The Elder Scrolls Online’s reimagining of Morrowind is due on June 6, however existing players will have the chance to step into its reworked world more than two weeks in advance. Existing players who purchase the digital upgrade version of TESO’s Morrowind, or those who opt for the Physical Collector’s Edition between now and launch serve to get in first from Monday, May 22 onward—a full 15 days ahead of time. “The ‘Early Access’ period will allow for final gameplay tuning and polishing before

WHY I LOVE In Why I Love, PC Gamer writers pick an aspect of PC gaming that they love and write about why it’s brilliant. Age of Empires II’s map editor was the king of time wasters for anyone with just a few games in their collection. This is no doubt helped by the fact that Age of Empires II is still receiving expansions from the team at Forgotten Empires almost two decades later, with the most recent being Rise of the Rajas in December. As well as adding new campaigns, units and factions, the

It was fast, you were better off not hiding behind cover, and best of all, it had a cool slide-boost mechanic. PS3 and Xbox 360 owners warmed to the game upon release, but now it’s finally hitting Steam. It’ll hit Steam on May 25 to be precise, but it’s available to pre-order right now. More tempting than that (and let’s face it, a lot would be more tempting than that) is that anyone who purchased Bayonetta last month will get a 25 percent discount if they pre-order Vanquish. Bayonetta was a suc

We’ve seen some weird, whacky and wonderful mods grace Fallout 4’s Commonwealth since its late 2015 launch, however it seems there’s always room for more. After launching his Trash Collection mod last week, GenghisKhanX is back with another designed to further spruce up toxic Boston. Named The Beautifier, this mod lets players restore some greenery to the ever-ailing wasteland with one crucial catch: you do so with a shotgun. As GenghisKhanX notes in the mod’s description, The Beautifier can be

After a few years in Early Access, Starbound launched in full last year. Chris liked it, and it’s since introduced some pretty wholesome updates—the latest of which will let players craft and customise their own space stations. “This is something we’ve wanted for a really long time and it has finally found its place in the upcoming update,” Chucklefish adds, in reference to the incoming but as yet dateless update 1.3. When that arrives it’ll also come packing a new mech assembly feature which, a

From a delicious bowl of venison stew to a raw potato floating in a toilet, these are some of the tastiest and most revolting foods in the history of PC gaming. The nicestVenison stew (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)Skyrim’s full of hearty, warming food to fend off the frigid winter. Pork bun (Sleeping Dogs)“Why don’t you have a pork bun in your hand right now?” asks Sleeping Dogs’ pork bun vendor. Monster meat (Don’t Starve)A food for the desperate. Most monsters you kill in Don’t Starve drop meat

League of Legends is constantly the source of controversy, discourse, and debate. How I learned to stop worrying and love League of LegendsI got into League of Legends at a friend’s recommendation. The most dangerous gameUltimately, the reason I’m still in love with League of Legends is the game itself. One of the biggest questions about League of Legends is the game’s lifespan. I may complain about the game professionally, but I love League of Legends.

In his review of its Utopia DLC, T.J. Hafer describes the Stellaris base game’s undoing as “[not] space itself, but its relatively challenge-light mid-game.” I couldn’t agree more, and its subsequent expansions, not least Utopia, have served to bolster that intermediate lull. Furthering this quest for improvement, and in celebration of its first birthday, Paradox has unveiled the Stellaris Digital Anniversary Edition—which includes Stellaris, its Uptopia DLC, Plantoids Species Pack and Leviathan

In case you were wondering, Blizzard hasn’t given up on allowing players to save and export match highlights in Overwatch. As he’s wont to do, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan chimed in. “This is the current focus of the feature team (one of the smaller development strike teams on the Overwatch team),” he wrote. “The team is working extremely hard on this and has been for months. 2017 is likely to be an even bigger year for Overwatch than last year.

