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

A player wields the Grimhawk in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Season 4 adds a mode that removes OmniMovement and a gun that aims for you

By Rick Lane Published

News Black Ops classic offers "streamlined" loadouts and a "throwback" map roster.

News
A Satisfactory player takes a selfie with the new portable toilet spawn-point. Yes, you read that correctly.
Satisfactory's first major update in a year brings back rain, adds fuel trucks and overhauls vehicle pathfinding, but Steam Deck players should approach with caution

By Rick Lane Published

News Rain check.

News
Grace from Requiem (left) Ecstatica character (right)
DLSS 5 isn't the first time the future of videogame graphics looked like total balls

By Rick Lane Published

Triangles vs balls Tracing the brief history of ellipsoid graphics.

Triangles vs balls
Star Citizen
Star Citizen's latest alpha patch adds 385 asteroid defence missions, but players are reporting problems with broken hangar doors and exploding pilots

By Rick Lane Published

News Alpha 4.8.1 gives players the chance to earn 'unique blueprints for the first time', if they can actually complete the missions.

10 Comments
News
Randy Pitchford at the "Now You See Me: Now You Don't" world premiere held at The Lighthouse Pier 61 on November 10, 2025 in New York, New York. (Photo by Stephanie Augello/Variety via Getty Images)
2026's weirdest tech leak involves scuba diving, a Caribbean island, and Gearbox head honcho Randy Pitchford, and no, it's not what you expect

By Rick Lane Published

News Water reveal.

News
The Toreador vampire Ysabella taunts a ghoul wearing a mask in Bloodline 2
Bloodlines 2's final DLC introduces swordfighting, dual pistol wielding, and other stuff that should probably have been in the base game

By Rick Lane Published

News The Flower and The Flame tells the story of glamorous Toreador Ysabella.

9 Comments
News
TOPSHOT - Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves 10 Downing Street in central London on December 10, 2025, to take part in the weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs). (Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP via Getty Images)
The UK government is considering banning children from speaking to strangers in games like Fortnite and Roblox

By Rick Lane Published

News The UK's online safety minister is concerned about 'stranger pairing' in games.

15 Comments
News
Nina Freeman in front of a backdrop from Devotion
There's one game Don't Nod narrative designer Nina Freeman won't ever uninstall from her PC, because it's banned on Steam: 'It's tragic, because everyone should play this game'

By Rick Lane Published

Follow Freeman The chief writer of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage talks us through her Steam library.

16 Comments
Follow Freeman
null
Star Citizen's single-player component is in the 'closing stages' of development according to Chris Roberts, as rumours of another Squadron 42 delay circulate

By Rick Lane Published

News Cloud Imperium Games is getting "imminently closer to launch."

34 Comments
News
Factorio's next major update will also be its last, as its developer announces it has 'reached a good place to conclude active gameplay development'

By Rick Lane Published

News Wube Software will shift focus onto "long term support" after update 2.1.

News
The player fights through an underground mine in Medal of Honor Retro Remake
This fan remake of 1999's Medal of Honor proved so popular that its creator added a level cut from the original game

By Rick Lane Published

News Version 1.1 of Medal of Honor: Retro Remake lets players infiltrate Colditz Castle.

News
Stop Killing Games logo
The Stop Killing Games movement hits another major milestone as a game preservation bill passes California State Assembly vote

By Rick Lane Published

News The bill now moves on to the California State Senate.

News
Unreal 2
The remarkable story of Unreal 2, the sequel rescued from development hell by dooming it to failure: 'There was just no way we could succeed'

By Rick Lane Published

Unreal expectations "It made it possible for us to ship something, but what we shipped was not what people wanted."

10 Comments
Unreal expectations
A spaceship wreck looms in the desert in concept art for Project C
After more than two decades, the creator of Paint.NET finally owns the domain paint.net, and it's all thanks to a 'slam dunk case of trademark infringement'

By Rick Lane Published

News "I've been trying to get this domain for 22 years."

News
Destroyer, Thief and Recon traverse Perimeter's rocky map in Marathon
Bungie spills the beans on combat tuning for Marathon Season 2, and it's bad news for shotgun lovers and thermal snipers

By Rick Lane Published

News Bungie says it wants player weapon choices to "feel more intentional".

News
Terraria
It seems Terraria's developer is as bad at making small updates as it is final ones, as it says its latest balance patch is much more than 'adjusting a few numbers'

By Rick Lane Published

News "Sometimes, addressing balance means rethinking some core aspects around how things function."

News
Sci-fi shooter Pragmata
Pragmata's developers take all your comparisons to Xbox 360 shooters as a 'huge compliment', though I'm not convinced by their theory for why players are making the connection

By Rick Lane Published

News "That's basically an honour."

News
Kliff jumping
Crimson Desert's latest patch adds 20 new types of small animal and then hands Kliff a shotgun

By Rick Lane Published

News Tameable wyverns have also arrived.

News
A Bastion tank rolling through a city street surrounded by explosions in Helldivers 2.
Helldivers 2 begins the long march back into the community's good books with a technical patch that represents the 'opening salvo' in a battle for better performance

By Rick Lane Published

News Upscaling support, advanced visual optimisation, and more on the way.

20 Comments
News
James Bond, face bloodied, looks toward the camera after emerging from a helicopter explosion.
You can now watch the first 13 minutes of 007: First Light, and the intro is giving serious Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes vibes

By Rick Lane Published

News IO makes the opening available after "a few users got hold of the disc early."

News
null
Star Citizen blasts through $1 billion in player funding, as its developer lists a new $5,000 spaceship for sale that is 'not yet ready to play'

By Rick Lane Published

News Hyper (funding) drive.

24 Comments
News
ABK sitting on a rock, with Morrowind behind him
Comedian Alasdair Beckett-King was a die-hard adventure gamer until he discovered Morrowind: 'The first time I loaded it up, I walked straight into a little pond and was killed by a fish'

By Rick Lane Published

King's Quest The YouTube sketch maestro and creator of Unforeseen Incidents guides us through the games on his PC.

11 Comments
King's Quest
Man with gun in doorway.
The design lead of Half-Life's biggest competitor says that its publisher was so 'pissed off' by the time the game launched that it didn't bother testing it properly: 'We got trashed in the press because of bugs'

By Rick Lane Published

News "It really hurt it when it came to reviews."

News
godot logo
A game developer compared Godot and Unity by making the same game in both engines, and he's found a clear winner

By Rick Lane Published

News Godot is smaller, faster, and quicker to load than Unity, according to tests run by designer Thomas Grové.

11 Comments
News
Space Marines fight terminids in a wintry landscape in Space Marine 2
Space Marine 2 gets a steep discount, a free trial and an update that adds a 'major revamp' of Siege Mode, as its multiplayer continues to outpace games like Marathon

By Rick Lane Published

News The overhaul makes horde sessions "quicker and more intense".

8 Comments
News
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Archives

Other versions of this page are available with specific content for the following regions: