As interest in VR continues to grow, it was only a matter of time before the topic of in-game advertising came up. HTC is tackling it head-on in way, so to speak, with a unique twist—the company’s new “VR Ad Service” knows when you’re looking at ads. HTC notes that by opting in, “all of your free apps would be automatically put on the list which can be used to integrate VR Ads.” News of in-game ads coming to VR isn’t exactly the sort of thing that will excite gamers. The in-game advertising prog

Well, we tried to hint as hard as we could, and now it’s been confirmed: Destiny 2 will be on PC. The not-so-secret was revealed on the Destiny website today, where the preorder option lists multiple editions and the PC as a selectable platform. That news coincided with the worldwide reveal trailer, which sets up Destiny 2’s story—which seems to be shooting for an Empire Strikes Back sort of theme. Destiny 2 seems set to deliver the same weird blend of gravitas and banter that was introduced wit

I caught up with some professional Overwatch players to see what their thoughts were on Orisa so you can take your game to the next level. Former Minecraft player Danteh , now with Denial Esports , had this to say: “if you play Orisa, you gotta tank her. You just ball up with Orisa and tank each other.” PsychoWaffle from You Guys Get Paid? Ben “ Captain Planet ” Trautman, Content Manger for Overbuff , suggests that players take a look at Carbon Series’ Grand Final between Immortals and LG Evil t

Welcome back to The PC Gamer Show , our weekly livestreamed podcast. This week we’ll be talking about PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, the now confirmed StarCraft 2 Remaster, and lots more—including our usual Twitch chat Q&A! This week’s topics:StarCraft Remastered was confirmed, Destiny 2 announced, and more news…We talk about what we’ve been playing recently. Evan and Chris talk about the highs and lows of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Listen:Download the MP3 directlySubscribe on iTunesGrab t

It could have been the best multiplayer mode ever created, but the offering was too bizarre for Bioshock fans. Ubisoft never quite nailed the idea of a hide-and-seek Assassin’s Creed multiplayer mode, and Dragon Age: Inquisition’s co-op mode was entirely forgettable. Mass Effect gets it right, first by coming up with a thematically appropriate reason to shoot lots of enemies with friends. Mass Effect 3 in particular did a great job of letting you inhabit characters that receive brief mentions in

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. Today, Joe enjoys the view from Dark Souls 3’s southernmost point. Last night I started Dark Souls 3’s second and final offering of DLC and welcomed the lead butterflies back with open arms. Setting in the Dark Souls series has been discussed almost as much as its brutally-unforgiving difficulty, its huge variety of equipment loadouts, and its fascinating open-ended lore. Thi

Battlegrounds developer Bluehole posted an in-depth explanation of how gunshot sounds work in their battle royale shooter, and it’s worth a listen (technically, a read) for anyone playing. If you hear a ‘whizz’ sound that means a bullet has flown past you. You may also hear a crack sound, which is the “bullet bow shockwave.” The close gunshot sounds louder and more clear than the distant one. In the current public build, all bullets generate a sound crack effect.

In yesterday’s ‘Weapons and Powers’ trailer, Prey showed us how we’ll mix-and-match conventional weapons with special abilities as we go up against its hostile Typhon aliens. Today’s ‘Playing with Powers’ short explores these unique traits in greater detail, while outlining their pros and cons along the way. Here’s Arkane’s rundown of the powers and their effects in practice:Arkane notes that the environment will react differently to Yu depending on the traits he/she takes on. An overreliance on

“We weren’t a great free-to-play game before,” Heroes of the Storm production director Kaeo Milker told me. Otherwise, you can craft items with another new currency called Shards, which you get from loot chests and duplicate items. Hero-specific Emojis that can be used anywhere you can type in the game, including mid-match. that can be used anywhere you can type in the game, including mid-match. These join currently available items in loot chests like portraits, skins, mounts, and even heroes th

There are bad games and then there is Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties, quite possibly the worst game ever made. Centered around John, a sexy mid-twenties plumber, Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties is a unimaginably terrible adult visual novel from the ’90s. “I noticed in the Lost Media wiki that there was an article showing PC Gamer UK had a review of the PC version,” psychoticgiraffe tells me. Somehow, amazingly, Ball State University’s library had never thrown away Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties’ PC version. But re

See Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild running at 4K in Cemu emulatorIt’s a bit hinky and usually sits at 15 frames per second, but it’s running, and it looks great.