Forza Horizon 3’s final expansion took me completely by surprise. Hot Wheels expands on Horizon 3’s best remaining qualities, encouraging you to go fast in fantastic supercars and supercharged Surge-branded vans, and to mess with your friends with reckless, heartless, thirsty abandon. You can represent your favorite brands (Doritos and Mountain Dew) within a brand (Hot Wheels) within another brand (Forza). The Hot Wheels expansion doesn’t work well with the best vehicle, tragically. Thanks, Hot

BioWare’s new, announced project, which general manager Aaryn Flynn described in January as “a unique IP that will bring players together in exciting new ways,” had been expected to be ready for release during EA’s current fiscal year, which ends in March 2018. “We’re very pleased with the progress of our new action IP from BioWare. Gameplay mechanics are excellent, and the action will be exhilarating,” Wilson said. “The game is built around a live service, and through our creative process, we d

Blizzard said in November 2016 that it planned to launch an Overwatch League this year, with the aim of building it into the “world’s premier esports league.” Today it took a big step toward making that happen with the announcement of a new, dedicated division “that will handle management, operation, sales, and distribution for Overwatch esports programs, including the Overwatch League and Overwatch World Cup.” “It will also operate the MLG-branded media network, which will broadcast both Blizza

Much to my pleasant surprise, I found that the Wild meta felt substantially different from both the current Standard ladder and the past iterations of it as well. Wild boysI’d love to see support for Wild expanded to include the ability to earn HCT points. This makes playing Wild feel like you’re playing a different game from the pros, so whatever Blizzard can do to encourage high profile players to take part is helpful. If you can play this deck in Standard, there’s very little you need to add

I’ll be honest—I’ve lost track of exactly what’s happening with Need for Speed these days. The most recent entry in the series, a “reboot” called simply Need for Speed, arrived on Origin in March 2016 to something less than critical acclaim. Rest assured that we’re committed to customization having a home within the Need for Speed series. “So, when release day rolls around for the next Need for Speed, you will be able to play through a single player experience completely offline. The previous Ne

Underscoring that point is a sale on AMD’s FX-6300 Vishera chip. While normally priced at around $70 to $80, it is on sale today for $58 at Amazon. The FX-6300 comes with a heatsink/fan combination, though you might want to go with a third-party cooling solution if you plan to overclock. Either way, this Black Edition processor offers up an unlocked multiplier to play with. You can grab this processor on sale here.

Oblivion’s Dark Brotherhood questline gives you access to poisoned apples, and using them requires reverse-pickpocketing the tainted fruit into someone’s inventory. I’m going to accept that premise, though, and see if I can use Oblivion’s poisoned apples to murder an entire tavern full of people. First, I add 100 poisoned apples to my inventory using a cheat, then head to Imperial City’s market district, where there’s a tavern called The Feed Bag. That statement feels too apt to ignore for an ev

One way to go is with Gigabyte’s Aorus GA-Z270X-Gaming 5, a relatively high-end option that is currently on sale at Newegg. There is also a $20 mail-in-rebate available, bringing to the total down to $145. It also has three PCI-Express x16 slots, three PCI-Express x1 slots, six SATA 6Gbps ports, three SATA Express connectors, two M.2 connectors, and a single U.2 connector. It has a built-in headphone amp, high-end audio capacitors, and offers a 120dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for HD audio play

The new Humble Tinybuild Bundle offers up to a dozen different games from—you guessed it—publisher Tinybuild, ranging from an educationally-inclined “math puzzler” to a train ride across post-apocalypse Russia and a game about murdering your neighbors because they just won’t keep it down. At the “pay what you want” level, you’ll take home Divide By Sheep, Road to Ballhalla, No Time to Explain Remastered, and SpeedRunners. And for $40 or more, you’ll get Hello Neighbor, “a stealth-horror game abo

Our pick for best overall VPN for PC Gaming is VyprVPN. The Premium offers a cloud VPN server, and something called Chameleon Protocol, which is designed to get around VPN blockers. The free version of the VPN only offers 500MB monthly data, but upgrading to the paid version improves things. TunnelBear currently costs $4.99 monthly, which is a moderate price for decent download speeds, upload speeds, and a nice low ping. If you’re looking for more options, particularly on the gaming side of thin

Out of the 170 ST400DX000 models deployed, there were 15 failures, giving it a 35.88 percent annualized failure rate. That is by far the worst of any single HDD model in Backblaze’s stable. Out of the 34,540 models deployed, 267 failed, giving it an annualized failure rate of 3.27 percent, and a lifetime failure rate of 3 percent. It currently uses three different 8TB models, each with a failure rate of less than 2 percent. The HGST 8 TB drives were the first true enterprise drives we used as da