More on Ultima For more of Richard Cobbett’s inisght into the Ultima series, check out this feature on the Legacy of the Avatar. The first Divinity game suffered from trying to do Ultima 7 without the lessons of first making Ultima 1-6. With Divinity: Original Sin though, Larian finally pulled it off, gambling everything on a game that nearly bankrupted them . This isn’t to call out Divinity: Original Sin 2 for not following the same storytelling path. Whether Ultima 7 can ever officially be ‘be

In December 2013, Rockstar appeared confident Grand Theft Auto 5 would receive single player DLC in the new year. “As a company we love single player more than anything, and believe in it absolutely—for storytelling and a sense of immersion in a world, multiplayer games don’t rival single player games,” says Sarwar. “With GTA 5, the single player game was absolutely massive and very, very complete. “The combination of these three factors means for this game, we did not feel single player expansi

At this year’s Golden Joystick Awards presented with OMEN by HP, we’re not just celebrating the best games of the last 12 months. In the ‘Still Playing’ category of the Golden Joystick Awards, then, we’re celebrating a bunch of these games. There’s a broad range of games in there, so hopefully there’s one that’s captured your imagination over the last few years, and you think is worth further acclaim. Just head here to cast your vote, and help celebrate the game of your choice, among many others

Mass Effect: Andromeda wasn’t our favourite of the sci-fi series, and poor sales led to both Bioware Montreal being merged with EA Motive and the game’s single player support being dropped earlier this year. “It’s definitely a thing inside of EA, they are generally pushing for more open-world games,” says Heir. The reason you care about that is because microtransactions: buying card packs in the Mass Effect games, the multiplayer. And the reason is that EA and those big publishers in general onl

“Everything from unlocked framerates, field of view slider, to lots of advanced visual settings like lights, shadows, reflections, the list goes on!” And for gamers dealing with color vision deficiency, Wolfenstein 2 will offers modes for protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia. “The minimum hardware requirements are set to ensure a high-quality experience, and with Vulkan players should see solid performance on a variety of system configurations. However, if you’re aiming for 1080p with high f

As Andy outlines in the opening line of his review, Sonic Mania is the best Sonic game in decades—despite Sega’s attempts to revive and refresh the series with a number of middling 3D ventures over the years. Now, Sonic Team’s Shun Nakamura reckons the retro throwback will inspire he and his team’s future 3D incarnations. “There’s the classic game that classic Sonic fans will love and get excited for—and maybe they’ll go onto Sonic to try a modern Sonic game. From a reverse standpoint, we wanted

I replayed Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number a couple of weeks ago, and found myself really craving other angles on that kind of top-down action game. Superficially, it looks like Door Kickers, but this offers something rather different in feel. In the alpha, like in Door Kickers, you can get your buddy to scope out each room with a mirror to see who’s waiting for you. If you open fire before a goon has pointed their gun at you, your overall score for level will drastically drop. Somehow, the combin

Ahead of its November 10 launch, Football Manager 2018 has so far teased its Dynamics system, its overhauled scouting system, and its new Medical Centre, among a number of other features. Over to Sports Interactive:As detailed there, the new engine now supports DirectX 11, against previous games’ DirectX 9. On-pitch lighting and textures have been “significantly enhanced”, and there’s now more movement variation from one player to the next. “It’s not just the background tech that’s improved, the

City of Brass is the Arabian Knights-meets-Indiana Jones roguelike that proves there should be more whips in games. It arrived in Early Access last month and has now launched its first major update 0.2. Asking players to “enter the Catacombs”, City of Brass’ new update is out now and adds a new environment—the Catacombs, unsurprisingly—which replaces the previous patch’s levels 6-9. As you might expect, update 0.2 addresses a host of bug fixes and community bug fixes too—the sum of which can be

It’s not often that the setting and story of a shoot-’em-up are enough to warrant a second glance, but here we are. According to five-man developer Manufacture 43, Pawarumi is “a modern shoot-’em-up set in a retro futuristic sci-fi pre-Columbian universe,” and it’s coming to Steam Early Access this Monday, October 23. That’s the world Pawarumi imagines, one where Mayan-esque people went on to build towering cities powered by light and gravity. Manufacture 43 expects Pawarumi to remain in Early A

