time, reacting to Bob’s scrapes and smears as if they were plays in a high level esports match. Bob scrawls an ugly tree trunk over an otherwise pretty landscape? “RUINED”, “CONCEDE”, “THE CHOKE”, “NA PLAY”. Bob pulls it together late? “SAVED”, “VAC”, “WIZARD”, “NERF BOB”. Cutest of all, each time Bob wraps up one of his rapidfire oil paintings, chat spams “GG WP”
Chris Livingston: The coast is most
I can be as cynical as the best of 'em (or maybe the worst of 'em), to the point where I'm actually surprised when I find myself genuinely excited about a game I haven't yet played. One genre never fails to get me worked up and optimistic, though, and that's the weird-ass simulator genre. I am always, always excited to try a new sim, be it one where you cut down trees, or tow cars, or put out fires at an airport, or unload boats with a crane. And I'm always convinced these sims will be great, even when they are, historically, not.
In this case, it's Coast Guard, which I've just acquired a key for. The trailer is weirdly amazingly awesome, so that's part of my excitement. I think the rest of my enthusiasm may stem from the idea of doing something in a game I've never done before. I've driven boats in plenty of games, but I've never driven a boat to—as the trailer says—SAVE LIVES and PROTECT THE WIDE-OPEN SEA. And I'm going to do that. I'm going to save lives and protect the wide-open sea. And I'm pretty sure it's going to be amazing.
Wes Fenlon: Does Tribes have another shot at life?
Hi-Rez Studios burned a lot of its fans when it more or less abandoned F2P shooter Tribes Ascend. It's been heartening to see them try to make up for that, even if it's too late for Ascend to be a competitive esport or maintain a thriving community. First Hi-Rez patched Tribes, and said it plans to keep updating the game more. Now they've released every single Tribes game for free, with a nice website showing the history of the series.
I love that those classic shooters are now easily available online, and hopefully will be in perpetuity. It's certainly a smart way for Hi-Rez to build goodwill and raise the profile of Tribes, too. Is it impossible to think that the Tribes Ascend community could actually grow over the next year, as Hi-Rez go back to supporting it? It'd be enough to melt grumpy Tyler Wilde's heart.
Tom Marks: Who watches the Overwatchers?
The Overwatch beta began on Tuesday and I’ve been playing it at pretty much every opportunity since then. It’s incredibly fun and has the same level of polish we’ve come to expect from Blizzard games. The guns feel great, and I’ve found a few heroes I’m really enjoying, though not quite one I want to call my main just yet.
It’s really not quite like any other FPS I’ve played, but takes bits of inspiration from many. And though it’s definitely not a MOBA, the heroes’ ‘ultimate’ abilities allow Overwatch to have those big play moments we’re familiar with from that genre. So I’m excited to see if an esports community rallies around Overwatch. It’s kind of hard to imagine it won’t.
I am also excited to keep playing. Overwatch is the first game in a while that I really want to learn the little intricacies of. The quickest routes to a point, the sneaky side paths, the ranges and reload times of everybody’s weapons and abilities, who can beat who in a duel, etc. The lack of leveling-up or ability points makes figuring all of that out seem so much less daunting. But as much as I’m having fun with it, it hasn’t all been sunshine and roses… (see: Tom’s low)
THE LOWS
Andy Kelly: Break the bat
Oh, Batman. What happened? What should have been a fond farewell to one of the best superhero game series ever has been sullied by a dodgy PC port. My personal ‘low’ this week was having to review the thing, because while I enjoyed it as a game, I still had to stick the boot in because of the mess they made of the PC version. That’s one of the challenges of writing for PC Gamer: having to weigh up a game from a design standpoint, but also as a product that needs to be fit for purpose on multiple systems.
And in this case, the product was, for many, broken. If they’d done a better job with it, I might have given it a higher score. Oh well. Will this be a cautionary tale for other ‘AAA’ developers? I hope so, but I’m not holding my breath. Still, if your PC has the muscle to counter-combo those framerate problems, you’ll find a pretty damn good Batman game. In a week the world will have forgotten about Arkham Knight, and there’ll be another bad port to get angry about. It’s the circle of strife. Man, those console guys have it easy, don’t they?
