Latest articles by Rick Lane
I finally played Duke Nukem Forever's unfinished 2001 build, and while it probably would have been better than Gearbox's fiasco, it still wouldn't hold up today
Kick ass and chew burrito The vending machines are excellent though.
The follow-up to one of the decade's best detective games will have you selling cursed antiques to Victorian weirdos next month
News Strange Antiquities launches in September.
The iconic look of BioShock's Big Daddy has its roots in System Shock 2's low polygon counts: 'If you embraced your designing limitations on that stuff, you'd end up with a better model'
News "BioShock was really the last time we talked about polygon counts."
Portal sicko beats the game with 'switched' wall textures so no surface is where it's meant to be, creating a whole new puzzling challenge in the process
News 'This is the entirety of Portal with a twist'.
I embarked on a mission to answer the most important question in PC gaming: How tall is Garrett from Thief?
Tall boy Pinned size at last.
An 'Overwhelmingly Positive' idle game about plastic ducks floating in a pool has a collectible card-game successor, and there's a demo you can play now
News Placid Plastic Deck – A Quiet Quest is a card-battling adventure.
Crytek says the most important difference between Far Cry and Crysis had nothing to do with technology: 'In Crysis, we mimicked nature as closely as possible'
News "If you want to build a real place, the best you can do is go to this place."
Stormgate is leaving early access before it's technically finished: 'We believe that our campaign and 1v1 are ready for a broader audience'
News Both the co-op mode and terrain editor are still in active development.
These fanmade reload animations for Abiotic Factor are so good the game's own art director praises them: 'You absolutely nailed the vibe I was going for'
News (Re)active reload.
The Elder Scrolls' weird relationship with expansions began a full decade before the horse armour DLC, in the form of a 16-quest addon to Daggerfall exclusive to one US retailer
Secrets of the ancients Investigating the history of the Daggerfall CompUSA special edition.
Total War: Warhammer 3's siege rework beta is live now and runs into August, letting you have your say on pocket ladder prohibition, battle AI improvements, and more
News "This is your chance to get hands-on with the changes."
Crash Bandicoot's original lead programmer reckons the overhauled N. Sane Trilogy 'got almost everything right' except for one tiny detail: 'they completely botched how jumping works'
News "Every jump on the remake is huge and floaty."
After a forgettable launch, Ubisoft's Avatar game is getting a huge new update later this year, introducing new game plus and a third-person mode
News But you'll have to wait until December.
'The age of gameplay mechanics has already passed' says Shadow of The Colossus director as he praises Katamari Damacy creator's new game for not being systems-driven
News "Even if there’s nothing novel about the mechanics, you can push the game further with a certain vibe or artwork."
Co-op Kaiju Horror Cooking is a game about medieval monks catapulting meals into the mouths of giant monsters, and it's out later this month
News But you can get in early via an ongoing playtest.
Ubisoft CEO responds to the Stop Killing Games petition, stating the publisher is 'working on' improving its approach to end-of-life support, but that 'nothing is eternal'
News "Obviously support for all games cannot last forever."
Soulframe dev says launching in 2025 is now an 'aspirational goal', but you can play the fantasy RPG's pre-alpha right now if you're quick
News "We have ambitions to release it as soon as we can."
Peak's latest beta patch ensures the cooperative climbing sim actually checks players are alive when they reach the summit of its mountain: 'You no longer win if you die'
News Patch 0.8.d also adds two new items and the option to reduce camera bob.
Destiny 2 dev denies accusations that The Edge of Fate introduced 'stealth nerfs' after players identify missing changes in the expansion's massive changelog: 'We would be completely out of our minds if we thought we could slip something under the rug'
News "We're looking to get details out ASAP on the missed notes."
The Sims 4's rampant pregnancy bug was apparently caused by 'performance optimizations' and has now been fixed
News "Any Sim pregnancy related mods should return to their pre-update functionality."
Fanatical's latest build your own bundle lets you grab 23 shooters for under $2 apiece
Get Dusk, Amid Evil and, er, Pathologic 2 for less than a cup of coffee each.
Ubisoft confirms it is working on a new Ghost Recon game, and it sure looks like it'll be a live service affair
Possibly first-person too.
The Expanse RPG's developers are 'humbled' by comparisons to BioWare's heyday, but don't expect it to be a straight Mass Effect clone: 'We make our story a little bit differently'
News "We’re making more choices and consequences."
