Critical Hit(Image credit: Future)Welcome to Critical Hit, where I (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.I have not played Hades 2 since October 4 of 2025. That's not because I "fell out of love" with the game or whatever, I simply plugged 65 hours into it, beat the 'main story',...

Politico recently reported on a confidential draft of a proposed AI safety bill from Anthropic, the company behind Claude LLMs (via Tom's Hardware). The bill, which has been pitched to US lawmakers, would let the government crack down on a given AI model "only if it poses a foreseeable, imminent risk of more than $1 billion in damages, or of killing or seriously injuring more than 50 people. The risk...

Ultimate 3-mode: was $69.99 now $39.99Though not the latest Ultimate controller to date, it is the best-priced right now, and with a cute included charging dock and stick-drift-resistant sticks, it's sure to last you a long time. The only real caveat to me is the 250 Hz polling (200 Hz wireless), which is better than Sony and Microsoft, but it means a 4-5 ms response time to your device. Key...

Funcom, the developer behind Dune: Awakening and Conan Exiles, has announced a restructuring process that will result in layoffs at the company, and that current CEO Rui Casais will leave Funcom once the reorganisation is complete.The decision comes after a shift in direction at Funcom, whereby the studio will focus wholly on supporting its existing survival RPGs. In a statement (via GamesIndustry.biz) Casais said that Dune: Awakening was "the biggest...

Liquid Swords, the developer behind Samson, has gone bankrupt just six months after its run-based open-city crime sim was released.As reported by Breakit (via Rock, Paper, Shotgun), a bankruptcy order was issued against the Swedish developer on October 12. According to Breakit, Liquid Swords' staff—around 30 employees—have gone unpaid for at least two months, and it was those employees who petitioned to have the company declared bankrupt.Liquid Swords was founded...

Red Barrels' Outlast series has long held a reputation for pushing the envelope further than most horror games, with depictions of violence, gore and nudity that can be shocking even within a medium well versed in delivering scares. But it isn't just audiences who have found the studio's games shocking beyond the virtual horror norm. As co-founder Phillipe Morin recently revealed, there have been numerous instances where people in and...

Hellraiser: Revival's commitment to being both gnarly and horny has already been thoroughly documented, with PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon describing it as "nasty nasty" in his preview . This uncompromising attitude to both gore and kink went down well with fans, but it has also been celebrated by Hellraiser's creator, Clive Barker.In an interview with horror site Dread Central (via FRVR), Barker admitted that he had concerns about the project...

The developer of an upcoming horror drinking game has cancelled plans for a public Steam demo in favour of private preview sessions, citing concerns that AI vibe coders might use the demo's content to clone the game.Drunken Goddess Reflux is a "shot glass Russian roulette" drinking game where players square off against an anime demon girl who loves you but also kind of wants to murder you (which sounds like...

I heard it on the wireless: election fever is sweeping America. The world's loudest democracy is headed to the ballot box to vote in its next slate of soda jerks and Chevrolets and whatever else it is they have over there. It's all very exciting.Can I help? Yes. I've already solved my own country's politics, now it's time to help the benighted and backward people of places like "Connecticut" and...

I've nothing against games that feature simulated animal petting, but it's never been something I've considered buying a game specifically for. Sure, it's nice when your character can stroke a virtual dog or fuss with a clump of polygons shaped like a cat, but it rarely amounts to more than a canned animation. That said, I am suddenly more tempted to shell out on The Blood of Dawnwalker, as Rebel...