After dabbling with futuristic colonies for two games, Anno is once again visiting the past, specifically the Victorian era, with Anno 1800. Expect big ships, industrialisation and world-spanning trade empires. Not a lot of details accompany Ubisoft and Blue Byte’s announcement, but it’s an Anno game, so there’s no doubt that we’ll see detailed economic and trade systems, along with a dash warfare to spice things up. Blue Byte promise a story-based campaign to go along with a customisable sandbo

Age of Empires IV has been announced at Gamescom 2017 and veteran RTS developer Relic Entertainment is making it. I’ll probably have to download Age of Empires IV from the dreaded Windows Store, but I’ll do it for this series. Their games are quite technical with a focus on positioning and tactics, tenets that I wouldn’t associate with Age of Empires. Perhaps there’s scope to expand Age of Empires IV into the information age with expansions. Tom: The scenario editors did a good job of tapping in

By now, I’ve played about three hours of Assassin’s Creed: Origins, and its shape has come into sharp relief. Assassin’s Creed has always done this, but seeing Rome and Egypt on stage is particularly exciting. The map is bigger than you thinkSo, I’m not allowed to show the final map size, but I can say it’s going to make every other Assassin’s Creed look puny by comparison. With the same dull melodrama as every Assassin’s Creed or with some newfound levity and breadth? It’s some of the most elab

More Biomutant details have crept out of Gamescom, with new footage showing off the diverse, post-apocalyptic open-world. It looks like Biomutant will contain plenty of vehicles, from huge mechs to hang gliders, but they’ve got nothing on the hand. It comically runs on its fingers like Thing from The Addams Family, and in combat it uses a finger-gun attack. Crafting, puzzles and giant monsters are also teased, along with genetic mutations. A Steam page for Biomutant also appeared yesterday eveni

GTA Online gets another new car today: the pleasingly late ’70s-looking Ocelot Ardent, which comes equipped with two front-mounted machine guns. If you’re looking for double experience and money this week, the Bunker Series playlist or any Bunker-based adversary mode offer twice as much GTA bucks and Rockstar Points for your time this week. Also paying double this week are Vehicle Cargo Sell Missions, if you’ve got a vehicle warehouse. I’m more interested in spending my spare $750,000 on an exec

“Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a violent Tolkien fan-fiction generator,” said our James of Warner Bros and Monolith’s Lord of the Rings-inspired Mordor follow-up, after going hands-on at E3 . “My biggest concern going into Middle-Earth: Shadow of War was stealth play getting sidelined for the large-scale combat of the fortress assault missions and a renewed focus on managing uruk forces,” said James. Classic Shadow of Mordor stuff.” This perfect outlines Shadow of War’s scope for nuance and its

With even more big PC announcements at Gamescom 2017, the next few years are looking really exciting for PC gaming. As we move closer to 2018 and the return of the PC Gamer Weekender and the PC Gaming Show at E3, why not celebrate with a stylish T-shirt declaring your love for all things PC Gamer? If you attended the PC Gamer Weekender in London this year you may have already seen these T-shirts in the wild—here’s your chance to have one of your very own! They come in black unisex design and are

Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is launching on PC early next year, but what about the first game? Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch was released on PS3 in North America and Europe in 2013, with Studio Ghibli and Level 5 combining forces to create one of the console’s most striking JRPGs. When we asked Akihiro Hino about our chances of seeing a PC port, he laughed. Hino also told us about the PC version of Ni No Kuni 2. Ni No Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom is due out in January 2018.

Attack on Titan, the bonkers anime about killing naked giants, is getting another game adaptation next year in the form of Attack on Titan 2. Koei made the announcement today, releasing a teaser trailer that, lamentably, only shows snippets of cutscenes. Koei’s keeping quiet in regards to specific details, but expect to jump around using fancy grappling gear, known as Omni-Directional Maneuver Gear, while stabbing lots of gargantuan monsters. Here’s the first game in action, to give you an idea

Kills rarely come easily in Battlegrounds, or at least when they do, it’s usually because you’ve gotten lucky. So when you do end up mowing an enemy down it can feel a lot more meaningful than in virtually any other shooter. Perhaps knowing this, Nvidia has introduced functionality to ShadowPlay which will automatically capture every kill you pull off in the battle royale phenomenon. Announced at Gamescom, the Highlights functionality will not only automatically save kill clips, but also knockou

