Announced on stage at PDXCON 2018, Europa Universalis 4 is en route to the Indian subcontinent with its latest expansion, Dharma. In turn, this earns players free policies. “As usual, Europa Universalis 4: Dharma will be accompanied by a free update for all Europa Universalis 4 players, including a major reworking of the game’s map of India, Tibet and Burma,” says Paradox in a statement. Also, Dharma gives owners of The Cossacks expansion a new Cossack Government. Europa Universalis 4: Dharma is

asks Crusader Kings 2’s latest DLC. Named Holy Fury, it’s one of the medieval grand strategy ’em up’s most sophisticated expansions—this time drawing inspiration from the Northern Crusaders of Catholic Europe against their Pagan neighbours. “In Holy Fury, Pagan rulers who reform their religion instead of converting will have a chance to design that new Reformed Paganism,” explains Paradox—who unveiled Holy Fury on stage at PDXCON 2018 today. Here’s an announcement trailer:And while it may not be

Paradox and Triumph Studios have revealed Age of Wonders: Planetfall—a sci-fi spin on the latter’s esteemed turn-based strategy series. Announced at PDXCON 2018 today, Planetfall combines AoW’s familiar tactical combat and empire building with hulking mechs, futuristic tech and laser-eyed baddies. “Age of Wonders: Planetfall is roughly three years into development, running on a new generation of our multi-platform Creator Engine. “While the setting is new, we’re confident that Age of Wonders fan

Earlier this week, we asked you to tell us the last physical copy of a PC game you bought, while sharing our own choices. Today, as a kind of sequel to that question, we ask, what was the first downloadable game you bought on PC? Jarred Walton: Half-Life 2I’ll take the easy route on this one, because it’s also true: Half-Life 2 was the first downloadable game I bought. “I had played PC games before TOB, like Quake, Command and Conquer, and WoW but always from a disc. Fellow user erdelf adds “Sta

In Monster Garden you play Mr. Bobo, an orange creature with a big butt and an even bigger heart. Monster Garden features no fights, or items, or plot twists. There is almost always a degree of power control at play, but Monster Garden eschews this entirely. Its contrast between cheerfulness and despair vaguely reminds of Everything is Going to Be OK, although Monster Garden feels more optimistic. Monster Garden is on Steam and itch.io.

Green Hell is a first-person “psychological survival simulator” that sets players off in the depths of the Amazon rain forest, alone, (mostly) unequipped, and with no memory of how they got there. The only tool at hand is a radio, carrying an oddly familiar voice that helps guide you along your journey. But there’s more to it than simple survival: There’s also a mystery to solve. Fortunately, Creepy Jar also shared a 20-minute gameplay video revealing how you’ll go about staying alive (or not) d

It feels a bit Borderlands, a bit Bulletstorm, and even a little bit Doom. Philippa Warr: Clash mobI’m really excited to play League of Legends’ tournament mode, Clash when it launches later this month (25th May). My esports work took a bit of a back seat since joining PC Gamer magazine. It feels a little weird that the fourth Stalker game is called Stalker 2, but yeah, I’m okay with it. Austin Wood: Magic and murderAt any given moment, I either have no games to play or way too many games to pla

Omensight is a third-person action RPG that plays a bit like Clue. You’re not going to figure this out in a day, and you can’t make wild stabs in the dark, either. As I tailed her through an ongoing siege staged by the rat tribe, I quickly learned a few things about Omensight. Omensight is an action RPG, after all, so you’re going to kill, loot and level up each day. But those are small complaints, and so far Omensight is a big bag of fun.

The Prey hype machine started cranking over again today with the appearance of a number of new achievements on Steam. They’re not properly named, but they do provide a clue to what’s coming: From top to bottom, they spell out, “If you believed they put a man on the moon.” That’s a lyric from the REM song Man on the Moon, which may or may not be directly relevant to the future of Prey. More to the point, though, it’s a reference to the moon, which has previously been hinted at as the location for

Rising Storm 2: Vietnam’s free Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) update is releasing on May 29, but owners of the game can take it for an early spin this Saturday, May 19 during a brief beta testing period. Saturday’s beta run from 2 pm to 6 pm EDT (11 am to 3 pm PDT, 7 pm to 11 pm BST). If you own Rising Storm 2: Vietnam on Steam, you can join in by finding the Rising Storm 2: Vietnam CTB Beta game in your Steam library. If you don’t own Rising Storm 2, Tripwire has provided us with 20 Ste