(Just kidding, the effort some of you will go to dodge responsibility and play games at work is inspiring). Save and quitIf you’re going to play games at work, I think the best advice would be to not keep that game running in the background all day. Maybe ten years ago I got obsessed with World of Warcraft and started playing it in between customer calls. Getting caughtIt’s an embarrassing experience getting caught by your boss while you’re slacking off. Then I started playing myself in matches

Multiplayer horror game Hide and Shriek takes this idea a little more literally: it’s PvP horror where your goal is to out-scare your opponent in a 10-minute match. It’s like somebody played Screencheat and thought, “you know, this could just more jump scares,” and it’s now free to try. “Hide and Shriek is a one vs. one multiplayer game where players collect points and scare the other player using spells, traps and jump scares,” developer and publisher Funcom said in a press release. Developer a

It’s coming to Steam next month courtesy of developer KO_OP and publisher Double Fine. Gnog does not yet have a price point on Steam, but judging from its earlier PlayStation 4 release, it will cost $14.99. “Inspired by real-world toy designs, every Gnog head is a miniature world to discover,” its Steam page reads. The ‘Purp-L’ level, for instance, is based on a monster whose head “doubles as a synth” which you can use to remix the level’s music. While Gnog supports VR play, its creators say it’

Anyone caught outside of that area is said to be in the blue zone, and gradually takes damage over time. The change will first arrive in the test servers early next week, the team said in a Steam post. “From this new update, you will be able to focus more on the immediate, close-ranged skirmishes inside the play zone, instead of dealing with enemies outside of the play zone during the mid to late phases of the game. In other news, new vaulting and climbing mechanics—which Christopher tried out l

Turning your computer off when you’re not completing tasks also means that your computer can’t complete its own important tasks. If you leave your computer running you can schedule these to run overnight or anytime that’s convenient for you. While there are lots of compelling reasons to keep your computer running, there are some scenarios where it’s definitely best to shut it down. If you are running custom water cooling I would also recommend not leaving your machine running. Whether or not you

If you’re looking for an inexpensive power supply without a ton of wattage, it doesn’t get any cheaper than EVGA’s 450W, which is on sale at Newegg for $12 after a $10 mail-in-rebate. Shipping is an extra $4, unless you’re a Newegg Premier member, then it’s free. One thing worth noting, however, is that the 450W wattage figure is based on continuous power rather than unsustainable peak power output. If you’re not sure what size PSU you need, there are several online PSU calculators that will giv

The coughing citizens of your Cities: Skylines metropolis can breath again—the game’s eco-friendly expansion is out now. Green Cities, which is £9.99/$12.99 on Steam and Humble Store, adds more that 350 assets to the game, from Geothermal Power Plants to Yoga Gardens and Bee Havens. Players that don’t want to pay to battle pollution get some free options courtesy of an update released at the same time as the DLC. The 1.9.0 patch adds electric cars, reworks noise pollution, introduces three new t

You’re probably aware that the sequel to Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide, the beautifully chaotic co-op FPS, was unveiled this week, and is out next year. But you might not be aware that the brilliant original is free-to-play until Wednesday. In many ways it’s like Left 4 Dead with a Warhammer skin, but that’s no bad thing. The emphasis is on melee combat, and crushing Skaven skulls with a warhammer feels as good as it should. As Ian said in his review, it’s one of the best co-op games since L

You wait four years for a Sword Art Online game on PC and then two come along at once. Fresh off the news that Bandai Namco is bringing the next game based on the Japanese light novel series to PC, the publisher has announced that the formerly PlayStation exclusive Sword Art Online: Hollow Realization is slashing onto Steam as early as next week. I’ve never played one of the Sword Art Online games but I know they’ve attracted quite a following. The light novel series they’re based on started in

One of my fondest memories together is the day we took a trip to the mall and he decided, on a whim, to spring for a HOTAS joystick and a copy of Joint Strike Fighter. I was seven years old, and it is one of my earliest memories of playing PC games. Joint Strike Fighter, for its time, was a hopelessly complex flight simulator. But I want to know what your favorite memories are of playing PC games with your family—whether it’s with your parents or a sibling—hell, even your cousins that only visit