Rick Lane
Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.
Latest articles by Rick Lane

Get up to 90% off historical murder in the Assassin's Creed franchise sale
By Rick Lane published
News Assassin's Creed Shadows is half-price.

Microsoft nukes popular Halo 3 mod for Counter-Strike 2 from orbit: 'It was fun while it lasted'
By Rick Lane published
News "Make sure you give your thanks to Microsoft!"

Phoenix Point's Terror from the Void mod is so good Snapshot Games just released a massive patch to make the original game more like the fanmade overhaul
By Rick Lane published
News New update is fully compatible with Phoenix Rising's rework.

10 years in the making, this total conversion based on Half-Life is every bit as ambitious as Black Mesa
By Rick Lane published
Blue Shift Diffusion is a fantastically fun shooter, albeit with one big caveat.

Race a Kei truck through a collapsing Japan in DriveCrazy, which is like Burnout if you could drive on walls and fight towering kaiju
By Rick Lane published
News Action-packed racer blasts out of early access.

Gate Guard Simulator is Papers, Please with fewer terrorists, more geese, and the chance to throw people into a moat
By Rick Lane published
News Coming next year.

Sins of a Solar Empire 2 gets a massive diplomacy overhaul that makes wars 'economically ruinous'
By Rick Lane published
News Planetary economies are now population based, so murderous conquests are going to hurt your wallet.

I'm never getting any work done ever again, thanks to this website that lets me play thousands of user-made Doom levels in my browser
By Rick Lane published
News RIP (and tear) my productivity.

Wreckreation developer puts its entire staff on notice as publisher THQ Nordic abandons it: 'We simply cannot sustain the studio in its current form'
By Rick Lane published
News "We have so many things in the pipeline," says Three Field's CEO as she hopes for a potential rescue.

Descenders Next gets a big multiplayer update as its developer apologises for taking so long with it: 'We're slowly working on getting the feel and flow of Descenders back into Descenders Next'
By Rick Lane published
News "We're sorry for taking so long with updates."

World War 1 survival horror Conscript gets a 'huge' update that adds a hardcore mode, redesigned levels, new items and gear, and much more
By Rick Lane published
News "I'd consider this to be the version of the game I’d have released if I had a bit more time to playtest the game thoroughly."

Viking RTS Northgard is now Northgard: Definitive Edition, thanks to an update that folds in its major DLC and adds a bunch of new stuff free to existing players
By Rick Lane published
News It's also 60% off until December 18.

PC gaming's best inventory system is hidden in this obscure post-apocalyptic roguelike from the dawn of the survival craze
By Rick Lane published
Pocket dimension NEO Scavenger puts the invent in inventory.

Rust's hotly anticipated naval update is delayed into 2026: 'We took on too much'
By Rick Lane published
News "The closer we got to release, the less confident and happy we were with the state of it."

Tempest Rising's playable third faction has invaded its beta branch, as its developer commences testing for the next two weeks
By Rick Lane published
News Superweapons are also now available to deploy.

Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert isn't interested in returning to making 2D adventure games: 'When we're all dead, it probably won't be the kind of thing that survives'
By Rick Lane published
News But he would consider making another 3D Monkey Island.

Cities: Skylines 2 finally gets its asset editor in a parting gift from the series' original developers
By Rick Lane published
News Editor aims to let players "create complex assets on par with official content."

This pirate-themed FPS just got an enormous update that lets you sail a 'living ship'—a hybrid of wooden hull and space whale that's called Abby and is utterly horrifying
By Rick Lane published
News Davy X Jones? More like Davy XL Jones.

Halo's co-creator says Bungie redesigned Master Chief nine times before coming up with the now-iconic look: 'We tried a lot of things'
By Rick Lane published
News "It took forever, but I wasn't going to stop."

This cyberpunk platformer with an Overwhelmingly Positive Steam rating just got a completely free expansion
By Rick Lane published
News Sanabi: A Haunted Day takes place before the main game.

This Minecraft map that recreates one of history's most notorious slums made me reconsider what's important in 3D level design
By Rick Lane published
Slum bored Kowloon Walled City in Minecraft is a feat of virtual architecture, but it's missing one crucial ingredient.

Sektori developer says the response to his Geometry Wars-inspired roguelike has been 'awesome', but the game's sales still leave him 'with zero salary for 4.5 years'
By Rick Lane published
News "Hope is a dangerous thing."

MindsEye developer offers a starter pack that lets you try the beleaguered action game's best mission for free, though you should imagine air-quotes the size of skyscrapers around the word 'best'
By Rick Lane published
News The free demo coincides with a new patch.
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