THE HIGHS
Samuel Roberts: Crazy season
Take your pick: Assassin's Creed: Origins, Wolfenstein 2 or Destiny 2. These are all games released on PC in a single week, which is crazy. It's the biggest few days for new releases all year, and the choice is pretty great. We've all only got so much money to spend on games, so which is it going to be for you?
I reviewed Wolfenstein 2 this week, and I really enjoyed it. Arguably it's not as fresh as The New Order was back in 2014, but it feels a little more ambitious in storytelling, and some of the levels are fantastic. You can't really lose with that one.
Tom Senior: Fighting fantasy
As a fan of absolute nonsense I was very pleased to see that Injustice 2 will be coming to PC this season. The first game perfected the art of the schlock singleplayer beat ‘em up campaign with a story that put you in control of everyone on the roster. The mad plot backflips required to make that format work only added to the game's charm, and even though it looked strangely washed out on PC, it was a well-produced take on DC’s superhero roster.
A fighter is a good place to showcase superpowers at their most ludicrous. Joker vs. Superman in a fist fight shouldn’t be a contest, but the clown’s ability to produce cheap shots from bottomless pockets somehow sells it. In the trailer there’s even a bit where Flash slams his foe into a T-Rex. I have high hopes.
Joe Donnelly: Wave reviews
I spent most of last week on a cruise ship in Norway for the sake of videogames. Splash Jam is a 48-hour game jam that takes place on a boat and travels 700-odd miles between Tromso and Trondheim. During that time I played some cool games, met some cool people, and enjoyed some R&R in the on-deck jacuzzi, all the while gawping at the northern lights above. It's a hard life etc.
Expect some words (and photos) on my travels in the coming weeks on PCGamer.com and in the next issue of the magazine.
Tim Clark: Frame job
I can’t go back. Now that I’ve played Destiny 2 at framerates of 100+ on PC, the thought of touching my PS4 characters seems ridiculous, even though they’re all at max level. I don’t say this lightly. Those of you who for some reason know my background (hi dad), will be aware I spent a good chunk of career on a PlayStation mag, so I’ve never been much one for format wars. But the night and day difference between how Destiny 2 looks and feels on PC over the now zoetrope-style PS4 version is indisputable. For me, it’s finally like getting the game I wanted the sequel to be. At least it is technically.
Tom posted his review today, and I think the score is spot on. Right now this isn’t the “forever FPS” that many hardcore players of the original hoped for. What it is, is a 100 or so hours of great gunplay from one of the best studios at sci-fi world building. But, if you want to keep grinding after that, you’ll hit a very hard wall in terms of loot-based progression. So, as a committed addict, I was pretty glad to see Bungie start addressing that hole in the endgame as part of yesterday’s update post. We’ll see how that shakes out eventually, but for now let me savour these frames. So many frames.
Tuan Nguyen: Bigger is better
There’s never enough storage room. I went from 4TB drives to 8TB drives, but now even they’re feeling cramped. So I’m swapping them out now for a batch of 12TB Seagate IronWolf Pro drives. All in all I’m going to have to be swapping a total of 28 drives. That’s a lot of storage—336TB to be exact, which will put me well over a total of half a petabyte in total storage capacity for my home setup. What’s the benefit of having over half a petabyte of storage capacity? I’m struggling to find a normal end-user use case scenario, but right now I have backups of backups, of backups. You can never be too careful with precious data. Call me an addict.
Wes Fenlon: Developers speak on Steam
It's my pleasure to host this massive survey of PC developers speaking candidly about the good and bad of Steam, conducted by indie dev Lars Doucet. I spent a good chunk of the week getting the presentation and formatting of the survey and a companion article just right, and I think it's insightful for developers and gamers alike. And hopefully for Valve, who now have some great feedback to help make Steam a better store. I recommend reading the breakdown article Lars wrote here, which focuses in on the top 10 issues developers have with Steam today.
