The first of April tried to slide by undetected, consuming a Saturday with gags and riffs while news editors slept. We never sleep! And we will never be fooled. Except that time we actually thought Destiny 2 was coming to PC (opens in new tab).
Just kidding. Maybe. And that's how that's done, if you lazily rolled out of bed at noon, on this grand day of misinformation and mock-ups of pretend games that we actually do want, and so shouldn't be joked about. As we've done in years past, here's our round-up of 2017's April Fools' Day gags. Regular PC Gamer readers might see a couple familiar jokes, proving, as you'll see, that we are on the cutting edge of bathtub and bear-related humor.
Nvidia: GeForce GTX G-Assist
GeForce GTX G-Assist is an AI which studies your play and takes over for you when you have to get up to grab one of those Nvidia-branded energy drinks you love so much. It’s a decent gag, and a probable glimpse at our real future, given that Nvidia’s going to be driving our cars for us any day now.
Arika: Street Fighter EX
A fighting game that features Arika-designed characters from the Street Fighter EX series showed up on YouTube the other day. While it's definitely an April Fool's joke (it says so right in the video description), there's nothing PC Gamer's Mat Paget wants more than to see his main dude Skullomania in a modern fighting game. This April Fool's day is a sad one indeed.
Square Enix: Tactics Alexander
Square Enix released this video a day before April Fool's, which makes the fact that it's a joke all the more cruel. It depicts a game from the Final Fantasty Tactics series, based on the Alexander raid from Final Fantasy XIV. It may be a joke, but we'd play another Tactics game in a heartbeat.
IBuyPower: RGB printer
The jokesters over at IBuyPower announced a printer (opens in new tab) powered by a Titan X. Laugh all you want, but that would be the only printer worthy of producing a picture like this (opens in new tab).
Rocket League: Rank Adjustments
One day we’ll reach Grand Eggplant, but for now we are lowly Potatoes (opens in new tab). These vegetable ranks are good, but they’re a bit overshadowed by Friday’s actually-not-a-gag, excellent announcement that Rocket League will be getting a Fate of the Furious DLC car (opens in new tab).
Pillars of Eternity 2: Bear Party DLC
At least one of us here at PC Gamer was beary, beary excited to see the announcement of Bear Party DLC (opens in new tab) for Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. At a perfectly reasonable asking price of just $60, it would let you play Obsidian's upcoming RPG as a party of bears. While it may be a joke, we'd be completely into that.
Book of Demons: Reversed Mode
Ooh! Ooh! Uh! Uhhh! Eugh! Ooh! Grr! Uh! Eugh!
Yooka-Laylee: Rap
Sometimes April Fool's jokes can go too far. Yooka-Laylee developer Playtonic Games decided to bring back something that PC Gamer's Mat Paget thought he wanted. He could not have been more wrong. The upcoming platformer now has its own song in the style of the classic DK Rap, and… it's hard to watch. We all tried to make it the whole way through and each of us failed, so we're sending the challenge to you.
CD Projekt Red: Tub Geralt
This figurine (opens in new tab) would look great in our livestream setup (opens in new tab), just sayin’. Make it real, CD Projekt.
BlizzCon: Textual Attendance
If you don't have enough for a Blizzcon Virtual Ticket, you can visit by text for free (opens in new tab). Thumbs up for the effort here. When you're done, lose a day of your life to what we must assume helped inspire this one: ClickHole's ClickVentures (opens in new tab).
Hearthstone: Nadia, Mankrik's Wife
Those who don't like to have jokes explained, please continue on. Those who are confused: Hearthstone's April Fools' card (opens in new tab) references an infamous World of Warcraft quest that sent players searching for Mankrik's hard-to-find wife. Players spent hours looking for her, hence the stealth. "Makrik's wife" is still used to describe anything that's hard to find.
Google Maps: Ms. Pac-Man
This isn't really a joke and it's a repeat gag, but that hasn't stopped us from wasting 20 minutes on it (opens in new tab).
World of Tanks: Mars Mode
We don't mean to talk mess about World of Tanks, but this Mars Mode looks better than the main game. It evokes the type of multiplayer game you'd find on the original PlayStation or Nintendo 64, and we could probably use one or two of those these days. The best part about this joke is that the mode is for consoles only, which has made some PC gamers a little upset. Wait, is that really a joke?
Crusader Kings 2: Mittens
We wouldn't be all that surprised if Mittens really were added to Crusader Kings 2 (opens in new tab). Cats are notorious for their influence on politics. Take Humphrey (opens in new tab), for example, who achieved the position of Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office.
Doom: Floppy disks
Some of us still have the floppy disks from the original Doom games. According to this tweet, the new Doom would require 35,550 disks. Make sure you install them in order.
Prey: Cafe
In Prey, you need to be careful what you sip from.
Press X to Shaun
Heavy Rain's 'press X to Jason (opens in new tab)' scene lives on. Modder CDante felt inspired by David Cage's most-remembered work and created a Fallout 4 mod in celebration of April Fool's Day. Your son in Fallout 4 is named Shaun, and CDante's mod lets you hit the X key to say his name whenever you want. You can check it for yourself on NexusMods or watch it in action here.
