Rick Lane

Contributor

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

Stars Wars Zero Company key art
There's only one Jedi Operator in Star Wars Zero Company, and reckless players may end up with none at all: 'Be careful that nothing unfortunate happens to her!'

By Rick Lane Published

News Pad your wan.

News
Mythbusters: San Andreas
Modding wizard creates Grand Theft Auto multiverse that lets players travel instantly between Rockstar's first three games: 'We got inter-GTA portals before GTA 6'

By Rick Lane Published

News "The other game is actually running behind it, it's not a video or a captured window," says mod creator.

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Players clad in blue and red jumpsuits chase a football around a pitch while wielding grenade launchers
MindsEye has multiplayer and a grenade football mode now, which the handful of people still playing it will no doubt be thrilled to hear

By Rick Lane Published

News Update 8 also further addresses the campaign's many problems.

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A trio of dwarves descend into the depths in the Dwarf Fortress key art.
The challenges of developing the colony sim, from Dungeon Keeper to Dwarf Fortress and beyond

By Rick Lane Published

CITY LIVIN' PC Gamer interviews the genre's founding fathers.

CITY LIVIN'
A picture of David Szymanski and a Doom backdrop
'The mid-2000s was the golden era of first-person shooters': David Szymanski, creator of Dusk and Iron Lung, discusses the games on his PC

By Rick Lane Published

Old blood The New Blood dev guides us through the games in his Steam library.

Old blood
God of War Laufey screenshot
God of War Laufey star Deborah Ann Woll isn't fazed by the negative reactions to its announcement: 'I feel totally unbothered'

By Rick Lane Published

News "I just know it's great."

24 Comments
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Cliff Bleszinski.
Gears of War's creator is considering returning to game development, but whatever he makes won't be PvP like his last efforts: 'Good luck to anyone in that space'

By Rick Lane Published

News "Players just want to hop online with friends and shoot some stuff."

8 Comments
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Screenshot of the game 007 First Light
007: First Light was originally going to be less about James Bond and more of 'an ensemble piece', with 'all the 00s working together, as they do in Slovakia'

By Rick Lane Published

"You had the different agents working together."

Action
A horde of TF2 robots
Valve reassures Team Fortress 2 players that it's still working on the Mann vs Machine update it announced last year: 'We promise we're making progress'

By Rick Lane Published

news "It's taking a lot longer to sort through the new content and changes than we'd originally anticipated."

7 Comments
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Get 15 games for $15 in Humble's 2K Megahits bundle, including Bioshock Infinite, Risk of Rain 2, and one of my favourite shooters of all time

By Rick Lane Published

News Also includes XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands 3, and Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition.

News
The rear fan cover of the Steam Machine, with the Valve logo in the middle
Valve says there's no end in sight to the memory crisis, and prices are only going to increase: 'Honestly, it's still getting worse'

By Rick Lane Published

News Retail availability is lagging bulk supply by "at least three to six months" according to a Valve engineer.

26 Comments
News
Christoffer Bodegard in front of a Deus Ex backdrop
2026's best RPG might look like Disco Elysium, but it was heavily inspired by Deus Ex, and its creator wants 'to do a first-person game at some point'

By Rick Lane Published

Clerical error The designer of Esoteric Ebb guides us through the games on his PC.

Clerical error
helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 dev cracks down on 'suspicious super credit activity', though it would help if earning premium currency wasn't so boring to begin with

By Rick Lane Published

News "We're starting to implement changes that will tackle issues like this."

17 Comments
News
Key art of the Veti expansion for Tempest Rising.
Tempest Rising's elusive third faction will get its own singleplayer campaign as a paid expansion, and you can play the demo right now

By Rick Lane Published

News The Veti's Wrath releases "later this year".

News
Counter-Strike 2 header image
Valve has rewired Counter-Strike 2's bomb to make it more spectacular, but potentially less deadly

By Rick Lane Published

News Bomb has been supplanted.

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Star Citizen's next update will switch focus to fixing its bug-riddled previous update, with bigger changes shunted to a later patch

By Rick Lane Published

News "We're moving Siege of Orison and all instance-related content out of Alpha 4.9.0".

19 Comments
News
The player character prepares to swing a scythe at a spiderlike creature in Mortal Shell 2
Mortal Shell 2 is the latest game to join the Grand Theft Auto 6 release crush, but I don't think it has much to worry about because it looks sick as hell

By Rick Lane Published

News Cold Symmetry's soulslike releases in August.

News
Screenshot from Space Marine 2
After Space Marine 2 'literally changed everything', Saber Interactive has been inundated with offers from major licenses: 'We are in a very fortunate position to turn down more than we can accept'

By Rick Lane Published

News "It changed how people look at us."

7 Comments
News
Art from The Seance of Blake Manor and a picture of Sally Beaumont
Sally Beaumont, voice actor in Old Skies and The Séance of Blake Manor, extols the virtues of narrative singleplayer games 'You can have lots of them in your PC toolbelt'

By Rick Lane Published

Sally forth The voice of Old Skies' Fia Quinn guides us through the games on her PC.

Sally forth
Garret from Thief.
Nightdive says compatibility with fan missions was a big priority for Thief Remastered, and there's one massive mod in particular it knew it had to get working

By Rick Lane Published

News "Obviously the big one in the room is The Black Parade".

7 Comments
News
Total War: Medieval 3 trailer
Creative Assembly wants to know which factions you wish to play as in Total War: Medieval 3, but whatever you do, don't ask to play as the Pope

By Rick Lane Published

News Some factions are already "locked in".

20 Comments
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Spyro speedrunner says a PC port of the original game is in the works, and it's being made with 'no AI'

By Rick Lane Published

News The port runs at 60 FPS, supports true widescreen and has "no polygon wobble".

News
The Vault Dweller from Fallout 4 standing in front of mountains from The Elder Scrolls 6
Skyrim's lead designer reckons releasing Elder Scrolls and Fallout games faster risks 'disappointing fans'

By Rick Lane Published

News "The biggest risks of shortened schedules is quality, reduced features, polish, or bugs."

30 Comments
News
DeadOS
I tried to create the perfect zombie apocalypse in this intensely detailed outbreak simulator, and sorry slow zombie fans, fast zombies are just better

By Rick Lane Published

Infectious "It's the game I wanted to play but couldn't because it didn't exist, so I made it."

Infectious
Garrett, stood face-on wearing a hood and cowl, stares menacingly out of the picture.
Not content with a Nightdive remaster, Thief's also getting a graphic novel and an original soundtrack featuring Garrett's voice actor

By Rick Lane Published

News Thief: Pulse of Promise is set between the first two games.

News
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