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

The RoboCop: Rogue City expansion that looks like Dredd will bring more trouble to your PC in July
By Rick Lane published
News Unfinished Business gets a release date.

This upcoming life sim features co-op survival, farming, factory automation, time-travel romance, ghost hunting and mechs, which is probably why it doubled its Kickstarter goal in its first 24 hours
By Rick Lane published
News Autonomica aims to do it all.

The adventure game that kicked off the Syberia series just got a shiny Myst-like makeover
By Rick Lane published
News Amerzone – The Explorer's Legacy is out now.

The end of The Long Dark is in sight after over a decade in development, culminating in a fifth and final story episode that is '3 to 4 times as big' as episode 4
By Rick Lane published
News "The episode is the most ambitious we've built so far."

This subreddit dedicated to the worst computer setups on Earth makes me weirdly proud to be a PC gamer
By Rick Lane published
Masters of disaster Celebrating the gloriously terrible PC gaming setups of r/shittybattlestations.

Gloomwood's research update transforms it from Thief with guns into Dishonored with mutations, letting you inject dissected monster juice into yourself to gain their powers
By Rick Lane published
News Jekyll and hide.

Dwarf Fortress sells 1 million copies on Steam, so now Bay 12 Games can afford that 'little party' it planned
By Rick Lane published
News But the work continues.

After a disappointing sequel and a cancelled remake, the original Fear Effect is coming to PC 'for the first time ever'
By Rick Lane published
News The cel-shaded action game's rerelease comes courtesy of Limited Run.

The Elder Scrolls Online celebrates its 10th anniversary a year late by selling off 2,000 pieces of its servers
By Rick Lane published
News Own a shard of Tamriel.

Rebellion's CEO says 'it looks like we want to do more Atomfall' but it will depend on whether the studio can 'find the resources to do it'
By Rick Lane published
News "It's nice when marketing comes back to you and says 'yep, we underestimated our high-level success.'"

Phil Spencer is 'really happy' with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, hinting there might be more Nazi punching adventures in the future: 'We do think there's life in that franchise'
By Rick Lane published
News But he also wants Microsoft "to do our own games and our own franchises".

Painkiller's new weapons trailer gives us a good look at the reboot's guns, and I'm delighted to see that its iconic stake launcher still skewers enemies to walls
By Rick Lane published
News Stake out.

After a disastrous recent update and a flurry of attempts to fix it, Path of Exile 2's next patch will bring 'two highly sought after improvements'
By Rick Lane published
News Grinding Gear Games will launch update 0.2.0g "as soon as we can".

Tempest Rising review: A stalwart defence of everything that made the RTS great in the first place
By Rick Lane published
Tiberian Son Tempest Rising is a rollicking RTS just like mama Westwood used to make.

The Epic Store's latest free games giveaway includes 'over $100' worth of stuff for the Forgotten Realms idle game
By Rick Lane published
News Also includes River City Girls and in-game currency for Arcadeogeddon.

Age of Empires 2's quest to conquer the strategy globe continues unabated as The Three Kingdoms DLC invades ancient China this May
By Rick Lane published
News Five new factions, three new campaigns, and camels wearing trebuchets all coming in the expansion.

Former Skyrim dev announces a vehicular free-running game where you launch a car through a claymation world using mouth-sound explosions, and that's the weirdest thing I've ever had to fit into a headline
By Rick Lane published
News Deedlee Doo! Carkour! barrel-rolls onto Steam in May.

John Romero's brutal megawad Sigil 2 has formally chainsawed its way into Bethesda's Doom + Doom 2 remaster
By Rick Lane published
News Doom's unofficial sixth episode is now considerably more official.

Neil Newbon definitely wants to play Astarion again, and if whatever studio that makes Baldur’s Gate 4 recasts him, he’ll totally ‘hunt them down and gut them like a fish’
By Rick Lane published
News "I hope I get to play him again."

Following massive player fall-off, Amazon's MMO Lost Ark is getting an update to make levelling faster and address a 'known progression pain point'
By Rick Lane published
News "These changes will help make progression more accessible."

Literary masterpiece The Count of Monte Cristo is being adapted as a clicker game about getting educated to escape prison
By Rick Lane published
News Click for freedom.

Days Gone’s upcoming survival arcade mode will introduce endless hordes and ‘exploding freakers’, and I’m beginning to think it might be the best way to play the game
By Rick Lane published
News Horde assault mode aims to turn the open world game into a survival roguelite.

Superb city-builder Against the Storm will round off its roster with a DLC of bats, who 'take pride in enduring what breaks others and cannot stand being favored'
By Rick Lane published
News The DLC will launch alongside a free content update, though both are still "months away."

In 'a bit of an experiment' Rust's latest update makes softcore mode even softer, and some changes may be brought over 'to the vanilla game in future'
By Rick Lane published
News New jungle biome also teased.

Pacific Drive's 'largest ever' update adds endless expeditions to the vehicular survival game, but it's a big change to how saving works that has me pondering a reinstall
By Rick Lane published
News "The main storyline and expeditions routes can be completed in parallel, so you’ll benefit from progress in either!"
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