To get all that stuff, you’ll pay roughly double, too: $50/£40 total for all four expansions, through BF1’s Premium Pass . The first expansion, They Shall Not Pass, is a chance for DICE to make a good first impression about the season pass as a whole. After a full day playing it, I feel good about the direction Battlefield 1 is headed post-release. Here’s what I think of the individual pieces:The gunsOne of my longstanding criticisms of Battlefield is that its guns have, until Battlefield 1, lac

Mass Effect: Andromeda is nearly a week away, and with it comes the return of Loyalty missions. The gameplay demo showcases squadmate Liam Kosta’s Loyalty mission. These types of missions weren’t present in Mass Effect 3, but they were a critical part of the second game. That even includes us at PC Gamer, to the point where we even ranked the best Mass Effect companions, from worst to best. Mass Effect: Andromeda releases for PC on March 21.

I’ve been fairly ambivalent about Sonic Mania until now—a couple of decades’ worth of bad Sonic games will do that to you—but the latest trailer really tugged at my nostalgia, illustrating how a classic Sonic ‘zone’ has been reworked and expanded upon for this unusual official/unofficial Sonic mashup. However, once the SEGA employee demonstrating the game reaches the second act of Green Hill Zone, the changes became more clear. Sonic Mania will run at 60fps—the narrator says the Mega Drive origi

It seems Cities: Skylines has done rather well for Colossal Order, and for publisher Paradox, shifting over 3.5 million copies to date. It’s also the second anniversary of the enormo-city builder’s release, so in celebration the developer is putting out some free DLC, which will be “available soon”. We can finally recreate the alternate universe from Fringe! Oh, but only if the next expansion contains that weird amber stuff that was being used to close dimensional breaches. Here, have a read of

Since then, Overwatch has sort of become the de facto leader of the character-based shooter movement, but when we met up with Bleszinski at PAX East 2017, he told us that he isn’t trying to make an Overwatch killer. “If you do all of the stuff that’s in every other game, you’re just going to be a bad clone.” So I think that layer of depth is really, really needed. But I also think also, the fact that we really are really a shooter game for [shooter fans]. Do you think every new shooter has to tr

Friday the 13th developer Gun Media has released a new trailer for its multiplayer murder simulator, and surprise! Jason doesn’t hide the fact that he’s a big bully, giving those sinful camp kids swirlies and killing them in gruesome fashion. This new trailer is also the first time we get to see legendary makeup artist Tom Savini’s new Jason model. It’s the new Jason model created since 2009’s Friday the 13th, and it’s based on Jason Goes to Hell (via Bloody Disgusting). Friday the 13th: The Gam

One game that seems destined to be lost in the extraordinary March rush is Styx: Shards of Darkness, Cyanide’s sequel to its goblin-based fantasy stealth game that’s releasing on March 14—so next Tuesday. The first game garnered fairly solid reviews, and sequel Shards of Darkness seems to offer more wacky, light-hearted, third-person-stealthy shenanigans, but this time with added two-player co-op. Of course, it’s not a proper game release without an accompanying ‘hey, this is out soon’ trailer,

There’s not a hint of daunt on display in the latest trailer for co-op action RPG Dauntless, and yes, ‘co-op action RPG’ is a fancy way of saying ‘Monster Hunter-style game’. The major difference between this and yer actual Monster Hunter is that, hooray, it’ll be on PC (and no, the Monster Hunter MMO didn’t count). There’s an open beta for Phoenix Labs’ free-to-play action RPG coming late this year, and you can sign up in readiness over on the official site. Unusually, the system requirements h

Update (March 10): We’ve received a little clarification on the question of exactly how well Mass Effect: Andromeda will perform on a 3GB GTX 1060. At PAX East today, we asked producer Michael Gamble if the card would really deliver 30 fps at best on high. The recommended, at least on my machine at home, I have a 1060, I run at higher than 30 [fps] for the majority of the game. We have a GTX 1060 in the office, so as soon as we can we’ll test Andromeda with it and report back on how it performs.