This week's highs and lows in PC gaming

THE LOWS 

Chris Livingston: Coward's got a gun

I don't care if it was an air rifle or a real rifle: if you shoot at someone's house, you're terrorizing them. Maybe it's not the legal definition of terrorism, but it's terrorism. There's a family in there, you cowardly piece of shit. You're not being cool or badass or just pissing someone off, you're causing real people to fear for their lives and safety. I hope whoever shot at DrDisrepect's house this week is caught quickly and goes to prison for as long as the law possibly allows.

Phil Savage: Judgement Day

This a presumptive low. This week, Ryu ga Gotoku Studio—the makers of Yakuza—announced a new game, Project Judge. Based on the game footage it is incredibly my thing, basically a Yakuza game but featuring investigations and detective stuff. Also, this gif…

Of course, as a Ryu ga Gotoku Studio game, it has only been announced for PS4. And look, I'm grateful that the amazing Yakuza 0 finally made it to PC, but… can we hurry it up a bit? There are six more Yakuza games that aren't on PC, five of which aren't even confirmed for PC. And that's not to mention the zombie spin-off, the two period dramas, and this anime bullshit. Just get 'em on PC already, Sega.

Jarred Walton: Wait for it

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti arrived on my doorstep this past Tuesday. So where are the benchmarks!? Those are coming next week, because that’s the agreement all journalists signed off on with Nvidia. I’m not upset about that, but damn it was torture having the graphics cards with no drivers all week! The drivers were released early this morning, and benchmarking has commenced. That’s all I can say right now. Boo.

Everything sounds great on paper when looking at Nvidia’s new GPUs, but paper specs don’t always translate into real-world performance. Given the inability to test any ray tracing games for the initial launch (because they don’t exist yet), Nvidia is asking users to invest a lot of money for future potential. I think creators will be all over Turing, but it might be months or even years before there are enough games using the technology to warrant the expense. We’ll see how the cards perform in existing games with the full reviews next week.

James Davenport: Card table

It’s finally happening. It is inevitable. We live life and play games without a worry, our shiny once-new PCs still plucking along, aliasing harsh edges and spitting out post-processing effects without breaking a sweat.  But I’ve noticed a trend lately. With some newer games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, I’m not pushing the framerates I want on a 120Hz monitor at 2560x1440. The ol’ GPU just ain’t cutting it anymore. With the RTX series on the horizon, all I can think about is how my rig is going to become extra dated overnight. I’ll spend my days pining for parts I can’t afford and edges my PC can no longer smooth out. My PC is getting old. Time’s arrow.

Joe Donnelly: It’s all good, baby, baby

I’m going off topic this week to let you know that my girlfriend and I are expecting our first kid. My girlfriend was due on Monday past, and yet here we are on Friday and still no baby. BUT! Having spent the last four weeks frantically baby-proofing our house, I’ve actually freed up some spare time and, obviously, I’ve spent it playing PC games. Which has inevitably meant GTA Online and rediscovering the adventure game genre. 

Another high masquerading as a low from me again this week, I’m afraid. But be prepared for me moaning about having no free time from here on in, as I evolve into my final form: Boring Dad Man.  

Fraser Brown: Subsisting on chicken dinners

This week we’ve had a Black Ops 4 battle royale beta, The Culling: Origins relaunch and an announcement for yet another one launching next week. I’m getting a wee bit tired. Tencent’s Ring of Elysium actually sounds a bit novel (not that I’ll find out, given that it’s not launching in Europe), but Blops 4 and The Culling: Origins are just more of the same thing we’ve seen plenty of already. There are so many different directions the genre could go in, but right now it just seems to be coasting.  

What I’m waiting for is a reason not to just play more Fortnite, or go back to PUBG, where I’ve already invested time and cash. I think I’ll have a long wait.