Today, I found a second hex planet (which I decided to make my homeworld), and shortly after, I stumbled on something else: a planet littered with weird metallic orbs. There are no alien creatures on this weird planet, just like the hex planet. I explored the planet a bit, hoping to find interactive terminals similar to the ones present on both the hex planets I’ve visited. As it turns out, they’re not similar, they’re exactly the same. Same shape and same messages as the hex planet, as far as I

DICE revealed a brand new game mode for Battlefield 1 at Gamescom, in the form of the 5v5 Incursions. As the player count suggests, these will be tighter, more focused combat affairs, and while the maps won’t be sprawling there will – rest assured – be vehicles. The mode will go into closed alpha next month, and you can register your interest to partake over here. According to the notes on that page, the mode will reward close attention to load outs, which you’ll be able to tinker with at the be

Ah, Shenmue 3 – the game that was announced two years ago but which we still haven’t seen yet. Above is a very short teaser trailer, which shows what appears to be in-engine footage of Ryo and Shenhua being very wistful. The Kickstarter-funded instalment is at Gamescom right now, but it’s a behind-closed-doors scenario and, most likely, this video is the most we’ll see for a little while yet. “The first teaser of Shenmue III is built from a small slice of an in-development build of the game, and

If there’s one thing you can rely on a Far Cry game delivering, it’s shooting. Or at least, that was the case until Far Cry: Primal, which had no guns in it. Far Cry 5 will commit no such crime, delivering shooting, bombing, ramming and even fishing in spades, judging by this extended gameplay video. The Far Cry gameplay template of exploring and shooting is very much intact here, and it’ll be interesting to see whether this condensed Montana will feel dramatically different to previous Far Cry

Nvidia confirmed last week that the PC version of Destiny 2 will support 4K resolutions, uncapped framerates, 21:9 monitors, and “a full suite of adjustable graphics settings.” Today at Gamescom, it announced that the game will also support SLI and HDR displays, and that HDR support will actually be live for the upcoming PC beta test. “In the context of Destiny 2’s sci-fi setting, you’ll experience a dazzling display of color, brightness and contrast that was previously impossible to render, fur

Microsoft announced a little earlier today that Age of Empires 4 is in development, but that’s not the only big news on the AoE front. It also revealed that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, with 4K graphics, a remastered soundtrack, and improved gameplay, will be released on October 19. Exciting news from #gamescom2017: @AgeOfEmpires: Definitive Edition [T] will be released on Oct. 19. Just like we created the Age of Empires: Definitive Edition to honor fans of the series and PC gamers everyw

Final Fantasy 15 on PC looks good. Final Fantasy 15 on PC looks great. Like many western players, I was first captured by 1997’s Final Fantasy 7, and thereafter tackled its forerunners in retrospect. Final Fantasy 15 already feels well at home on PC. That last part is crucial, so much so that Final Fantasy 15’s Windows Edition will live or die by its performance on lower spec hardware.

Microsoft revealed the system requirements for the PC version of Forza Motorsport 7 back in January, and the required hardware at the low end of the scale was actually pretty reasonable. “Forza Motorsport 7 was designed to run smoothly across a wide range of Windows 10 PCs and performance settings. Even gamers with a Surface Book 4 or other budget-friendly gaming PC can play the game.” I’m not clear on how exactly the minimum requirement has been lowered, since the “low” spec is identical to wha

The isometric cyberpunk shooter Ruiner turns players loose amidst the “cyber metropolis” of Rengkok, where a corporation named HEAVEN is up to no good. The rapid-fire reflexes that come with being a “wired psychopath” are obviously very handy, too. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds cool. Speaking of which, the trailer also showcases a bit of the “exceptional soundtrack” featuring “the intense beats of Khoven, DJ Alina, and famed anime composer Susumu Hirasawa.” More informatio

Corsair proves otherwise with its Katar, an optical gaming mouse with an 8,000 dpi sensor. This is not a feature-rich mouse by any means, though it does cover the basics, including four programmable buttons and on-the-fly dpi switching. It also comes with a “pro player mode” with pre-configured settings that are supposedly customized by the “world’s top players.” You can find the Katar on sale at Amazon and Newegg. Also be sure to check our picks for the best wired and wireless mice.