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

Seafaring survival sim The Last Caretaker gets a big update that adds a speedy jet ski and lets you customise your base-boat
By Rick Lane Published
News Also adds new quests, locations and a sonar module.

Unreal Tournament 2004 is now available for free thanks to its fan community, and they've even updated the game for modern PCs: 'This is the first public patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 in over 20 years'
By Rick Lane Published
News Wicked sick.

Inside PC gaming's wildly creative Tomb Raider mapping scene: 'Being able to create my own adventures for other people to play is such an addicting concept'
By Rick Lane Published
Tomb Maker Tomb Raider has a fan-level scene as storied as Quake or Thief.

Underrated hack 'n' slash Blades of Fire heads to Steam with a 2.0 update, bringing new game plus and 'expanded death and mutilation variations' for you sickos out there
By Rick Lane Published
News It's me. I'm the sicko.

THQ's Gothic 1 remake arrives in June, and I think it might prove a more valuable overhaul than Oblivion Remastered
By Rick Lane Published
News The great grandaddy of eurojank looks spiffing in its latest trailer.

Bloodlines 2's Valentine's patch adds further customisation options and lootable blood bags, because nothing says 'I love you' like the vampire equivalent of a ready meal
By Rick Lane Published
News Love bite.

Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition gets a massive update introducing Steam Workshop support, 10 new maps, and a 10-mission cooperative campaign
By Rick Lane Published
News Winter is coming.

You've had Skate Story, now get ready for Skate Style, a 'next-gen skateboarding game' that lets you customise your character's animations
By Rick Lane Published
News Demo available now.

Terraria's biggest mod manager will require months before it's fully compatible with the 1.4.5 patch: 'Updating tModLoader to major Terraria releases is a huge undertaking'
By Rick Lane Published
News "We ask players to be patient."

Timberborn gets a 1.0 release date and new 'lore trailer' showing some very thirsty beavers
By Rick Lane Published
Mechanistry's city-builder leaves early access in March.

219 hours of XCOM 2 and 20 minutes of Fallout: Size Five Games' director Dan Marshall takes us through the games on his PC
By Rick Lane Published
Disk Cleanup The co-creator of the Swindle, Lair of the Clockwork God and Earth Must Die gives us the lowdown on his gaming tastes.

If you thought Untitled Goose Game had a horrible goose, wait until you play this powerfully unsettling idle clicker where humans give birth to waterfowl
By Rick Lane Published
Fowl play Playing Tingus Goose makes me feel dirty, and I kinda like it.

XCOM 2 is 10 years old, and 2K is celebrating with a free weekend and a 95% discount on Firaxis' masterful sequel
By Rick Lane Published
News Try one of the best games ever for nothing, then grab it for less than the price of a coffee.

Rust player says goodbye to his server neighbours by constructing a giant, illuminated middle finger: 'Making one of these is often how I like to end a successful wipe'
By Rick Lane Published
News "Making one of these is often how I like to end a successful wipe."

Get 7 incredible FPS games including Prey, Doom Eternal and Black Mesa for $20 in Humble's sci-fi shooter bundle
By Rick Lane Published
News Space, the final gun tier.

Prince of Persia's creator reacts to Ubisoft's cancellation of The Sands of Time remake: 'Having a project killed is a brutal experience'
By Rick Lane Published
News "It's an aspect of the game industry that the public doesn't often see, but developers are all too familiar with."

Get the complete editions of Civilization 4, 5 and 6 plus a bunch more games for $15 in Humble Bundle's The Sid Meier Collection
By Rick Lane Published
News That's enough Civilization to last the remainder of civilisation.

Thirty years after launch, this classic space combat sim just got updated to work on modern systems and released for free
By Rick Lane Published
News Grab Star Quest 1 in the 27th Century on Itch now.

Over a decade since launch, this cooperative dungeon crawler is getting a double-barrelled update that overhauls its magic system, dungeon generation, and much more
By Rick Lane Published
News And it's 50% off for the next two weeks.

Cities: Skylines 2's new developer breaks cover on its plans for the sequel's future, revealing a patch that will include changes players 'have been requesting for a long time'
By Rick Lane Published
News Better snow effects and a "streamlined" UI are coming to the sequel soon.

The best Elder Scrolls game that isn't an Elder Scrolls game is getting a big patch in February and free DLC in March
By Rick Lane Published
News And there's a small patch out right now.

In a beautifully ironic twist, a YouTuber attempting a pacifist run of Bully discovered a secret weapon hidden for almost 20 years: 'I can see why they tried to lock it inside a building'
By Rick Lane Published
News Norton's sledgehammer is finally yours to wield.

Old-school MMO Project: Gorgon launches into 1.0 with an update that adds 'by far the largest and most complex map we've ever made'
By Rick Lane Published
News Embark upon 200 new quests in the capital city of Statehelm.

'Brutally honest' city builder Microlandia gets brutally honest crime simulation: 'It's a spectrum of consequences that can become a death spiral every single day'
By Rick Lane Published
News "Cities are not clockwork, they are chaos machines with a mayor attached."

Lort devs reluctantly tweak the fantasy roguelike's difficulty after players complain the Risk of Rain 2 successor is too hard: 'You are meant to die and learn how to overcome the challenge'
By Rick Lane Published
News "But we also don't want it to be too aggravating to jump into quickly and have fun."
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