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

As Black Desert Online celebrates its tenth anniversary, Pearl Abyss reveals the future of its MMO lies thousands of years in the past
By Rick Lane published
sands of time "It was like, 'what's the next big adventure?'"

With Doom: The Dark Ages, id Software is still searching for what made the original great, and I hope it never finds it
By Rick Lane published
Doom for improvement Hugo Martin keeps getting Doom wrong, and that's what makes the games so good.

Black Desert celebrates its 10th anniversary with a brand-new class: a pipe-smoking swordsman who can summon an army of ghost archers
By Rick Lane published
News Smoking kills.

Asked whether Grand Theft Auto 6 will come to PC, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick says Rockstar 'will make more announcements in due time'
By Rick Lane published
News "The only thing that happens after the lack of an announcement is an announcement."

Slime Rancher 2's latest update adds toys and see-saws for your colourful blobs, letting you transform your ranch into a playground for profit
By Rick Lane published
News Get there pronto.

Broken Roads, the wonky Aussie Fallout, receives a major update that lets you pet koalas and explains the meaning of sex trophies
By Rick Lane published
News Koala-ty of life changes.

Private Division has canceled a deal for Bloober Team's unannounced survival horror 'Project C', but the mystery game from the Silent Hill 2 remakers might not be dead yet
By Rick Lane published
News Bloober Team is 'prepared for potential alternatives'.

Helldivers 2 player encounters a bug that gives them infinite gas, and haven't we all been there?
By Rick Lane published
News Stuck on a loo(p).

Sony accidentally leaks the whole of Destiny 2's latest expansion, as its game streaming service let players access The Final Shape days before launch
By Rick Lane published
News Weapons, armor, exotics, and campaign mission details revealed prematurely.

Arrowhead's new CEO says the studio 'knew it would be impossible' to keep up with Helldivers 2's demand for new content, is now focussed on adjusting 'so that in the long term we can make more and better stuff'
By Rick Lane published
News "We're building a bit of scaffolding so we can make a bigger barn."

Sony hopes PC gamers, who'll wait years for Epic exclusives to come to Steam out of spite, will buy PS5s for exclusive sequels
By Rick Lane published
News It could work for them, but then again, we are a notoriously patient bunch when we want to be.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6's latest teaser trailer is heavy on analogue horror and creepy mannequins
By Rick Lane published
News Extended trailer also suggests Zombies mode is back.

Helldivers 2 players have successfully emancipated the Emancipator mech from the automaton assembly line, and of course the dual-autocannon exosuit has triggered another debate about balance
By Rick Lane published
News Mech a big mess.

The next Doom game will be titled Doom: The Dark Ages and revealed at Xbox Games Showcase, report claims
By Rick Lane published
News I'm Quaking with anticipation.

Larian CEO reveals the studio 'had to do a bit on crunch' on Baldur's Gate 3, but it was 'certainly less' than previous projects it has worked on
By Rick Lane published
News 'You will always have a little bit when you're trying to finish something'

Assassin's Creed Shadows is leaking like a freshly-stabbed Samurai, as main character art sneaks online ahead of imminent reveal
By Rick Lane published
News Shuriken look if you want.

Ghost of Tsushima's crossplay function will launch with a 'beta' tag attached, prompting speculation that Sony is hoping to avoid another PSN-related fiasco
By Rick Lane published
News Ghost in the machine.

Nexon says sweaty FPS The Finals surpassed expectations at launch but has tailed-off badly, pledges to 'understand and address the key issues'
By Rick Lane published
News Final Countdown?

Abiotic Factor's first major update adds alien cheese and corpse bags, as the Half-Life inspired survival sim sells 250,000 copies
By Rick Lane published
News What's that smell?

This chocolate factory-building game asks the question 'What if Willy Wonka had a gun?'
By Rick Lane published
News Chocolate Factory lets you build confectionary assembly lines and shoot gingerbread men in the face.

Helldivers 2's Polar Patriots Warbond gets an icy reception, as over 70% of 21,000 Discord voters declare they'd prefer more patches or simply don't like it
By Rick Lane published
News Cold shoulder.

ZeniMax files a trademark for a Doom cheat code that unlocks everything, raising hopes of a new entry in the series
By Rick Lane published
News Xbox's 2024 showcase is in June.

Square Enix to 'aggressively pursue' a new multiplatform business strategy 'designed to win over PC users'
By Rick Lane published
News New plan will also include a shift from "quantity to quality".

Former Helldivers 2 writer is astonished by the monster he helped create, as he describes how the game's approach to storytelling led to the community's showdown with Sony: 'We trained them to fight together. And then they fought together'
By Rick Lane published
News "It was built from the beginning to have the players involved."
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