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

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.

News
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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.

News
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."

News
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
Gary Oldman
Star Citizen's latest alpha update brings a 'full reset' to its universe, as Cloud Imperium Games promises to crack down on player exploits and duplication issues

By Rick Lane Published

News Players keep their blueprints and ships bought with in-game currency, but that's it.

42 Comments
News
Alexander the Great looking insufferably smug as he poses with a shield and spear.
Civilization 7's imminent update will add one of history's most famous conquerors for free, in Firaxis' latest bid to coax you back to its controversial sequel

By Rick Lane Published

News Tests of Time has one last surprise in store.

8 Comments
News
The player fends off a bomb-chucking goblin with a broom.
This indie action RPG looks like Minecraft but plays like Dark Messiah, letting you boot enemies off ledges and body slam them into walls of spikes

By Rick Lane Published

News The Adventures of Sir Kicksalot is out now

News
Rhell
This game about being a chaotic mage might be the best indie immersive sim you can play, as I learned after destroying a mime's house with magnetism

By Rick Lane Published

Rhelly good Rhell: Warped Worlds & Troubled Times is a delight.

Rhelly good
Blades of Fire's protagonist Aran comforts another character in a tavern bedroom.
MercurySteam announces 'difficult and painful' job cuts as its God of War-inspired hack 'n' slash arrives on Steam

By Rick Lane Published

News The developer of Blades of Fire has initiated a "workforce adjustment process."

9 Comments
News
Mozilla Firefox logo with an artistic outline of a phone
6 million more people are using Firefox because of new EU rules, which is good news for Chrome haters like me

By Rick Lane Published

News Other third-party browsers are seeing upticks too.

35 Comments
News
Two vampires stand menacingly in V Rising, a vampiric survival game by Stunlock studios.
Sink your teeth into V Rising for free this weekend, and you can grab the full game for less than half price

By Rick Lane Published

News All DLC is also 20% off.

News
Fallout Power Armor helmet looking to right with darkened red city in background
Fallout's creator reveals you could have played as a snoring cow hater who believes in UFOs, had Black Isle stuck with its original licensed roleplaying system

By Rick Lane Published

News Tim Cain spills the tea on "GURPS Fallout".

News
Bennet Foddy in front of Baldur's Gate 3 characters
Bennett Foddy, designer of QWOP and Baby Steps, is obsessed with friendslop games and won't uninstall Baldur's Gate 3, even though he'll probably never finish it: 'It was too big and so I stopped'

By Rick Lane Published

Loco motion The master of bizarre control schemes talks us through the games on his PC.

8 Comments
Loco motion
An artist paints on a canvas in a paint-dappled studio in Two Point Museum
Two Point Museum's latest DLC features a buildable studio where artists can create 'millions' of unique artworks, and there's 'no generative AI involved' whatsoever

By Rick Lane Published

News Two Point Museum: Arty Facts is available now.

News
A mortar shell launches from a tube in Rust.
Rust's latest update adds mortars but 'no visual guide to help you land shells,' so get ready for some chaos

By Rick Lane Published

News "Firing a mortar requires mastery through trial & error."

News
Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza
How a trio of Canadian modders stumbled into making an official Die Hard game: 'I've had projects disappear that had 10 times the promise that this did'

By Rick Lane Published

Hard lessons The strange origin of MechWarrior steward Piranha Games.

Hard lessons
EU5 key art
Europa Universalis 5's 'biggest update yet' expands the Balkans, overhauls the economy, and fixes more than 2,000 bugs

By Rick Lane Published

News The Encinades update also reworks orthodoxy and improves military systems.

News
A scientist is mobbed by friendly alien pets in Abiotic Factor.
Abiotic Factor just got another massive update that adds better pets, a ludicrously involved chemistry system, and most importantly, a mop for cleaning up all your failed experiments

By Rick Lane Published

News Cosmic Companions is live now.

8 Comments
News
Max Caulfield wallops a headcrab zombie with a crowbar in Half-Life is Strange.
This very normal Half-Life mod lets you play as 'queen of spacetime' Max Caulfield, and it's convinced me that the next Life is Strange should be a full-on boomer shooter

By Rick Lane Published

News Half-Life is Strange adds rewind powers and teen angst into Valve's FPS.

News
A group of leather-clad warriors pose in front of a portal in Conan Exiles
Conan Exiles whips out a massive Unreal Engine 5 upgrade that includes an 'enhanced endowment slider' to further improve player penises

By Rick Lane Published

News Biggus Clickus.

News
A cyborg from Helldivers 2 stands ominously, surrounded by mist and vapor.
Arrowhead addresses the Helldivers 2 community as recent Steam reviews slump to Mostly Negative: 'We want to be clearer about what we're working on and what's coming next'

By Rick Lane Published

Multi-week campaigns, new vehicles, and more red stratagems are all apparently in the works.

53 Comments
Action
Slay the Spire key art.
Erik Wolpaw, co-writer of Portal and Portal 2 adores Burnout Paradise and has 1,500 hours in Slay the Spire: 'This is the perfect level of strategy'

By Rick Lane Published

Paradise killer "It's the exact, perfect level of decision making and cognitive load for my brain."

Paradise killer
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