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

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
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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".

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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."

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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."

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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.

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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."

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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."

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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
Jessica Park, protagonist of the Florist, shoots a flower zombie with a pistol in a living room overgrown with creepers.
I can't wait to get murdered by flowers in this rad-looking survival horror game

By Rick Lane Published

News The Florist looks like Resident Evil meets Annihilation.

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A Broken Sword movie is in the works, aiming to move the adventure game classics into 'the next medium it deserves'

By Rick Lane Published

News Creator Charles Cecil says the emphasis is on 'what Broken sword is' rather than 'what it can be made to look like'.

8 Comments
News
A pair of blue merpeople stand on either side of a thorny coral structure in Life Below.
You can help save the whales by buying this reef-building game written by the scribe of the Tomb Raider reboot

By Rick Lane Published

News The developer of Life Below is launching a special supporter pack with all net revenue goes to supporting whale and dolphin conservation.

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Someone walking away from a spaceship
As it rapidly approaches $1 billion in player funding, Star Citizen goes free to play until May 27

By Rick Lane Published

News No taxation, just representation.

14 Comments
News
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The director of the best Splinter Cell game reckons that modern lighting engines are making stealth games 'so much harder to read'

By Rick Lane Published

News "It gets very hard to tell what’s light, what’s shadow, what’s dark, what’s safe, what’s dangerous."

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Scott Miller
Scott Miller, founder of Apogee, has over 1,000 hours in World of Warcraft and always plays a warrior in any RPG: 'I like to get right in their face and pound away'

By Rick Lane Published

Realm walker The shareware pioneer guides us through the games on his PC.

Realm walker
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth PC
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director weighs in on the real-time versus turn-based debate, saying that younger players 'increasingly favour more real-time experiences in games'

By Rick Lane Published

News But Hamaguchi still reckons that turn-based games are "deeply universal."

20 Comments
News
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