I cover a lot of demos for PC Gamer, and some of them really stick with me. Divine Frequency has been a real lost Lenore among those memorable games: It was a rare shooter that managed to scare the living daylights out of me, while also being an amazingly satisfying action experience. I've been up on the widow's walk every night, watching for any sign of its ship returning from...

Xanadu Next is a Diablo-esque JRPG originally developed by Nihon Falcom for Nokia N-Gage. Those bullet points were enough for me to grab it when Steam's algorithm surfaced it for me last week as part of the ongoing Autumn sale. I wasn't expecting it to be good, but I was definitely curious.Some background: Xanadu Next is actually a belated spin-off to the PC-88 game Xanadu: Dragon Slayer 2, which was...

The plague of games industry layoffs and studio closures that seemed to explode in 2023 has yet to subside. Just about every week there's news of some new restructuring, closure, or cancellation as the videogame industry, particularly in North America, is battered by global economic forces, corporate maneuvering, and private capital.Here's the latest news related to the crisis that continues to unfold: SUPERMASSIVE GAMES(Image credit: Supermassive Games)In August, three months...

THEN:NOW:WHAT?Vice City and Leonida, the fictional city and state that serve as the setting for Grand Theft Auto 6, are largely based on Miami and the state of Florida, and Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive are moving heavy and hard to leverage that real-life inspiration to promote GTA 6 as its console release gets closer. The sheriff made no bones about her position on the matter when the proposed partnership...

(Image credit: Christopher Livingston / Garmin / MarekSoso)Got myself a Pip-Boy! Sorry, for legal reasons, it's actually a "Rad-Lad." I recently bought my first ever smartwatch (a Garmin Vivoactive) and now my evenings are spent being completely inactive as I sit on the couch downloading cool watch faces and trying them out. This is a really impressive one called the Rad-Lad by MarekSoso that turns your watch into a Pip-Boy,...

Los Santos CustomsI'm modding GTA 5 every day in a quest to either transform it into a PC version of GTA 6 or break it entirely. Come back tomorrow to find out what new horrible thing I've done to Rockstar's baby, or check out what I got up to earlier.La Rochefoucauld once wrote, "What grace is to the body, good sense is to the mind." He wrote this some time...

Which graphical effect will be crowned the worst in games? It's down to the final two, and no one—no one—could've guessed the two effects that made it into the final round. It's a huge surprise.This vote could go either way (lol). Get your votes in to decide once and for all which effect should be banished from games forever.We'll find out the winner (loser) later this week. Then we can...

What's great about the PS2 back catalogue is that it's too vast to have an encyclopedic knowledge of everything in there. The defining 20 or so games on the platform—God of War, Gran Turismo 3, Final Fantasy 10 and so forth—are very well known, and maybe Millennial players can recall a weirdo game or two like Mr Mosquito or Global Defence Force. One look at the games in the Japan-only...

Given the legacy it created, it's easy to forget The Elder Scrolls wasn't a big deal right out of the gate. The original game in the series, The Elder Scrolls: Arena, wasn't badly received—our reviewer, Andy Butcher, gave it an 87 in his review at the time—but it didn't set the world on fire immediately.In a retrospective on the making of Daggerfall over at Time Extension, Ted Peterson, designer on...

Brigador was a great sleeper hit of mech and simmy gaming, and studio Stellar Jockeys recently released its ambitious follow-up, Brigador Killers, into early access. I spoke to lead developers, brother duo Hugh and Jack Monahan, over the summer. They told me about the challenges of adding on-foot gameplay, the importance of not trying to please everyone, as well as why they emulate the "show, don't tell" morality and storytelling...