Tim Clark: Goofing off to watch the game
Do you watch esports on Twitch? If you don’t, there’s really no need to explain why in the comments. I know this may seem radical, but it’s fine for people to like doing different stuff. But if you do like watching esports, how the hell do you fit it around real life? I’ve got a job in which I’m unlikely to get canned for having the group stages BlizzCon Hearthstone World Championships running on my second screen, but I still feel an odd sense of guilt about it—even though I know I won’t let it affect my scrupulous Protestant work ethic. (My boss sometimes reads this page.) But how do you fit watching tournaments around school, regular jobs and family commitments? Marathon toilet breaks? Frenzied alt tabbing? Phone wedged betwixt thighs technique? I need to know, because my low this week is that I want to find ways to watch even more. Blizzard, nerf real life pls.
Wes Fenlon: Why am I not playing Vermintide...
...and will I still want to be playing Vermintide a month from now? I'm cheating with my low here, a bit, to talk about how much fun I've had with my few hours with Vermintide, and how much I wish I was playing it right now! Ian has played much more than me, and came away even more positive than I expected in his review, which makes me optimistic about Vermintide as a game I'd want to play through several times.
Longevity's been my big concern, here. I'm okay with Vermintide ditching Left4Dead's Versus mode for a purely PvE experience. The game does PvE with more nuance in combat than Left4Dead, and has a loot system to justify repeat runs through levels. But I don't know how many of its levels I'll enjoy playing multiple times, which makes me hope that Fatshark is able to work mod support into its game. The uncommon engine they used for Vermintide may discourage modding, but if the community was even half as enthusiastic and productive as Left4Dead 2's, we'll have years' worth of awesome custom stages to murder giant ratmen in.
Chris Livingston: NayZ
This week marks a weird, stupid anniversary for me. It was a year ago when, on deadline for Rock Paper Shotgun, I decided to play a session of DayZ with the caveat that if I died during it, I'd treat it as perma-permadeath. In other words, if I died a virtual death, I wouldn't ever play DayZ again for the rest of my real, actual life.
Spoiler alert: I died almost immediately in the most bumbling and rookie way possible for someone who had already put 252 hours into the game. And so, I have not played it since. It hasn't really been that difficult: my favorite streamer, Break71, still plays it often (and plays it much better than I ever did) so at least I get to watch. Very rarely do I get the urge go back on my word and fire it up again. Until this week, that is, when I realized it had been a year, a full year since my dumb idea blew up in my stupid face. Now, I pretty much want to do nothing but play DayZ. If I can just hold out a little longer, Fallout 4 will hopefully distract me. November 10 can't get here fast enough.
Tom Marks: Overwatch, again
I’ve been enjoying Overwatch a lot so far, but I’m nervous about how long it will keep me hooked. It’s incredibly fun, but I have a few major problems with it. Chris wrote about how the supports didn't have very exciting abilities, which I agree with but think is actually indicative of a bigger problem: most of the abilities in the game aren’t very exciting, and supports are just the ‘canary in the coal mine’ because they, by their nature, have less powerful weapons which makes the unexciting abilities more obvious.
I also think something is a little off with the pacing of matches, but can’t quite put my finger on what yet. Gun fights are fast and exciting, but it takes a long time to run back to the action. This means that if you kill the entire defending team on one of the capture point maps, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a cap. This is also the case in Team Fortress 2’s capture point maps (wiping out the enemy team should be rewarded, after all) but there are a few fundamental differences—first and foremost being that there are only ever two points to capture, so winning one big fight means an enormous amount more in Overwatch than in comparable games.
I think regular updates and balance adjustments are going to be key to how much I continue to play Overwatch—and to its credit, Blizzard has already released a patch based on community feedback, teased a new hero, and is hinting at something else only days after the closed beta began. New content will definitely help, but I hope they are willing to make the drastic changes they’ve said could potentially come.
Phil Savage: Cause for concern
I've had my head in an MMO all week, and all the gaming news I did see seemed absurdly positive. Free Tribes games? Cool. Paradox buying the White Wolf license? Interesting. All the other stuff that happened? Probably fine, I don't know. Instead, I want to highlight a concern from my recent Just Cause 3 impressions. The game is fun, but I'm not sure about the timer attached to its airdrop system. Too often—mainly due to my own incompetence—I destroyed a good vehicle and was forced to wait 30 minutes until I could call in a replacement. That seems such an arbitrary restriction for a game built on freeform chaos. I worry that, as with Just Cause 2, I'll have to wait for modders to unlock the unabashed absurdist carnage that I crave.
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