The closed beta for The Crew 2, Ubisoft’s open-world racing game, will begin on Thursday, May 31 and run until Monday, June 4. That’s the big hook in The Crew 2: If you’re in a plane flying over water, for instance, and decide you’d rather be on the water, you can change your ride into a boat and take to the waves without the unpleasantness of crashing. It’s not exactly the most realistic approach to racing, but it should enable some interesting moments behind the wheel. The closed beta will beg

To The Moon is being made into a full-fat animated film, developer Freebird Games announced today. Freebird didn’t specify who’s working on the film, but in his announcement video, To The Moon creator Kan Gao said the “first-tier” studios involved are “pretty big players in the [Japanese] animation industry.” Gao said making games at Freebird is still his primary focus, and that he’s “started more actively working on the next game,” which is still unannounced. His most recent game, Finding Parad

Antigraviator, we said in our March preview, is “a beautiful and overwhelmingly fast sci-fi racer” in the spirit of games like F-Zero and Wipeout. A single-player campaign offers unlockable parts, ships, and skins, and multiplayer is supported via online racing and split-screen local action for up to four players. But the speed is the thing, because there’s literally no speed limit: You can go as fast as you can go. Wes got a taste of that style of racing when he got behind the wheel at GDC. “Th

Maybe it’s because for years water in games was mostly unconvincing: it didn’t sparkle or ripple or swirl or even really move. We love when games have great water—even if we don’t always love the games themselves. Below we’ve collected some of the most beautiful water in PC games. Let’s start here because Sea of Thieves definitely has the most beautiful water I’ve ever seen in a game. We’ve all driven cars into water in games because we’re terribly irresponsible, but the water in Spintires actua

We’ve been waiting for Acer to release its Predator X27 monitor for more than a year now, and it’s finally here. Or at least it will be soon—it’s listed for preorder on Newegg for $1,999.99 with a “low price guarantee” and is scheduled to release on June 1. What makes this monitor unique is that it’s the first 4K HDR display with G-Sync support. As time goes on we expect to see more 4K HDR displays with G-Sync—Asus has a similar monitor in the works as well—and eventually better pricing. It also

As of 4.2, Epic Games nerfed damage from traps from 125 to just 75. It’s a change that many find inexplicable—after all, isn’t the point of traps is that they’re deadly to careless players? Many of Fortnite Battle Royale’s players aren’t happy about the change, which has led to a wave of threads on its subreddit debating the topic. For example, PiPture suggested that traps do 125 damage but only while the owner still lives. But the most interesting suggestion I’ve seen so far is that this nerf m

The days of having a pay a premium for a case with a tempered glass side panel are now firmly in the rear view mirror. There are several affordable cases that now use tempered glass instead of acrylic, and if you can catch one on sale, even better. To that end, Thermaltake’s Core G21 mid-tower is available from Newegg for $29.99 after rebate. It’s listed on sale for the next six days for $54.99, down from its $69.99 price, which itself is pretty reasonable. There are actually two tempered glass

EVGA is putting another nail in the optical disc coffin by making the switch from driver DVDs to using USB flash drives instead. The company’s Jacob Freeman announced the change on Twitter, saying that future motherboards will ship with drivers on a pico-sized 8GB flash drive. That’s true, though driver discs and/or flash drives are still handy to have around. Instead you get the drivers on this small 8GB flash drive 🙂 pic.twitter.com/3ACXv3snFpMay 17, 2018″You need Ethernet drivers first,” Free

Pillars of Eternity 2 director Josh Sawyer has an enviable list of credits to his name, from Icewind Dale to Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and Tyranny. But after two decades in the business, Sawyer said in a blog post that he’s going to take a little time off. I’m now in my 19th year in the industry and I’ve been working on Pillars 1 & 2 for about 6 years,” he wrote. “I’m going to be on Deadfire (not the DLCs) until we’re done patching and improving it, but after that I’m taking a br

The latest preview build (17672) is relatively minor in terms of new features, though it does contain a host of bug fixes. In the meantime, Microsoft is already pushing out preview builds, and has been for several weeks now. The latest preview build contains an important fix that was causing some PCs to appear stuck at “Preparing to install…” somewhere between 80-100 percent completion of the update. “After completing the Windows mixed reality first run experience, OOBE is black. If you to rec