I presumed that reading 20 books in Patrick O’Brian’s AubreyMaturin series might give me an innate understanding of sailing. I understand that sailing into the wind requires me to tack, and some of the terminology sounds familiar—backstays, jibs, the sea, etc. By the time I get to the tutorial about different lines, I’m lost at sea. Most ships in games control like bumper cars, sliding in whichever direction you press, but Sailaway is honest. It’s the process of zigzagging into the wind so you c

GOG has sales on all the time, but this week the deals are a little sweeter. If you spend $5, $10, or $15 in the new Weekly Sale, you will get one, two, or three games completely free. So, the more you spend, the more games you’ll get. You’ve got a whole seven days to browse the sale of over 60 games and get what you want. The free ones will be distributed after the end of the sale on September 19, and remember that you’re only eligible if you’ve spent money on games in the Weekly Sale.

Having launched a Patreon earlier this year, esteemed Grand Theft Auto modder JulioNIB has since set about reworking some of their earlier work. In July, this saw the creator launch the GTA 5 Iron Man script mod Version 2.0—an improved variation of the original that added new animations, new effects, new sounds and, in turn, new ways to tear up Los Santos. The Flash Version 2.0 follows suit. The last one is particularly devastating and stars around the minute mark here:Again, JulioNIB’s The Flas

According to Steam Charts, GTA V just had its third highest peak player count since its launch window in August 2017. The numbers show that interest in GTA Online is steadily going up with time, and yet on Steam, GTA V’s reviews sit at ‘mixed’, with 64% of overall reviews being positive (most recently, 68% are positive). So I’m curious about what you would change in GTA Online, if you play the game with any regularity. I’ve created a survey (which you can access here) where I ask a few simple qu

According to our ‘Batman: Arkham games ranked from worst to best’ list, the running order of Warner Bros’ caped crusading games on merit reads as follows: City, Asylum, Knight, Origins. According to Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman himself, this list will remain forever unchanged because the publisher is done with the series. Story-wise, Arkham Knight definitively concluded all that had come before it, however Arkham Origins—developed by WB Games Montreal and not Rocksteady—provided a side vent

River City Melee: Battle Royal Special is the latest Kunio-Kun series entry which arrived on PlayStation 4 consoles earlier this year. It’s now coming to PC, due this week, on September 14. “This is the most recent installment of the Kunio-Kun franchise, recreated as a fun and easy fighting game with the fighting aspects taken and upgraded from River City Super Sports Challenge: All Star Special,” so reads its Steam blurb. River City Melee: Battle Royal Special lands on Steam this Thursday, Sept

YouTuber PewDiePie – who lost lucrative partnerships with Disney and YouTube earlier this year due to an anti-Semitic video – has used a racial slur during a new livestream. The wealthy (and regrettably influential) personality uttered the slur during a livestream of PUBG, and while it has attracted condemnation online, Campo Santo co-founder Sean Vanaman has indicated he will take further action. We’re filing a DMCA takedown of PewDiePie’s Firewatch content and any future Campo Santo games.Sept

Wayward attracted a fair amount of attention back in 2013 while it was still in very early stages of development. Tom played the top-down survival game and said it had “echoes of Ultima Online, Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft”. It’s now in Early Access and developer Unlok has announced that it will add multiplayer in the next update, which should increase its longevity. “Players will be able to join Wayward multiplayer games through their friend’s Steam profile, their Steam friends list, or through

With 200 thousand copies on their way to store shelves, a localizer working for Bungie discovered a glitch that, upon uninstalling the game, could erase a player’s entire hard drive. Sometimes they’re as simple as an object clipping through a wall, or enemy AI behaving as it should. We want to hear your stories of bugs so bad they’d make any programmer cower in fear. They don’t have to be game-ending—if you have a funny story about a glitch we want to hear it—but they should be confounding. Drop

