Causality Chain is a series at PC Gamer exploring the unlikely links between history, culture, and videogames. And ocassionally hedgehogs. The arc of history curves in mysterious ways. Beloved actor Keanu Reeves—Ted, Neo, John Wick himself—may not be Buddhist, but he does, in fact, owe the existence of one of his blockbuster roles to the teachings of one of Buddhism's most important figures.How, you ask? And what exactly does this...

During Take-Two's latest earnings call, CEO Strauss Zelnick said the current computing hardware crisis—you know, the one that's making it more economical to fly roundtrip from the UK to buy an MSRP GPU at Nvidia's QuakeCon booth than it is to buy one anywhere online—is, to quote the man directly, "not a good thing."But while the skyrocketing costs of consoles and components are threatening to price customers out of the...

Fantastic new puzzle game Big Walk drew some early complaints over the volume of its proximity voice chat, which was too quiet for some players and mic setups, and developer House House has now released a patch that it hopes will resolve the issue while respecting the spirit of the game.The studio has a fine line to walk, because Big Walk's primary source of friction is the challenge of communicating...

Critical Hit(Image credit: Future)Welcome to Critical Hit, where Mollie (or someone else on the PC Gamer team) celebrate and lament all things videogame music, audio design, and the ways our favourite games make our ears tingle. This week I'm that "someone else", and I'm here to talk your ear off about time signatures!So I've recently given in and decided I won't be waiting for Deltarune's final chapter before I played...

I can turn an overgrown property into an industrial vineyard in a single year no problem. I've done it in the valleys, islands, and fields of countless farm sims. Usually it's just as easy to pluck one of its provincial hotties out of town to become my spouse (the overworked leader type, ideally), but magical girl-inspired Fields of Mistria has given me a bad case of choice paralysis. I love...