If you have installed the Creators update for Windows 10, you may have noticed your free space has dropped significantly. With major upgrades, including between Windows versions, your previous windows installation is saved in a folder called “windows.old”. The option to remove Windows update logs and update data as well as the option to remove previous windows installations (windows.old) will appear. The Windows page file uses hard disk space as virtual memory when you are running low RAM; that

I have never seen a more tragic comments section than the one from a few weeks back when we asked our readers to share their most tragic save file disasters . Lost in spaceNot all of these stories have to do with losing a save file entirely. Sometimes those mistakes can hurt us, but I’m not sure if I’d ever end a relationship over a lost game save. I would regularly save my games but in this instance, my last save was a couple of levels before the incident. Tower of TrialsSpeaking of hard drive

Blizzard has pulled a swift u-turn on last month’s changes to Hearthstone’s Arena mode after negative feedback from fans. In the mode, players pick between one of three random cards, repeating the process until they have a full 30-card deck. The idea was that these cards would provide a good base for a cohesive deck because they would help direct your future picks. Well, Blizzard has been listening, and the system will be dropped in a future patch. “The first two picks will be the same as all th

Team Alpha, makers of the popular Alphabirth mod packs for The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ DLC, is halting its work on the game because of a “broken” mod API and the failure of developer Nicalis to work with the modding community. Though the “half-finished” DLC was patched up post-launch, the mod API received little support, the team said in a blog post. Things like basic grid entity control, enemy projectile generation, item pools, trinkets, curses and any meaningful documentation were absolu

Archaica: The Path of Light first piqued my interest about a year ago with a trailer showing off some pretty environments and puzzles filled with lasers and mirrors. It’s just slid onto Steam, and if you’re looking for something to scratch your head to it could be worth checking out. The objective is simple: you have to rotate and move devices, including mirrors, to direct laser beams and light up all the crystals in a given level. The transitions between puzzles look slick too, with ancient sto

There are a lot of promising things going on in MTG Arena, though my first impressions are laced with a few concerns, as well. As something of a Magic purist, the tapped cards being tilted ever-so-slightly (as opposed to the traditional 90 degrees) is… well, tilting, frankly. To say there’s a lot happening on the battlefield in MTG Arena might be an understatement. While sound effects in digital card games can and have been done wonderfully, these also felt overdone. That being said, it’s wort

Elder Scrolls Online developer ZeniMax Online Studios has revealed the full contents of its next DLC package, Clockwork City, and unveiled a new King of the Hill PvP mode that will come to the game for free later this year. In Crazy King, a new Battlegrounds mode, players will have to hold and capture a point that moves randomly around the map. On the Clockwork City DLC, first announced in June, ZeniMax said it will feature a Daedric conspiracy-laden standalone story that’s roughly the size of t

I’m playing Destiny 2 all weekend. It’s not out on PC until October 24, so do a little detective work and you’ll come to the conclusion that I, an editor on PC Gamer, am playing a console game. If I’m going to lose all the time, I’ll at least lean into it. Now, the real question: what are you playing this weekend? Whatever it is you’re playing, let us know in the comments.

Around 1,300 games have popped up since June’s launch of Steam Direct, the replacement for Steam Greenlight that lets developers publish on Steam without passing through an approval process. If that pace carries on then the number of games released this year could top 5,000 for the first time. That would mean there were more games released this year on Steam than in the eight years between 2006 and 2014. Updated the number of Steam games released per year chart. Over 1,300 new games since Steam

This week: which classic PC game is on your pile of shame? Andy Kelly: System Shock 2I know this is an important game. Looking to rectify things, I acquired the Steam version of the game in 2009, probably as part of some game bundle. I’ve only dabbled, getting a taste for the game and fiddling with it to run well on a modern PC. I know I’ll love it… someday.

This patch just contains the vital stuff: server and matchmaking fixes, and cross-region play. Improved overall stabilityI logged in to the server just now with no delay and played two lag-free matches. We’ll see this weekend if this update gives Absolver a push, and if the servers can handle the push this time. Update: I just played a few more rounds, and lost my connection to the server part way through one just now. So clearly the waters are still a little choppy, though the matches I played